RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

If they could keep still at any other time other than while driving, I'd have doubts that they belonged to me, or at least I'd have doubts that they were once attached to me. My habit of not keeping my legs still came back to haunt and hit me right where it hurts the most today - my left kneecap, probably after the CPU had had enough of abuse all these years with my consistent non-intentional kicking. The CD in all it's broken glory :( On another unrelated note, a CD that I won in a contest ages ago just broke after having a bad, bad fall. I attempted calling all the kings men and horses although I realised that it was a lost cause, but like Humpty Dumpty, the CD could not be put back together again. Of course the kings men and their horses never arrived to my rescue, because I don't know any kings. I won the CD after answering a question on the cable music channel via e-mail, as I was strangely fixated with the band REM back then after hearing their song Shiny H...

So the country is apparently thinking on broadening her economic horizons using the partnership with a certain foreign biotech company that specialises in and develops medicine which also unfortunately involves testing on animals. While broadening economic horizons is crucial to the development of a developing nation such as ours, I personally think that using animals to test the effectiveness of the medicine meant for humans to be a tad bit cruel, although it had been done for some time until some intervention. Now you get stuff (mostly cosmetics) that says it was not tested on animals. The other day, while I was reading one of my usual lunch time reading materials I came across the article below: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/mouse-pain-expression/ I sort of discussed the article with my sister later that night and she did say that mice had the tendency to double up in pain (like we do) when they were subjected to painful conditions that could give them ulcers - stres...

I suppose I wouldn't be too far off the mark if I were to say that if you told a Malaysian that they were not allowed to celebrate a certain occasion with food, they'd probably give you a punch on the nose. That is if you were the one unfortunate enough to have to break the news to them. See, Malaysians love their food, and although picky (the sauce doesn't taste quite right, the consistency sucks, etc), food represents all occasions. Naturally, being Malaysians and all, Mother's Day this year was celebrated amidst food. This story was supposed to go up on Saturday night/Sunday morning ages ago, but as luck would have it, it wasn't meant to be (see post with the word Poison in the title), and as time went by, the direction of the post in my head changed altogether... mainly because of a certain picture I saw on Secret Agent Woman's blog. You know how pictures sometimes evoke the strangest memories? That particular picture brought back memories of the time m...

My interest in politics waxes and wanes like the moon in the sky at night, with the most poignant moment being the general elections in March 2008, where I spent a good deal of the night (until 5am!!) refreshing the web page where the results were displayed. It was interesting to note that after so long, the ruling coalition (will be known in this post as NF) got it's ass kicked by the opposition (known in this post as PF) by losing five states. Naturally, the interest waned later on as the whole situation seemed like a very bad soap opera with equally bad actors. The high hopes of making a difference seemed to move further away from reach as *components stated having issues amongst themselves, one of the states was just stolen away in a shocking manner and many other things. A year and a half later, we see the need for a by-election in this place called Hulu Selangor, and while it garnered interest in many ways from a whole bunch of Malaysians, the only thing I did was read a po...

While I've never been the kind of person who blogs daily, I somehow get this vibe that I have been blogging less in recent days for reasons that range from time passing by too fast, being ill, to the uncanny momentary dislike of the internet in general. Well, slow moving internet, that is, where videos take forever to buffer, and the only thing that loads pretty quickly are blogs (some of 'em, at least), but there's only a handful of blogs you can read at any given time. It was somewhere in the evening yesterday while putting the finishing touches to my Mother's Day post that I realised how ridiculous it was - not the post, but how it is now more than a week since that day that I even had difficulty remembering the exact unfolding of events! And much to my regret, I couldn't even publish it as some of the photos which I figured should accompany the post are still in the memory card and were not accessible at the very moment. This isn't the only case, the TS ...

Eons ago in the mad days of schooling I had learned about the "Perang Tiga Segi" , loosely translated into the Three Angled War. Now the only reason why this particular war stands out among all others is because I happened to have three classmates who sat in a triangle while discussing the war while we had a teacherless class one day... Everyone, including the three of them thought it was funny and laughed for days on end each time anyone mentioned the irony of a discussion about the three angled war while sitting in a triangle. (It sounds so much funnier in Malay, though) Our history books back then were dead boring, and some of our teachers even more so. My Form 1 history teacher would make us read paragraphs aloud and force us to underline the "ímportant" passages with a red pen. The only interesting thing about her was she wore a necklace of seashells every single day which we all imagined were the shells of the "Siput Cowrie" , which was used as cu...

Just the other day, I had candidly remarked on Ricardo's blog that the notion of being poisoned has this aura of romanticism about it. Perhaps it's how poison is always the chosen weapon for women serial murderers. It's something that I find hard to explain. Besides, with explanation, I may run the risk of revealing too much. Little did I know that day that I was about to be on the receiving end of some poison, and it was the furthest from being romantic, instead, if you know me well enough, you may already suspect that it borders on something comedic. On the practical side of things, geckos or 'house' lizards are under the impression that they rule this side of the planet. Wherever you go at night, they'll be there, challenging you to a fight. The other day, a baby lizard fell on my sister, she freaked out. That did it. That was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand or as some people might say, the Casus belli . The war on geckos had begun. Tucked...

Whilst clearing up the laptop of things I didn't want the other day, I got sidetracked and started viewing the photos in my carelessly named folders, and found this. This happened to be a friend's plate at a teppanyaki place in Japan on a cold, cold night, (mine was a boring one of floral design), and I figured that it looks interesting enough to be a conversation piece... (or blog fodder, for that matter) Edit: I wonder if the plate is meant to distract people from their food??   Click to enlarge

*"Do not trouble trouble till trouble troubles you" so said an illustrated character in my Form 3 English textbook. For some reason, those words amused me immensely throughout the rest of my school life although I can't really say I have followed the advice dispensed wholly. Most of the trouble I find myself in always has some other factor that would have influenced it in some sort of way or another... but that's a different story. In about a week, my one year contract with my current ISP will be over, and I will be free to continue or discontinue their service. If you have been with me on this blog circa 2008, you will probably know that I had some mega ISP issues back then which caused me to tear out my hair in frustration and led me to cancel that account and use a new ISP. While I do not have any major complaints in regards to their connection (except the occasional crawl that could put the slowest snail to shame), they seem to have taken me and my sister for a r...