RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Maybe. I don't know for sure.

Continued from here It seems that every hot country in Asia which has had a history with British people at some point when they were on a travelling and colonising spree, would be left with hills where people live, grow tea and ultimately end up being a tourist destination. That is perhaps why we found ourselves in Nuwera-Eliya, a settlement on top of a hill with sprawling tea plantations and known to the locals as Little England. We, on the other hand called it a refrigerator. It was cold. Now, I know my previous posts on travels have been lengthy, but I intend to cover this place in one post, and even if it means typing it out in point form, then point form it is: 1. 7 waterfalls en route. You never know you can get OD'd on waterfalls until you actually do. At this point I just grabbed a photo from inside the van 2. Yes, it rained - on and off. 3. We had the quickest tour of a tea factory with the unfriendliest guide ever. 4. We bought a lot of tea. This was in ...

Some time ago, there was this episode on "How I Met Your Mother" in which all the characters were trying to quit smoking. Watching that episode (and comparing it with some much older movies/literature) it finally hit me how people's opinion on smoking and smokers have changed. What used to be normal way back is now viewed with some disdain.  How else do you explain smokers being given a smoking bay where so many of them sit in cramped up spaces to get their fix AND inhale secondary smoke from their fellow smokers, or even while I was in Japan, where it seemed as though everyone smoked, they were forced to smoke in small groups at little ashtrays by the kerb - hardly a sociable activity, or in some areas, they stood in alleyways behind tall buildings in their nice clothes, smoking mournfully in the cold.  The other day, the papers had a piece on new rules for cigarette manufacturers in terms of packaging size and pricing (among the methods employed to reduce young ...

Eons ago, when I was a student in school, learning English as a second language (though spoken as a first language at home), I met a stumbling block in the form of grammar. Although using correct grammar was never a problem, explaining why I'd pick A over B when given an option between the two was a problem. Without a doubt, my English teacher would have labelled me annoying since I had the cheek to tell her I picked what I did because it 'sounds right'. I'd have been a much better student if I had this book in my grubby hands back then! Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares: How to Avoid Unplanned and Unwanted Grammar Errors If you're a follower of the blog that goes by the title Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares , you'll find that the posts explain grammar in a delightfully whimsical style. You'll never know what hit you until the end where you finally realise that you've been given an interesting lesson in grammar. You get an idea of ...

"Guilty until proven innocent - if you can find a way to prove your innocence, that is. Ha ha ha ha" The line above sort of sums up the newly ammended evidence act, where as the owner of a website, blog, e-mail address, facebook or twitter account or even as the owner of wifi connection that someone else is 'borrowing' because your password got hacked, you will be held responsible until you can prove that you're not the one responsible for whatever was posted. How you gather evidence is your choice, but if you can't then be prepared to get sued/go to jail/pay fines, etc.  In view of this horrible development, the CIJ (Centre for Independent Journalism) is organising our very own Internet Blackout Day on the 14th of August. As I do use the internet for blogging, have various e-mail accounts, and use Facebook as well, plus the wifi connection is registered under my name, I think this is an extremely important cause and I'm in full support of the Bl...

It's been a long, long week. Deprived of the much needed mental effects coffee has on me (I'm not phasing coffee out of my life, but due to the fasting month and the fact that the rest of my office is filled with Muslims who are fasting, I have ceased mixing myself a cuppa in the afternoons out of respect for people who would have not had even a sip of water since 6:00 am) and the sudden influx of problems to be solved, I have been having problems sleeping well too. In the end, I'm tired, sleep deprived, irritable and have made zero progress in posting up anything here despite so many interesting things going on.  Losing Hope on Our Only Gold Medal I've never been a fan of watching sports on TV. I do watch the occasional football match, but I hate watching badminton. Nevertheless, I sat down and watched last night's men's badminton final on TV, because Malaysia was playing and there was a chance we could win a gold. We've never really been a country t...

They're centenarians, lined up along the road, providing shade against the sweltering afternoon heat, and giving wannabe photographers the opportunity to get good photos. Back in July 2010, I saw them in person during a visit to the Taiping Lake Gardens . The other day, my mother told me that there was a big issue over some development plans for the Taiping Lake Gardens, in which these 120 year old raintrees may face a situation they have not faced in the past. The very next day, my favourite radio station interviewed a man who started a petition to stop the Taiping Municipal Council from going ahead with their plans of building kiosks at the area despite assurance that the trees will not be in immediate danger. The problem is, you can never tell with development -  what if greed gets in the way? According to the interview, the proposed kiosks will end up blocking the view of the lakes and I'm assuming that the aura of tranquillity which we get there now will be gone foreve...

