RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

"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...

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...

If I had the time to make a "To Do" list, I can bet it would be 2 miles long. Everything is shrouded in a mist, And to be honest, I'd rather write a song. Scattered on "Post its" on the desktop, In font size eight. You could jump, skip and hop, The burden will still be of the same weight. Maybe it's time to make a list again, And happily cross out each line. Then perhaps I could board a train, And everything will be fine!

Someone got stuck in the passenger *lift the other day. Despite the 'unfortunateness' of the incident, he was rather fortunate because he had a walkie-talkie with him and could therefore call for help. Yes, the glass is always half-full, probably because it wasn't me in there, stuck in between floors in a dark and stuffy cube - alone. I've always been worried about using that particular passenger lift due to it's uncanny ability to trap unsuspecting users time and again - sometimes right after it's been serviced. Give me the stairs anytime - plus there's always the promise of nice looking legs with the stairs. The passenger lift  gives the vibes of something lonely and desperate which will decide to force it's company on you whether ypu like it or not, until one of the maintenance guys set you free. I had a dream about it last night. (Edit: Last night was actually Tuesday - I wrote this on notepad during lunch and managed to post it up only today - ...

*"Do not trouble trouble till trouble troubles you" so said an illustrated character in my Form 3 English textbook. For some reason, those words amused me immensely throughout the rest of my school life although I can't really say I have followed the advice dispensed wholly. Most of the trouble I find myself in always has some other factor that would have influenced it in some sort of way or another... but that's a different story. In about a week, my one year contract with my current ISP will be over, and I will be free to continue or discontinue their service. If you have been with me on this blog circa 2008, you will probably know that I had some mega ISP issues back then which caused me to tear out my hair in frustration and led me to cancel that account and use a new ISP. While I do not have any major complaints in regards to their connection (except the occasional crawl that could put the slowest snail to shame), they seem to have taken me and my sister for a r...

Of all the fashion fads of the past that came tumbling into the current era (about 10 years ago till now), nothing was embraced with more love from me than the boot cut jeans and pants. Besides giving the illusion of longer gems, the boot cut balanced certain proportion issues faced by certain women. It was loved by everyone, except perhaps some of the young people of the 70's who remembered the bell bottomed pants from their past with a certain degree of horror as it came in psychedelic colours. For reasons that will be explained in a few days time, I went shopping yesterday. A dreary chore if I may say so myself. It took me about 5 hours to get a few necessary things after scouring practically every other tenant in the mall. Among the stuff I was looking for was a new pair of Levi's seeing that my current pair seems to be hanging at an awkward angle on my hip bone due to all the stretching after almost 3 years of usage and washing. It is still a nice pair, but a new pair wo...

Thursday. It was slightly after 6pm, and due to some urgency, I tried to get through to my parents by calling them at home. The phone rang, but no one picked up. That was odd. Someone's always in, I know... I thought they might have gone somewhere although it seemed unlikely at that time, so I call my dad's mobile, which he doesn't pick up either. Even more odd... I thought they had gone out and forgotten to take the mobile phone (Dad's famous for doing that) Anyway, I spent the next hour and a half intermittently trying to call them to no avail. I even thought something might be wrong with my phone, so I used the office phone as well, and even when no one picked up then, I made the mad assumption that both my parents were dead! The good news is, they're fine. The not so good news is the house phone was dead and they didn't know. We later on found out that the wire outside had snapped. It has since been rectified. Dad's mobile phone was in silent mode (...

A few of us had a distressing few weeks when we realised with horror that the charger we use to recharge the batteries of the video camera which is practically the lifeline of the 10 year project had disappeared without a trace. All accusing eyes turned to B, the last person believed to have used the video camera. A thorough search in all possible locations proved to be a futile effort. It seemed as though the charger might have developed a few legs and ran off in the middle of the night. The owner of the video camera (Our sales department) wasn't very happy with the knowledge, and it was finally decided that all the members involved in the using of the said camera would pool in some money to get a new charger. So, last week B went to the shops with the video camera to get a replacement charger. And much to his dismay (and ours later), none of the shops had the type of charger we needed. In fact, they had no replacement units at all, but gave B an unconvincing promise of atte...

Markets everywhere are tumbling just like sandcastles crumbling after a rogue wave. And yet, the finance portfolio holder says everything is just fine and dandy, and we shall all be happy and continue with what we've doing all this while. Oh, what a pretty picture! Admittedly, my knowledge on economics is almost non-existent thanks to the education system I grew up in. If you're a science stream person, you stick with chemistry, physics, Biology and Additional Mathematics, and put your nose far away from the Social Sciences, arts and economics classes. No school (except maybe private schools, but I'm not sure) gave the option for you to take up a selection of subjects that you dig. I guess, inadvertently, it may have been some evil ploy to keep us only knowledgeable in certain areas so that we don't end up being too smart and start asking dangerous questions... hehehe. And due to that, most of the stuff I 'learned' about the economy is from a fellow blogger Z...

Wiki answers says that a human uses 10% of their brains in a lifetime. Now, I can't say for sure (because I can't really think, and I'm sleepy as well as in need of coffee), but I've heard in other places where people only use 3% or less and oh, whatever! Anyway, today, I feel as though I might have used up all the 10% allocated in about 6 hours, and believe me, the way I'm feeling now is even worse than the time when I had 27 chapters to study in less than 24 hours! It was one of the most exhausting processes in the world (today, and not the day with 27 chapters) The worst part is that I will have to go through the whole process once again tomorrow and I'm dreading it. And somewhere at the back, my left kidney is protesting against the local drought.

In a few days time, about 30 of us will be headed as far away from civilisation as we know it for a few days only to be kept together doing assignments, deprived of sleep, given food which we don't necessarily want to eat and be forced to work in teams to see how everything turns out. All of these is under a training scheme known as Performance driven team. As if all of these are not enough, we will also be sent into the jungle where giant insects linger (and maybe a few ghosts as well) to walk on treacherous terrain as well as to wade in water, build a tent which we will sleep in for maybe an hour or so if permitted and to walk the dreaded night walk all alone without any guiding light. The last time I went into the jungle (for real camping) was back in 1997, and even then, it was a camping site, and we had a proper bathroom so it wasn't that bad! Other than that I went to FRIM in 2006 for fun. Although FRIM is a reserved forest, it had a convenient track cut out for you so ...