RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

You call a hot but dumb girl a bimbo, but what would you call a girl who is not hot but equally dumb? I had an encounter with one of those types yesterday... I don't mind her being not hot, but it was the dumb that I couldn't stand. It all began on Monday morning, starting with an e-mail from my boss regarding a certain problem I was supposed to investigate. With Sherlock Holmes-esque enthusiasm and reasoning (Elementary, my dear Watson), I dove into it, hoping to get some leads before I was imprisoned against my will from 10:00 am till Tuesday afternoon. For that, I had to communicate with a certain person, the person who initiated the chain of e-mails to be exact. To my dismay, I didn't get an immediate response on the office instant messenger. So I went looking for the evidence myself, with hopes of finding some information so that I could proceed with the necessary tests, but the information wasn't where it was supposed to be. Someone must have taken it away. ...

The impulsive shopper who goes by the nom de blog Terra Shield stood in front of the fiction shelf where  authors whose names started with P decorated the spines of the books they once wrote. And for the first time in over two years, the name Pratchett seemed to dominate the shelf. So there went the impulsive shopper, picking out books she wanted to read but couldn't because it was never easy to find Pratchett in the local bookstore she visited. With the help of her sister and a bewildered cousin (said cousin has never seen her in such a frenzied excitement), she grabbed a total of 11 books! That's going to be about four to five months worth of entertainment! The 11 books obtained during the shopping frenzy The whole collection from 2006 till now

I made a wish to the universe the other day, hoping for something funny or odd to happen, if not to me, then perhaps to someone else. (And not in a bad way... like how I had my sneakers stolen at the gym - that was odd, not funny, or how I once dropped a box set of books on a girl (it was an accident!!)  who was sitting under the shelf, sneaking a read in the bookstore) Thirty three hours later, other than an incredibly hilarious story a friend of mine shared with me, nothing funny happened. In fact, nothing happened at all, unless you count the activities that led my work desk to look like a tornado passed right through it within four days of being back at work. It was very neat when I left it two weeks ago. An attempt at chalk outlines using crayons :p The other day, however had a slightly funny moment. See, while the plant shut down for Eid, we had some installation and repair work going on, and one of the things they did was to build a roof over the ASSembly area so that pe...

How many people need to be buried under their respective houses before anyone realises that building houses on hillslopes is a bad, bad idea? Earlier this month, the star online ran an article mentioning that the court has ruled in favour of a housing development in Bukit Gasing, one of the few remaining natural places (a hill for hiking) where city folk get in touch with nature. Actual article here : I had actually highlighted this hillside issue on this blog before, and instead of repeating myself, I figured I'd just reproduce the post here. Originally posted on December 8, 2008 "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 ev...

Unrequited love. A term I first got acquainted with in English Literature class, where our teacher, a fan of all things French and romantic introduced us to abridged works of authors such as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. At that time, it was just another new term which I unfortunately could not incorporate into any of my essays for school. Now, if you have been *following the Malaysian news for the past one month, you'd probably know that we have had an incident with our less than friendly neighbour, the Indonesians (from a certain group that call themselves BENDERA actually). They seem to have taken a very dramatic stance by burning our flag and throwing crap at the Malaysian Embassy. (Ok, the throwing of crap is just plain gross... I think even with utmost hatred, the most dangerous thing I'd throw at someone is a Rubik's cube) *Actual news link here Anyway, incidences aside, what amuses me the most is the reaction from the Malaysian (ahem!) leadership. I was ...

Day 2 - After an interesting peek into the past and a short lesson on the history of Buddhism, from Borobudur, we checked out another Buddhist temple (I cannot remember the name - although come to think of it, I don't even know if we ever found out the name!) around the vicinity. Here we also saw the Bodhi tree, the tree under which Buddha received enlightenment. We did stand under the tree for a short while, but were probably not exactly in the right frame of mind to be enlightened in any way whatsoever. The Bodhi Tree: No enlightenment found here The second Buddhist temple We later hit the Sultan's Palace, another somewhat popular tourist destination judging from the number of non-local looking people around with cameras and backpacks. The strangest thing here is that the Sultan actually still lives there, in his palace. Of course we didn't go into the palace to say hi or anything, but if I was the Sultan, I'd go berserk if so many people were within...

Am I being evil when the first response that comes to mind when someone 'says' that they have a neck ache is "Serves you right?"

Evil (a song which sometimes serves as an alarm, and has the tendency to cause a certain degree of alarm, no doubt) woke me up at the unearthly hour of 3 in the morning. As I tried to organise my thoughts (where was I?, why is my alarm set at 3 freaking am?, why is it so bloody cold?), it finally hit me... I was going to see the sun rise from Borobudur! We left the hotel premises at about 4 am, with our breakfast boxes and backpacks, Sleep deprived and tired for some reason, we nodded off comfortably as our van took us to our destination, with our poor guide trying to make some conversation with some trivia about Borobudur, where we would occasionally respond with an 'ok'. Yes, we are terrible people, but we live in the region and actually know the general stuff about Borobudur because we all read. A lot. We finally reached our destination and were given a torchlight each to navigate up the 'stairs' to the top of Borobudur right before dawn. It was dark...