and voila, the hand-made guestbook! :)

just finished making my wedding guestbook! it took quite a bit of glue and some pressure screwing the fasteners tight, but it's done! here's a photo of it (sorry it's not a very detailed pic) entire thing made from scratch (ok, i bought the paper and ribbon, lah. not patient enough to make my own paper..) the pages inside are A4 sheets bound to the covers with metal fasteners. the covers are made of 2 layers of A4-sized hardboard cut out from a giant piece. a small window is cut in the middle right section of the top piece of board to reveal our names printed in silver. the gold ribbon ties the book close for storage.



that was fun! anyone interested in having guestbooks made? :-)

pounds of pain

i had my first experience of a migraine headache yesterday afternoon.. and boy was it a bad one. i had been having a mild throbbing headache the whole day and was treating it with paracetamol and medicated oils, but it got worse in the afternoon and the throbbing had turned into pounding towards early evening. lying down and resting didn't help as the pounding continued no matter what i was doing. the Ponstan pill didn't help either.

in the end i decided to ask my dad to drive me to the doctor's as the headache was getting quite unbearable. i think being in a moving vehicle exacerbated the condition as i was holding my head in my hands and literally crying and screaming out of pain all the way to the doctor's. it didn't help that there was a massive traffic jam - it was the evening rush-hour after all. i think we had to wait out two traffic light sequences at the junction outside my house.. i must have been quite a sight to other motorists, gritting my teeth and tearing my hair out wishing i could be sedated there and then.. i had never known a headache so exceedingly torturous.. stories in past issues of Reader's Digest of aneurysms were running through my mind with every paralysing throb of the veins. heck, i was even thinking of which hospital was nearest if i had to be admitted! each pounding pulse was an excruciating inward burst of pressure from all sides of my head; it felt as if my skull would implode any moment. and have you noticed that time seems to pass slower when you're in pain? to add to the pounding, a tinge of nausea had developed, and i was holding a plastic bag in case i had to throw up.

i was still holding my head in my hands and gritting my teeth as i described the pain to the doctor, who was himself gritting his teeth, possibly in an attempt to show sympathy. having been prescribed sandomigraine, feldene (a painkiller), an anti-nausea med and a sedative, i still had to endure the throbbing pain till i got home cos i couldn't take the medicine on an empty stomach. i stayed at the doctor's still grabbing my head as if my brains were falling out, while dad went next door to tarpau teochew porridge. the trip back through the jam was another clutching-head-and-crying-and-screaming ordeal.. finally, back home, i gulped down the porridge as fast as i could (the pain was getting ridiculous, and it was difficult to even eat) downed the pills, and i think i collapsed immediately to sleep on the sofa without even needing the sedative. i woke up this morning miraculously feeling quite all right, realising only after a few minutes that i had a major headache the night before, and vaguely remembering that at some point of time my family members were sitting next to me on the sofa with their theories..

"aiya, she was staring at the computer the whole day, that's why."
"it was quite bad, she was in this horrible pain all the way in the car."
"yeah, probably bogged down by too many things to do lah."

all i have to say is, man, that was one scary headache.

intoxed, detoxed

i was fed a slew of --OH* last night - a B-52, a flaming tower, a Cosmopolitan, a malt whisky and a Slippery Nipple, and was still all right until i started seeing spots after laughing too much (i never learn.. i almost always end up woozy cos i laugh too much after drinks). got driven home by sis with me navigating (it being her first attempt at driving on the left side of the road, with my senses still lucidly yelling "oi, go to the right a bit!" every few yards as the barriers/pavements on the left started looking too close for comfort), and now i'm awake at 8.00am and running errands. wonderful! ;-D

*alcohol, lah

quotable quotes #387

"Wah, ni keyboard bukan main besar..."*
- Cititel bell-boy who helped me unload the 88-key Yamaha Portagrand out of my car into the lobby for yesterday's Christmas carolling.

"Er, maybe next month lah, it will reflect."
- Jaring Wireless Broadband customer helpdesk officer, in reply to my query on why the change in my contact email in their records, while having been reflected in the "Account Information" section of my online account details, didn't seem to have been updated in their internal systems as I was still receiving Jaring notifications in the old email address.

*Translation: "Man! This is a freakin huge keyboard..."

the pensieve

i just started a blog which will act as a repository of useful web links i come across while browsing or doing research on web design, or just doing research in general! inspired by toomanyhatz's blog. this will come in useful when you can't remember where you wrote that link down, or which bookmarks folder on which PC you saved that oh-man-this-is-an-awesome-site URL...

... head over to The Pensieve at www.lightblog.com/member/wreckademik and have a look! :-) (used LightBlog cos it's got a nifty Widget tool that lets me post a link conveniently without having to call up a browser to log on and post!)

why Pensieve? what's a Pensieve? Harry Potter fans will know why. if you haven't read J. K. Rowling's famed series, go read 'em! ;-)

for starters, i'll probably have links categorised into "music", "design", "legal research", "academic research"... it'll get updated as it goes along. you get the picture. do drop a your comments at the postings if you have anything to add to the collection!

this blog will, of course, still be up and running.

join in some xmas cheer - mid valley cititel & boulevard hotels next week!

The Choir of The Philharmonic Society of Selangor will be performing Christmas Carols at the lobby of the Cititel and Boulevard Hotels (at Mid Valley) next Wednesday! (wth yours truly on the pianoforte). Open to the public. No admission fee. Come join in the fun!