Dinosaur in the garden: Run!!!! Failure teaches us that life is but a draft, a long rehearsal for a show that will never play - (Quoted from the movie Amelie ) Photo and quote are totally unrelated.

A primary school/elementary level bad joke: Teacher: What is the scientific term used for water? Student: HIJKLMNO Class: Ha ha ha  Bad jokes aside... There has been talk earlier this year that the state I live in will be facing a severe water shortage by 2014 unless the state government allows the federal government to go ahead with their plan of building a new water treatment plant. The state government insists that we do not need a new water treatment plant as reducing the current wastage from the present operational water treatment plants will actually be able to cover the projected shortage. Enter SYABAS, the private water concessionaire who is in charge of the distribution of treated water who shamelessly suggested that water should be rationed from now to prevent the acute water shortage. An article I read * here states that the previous government left behind a very complicated system where water is treated by several different companies, while Syabas is in ...

So, a vending machine company that dispenses toothbrushes and oral hygiene products thought that it was appropriate to post a comment on my blog post about vending machines dispensing sweet drinks. Interesting...

Continued from here It is said that out there in this world (and maybe beyond) there are 6 other people who look somewhat like us. A doppelgänger of sorts. They may be of a different gender, or of a different nationality, but you might someday be walking on the streets of Taipei and think to yourself... "hey that person looks like (insert name of female friend here whom you're sure is back wherever you came from), but it's a he!" My family met a not-so-favourite-uncle's doppelgänger in Sri Lanka. The similarity wasn't just physical. He even spoke like him, wore similar glasses my uncle would have used when he was in his late twenties while wooing my aunt (in the mid to late 80's) and bossed people around just like my uncle. The similarity was freaky but kind of hilarious at the same time (Come to think of it, I should have discreetly taken a video of this man and showed it to my uncle's kids just for laughs)  Due to the rain (I...

After an unexpected quest for a Sony mp3 player and an enthusiastic (and almost obsessive) research for a rugged phone, I have finally crawled onto the smartphone bandwagon with a Sony (Ericsson) Xperia Active.  July 2012 I liked it the moment I saw it on the Sony site, and I knew that I wanted it. It is dust and water proof, can handle tracking with wet fingers and was built to withstand abuse. It isn't the newest phone on the block. Released towards the end of last year, there were only two units left in the country (according to the store I went to) and I had to book a set and wait for them to send it to the store nearest to me. I got them to do so, and they called me yesterday afternoon. By 10:00 pm last night, the phone was in my grubby hands. As I was checking out the phone and setting it up to my liking, I suddenly realised that it has been 12 years since I've been using mobile phones, and how they've changed over the years, both in function and appearanc...

Over my sandwich and a steaming mug of coffee during my lunch break, I often unwind by reading science articles and blogs on Discover Magazine. There, I've openly admitted my pseudo-geek and nerd-like tendencies on this blog for all to see.  A few weeks ago, there was an uproar among the scienctific community that had nothing to do with the Higgs Boson. Everyone was talking about a certain promotional video that was released by the EU to encourage young women to get involved in science. Turns out, the scientific community found the video extremely distasteful that I had to watch it for myself. Here it is, below. To be honest, if I was a young girl on the brink of deciding between arts or science as my future career, I don't think this video would sway my final decision towards science. I thought it was shallow on the whole, like a comment a lab assistant once gave me a long time ago when I first started working. I have long nails most of the time, but it's not bec...

If there was an Olympic medal for worrying, I'd probably win gold. Adrian Mole said something like this in one of his diary entries, and I personally think I could win if I competed against him. After all, I'm real while he's (ahem) fictional. :P One of the few things I'm currently worried about is the fact that I think I find quite a bit of things which people generally do not find funny to be rather funny . It's not a new development, though. I've been doing this for years - and if you're interested, there's a label called "funny stuff" at the sidebar of this blog.  Of late, just as the government declared under a certain transformation program that the number of crimes have reduced due to the efforts of the program, the reality of the situation is the complete opposite. People in my neighbourhood had their houses robbed by thieves who carried weapons, my boss had her house broken into, a woman was assaulted in an elevator in a shoppi...

