RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

                                                                        Click to enlarge Back in 1997, a code found it's way into my hands. Even as the most irregular diarist (ahem!) the world has ever seen back then, the secret contents of the diary was always in danger of being read by curious eyes. Little did I know that many years later, looking at the few (note the emphasis on the word irregular above) coded entries, my enthusiasm in keeping them a secret would be in danger of being a secret forever and ever. To add to the drama, I also recently managed to misplace the entries, find them again, and finally break them, albeit thr...

Continued from here Samosir Island The view from the island right after the rain Samosir Island has got to be one of the most relaxing places on earth, other than being one filled with interesting ancient history. We left the mainland, Parapat, via ferry the next morning, after a typical Indonesian breakfast, which could also be mistaken for a Malaysian breakfast due to our close proximity. As we had nothing better to do, we sat in the ferry and observed people. The locals (or so we presumed) packed their breakfast into tupperwares and bags and enjoyed it on the ferry trip, like a picnic, while the wind whipped their hair and jackets about (if they sat near the open windows that is.) Some of them puffed on their cigarettes mulling over life. People wore jackets, and some kids were dressed in such a way that made you think you were going to a really cold place. We also took some time to look out of the window, the cold wind blowing at our faces and the reluctant sun occasiona...

It was a time when the future looked bleak, And a bird quit catching worms with its beak, Yellow turned to green, And everywhere people turned mean, Oh, What a week!

What was once a place where men went to for a tinkle was recently converted into a place where women would go for similar reasons. It's situated right next to the original women's bathroom. An observation on the local bathroom habits show that women always prefer going into the original women's bathroom and will only choose the converted one if the original one is occupied. Even more absurd is whilst being in the converted bathroom, you tend to feel that you're living in a reflection (everything is on the opposite side of the original bathroom), and wildly imaginative minds imagine that when you open the door, you will be met with an angry glare from some guy who had to wait for the bathroom! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I slept off while reading yesterday afternoon, and it was a pretty good sleep, until the very end that is, no thanks to an afternoonmare (instead of the more popular nightmare...

Fellow sufferers of a mild form of Facebook addiction may agree that the famous social network occasionally throws people you might know at your face when you least expect it. Most times, while you might have a friend or two in common, it's quite likely that you may not know who they are. At other times, let's just say that there's a reason (one that you're not exactly willing to divulge) why you're not already friends with that particular person they so excitedly think you may know. Earlier this year, FB decided that it was time to throw *Jimmy L across my path, and since he belongs to neither of the categories above, I approached it with my brand of curiosity and a trip down memory lane - though most of it is a bit hazy, and dusty and (for the lack of a better word), downright strange. This is because Jimmy L happens to be the very first boy I was teased with, at the crazy age of ten -  a very, very long time ago. It was towards the end of the 1990 school year, ...

He turned into a she for awhile (Peer pressure? Quarter life crisis?) And now, he's back to being a he. In fact he's getting engaged in a month or so, to a she. (Yes, me being back to blogging also means the re-emergence of pointless posts)

As far as movie franchises go, X-Men happens to be one of the few that I've actually made an effort to catch (background story: I'm not an avid moviegoer), and that is how I'd like to think I ended up in a cineplex after work yesterday amidst loud popcorn crunchers and children in pyjamas.  Funny thing about children, though.. there are was this huge family with lots of little kids in front of us, and one of them started whining (this was before the movie started), and I accidentally said "shhhh" out aloud and inadvertently set a good example to the (presumably) older sibling who said "shhhh" when the younger one started whining again.  But I digress... (Plot spoilers may lie ahead like landmines - so skip this if you haven't watched X-Men First Class and want to be surprised when you do) Long before most of us were born, a boy sees his mother being shot when he couldn't repeat some magic with metal which he was seen performing earlier unde...

The Plan The end of October and early November of last year witnessed my sister and I in one of our many happier moments - not only as sisters (we both probably had evil thoughts of wrestling with each other, that didn't pan out), but as people in general.  It's been ages since then, and details are a little vague, but it certainly involved a few bookmarked pages, blogs by other people who have done similar things and some concern regarding missing information about transportation from the middle of nowhere to the city, and in all that insanity, the two planners extraordinaire had completely overlooked the fact that our destination had recently been subject to a volcanic eruption from a volcano that had gone through centuries of inactivity! The Plan - sort of Our plan, however, was to make our way from KL to Medan (by flight, naturally), and then get away from Medan to Parapat, spend a night there, go on to the Island of Samosir the next day, visit some selected places b...

A few days ago: Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper rings out clearly as my phone lights up. I reach out and pick it up, not recognizing the number and hoping that I don't have to be rude to someone trying to convince me to buy insurance I don't need.  Rovanski: Terra! You were looking for me? I saw a missed call from you. Me: Oh. No, no.. I wasn't looking for you Rovanski: Oh, you probably wrongly called me then. Bye. Me: Bye. Strange. Rovanski's number was not in my phone, and yet he received a call (which he missed) from my number even though I was conscious and my phone was with me all the time. Besides, I don't really call people on their mobile phones unless it is an emergency and only after I've exhausted attempts at all other forms of communication. I thought it was just a one time thing, but I was clearly mistaken. A few days later: The phone rings again, and it's Rovanski again although I still didn't recognise the number as I...

It was in the late 80's. The family would sit together with cups of tea in our hands while watching some old reruns, among them this one show called The Fugitive. As I attempted drafting this post in my head, all directions of what I was about to write here made me sound like I was a fugitive myself - running for or from what, or who am I hiding from, I can't say.  The thing is, some time ago, I encountered something that made me very, very uncomfortable on this blog (the old url, anyway) that led me to make the drastic action of deactivating it. I sat up from 7 am on a certain Saturday morning and unpublished my posts one by one, and with almost 600 posts written all the way from 2006 till now, I completed the task only four hours later. I then proceeded to hide my blog by making it readable by only myself, and I took off the search engine options. Despite the sluggish posting and the confession that sharing too much of myself here was detrimental to my well-being, tearing d...