Date:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Venues:
Cititel Hotel Lobby - 7.00pm
Boulevard Hotel Lobby - 8.00pm

stuff it!

need to put a stop to:
the stuff people would like me to do;
the stuff i think i can do but which if taken up would be pushing my limits;
the stuff i all too readily volunteer myself to do;
the stuff people hint i could or should probably do, because, apparently, if you're still on sabbatical, you wake up every morning and sit around sipping tea watching the world go by;
the stuff everybody else won't do because it's taken for granted that i will somehow see to it.

sure, having the initiative to do things and being the all-obliging all-round do-it-all person earns some brownie points here and there, but people have to learn to stop taking others for granted...

cartoonist's block

just noticed a few days back that The Star is accepting cartoons from readers on issues of the day, etc. (and each cartoon published gets RM50). i've been sending emails to The Star for ages (since i was in school, i think) asking what I would need to do if i wanted to get a cartoon strip/single panel published in their paper.. finally here comes something and guess what, i've got a cartoonists' block. come on! come on! must.. think.. of.. something!

oh, so you're a lawyer! great, cos my mind is bursting with legal questions on my rental agreement, my sister's marriage and my company's HR policies!

one of the irritating things about being qualified in my field of work is when random persons you meet ask you for your thoughts on something 'legal'. and because they expect you to be well-versed with law in general, they don't quite understand when you say you're not familiar with that particular area and that you will need to check/can recommend them someone who is.

many legal issues involve a lot of common sense. sometimes when you respond logically to queries on such issues, you get the skeptical "are you really a lawyer? i expected legal jargon from you but you seem to think like a regular person" look.

on the other hand, there are also some who think lawyers are gods, and will listen and take notes on every single word that you say, even asking you to pause so they can write it down (presumably so that they can repeat it later to impress the party they are having a dispute with). you could be spouting nonsense and they will take it as the gospel truth. it's like you actually wield a power to set people's minds at ease. what a huge responsibility.

totally useless trivia (a.k.a. side effects of an MBA)

on math

• there are 65536 rows in an Excel worksheet.
• the last column is in an Excel worksheet is IV (not ZZ).

on music

• certain brands of water dispensers burst into a rousing honky-tonk chorus of (i swear it was Beethoven!) when they need refilling.

on geography

• there is a remote but quaint and picturesque village situated on the border of Negeri Sembilan and Selango. so do residents get to celebrate public holidays of both states? or do the holidaying people stand at the border marker and laugh at the people on the other side who are toiling away while the people on the holidaying side get to lie in? or maybe they just have houses/offices on both sides of the border so they can lay claim to both holidays.. ok this discussion has got to stop.

on systems integration

• if an organisation shifts premises, the new and old systems will not be integrated such that you get to print reams and reams of draft dissertations for free in the old campus [now wait a minute, this is NOT useless info!]

(by the way, yes, i'm still taking suggestions for the previous post on Flash ActionScript :))

ActionScipt experts.. 'elp!

the hazards of learning advanced design tools as you go along is that you become an expert CPA (i.e. copy & paste artist; term courtesy of my former colleagues in consulting..) and understand only the bits of code you use for that specific effect you wanted to create.

a site i'm working on needs to have certain images rotated (randomly) every time the home page loaded/refreshed. using Flash, i incorporated a bit of ActionScript to get the images to load randomly, based on what was recommended here. that worked like a dream. however, when i added in the bit of script for a preloader like this one here, the randomiser script didn't work no more, i just got a blank space where the image was supposed to be.

yikes.

didn't have time to figure out what the conflict was, so i left the Flash movie without the preloader for now.

any pointers?

(one day.. one day.. i will program an entire site with bells and whistles without having to google "free script" or consult a manual! har har har)

the amazon jungle (hint: it's dense)

today has been an accummulation of very long queues, being caught in the middle of other peoples' inefficiencies, slightly dim-witted salespersons ... and some very very dense system administrators.

dense administrators are funny if it's happening to other people, but not when it's happening to you (though they do make good party jokes.. sorry, my tech support friends! :P ).

i figured a virus/worm must have found its way into the network when i received a delivery-failure email from Yahoo about an email that was allegedly sent from my account to some fake (Yahoo) email addresses (which, on closer inspection, were manipulated versions of emails in my address book). the alleged email sent from my account had the looks of the doings of a virus/worm - the typical subject, content, etc. typical stuff. me no computer security expert, but there was some malicious program lurking somewhere which probably meant that i should drop a short note to the IT guys to let them know about it.

so i emailed IT, requesting them to look into the matter. after all, these things can obviously be potentially embarrassing .. (well, i guess it's more acute in professional firms where sometimes attachments broadcast to the rest of the world by the worm could be partial contents of a confidential document - once received one such message before containing partial contents of a court document saved in the virus victim's hard drive).

righto.

the first email that came back from IT told me that because the message was from yahoo.com, i have to contact the Yahoo administrator.

hmm. did the system administrator write that, or did he have dart-throwing monkeys in his room that day?

anyway, poor guy had obviously somehow misunderstood my email, so i mailed back with a clarification. i even offered a description of a similar situation encountered at my office. i must have written too much. the next email that came back somewhat defensively told me that oh, then it could be spam, which is beyond his control because spammers' machines don't belong to our organisation, and started giving me a lesson on how i must be careful about spam.

ow. ok. no, it's really, really, not spam i'm talking about (yes i think i am aware of what spam is). no, nobody needs to check anything with the Yahoo administrator, whoever s/he is. no, no, no. what's with the defensive front? was it an attempt to avoid work? i think i can identify with a LOT of Dilbert comics today... (e.g. "hello, this is tech support, how many I abuse you?")

gallavanting

have just realised how broke i've become. that's what you get from taking a year off work (i still think i'm mad; am sure my boss thinks so too :-D) and to add to it, go gallavanting in Vegas (no, this isn't a story about misfortuntes at gambling.. in fact i gave up all hope of feeling that luck could be on my side after losing 10 bucks on the Wheel of Fortune slots. that's 10 USD, not ringgit..)

lagging..

a miscellany of post-vacation vagaries:

1. jet lag. you go to sleep at 8pm. someone happens to call you on the phone at 10.30pm and as a result your biological clock somehow goes haywire and you remain awake until past midnight in a state of limbo - while the brain wishes to do something more interesting than lying in bed staring into the darkness, the body refuses to budge from the warmth of the blankets and pillows. and the next thing you know, you're awake again and it's.. 4am. before you know it, 8pm comes soon enough, and you realize you're sleepy again..

