RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

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 ...