RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

On 31st August 1957, a small peninsula in South East Asia declared independence from the British. Today, the country is known as Malaysia, and besides the old peninsula, encompasses some parts of the island of Borneo as well. Over the past week, the radio station I listen to interviewed several people who lived through more tumultuous times such as the time during the communist insurgency, and the race riots of 1969. Hearing these people speak, you can actually hear their sense of pride being a Malaysian shine through your car radio speakers as you navigate the busy roads to reach your workplace on time. And this, sadly is something you'll never hear from the current generation who run off to greener pastures the moment they are given the opportunity. Earlier on Monday, they were airing a series of documentaries regarding Malaysia on the history channel. One which I found particularly interesting is the one on Hidden Cities - because like it's name, the places were indeed sor...

Around a month ago, when the month of *Ramadan first started, the shopping mall where the gym I go to is located put up an abomination disguised as a festive decoration commemorating the festival - a giant rabbit dressed in a green traditional Malay costume. Decoration, ok. Traditional Malay costume, ok. But a rabbit? Seriously? Same question here, but since I'm a local resident, I know for a fact that said rabbit was happily recycled from the Chinese New Year decoration earlier this year. On one hand it can be seen as an act of prudence in the current economic climate, but on the other hand, the ugliness of it is just too hard to bear, especially since we have children pestering their parents to take photographs of them posing with the rabbit, and also tourists standing to gawp at it (and take photos) - either mesmerised or horrified, we'll never know. (I've been meaning to take a photo of the offending rabbit for ever so long, but I keep forgetting. Besides, I don't...

I want to be a chemical engineer. Actually, it was never like that. At all. Growing up, I had a long list of things I wanted to do. Believe it or not, being a drummer for a band in a pub was among one of them, although I never told anyone about it at that time. At the same time I also wanted to be a policewoman. However, for some reason, a career in the medical field took over the list and I thought that that was what I wanted to do, until 1996, when my sister met with an accident when we were on our way home from school one day and we spent a good time in the hospital emergency room, seeing people being wheeled around in wheelchairs in various degrees of injuries, the doctors who couldn't care less, missing several wounds and glass shrapnel which were scattered all over my sister's wounds. The whole atmosphere was so depressing that I knew there and then, that it was the end of an almost lifelong ambition. What's really interesting (and somewhat disappointing as well) i...

The year was 1988, and in that year, a rather 'out of the box' teacher and our class crossed paths. Every week, during one of our lessons - I can't remember which, she'd introduce us to something interesting, from a discussion on old wives tales (which we had to dig up from our parents to be presented in class) to old folk stories - one of them being the story of the misadventures of Pak Pandir during his attempts to help his wife give their baby a bath while she was away. Back then, we all laughed at how silly Pak Pandir could be, putting his baby into a tub of boiling hot water (and killing it in the process) Looking back, I can't imagine how on earth childhood innocence could make something so morbid seem funny. Earlier this week, while reading a local online paper, I saw the following headline:  "Perkasa burns copies of Star, rubber snakes in protest" Full article here Ok. (The) Star, I understand - something the newspaper wrote pissed them off big ...

Not Burnt What is the probability of anyone of us consuming food that has been slightly burned that it's almost inedible? This insanity happened to me twice last week. On Tuesday evening, I finally remembered to go down to the Ramadan food sales in the canteen. The company has kindly subsidised a certain amount for food for all staff regardless if they were Muslims or not, or if they were fasting or not, and I thought I might as well check it out and get some Nyonya cakes (aka kuih) By the time I arrived, though, most of the Nyonya cakes had been sold out and I was left with a meagre selection. Since I was already there, I thought - what the hell and randomly picked up two pieces of seri muka . Much later in the day, after dinner, as I bit into a piece of the seri muka, I was greeted with the pungent smell of something that had burned in the pot. The top layer had apparently been scooped up and saved from a batch that had probably been burned to boredom at the bottom . ...

Despite the fact that watching TV seems so 2002, the TV set and *Malaysia's Most Reliable Weather Forecast Thingy still exists and is still going strong at my parents house, that is until a few days ago.  Over the week, some of the channels have taken to disappearing overnight, for instance, among the few channels in the Education package (Discovery, NGW, NGC, Animal Planet, History, Discovery Sc), the only channel that is currently working happens to be NGC, whereas the rest happily display "Service is currently Unavailable", a message most commonly associated with the rain! Out of all the 40 available channels, 33 of them are now unavailable.   A call to the service provider involved some 'troubleshooting tips' via the phone, and it turns out that none of the usual remedies suggested work. The messages on the unavailable channels remain the same, and the operator actually had the nerve to ask my mom if it was **raining. Not once, but twice! (In case you're...

Apparently, last-minuteness works quite well with me.  In a sudden deviation from my usual (but mood-dependent and selective) anti-social behaviour, I found myself agreeing to spend last Saturday night playing RISK with a few friends, although on second thought, I could not possibly ever be anti-social with the bunch of people mentioned in here. I pulled up at JV's house around 7:40 pm, and instead of delving straight into attempts at conquering the world, the three of us had decided to go and pick up the board from JV's friend's house, have some dinner and then begin the game. Several minutes later with the board in hand, JV drove around as we wondered where we'd have dinner. In the end, after a rather lengthy discussion we decided to head over to Bangsar for dinner, quite a distance from where we were, actually. By the time dinner was over all thoughts of RISK had been thrown out of the window, albeit a bit forcefully - PJ still thought we could pull off a very shor...

It's been ten long years since the very first Harry Potter book (HP and the Philosopher's Stone) was thrown on my lap. I picked it up, a bit reluctantly at first, and the rest, as they say, is history. The movies on the other hand have been a different story altogether. The first movie was just 'alright', whereas the rest just got from bad to worse as they ignored important plotlines, leaving readers and fans of the books seething and disappointed, and the non-readers wondering what the hell happened. It all changed with the 7th movie, though. I didn't read the book right before the movie, and watched it with an open mind knowing well enough that it was the beginning of the end, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The review is here: http://raconteuresquescribblings.blogspot.com/2010/12/harry-potter-and-how-it-begins-to-end.html For that reason, we (the sister and I) went to see the final installment of the Harry Potter (HP and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2) on a Monday ni...