2. a clogged ear, and it's driving me nuts. it started after i got out of the surf pool in the hotel in Vegas, and it's still clogged, about a week later. most probably a case of dislodged ear wax. it feels like i'm going around with a finger stuffed into one ear. everything except my voice is white noise. which is horrible as i don't like the sound of my voice. looks like a visit to the doctor is inevitable. meanwhile, the poor people around me will have to put up with my either too-soft or too-loud speech, incessant repetitions of 'i beg your pardon' (or, alternatively, 'hah?', which is more efficient and easier to say), or blank stares when i don't realise someone has said something to me and is awaiting a response.

3. am just so very tired..

4. i guess the knee, which recovered not too long ago, is protesting too. also, i guess that's also cos i haven't been doing the knee exercises. serves me right, ha ha.

so i need sleep, a doctor, more sleep and some exercise. that's not quite how it feels like, but at least i've managed to find some excuses for the lethargy! :-D

somebody send over some sunshine!

results out in about 10 days. yaaaagh!

YAAAAGH! (not to be confused with "YAAAY!")

things we can learn (or not) - a traveller's note from the US of A

1. the toilets are clean and DRY! (you saw this coming, didn't you?) and they don't stink of an overdose of antiseptic. and why don't we provide disposable toilet seat covers here too? oh wait, that's cos our greedy-for-freebies ladies will probably stuff the whole pack into their shopping bags to keep them for future use, whatever that means. (once upon a time, an employee on my office floor allegedly nicked a roll or two of bathroom tissue from the restroom every morning to stock up her supply of tissue. because of her we ran out of tissue in the restrooms at approximately 9.30 am every day.)

2. front-line service people are generally more polite; though they may be a little, er, blur at times, like with fractions (Customer: Could you split the bill into three please? Waitress: Oh ok, so you want it split into half and half and half?)

side rambling (sorry): i realised today that i've probably been a bit too impatient with customer-service people since i got back. a customer service officer of a certain bank thought i was saying "Prudential" (the insurance company) when he heard me saying "potential" (the English word meaning, roughly, capable of being something) and for 2 whole minutes i was repeating my enquiry about the note they sent me on the fact that they suspect my card was subject to potential compromise or unauthorised usage, and he was repeating his statement about the fact that yes, my Prudential account was still on the direct debit list. i hope the bank doesn't use that phone call in their next call-centre training on how to deal with sarcastic clients.

3. you don't get street musicians or graffiti on historic sites. it's rather disheartening when you expect to admire a relic of the 17th century and some 21st century guy carves "Jojo was here, 2001" or "Dodo loves Dodol, 14th February 2004".

don't get me wrong. there's still no place like home. but home sure can do with some housekeeping. ;)

'the internet is for porn'

Avenue Q is demented, insane, wacky, hilarious and ROCKS big time!! Watched it at Wynn Las Vegas two nights ago. (and in case you're wondering - the above caption is from the musical ;-) ) haven't decided yet whether to get the t-shirt ($21.95) or the mousepad that says "the Internet is for porn" (price unknown) or a fridge magnet with attitude ($8.00). all prices quoted in US dollars. ;-) yes, i'm still in Vegas, getting blisters on my heels walking up and down mostly the southern half of the Strip*, and stocking up on the resort's soaps and shampoos so they'll stock up with more which I will keep again so they'll stock with some more ha ha ha! (yeah yeah, terrible terrible.. but really, you should smell the Exfoliating Sea Salt soaps.. they're to die for..)

back to the show.

the two people i dragged along to the show were pretty skeptical until the show started..

"avenue WHAT? never heard of it."

"there are puppets? PUPPETS? dang, i'm not paying 99 bucks to watch a puppet show!"

"this had better be good."

"know what, there's Buck Wild is showing at the Sahara..."

"maybe i'll try my hand at the Wheel of Fortune again.."

"this had better be GOOD."

anyway. for the uninitiated, the synopsis (from the website:)

What is AVENUE Q about?

AVENUE Q is the story of Princeton, a bright-eyed college grad who comes to New York City with big dreams and a tiny bank account. He soon discovers that the only neighborhood in his price range is Avenue Q; still, the neighbors seem nice. There's Brian the out-of-work comedian and his therapist fianceé Christmas Eve; Nicky the good-hearted slacker and his roommate Rod -- a Republican investment banker who seems to have some sort of secret; an Internet addict called Trekkie Monster; and a very cute kindergarten teaching assistant named Kate. And would you believe the building's superintendent is Gary Coleman?!? (Yes, that Gary Coleman.) Together, Princeton and his newfound friends struggle to find jobs, dates, and their ever-elusive purpose in life.

but don't worry, it's no Sesame Street (though you could say it's a pretty good parody of it):


Who is AVENUE Q appropriate for?

Adults love AVENUE Q, but they seem a little, er, fuzzy on whether it's appropriate for kids. We'll try to clear that up. AVENUE Q is great for teenagers because it's about real life. It may not be appropriate for young children because AVENUE Q addresses issues like sex, drinking, and surfing the web for porn. It's hard to say what exact age is right to see AVENUE Q - parents should use their discretion based on the maturity level of their children. But we promise you this - if you DO bring your teenagers to AVENUE Q, they'll think you're really cool.

fear not, it's not a Punch n Judy show... if you're near a theatre where Ave. Q is playing, go get your tickets!

