RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Sometime last week, I found out that R.E.M had decided to disband after 31 long years of making music. Though I knew they've been around for a long, long time, the knowledge that it was 31 years actually took me by surprise. I got to know R.E.M back in 2001 when the song Imitation of Life was repeatedly played. The video, a pool side party in a reversed sequence was equally fascinating. I suppose that song made them popular in these parts, and two years later while Bad Day was receiving lots of airplay due to In Time, I actually won this CD of theirs in a promotional contest organised by a music TV station, which I listened to a lot back then due to my *limited CD collection (Channel V - which for some strange reason has ceased airing it's programmes here since last year) In a freak accident while cleaning up, the CD fell off the shelf and broke into two. Eventually, over the noughties, I ended up being exposed to a lot of their stuff to the point that at one time, m...

continued from The Big North Sumatera Adventure Part V Although I had not mentioned anything about geothermal activity throughout any of the past posts from the Big North Sumatera Adventure series, Lake Toba and the areas surrounding it was actually once a very active area, so active indeed that whatever it was that formed Lake Toba was a supervolcano that erupted over 73000 years ago.  Mount Sibayak and Mount Sinabung are both located near Berastagi. While Sibayak spews out sulphuric vapour every single day, having last erupted in 1881, Mount Sinabung had erupted just slightly less than 2 months before our visit. There also happens to be place where they had pools of hot water from the geothermal activity in that area. It looked like it was an extremely popular thing to do (so many people!), but we didn't take a dip there.  We went back to the now cleaned up hotel, and stayed in for the rest of the night after dinner. We found a creepy looking 'mini house' wit...

Over the past twelve to thirteen years, I've mostly been a light sleeper, unless I'm not feeling well, where I could sleep *like a dead log for hours and hours. I also happen to wake up with the sun - even in a darkened room, alas, although this makes waking up in the mornings extremely easy, much to the envy of those who often oversleep. On Friday morning, however, I found it incredibly **difficult to wake up. The gentle tune of AC Newman's Prophets woke me up with a start at 6:15 am. I groaned as I hit the snooze button. (I do this every morning, but on most days, I'm usually really awake by 6:15 am. I hit the snooze button to fool myself that I'm getting an extra 10 minutes of sleep. Somehow, this actually works wonders) Reluctantly, I got up, but found my toothbrush missing from it's holder. I looked under the holder, behind the place where the toothpaste was kept and even inside the bathroom sink to no avail (I had once lost a toothbrush, and it wa...

1. It just hit me that I haven't done any random posts in awhile. And no, I can't explain why either... 2. I actually thought I had escaped unscathed from the flu that came visiting recently. I managed to get some rest and actually got better. This morning, however, I found myself sneezing violently again. 3. Which is worse? Having a colleague ask you if you are greying (at the age of 31), or finding out that the 'grey' is actually white paint that splashed onto your hair while you were investigating a problem with the particular paint?

Around two years ago, a rather spiffy gadget walked into my life and ever since then, things seem so much clearer. My life suddenly had direction . And the gadget? (Drumrolls please! The GPS unit. Ha ha)  Now, I've had a friend of a friend say that GPS usage makes you stop thinking as you try to make your way to a certain destination, and although I am the kind of person who is all for thinking, I just cannot toss the GPS unit away. You see, in the old days (before google maps and all), if I had to go somewhere new, I'd pick up the street directory and study it like I was going to sit for an exam using it's contents, copy important directions down neatly and store the copy as well as the original map in the car. One day before having to make the journey, I'd take the car, and the map and the copy, as well as the whole family and we'd all ply the route together to get it right before I attempted it on my own the next day or so. This method worked fine most of the...

continued from here: The Big North Sumatera Adventure Part IV   The Journey to Berastagi  The lake ends here We left Samosir Island right after breakfast the next day by hopping onto the ferry and sailing out of there, bidding farewell to the lake. However, we still had a long journey ahead of us, once again through the winding inland roads, and through some really magnificent scenery after a rather early lunch. One thing about Lake Toba is that it's elongated (check out the map above), and even as you drive away from it, you keep getting glimpses of the lake from the long, winding road, until you reach a certain point, that is, where the lake ends.  The moment you drive out of that road, there's no looking back, and no more lake. I don't know about my sister, but I did feel a wee bit sad when we had to leave that final bit of the lake. Near the end point of the lake, however, is the Sipiso-Piso waterfall, named as such due to the narrow stream of wat...