When I was a kid, I always had my nose buried in one of Enid Blyton's mystery stories. When I was done with those, I graduated to Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and The 3 Investigators. Now I have a mystery to solve all on my own. (Admittedly, they had more interesting mysteries which involved hiding in cars and spying on people and having their own tree houses as HQ for their top secret meetings, whilst mine is...) A slim, blue jacketed copy of Wuthering Heights has somehow incredibly disappeared right under my nose. I know that maybe two years from now, I might find it hidden in the fridge or something and laugh and probably blog about it, but for now it's missing.  I've turned my book cupboards inside out twice, searched other cupboards, searched in travelling bags, in my car and anywhere else books may take a fancy to hide themselves. So, now, despite promising my sister that I could lend my copy to her friend who expressed some in...

Continued from Kandy Part 2. The view outside Adventures whilst trying to check out the tooth relic. To be honest, I didn't see a thing, and had no idea what I was supposed to see! The final activity for the night was the visit to the tooth relic temple in Kandy. I don't know why, but probably it was because of all the driving around, we were all really tired and hungry by then. Nevertheless it was only 6:30-ish pm and we still had quite a bit to see. Now, even though we took a customised tour with a tour guide, his job was mainly to drive us around. He subcontracted us to guides from the respective tourist destination all the time. This time we were in the hands of a slightly elderly man who gave us quite the tour. He reminded me of a disciplinary teacher. Unfortunately due to the importance of this tooth (or some other reason that we never quite understood) we were required to take off our shoes/slippers, go in through a room where were patted down for weapon...

Kandy Part 1 After the delicious spice laden lunch at the spice garden restaurant, we drove on even more to the town of Kandy and checked in to our hotel, which was on top of a hill. That itself may be a clue on the hotel's actual name. Kandy is what I'd call a town, where there were more streets, shops and lots of vehicles on the road compared to Sigiriya. However, with our hotel being on the hill as it was, we didn't really feel like we were in a town. In fact, we were told to not open the windows because there were monkeys who would pay you unexpected visits. And they're always not the best behaved of guests. The Cultural Dance After getting our rooms at the far end of the hotel, we napped and then freshened up and headed out again to town. We had our first cultural experience of the visit here, at a cultural dance show held in a hall. I'm not a fan of dances (neither as a dancer myself, nor as a spectator), but I did think they gave a very good pe...

Day 2. Continued from here A few years back (5, maybe) a (then) random stranger who commented on my old blog told me that he didn't blog because he figured that by the time he got up to posting a post about a certain topic, the topic would have lost all relevance. Today, as I sat in front of the computer, intending to blog about a certain incident that happened recently, I realised that it has lost all relevance. Nevertheless, I am saved by the fact that travel posts may still hold some relevance even though they are more than a year late. At least I hope so.  We left Sigiriya for Kandy, which was another long, long drive through the *unanticipated rain. Now, as mentioned in the very first post , the people in this trip were my parents, my sister and I, all full grown adults, all equally stubborn and short tempered (except for my mom - she's only stubborn, but not as quick tempered as the rest of us) I mention this only because it may explain what I might decide ...

An epiphany hit me this morning while I was in the shower. I recall groaning at how ridiculous the whole thing was but as much as I try to recall the exact epiphany (which had a really nice ring to it), I can't. A "doesn't sound as good as the original" version is:  Epiphanies only hit you when you're unable to do much about it, after which your mind carelessly shoves it aside to tell you to concentrate on what you're doing instead. It then forgets to save it, nor will you be able to 'auto-recover' it from the depths of your brain. Or even if you do, it's just fragments of the real thing and doesn't seem as solid anymore.

The haze is back, Just our luck, Grey skies abound, All you can see is the ground, And nothing above a 12 foot rack! The forest is on fire, Definitely not burning with desire, I'm not sure about the peat But if you think about the heat It burns the quagmire A sorethroat has come knocking, I wear a striped red stocking Oh! There goes the wind The sun saying hi from behind Adieu! I'm going spelunking The haze arrived some time ago (I can't remember when exactly), but I was thinking this morning about how the blurry skyline looks like there is a mist shrouded in mystery until it assaults your nose from all directions. I wrote the 'poetry'  waaaay back in 2006. Some things are just there for rhyming purposes.