* i.e. Las Vegas Boulevard. The famous stretch of road with all the glitzy resorts on it. Incidentally, before i left for Vegas, i was watching a show on Astro where a character mentioned "the Strip" (i.e. Las Vegas Boulevard) and the Malay translation appeared as "tak berpakaian" (i.e. nude). :-D shall i give our script translators the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they have bad vocabulary? :-P

christmas isn't christmas, 'till ....

.... we go tellin' funky rhythms on the mountain, over the hills and ev'rywhere!! :)

this version of Handel's 'Hallelujah' (from 'Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration') absolutely rocks! (never mind that the mind-boggling rhythm kills quite a few retinal as well as brain cells)

and by the way, if you happen to have a CD of it, pinjam, please! :-)

halloween comes early

this is killing me... flipping thru my bound hardcopy adapting portions of the thesis into a prospective journal article is well and good, save for the fact that i'm holding my breath turning every page hoping not to spot any errors i may have missed while proofreading..... it's killing me!! yaagh!! there are a hundred and twenty pages to endure! spare me!

(now i remember why, after exams, i avoid all complaints of how horrible or pleasurable a paper was, make a bee-line for the car and head straight home where nobody knows or cares what Prisoner's Dilemmas or Porter's Diamonds are)

i think i need a lobotomy before i proceed any further; a temporary removal of whatever part of one's brain it is that deals with post-submission apprehension..

yaagh!!

a flash of orange

i was on my way back home today when i saw it.. between the frantically darting wiper blades in the heavy torrential rain.. there it was ... the EXACT same school bus i took to school close to 20 years ago, still plying the dangerous tar pits of kay ell! wow, it's still roadworthy after all these years!

imbas kembali *..

ever had a long-forgotten song dug up again from the dusty back-shelves of long-forgotten songs? (to be played to death in on the car cd-player whenever you have the chance?)

but in a world without you / where would I be / where would I be without you babe / in a world without you / where would I be / where would I be without you babe / i couldn't breathe without you babe

(belinda carlisle, 1987)

* flashback

cogito, ergo sum

woo hoo! here comes the feeling of helplessness again..

ages ago, it was the trepidation of having to move back to highlighters and reams of notepaper; the utter disbelief that i was leaving a job to become a student again.

that time is now over. before long, we will all be each going our own way again. a bunch of people brought together by diverse circumstances, being released once again into the whirlpool of the rat race.

thinking of it on a larger scale, it's strange how life revolves around having to work for a living. and how knowledge gained is supposed to be translated to gains in your coffers via (the anticipation of) a higher wage earned. and all that to turn the cogs and wheels of the economy. economies. countries. world peace. strange how the world works.

things almost always don't quite make sense when you try and put them in perspective through the macro, big-picture lens. it all boils down to.. hey you! you're just a tiny, rather insignificant, dot on the surface of the earth. your doing the MBA was, ah, just a trivial part of the entire ecosystem of knowledge acquisition, a pause in the conversation before moving on to other more important things in life.. well, who knows what that might be. another chapter of your existence down, time to move on with Life, the Universe, and Everything [with apologies to Douglas Adams!].

well, all in all, i would say that it's been a fulfilling experience. wish it could go on, but unfortunately one can't be a student forever :-D.

can't place a finger on it. was it the whole freedom-of-being-a-student-again thing? or the camaraderie and working with fun people? all of the above?

heck, i'll probably even miss the surreal drives down to the faraway campus. - surreal cos the kajang SILK highway is such a vast expanse of tar on each side and SO EMPTY that you practically have the whole road to yourself.. wonderful to blast music to..

well, thanks for the journey, all you wonderful people in it. anyone up for a PhD? hahaha, sorry. couldn't resist that.. ;-D

and life goes on..

what did you do after you finished your final exams (of whatever)?

post-UPSR:
am afraid i don't recall, haha! probably a case of mom and dad finally saying 'ok, you can watch tv now', or 'ok you can get back to the computer games now'...

post-SRP (yes, not PMR, i'm old):
to be honest, i don't remember either. :-D tho i do remember the school arranging some activities between the end of the exams and the end of the school term so that the third-formers wouldn't go crazy and gallavant around town giving the school a bad name. :-D well, there was first aid, 'personal grooming' (wonder how that one went), French and .. there was something else. i took French, and i'm proud to say i can, inter alia, tell the time (tho possibly only 8:45 - i somehow only remember 'il est neuf heures moins le quart' - it is a quarter to nine) and croak a bit of Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose (the French classes had to put up a performance at the end of it all), but, unfortunately, not be able to speak French to save my life (cos the mob will probably kill me for butchering Edith Piaf). :P

post-SPM:
bunch of us hopped on a bus and headed down to Rex (remember Rex? and its famed legend of the Japanese-era underground tunnel that connects to VI..) to watch The Lion King (2nd time for me, cos I'd already watched it between the History and English papers! heh heh!) Hakuna Matata! It means no worries.. for the rest of your days...

post-A-levels:
i think it was a dinner celebration with fellow sufferers, having one last rant about why the building management had to paint the college building pink and purple (can you guess which college it is now? :-D), hoping that England would somehow win the World Cup that year (our papers were being marked in the UK and it was right smack into World Cup season!) and being ushered to countless British university pre-departure briefings (they almost always told the same joke about rice-cookers going round the conveyor in Heathrow being a sign of Malaysian students arriving).

post-1st year undergrad:
all modules done and not a worry in the world till next year! woo hoo!

post-2nd year undergrad:
all modules done and not a worry in the world till next year! woo hoo!

post-3rd year undergrad:
entire degree done and not a worry in the world till i'll have to find a job! boo hoo!

post-postgrad:
entire degree done and i've gotta get back to my job soon! boo hoo!

MBA: Must Bind Already!