Like a girl who can't decide what to wear and keeps changing her outfit, I keep changing the way my blog looks even when I'm down with the flu. Don't know when this madness will end. If it ever ends!

I have been struggling with reading "The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition" for the past few months - since somewhere in February this year. In between, due to my frustration at being unable to digest the words as my eyes move over them from left to right and top to bottom, I had gone on a holiday and took it along with me for 'reading up in the air', left it in my bag with hopes that I'll pick it up again, read plenty of other books, and finally decided to neglect it in favour of reading lighter material . What's really horrifying about this is: a) It's the bloody concise version! Imagine if I had the actual lengthy version  that goes on and on in my hands... b) The topic is actually one of particular interest, and having the words pass you by is really, really bad. IMHO.  I picked it up again about two weeks ago, seeing that I had a long break and could probably read it in a few sittings, but it wasn't meant to be as I suddenly had pl...

I keep asking myself the same question

Continued from here: North Sumatera Adventure Part III While the name of the hotel escapes me, the memories of it will remain forever. There it was, right in front of the lake, the cold, chilly wind blowing against your face. Everywhere you look, you see the dark blue and green hues of the lake. But before anything else, we'll begin with something we observed behind the door of the room. Tired? Or just a lazy ass? Ha Ha! As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, Lake Toba is one of the most relaxing places on the face of the planet, and there is nothing you really want to do other than relax, although I did read a bit at night, I was knocked out cold by 9:30 pm. That night I had a dream. I was sleeping or at least was under the assumption that I was, firmly wrapped up underneath the blanket because it was cold. The wind was blowing, and the curtain billowed a little. It takes me awhile to realise there's a lady in the room. Slightly old and small sized, and dress...

Continued from here Simanindo is another part of Samosir Island. Here, we sat down under a small house-like structure to watch a local traditional dance. The dance itself had 7 steps and while at that time we actually had a paper explaining each step to us, the paper is nowhere to be seen now. Yes, I had not taken notes during this travel because I didn't want to get all touristy, and just wanted to sit back and relax, so I'm afraid there's not much information here. ONE thing I can tell, though is that at the end of the dance, the dancers will beckon you to join them in their dance. My two left feet trembled in fear. Would it be polite to decline? Could we just run away? Thankfully, it started drizzling there and then, and me and my two left feet, (as well as the sister and her two left feet) were saved from having to dance, and the dancers were saved from having to witness the worst dancers ever. So, it was a win-win situation. The dance. It was still shining at thi...

So, after the mishap with the ankle back in March, I've been ultra careful with my movements. I started walking up and downstairs (instead of running up or down, and skipping a step as I usually do), put on an ankle guard each time I go out, etc. But my accident free days were not meant to be. Last night, I became a human bowling ball while stepping into the bathroom, got reacquainted with the bathroom floor, and somehow managed to hurt my left knee, my right elbow and wrist, the right hand side glutes and the back of my head. All hurt parts are fine now, due to quick action and the fact that I've had practice thanks to my accident proneness! I don't know how it happened, but I must have slipped, and although I realised I was slipping and would eventually be outdone by gravity, there was no stopping it - I did try, though, which is how I explain the scratch marks on the wrist. I think I was more in shock than I was in pain.

SPOILER ALERT!!! I'm rather convinced that what I'm about to write in the following paragraphs will include bits and pieces of spoilers from the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, so unless you want to know what happened or just couldn't care less, kindly click the X on the tab that accommodates this page and check back in a week for something else - if you want to, that is. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy my less than thrilling take on the movie. For some reason, fictional scientists are occasionally depicted as deranged and the kind that are out there to destroy the world as we know it, although that is not the case here. In fact, we have an extremely good looking scientist (James Franco! Yum!) who invents the cure to Alzheimer's - a good intention, no doubt, with the exception to how it's carried out in the lab he works in - animal testing, which may seem as an indirect subject approached by the movie - or so I see it.  However, as experiments are apt to get, ...