If clothes maketh a man, does clothes size maketh a woman? Perhaps. Why else would some of us chase the coveted but almost unattainable size 0? Unattainable sizes aside, here's something I came to realise in July last year (yes, this post has been pending for almost a year) but never managed to get the contents into the blog editor until I was clearing out my drafts and saw this title, and some inspiration from Pat Hatt's post on conspiracy theories .  See, between July and August every year, we receive a form with our names on it with a few columns to tick (shirt size and pants size among others), and every year since they introduced the new uniform, I've been ticking on size M. I figured you'll be on the safe side of not putting on too much weight if you maintain your uniform size throughout your working years. Turns out, this isn't particularly true. It's been awhile since the new uniform and the new sizing came into effect. I have three different se...

As much as I love technology (and as much as it doesn't love me back, alas), I have to admit that I loathe the cellphone. It's useful no doubt - it's helped me get un-lost when I got a friend on the phone to help me out of a wrong turn, it allowed me to call for help when I needed help, and it facilitates the online payments I make through my bank's online banking services by texting me the top secret codes that allow me to do so. At the same time however, I also am at the receiving end of a slew of rubbish, from salesmen calling me to sell me insurance I don't need, strange messages asking me to watch some sexy dance by a hot (insert name of neighbouring country here) dancer, to some messages from the government, one which annoyed me endlessly was when they sent me wishes for the New Year earlier this year. The other day, I received a message, this one from an *independent research company asking me if I thought the current state government (PakRa) or the curr...

About two months ago, I went ahead and did something quite crazy. I signed up for a local 5.5 km run through the social and sports club of my workplace. Now while running itself is not usually associated with being crazy, for me it was because I used to detest running while I was young and in school. I dreaded the yearly cross country event we had to take part in and would walk the whole 1.5 km and pretend I conquered the world at the end of it. I never had the stamina nor the interest to run for the sake of running (I didn't mind running around while playing hockey though) I was also always prone to my sides aching after putting in some effort in running. So, it was a BIG thing for me to sign up for this run, which was a competition, and definitely would have real runners competing as well. I immediately started focusing on running in the gym. I tried building stamina by running for as long as I could. The first day, I jogged for about 15 minutes, brisk walked for about 5 min...

Otherwise known as the random post. I was in the midst of trying to fall asleep when I was bothered by the urge to violently sneeze. Eyes watering, I sneezed like there was no tomorrow. By the time I was done, my eyes were still itching, and whatever sleepiness that had manifested earlier was also gone. I had two options, read or blog. 10 points for anyone who can guess which option I picked ;) On reading materials I'm trying my best to read A Clockwork Orange, a book which seems to be in a lot of people's good books. Ha ha. I'm finding it an extremely difficult read, though and it's not because I have to learn a whole new language to actually get it. That's the least of my problems - I actually had fun trying to guess some of the words.  I can't seem to explain it, but the book just doesn't interest me as much as it should.  On another note, I recently downloaded The Golden Bough from Project Gutenberg . Interestingly, I came across the book being...

"Whatever you do, Terra..." he paused for dramatic effect, taking another sip of his canned iced lemon tea "don't ever buy anything from that machine" "Why not?" I asked, my fingers smoothing the creases of the RM 1 note which I had extricated from the mess in my pocket with the intention of using it to get something from the vending machine for the very first time.  "I'm now on my third can for the day" he said, raising his can in his right hand. He took another sip. "It's crazy. Hear that sound?" he asks. I nod my head. "They're refilling the machine now. After this there'll definitely be guys lining up to get themselves a can or two. It's like everyone's addicted. Did you know the machine needs to be refilled every two days?"  Vending machines and I had a very interesting relationship while I was in Japan This *conversation happened over two weeks ago when I had asked B who sit...

It's been almost 3 weeks since the incident involving the rogue lorry and 22 other vehicles. I thought it would be all over by now, and Kets (that's how I call my car, although his full name is actually Ketsbaia) would be with me right now, but apparently that is not the case. The damage done was far worse than anyone had initially anticipated and it turns out that the one of the major repairs require some sort of approval from the Road Transport Department (RTD) Earlier this week, the agent who was in charge at the workshop handling my repairs called and said that I have to go and swear an oath at the RTD (this was literally translated from 'angkat sumpah kat Puspakom). Having never met with an accident before and not knowing anyone else who's been in such a situation, I honestly thought I'd have to sign the form and swear in front of the RTD officer. Turns out, that's not how it's done. You take the forms to a commissioner of oaths, get his (it's alwa...