0000 hrs - falling asleep
0015 hrs - ok let's make a mug of hot milk (btw, coffee, milk, tea, it ain't got no difference to my system. yeah, i'm just kidding myself)
0100 hrs - falling asleep again
0130 hrs - OMIGOSH IT'S 1.30!!
0200 hrs - falling asleep again
0230 hrs - OMIGOSH IT'S 2.30!!
0300 hrs - need another mug of milk so i can look over the conclusion again
0330 hrs - aiee!! the conclusion ain't concluding!!
0400 hrs - i .. need .. to .. sleep ..
0410 hrs - set alarm at 0555 hrs, maximum volume.
0600 hrs - OMIGOSH! it's thursday! no wait, it was thursday long ago! duh!
0630 hrs - now WHAT was the last thing i looked at last night?
0700 hrs - edit edit edit
0800 hrs - edit edit edit
0900 hrs - no thanks, i'll just have milk for breakfast, edit edit edit
0930 hrs - OMIGOSH i need to PRINT!
0940 hrs - OMIGOSH the wordings on the chart din come out!
0941 hrs - OMIGOSH it's raining!
0945 hrs - hello ah, i'm the person who called yesterday about hard-cover binding for my thesis.. can wait a bit? maybe, er, half an hour... you see, i'm still printing, and it's just started to rain... (the quintessential Malaysian excuse)... sorry ah... i'm coming soon... thank you...
0950 hrs - OMIGOSH! i'm still PRINTING!
1000 hrs - count count count count
1005 hrs - where ARE my car keys?
1010 hrs - oh man, my car is ALL the way up the hill!
1020 hrs - why are all the traffic lights red when you need them green?
1025 hrs - a parking space! yess!!
1030 hrs - so, tomorrow still can ah, around 1pm? ok.. thank you, thank you..

palm oil, anyone?

by the way, an update to the post on the new campus:

- it's quite nice, really. don't think they'll have swans in the lake yet (during my first trip there, the fountain spouted cafe latte), and not quite sure why linoleum flooring, but yup, it looks like a nice oasis in the oil palm desert.

- it IS also in the middle of nowhere! just like an oasis in a desert..

- don't know what the situation was like before, but the air-cond is working all too well now :-D

- there IS now a signboard before the gas-station-turning (and at least two more on the winding road thereafter to keep you informed that, 'yes, we know this is an amazing artefact of civil engineering - a long and winding road with no streetlamps - but there's light at the end of the tunnel')

- each trip costs RM4.80 in toll charges (RM6.30 if you're lazy and decide to use the kerinchi link to get to the federal highway)

- each trip to and fro takes about 1/5 off my gas tank.

saturday night fever

this has to be the most pathetic saturday evening in recent history.

to take away the stayed-in-the-lab-all-day-staring-at-figures-and-words blues, i decided to swing by (Berjaya) Times Square on the way back, cos:

1. debenhams was having a clearance sale
2. shopping is good therapy
3. needed to get dad a birthday present
4. debenhams' cafe has a wondrous RM15 eat-all-you-like italian buffet which comes with heavenly rum-n-raisin gelato
5. i had to get myself dinner
6. i had to pick up some groceries as well

however (you saw that coming, didn't you, duh):

1a. the 'sale' was crap. stuff was either unwearable, in bad condition or still cost too much.
2a. therapy? what therapy?
3a. the size 'S' Ashworth shirts looked like size 'XL's big enough to fit a grizzly bear.
4a. so much for spaghetti and gelato. debenhams' cafe was closed for renovation!!
5a. what dinner? i reluctantly dragged myself to McDonalds about 6 floors up to get a Grilled Chicken Foldover which didn't even taste as good as it usually did..
6a. what groceries? walking up and down 6 floors of a useless shopping complex makes you too tired to do anything but get into the car and drive home.

but wait, there's a no. 7!

7. all the parking payment machines did not accept RM5 or RM10 notes. you wouldn't believe it. being short of RM1.40 after emptying my wallet of coins and RM1 notes, i had to ask people in the queue for change.

how was YOUR saturday evening?

prelude to a stroll to satay-land

we've been hearing so much about the new campus. apparently, it's grand (i hope this wasn't just a comparison with the old run-down building of the temporary campus, cos ANYthing's grand compared to that, er, old building). it's quiet (that's a no-brainer, heh heh, given that it's in the middle of almost-nowhere!). and apparently the air-cond's not quite working at the moment.

anyway. i've not ventured past the satay-serving heart of kajang town thus far, so i shall reserve my comments till i've set foot there. (we did attempt to head down last week but a massive traffic jam forced us to turn back before we were even halfway there.)

so i've got the map, and apparently it's easy to find the place, though i've been warned that "there's a road on the left after the gas station which has no signboard but turn anyway cos it IS the road that will take you there".

ah well, if we get lost, at least we're in the land of satay..

more bandwagons

after countless invites from countless people, i have succumbed to the forces of bandwagons and battled forces of inertia, to finally join Friendster.

how many networks have YOU joined and let lapse?

how many Yahoo! groups have you created and/or joined?

how many e-mail accounts have you applied for but never used?

how many instant messaging applications have you signed up for (thank god for nifty li'l apps like Trillian, tho..)

one more network joined, one more password to remember, one more net activity to be distracted by!

Survey on Media Piracy

A classmate who's doing his MBA dissertation on media piracy has done up a web survey for this purpose. Do take a few minutes to fill out the questionnaire!

(It's a completely anonymous survey.. so, don't worry, no records will be kept of your recent trip to the friendly neighbourhood DVD guy, or your mass harvesting of mp3's from Kazaa!)

Go to the survey!

art is calling..

catch us at the Laman Seni KL at the National Art Gallery this weekend..

'tis a short performance, shan't tell you more, you've gotta come and find out! ;)

LAMAN SENI KUALA LUMPUR: 6 OGOS 2005
Date: Saturday, 06 August 2005
Venue: Balai Seni Lukis Negara
Setiap Sabtu Pertama, 8 pg – 5 ptg
...
... 2.30 ptg / 4 ptg (Atrium) - Persembahan nyanyian A Capella oleh The Gratias Group

[Translation:
2.30 pm / 4pm (at the Atrium) - A cappella performance by The Gratias Group]

of course i've only cut-and-pasted the relevant parts, ha ha. anyway.. the full itinerary for the day is available here.

gastronomica

breakfast in sitiawan

... the local fare consisted of, inter alia, a local dish translated from hokkien as 'vermicelli in red wine'. apparently it's vermicelli cooked in a broth of fermented red rice grains. well, something like that.. am not all too interested in the ingredients.. all i recall is that it smelt like tomato puree and worn socks (sorry!) and had an aftertaste of red wine.

sitiawan was a lot larger and more picturesque than i expected it to be (the sunset journey on the trunk road through quaint villages and paddy fields was especially breathtaking), and i've noticed that the local gastronomic offerings are an interesting hodge-podge of malaysian cooking.. from mixtures you never woulda thought of (laksa + lor mee (which strangely resulted in a neutral-tasting gooey soup stock), laksa + curry mee (this one's not bad as it combines the richness of curry with the pungent laksa ingredients)) to the most simple-sounding concoctions (kicap mee, or noodles in soy sauce) to, of course, the signature dish, i.e. the aforesaid horrendous rice strips in red potion i have just blasphemed. i guess it's an acquired taste city slickers like me wouldn't ever appreciate...

yes, very interesting culinary crafts, but after two and a half days i began to crave for real food (no offence!).. which i was finally gonna get as we set out this morning for...

lunch in ipoh

.. where we stuffed our faces with hor fun, pork satay and ipoh's trademark short, stout n' crunchy bean sprouts.

warning (which i never heed): if you're on a diet, avoid ipoh.

couldn't linger on in ipoh for too long, as i had to get back home for...

singing gig at a corporate function back in KL (and dinner!)

must say the evening was enjoyable despite first having had to get drenched in sweat during the hot and humid cocktail reception outside the bungalow (as Soul Doc says, they needed some o' those "Coffee-Bean fans"!). ain't easy to strut around in an unbreathable-silk cheongsam and 2-inch heeled sandals (incidentally, first time i wore heels after a month. knee injury, remember) while holding a glass of juice; for an entire hour.

dinner, finally, was a welcome respite from the heat.. or so we thought. still no fans. fortunately, the oxtail stew and sambal udang compensated for the hot weather.

the singing by the choir was great (though i can't say the pianist, i.e. yours truly, put up her best show :P). and the corporate people tried their best to be a sporting bunch. when we left at 1.30 a.m. there was still a long list of senior officers on the ('unwilling'?) list of singers.. i wonder if they all managed to get to work the next morning at all!

ruminations

(no, i'm not talking about chewing cud..)

Yays

violin is progressing. apparently my intonation has gotten better. though i still bow like a madman.

wedding processional song, checked! (1st 2 minutes of Handel's Overture to the Music for the Royal Fireworks)

spent my 25 bucks' worth of Kino vouchers on Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History and the Last Man'.

Nays

have not had the time to go anywhere past chapter 2 of harry potter and the half-blood prince (yup, SACRILEGE!)

if you think our english-malay subtitles are bad...

remember "this is all i will do. period" --> "ini sahaja yang akan aku lakukan. menstruasi!"? well, if you think our local subtitles are bad, you'll be ROTFLYAO and wiping the tears from your eyes reading this one..

some surfing led to a recommendation to this blog entry regarding a direct english translation of the chinese interpretation of a star wars script, found on a made-in-china dvd. have seen nothing as good as this, ever. ever!

http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

the bandwagon

well, whaddya know. got myself a guestbook for the blog. so, do sign in, folks!

was looking thru the shoe cupboard and realised that i don't have anything with heels less than 2 inches high. (save for the mocassins and slippers.) i'd probably topple over and pop another knee..

lame excuse-in-the-making to go shoe-shopping! :P

divit, divet, diva!

some friends are performing at a vocal recital this weekend. details below. it'll be a wonderful way to spend your saturday evening! (i'd definitely go, if it were not for the harrowing prospect of having to climb a bunch of stairs at snail speed on wobbly knee!)

Vocal Talents Music presents

Divit, Divet, Diva!

Featuring: Cristina Yap, Janet Lee and Yeo Sook Siah
with Geneviene Wong on piano

Date: June 25th, 2005
Time: 8:00pm
Venue: Vocals Talents Music (VTM), Taman Desa
Admission: By Donation

Three fledgling sopranos present an eclectic collection of musicranging from the Romantic era to current Broadway Musicals! FromMozart to Offenbach to Hammerstein to Sondheim they tackle theoperatic arias, the thoughtful leiders, the out and out emotions ofmusicals, with a couple of folk songs thrown in. Watch out forfavourites from Jekyll & Hyde and Showboat! We ain't tellin you more -you've just got to come and see for yourself.

For more details, contact:
Vocal Talents Music (VTM)
4C, 2nd floor, Business Centre,
Jalan Desa Jaya,
Taman Desa
off Jalan Kelang Lama,
58100 KL

(VTM is located at the shop lot next to Faber Towers and Telekom Towerin Taman Desa, it's two floors up from the Public Finance & Thairestaurant on ground floor)

Map available on request.
Enquiries: 603-7980 8821 or 012-378 3730 (Janet) / 012-383 1654 (Cris)

discipline

these physio exercises actually take up a lot of time.. an hour of it the first thing in the morning, and before you know it, your lunch has digested and the next hourly set has to go on, and before you know it again, you've watched all the comedies on tv and it's time for the next hour of knee-bending and knee-stretching. tried reading something during the process but found that i'd either lose count or lose my page. the only feasible side-entertainment is to listen to the radio and play bejeweled on the pda..

'Ear this...

i started talking to a friend on the IM yesterday about my busted knee, and the conversation turned to one on war stories.. of past injuries and trips to the A&E. my friend was an active fellow and started off by saying nobody could beat the stuff he'd been through. i agreed. he however decided to relinquish his title after getting a load of the weird stuff i've managed to put myself through.. well, not everyone likes to hear injury war-stories so i'll just post one bizarre one here.. no, it's not particularly graphic, but given that i seem to have a rather high tolerance of these things (i dunno, so far everyone's cringed at the fact that i readjusted my own dislocated patella), feel free to skip the parts you'd rather not hear..

the story starts some time back in my final undergraduate year, easter holidays. i had just had my ears pierced and had finally switched from the boring ol' piercing set (which stems are larger in diameter) to a new pair (which is the regular type you find in stores, i.e. stems aren't as thick). so i went to bed with the said new earrings on (NB. i never did so again ever after this incident).

the next morning i got out of bed with blood on one side of my shirt, wondering whether i was still in some strange dream. nope, perfectly awake. and the blood was real.

initial thought - mosquito. but hell, with the amount of blood there was, i would have had to wipe out an entire colony in my sleep!

then i noticed there was also blood on my right ear, and although the earring was still there, the stud-fastener at the back had come off.

ahhh ok, so the sharp point of the exposed earring stem must have cut against some part of my outer ear or the back of my neck. so i pulled the earring off and looked into the mirror.

nope, no cuts or scratches on ear or neck.

and there was still this dull pain in the ear lobe.

after much peering into the mirror and probing around a bloody earlobe, i finally found out what happened - the small earring fastener had somehow got itself embedded INSIDE the raw flesh at the back of the ear lobe (i had pierced my ears only recently, remember).

and to make matters worse, by pulling out the earring from the other side earlier on, i had inadvertently pulled the offending fastener deeper into the flesh. ow. cringe.

so i got a perplexed corridor-mate to hold up a mirror behind my head while i tried to figure out how i could get myself out of the mess. it was just too hard to get any leverage on something embedded in the back of my ear... my friends didnt dare try, so i went to the campus GP who tried easing out the fastener with tweezers but it hurt like hell so he sent me to the university hospital's A&E for local anaesthesia.

so, on a bright early Sunday morning, i had left my wonderful breakfast of pancakes behind to trod down to the A&E centre of the UK's largest hospital (apparently also Europe's largest teaching hospital), with a thing in my earlobe (and a long-suffering friend who had probably by then been totally put off earrings).

finally it was gonna be a-ok, there would be no pain, the danged fastener's gonna be out, and i'm never going to wear that pair of earrings ever again.

however there was a minor 'drama' at A&E. the triage nurse who took my particulars absent-mindedly wrote down "FB [foreign body] in right ear". in my anxiety, i didn't notice the crucial typo.

when i finally got to see a doctor after about 2 hours' wait, he went, "ooo-k, what do we have here, foreign body in right ear..". all at once I realised the nurse's error but before I could correct him the doc started PULLING HARD ON THE EAR LOBE to look inside the ear and i started screeching "ear LOBE! ear LOBE!" at which doc responded "Ear lobe? Ahhh. Easy-peasy. Just let me get some tweezers and we'll have it out in a jiffy, love," and i must have screeched a bunch of expletives I don't recall now. well, i didn't walk all the way across campus and wait for 2 hours only to have someone else do the same thing the campus GP had already unsuccessfully attempted earlier, dammit!

so there was another wait, this time for 4 hours (not kidding), now outside the operating theatre while i struck up a conversation with a poor fellow who nearly got his finger shaved off in an industrial accident; and other poor souls with miscellaneous maladies. the wait was so long i was starting to have visions of the wound closing around the foreign body and having to live the rest of my life with a thing in my earlobe.

and so finally, the stark brightness of the OT (with pleasant music playing to boot) was a nice welcome change of atmosphere from the waiting benches in the dim corridor outside. must say i felt like an idiot climbing onto the steel table myself (by the way, operating tables look like tiny kitchen trolleys!) and lying down while chatting with the attending doctor ignoring all the machinery around me (I was probably the strangest person to have come through the OT doors that day), but boy was i glad when the needle went in (I didn't even feel it!) and everything was over within 10 seconds of that.

so i trodded back to Hall, just in time for dinner which my pals had whipped up for their poor corridor-mate who had just returned from the hospital with the thing that was in her ear.

no, earlobe!

knee-arly there

went to see the physiotherapist on knee today. apparently the MO who saw me last week shoulda referred me to physio a lot earlier (in fact he didn't at all, i went only because i thot i needed it because after a week on crutches i felt i didn't know how to walk on that leg anymore!) and that should have given be a patella-stabilising knee brace in addition to the tubigrip.

i got a huge reprimand from the physiotherapist, "my dear girl, your muscles are all wasted!! who told you not to put weight on your knee for a week?"

the medical officer at A&E!

"well that shouldn't have been the case because your muscles will waste if you don't use them for just one or two days!"

ok, i want to kill somebody at A&E.

yep, it looked bad, i couldn't straighten my left leg fully no matter how much i willed my thigh muscles to do it, cos the muscles were pretty much, well, wasted.

then there was all this prodding the area around the kneecap.

then came the electrodes. a mild current was passed thru the relevant thigh muscles to jolt them back to life. (it didn't seem mild at all as the dial had to be turned up a few notches from what the nurse thought she could start with, before my muscles started twitching!) and they'd have to do this during all physio sessions over the next week or so until my thigh muscles awaken again. all i can say is that the involuntary twitching of the muscles around the kneecap is the most scary thing... a whole lot scarier than when the knee popped out and i popped it back!

anyways, i think the leg has slightly more life now, i can put some weight on it already with one crutch less, and the aim is to get off crutches altogether by next week. *fingers, toes & knees crossed!*

the deviant knee

yep, i haven't blogged in ages. anyway, the 2nd semester exams have finished, and i dislocated my left knee-cap last week. have been on crutches for nearly a week now, and the inflammation has reduced somewhat. should be off crutches soon. now comes the next hurdle - i haven't used the left leg for a week, it'll probably take some time to have it get used to having weight placed on it again. i can't remember how i did it the last time i fractured something during my undergrad days and had to go on 3 weeks' hobbling on crutches.

the scariest part of it all wasn't actually seeing the patella pop entirely to one side, or popping it back myself (that scared a lot of people, but hey, i'd probably go insane with the pain if i left it awkwardly popped out and wait for the doctor to pop it back!) but the fact that the doc said if your knee's popped once, it can pop again so watch out. will have to stop tap-dancing for a while (hopefully i won't have to give it up forever!) and it doesn't look like i'll have any chance of planning a trip to Mt Kinabalu anytime soon, ha ha :P

have been off-campus for a week now. everyone's been wonderful, i've got a recording of the workshop i missed and a bunch of notes. looking forward to going back in again hopefully this coming week. am going insane living a sedentary lifestyle. driving wouldn't be a problem as i drive an automatic and the left leg ain't needed ;), but accessibility is gonna be a problem. the lifts only go down as far as the ground floor - they closed the basement lift lobby for security reasons some time back. so there's a flight of steps one has to take from the basement car park to ground level. and even if i can get permission to park at the porch near the CEO's lot, i'd still have to maneuver either jelly legs or clumsy crutches up about 10 steps up to the main entrance.

in fact the whole episode made me realise how not disabled-friendly a lot of our public places/malls are.. so far i only know of the Megamall and The Curve having motorised vehicles for loan, for instance. was at The Curve today on one of those contraptions. quite a nifty little machine, complete with a deafening horn and indicators. but then you run into a bit of trouble when you want to enter the shops - most of the merchandise racks are arranged so closely together there's no way you can fit anything bigger than a pram between them!

the other thing you get is, of course, stares. :-D don't know whether it's the fabric grip on my knee or the crutches or the pimple on my forehead :-D, but man, you get the stares. (and i normally grin back.) you also get some people who approach you and ask you what happened and give you bits of advice on taking care of the knee. but mostly, there are stares. ;) probably a Malaysian thing. I don't remember any stares when i had a fracture and had to haul myself into the university's disabled-services van for three weeks from hall to the faculty and back, when i hobbled around from one lecture hall to the next, or when i decided to take a cab and a few hops to Sainsbury's when i got tired of the four walls of the hall.

anyway, i should go get the cold-pack and wrap it around the knee now. hope to be able to return the crutches by the end of the week. and lug myself back into the campus to catch up on the work and classes (not looking forward to that)! (and in the meantime enjoy all the coffee and chips that's being delivered to me while i sit snugly in front of the TV! :D)

blah, blah

There's a discussion group I'm on where there has been a recent spate of out-of-office emails being inadvertently sent to the group by the respective persons' e-mail systems at work.

Then someone who was probably not too technology-inclined (and probably also in a bad mood that day) posted:

"I get so much of this rubbish coming in telling me who is in his office and who is not! Can we please stop this? I DO NOT need to know who is in or out of his office and this forum is NOT for this sort of info! Have a great break or holiday OR whatever it is you are doing outside your office but please do not tell me about it!"

.. hats off to the long-suffering moderator who had to draft a long spiel after the above outburst about the fact that neither the poor individuals who went on holiday, nor the moderator, could do anything about an automated process found on most groupware/email systems which the poor chap apparently had never encountered ..

a river of peanut sauce?

the company that makes my favourite satay pleaded guilty in court to discharging toxic effluents containing excessive biochemical oxygen, chemical oxygen, solid particles, oil and grease!

there are alarm bells ringing somewhere in my head... i'm researching corporate social responsibility for my dissertation, i just had ten sticks of their chicken satay last week, and suddenly i see 'Kajang satay firm pleads guilt to discharging toxic effluents' on the front page!

guess i can do without it for a while. after all, the stuff is chock full of carcinogens.

allergens

substances that i gradually found out i'm allergic to:

- white wine (not red, but white)
- therefore champagne
- and, this seemed to have suddenly developed -- vodka! (specifically, the combi of orange juice + vodka)

it's becoming quite easy for me to find an excuse not to have a drink - i'm getting allergies to more and more of stuff in the --OH family!

lavender's blue, diddle diddle

was at one of the usual shopping centres where a bridal photography fair was going on. and what a variety there was.

the too-perfect package

they seem to have got it all right. lovely gowns, good use of white space and perspectives, some evidence of photographic skill, nice play of light, ingenious use of outdoor elements, no posing by the studio's fake mini bar, no pineapples in your hair*, and i actually think that i'd like to have my photos taken by them.

there HAS to be a catch somewhere!!

something.. SOMEthing about it ain't right

if run the photos in the sample album through a slide projector and put in some soppy music (in fact i think they DO provide a Flash file with soppy music!), it'll replicate the initial scenes taken from a typical not-so-highly-rated cantonese tv serial.. you know, where the theme song plays and the scenes shift from huddling under an umbrella in the rain to feeding your guy ice-cream to running along a (superimposed) beach with the wind in your hair to standing in a vast (superimposed) field as the title of the series materialises above you in the sky... lovely words that spell "i can't put my finger on it, but something's not quite right about the whole theme. i think i'll pass".

superbeng

"As you and me met,
without knowing that we matched.
Love at the first sight,
the spirit of love begins.
Love begins to grow within,
Where 2 become 1."

so, for a couple of thousand bucks, they'll conjure up a story of my love life using some prose commissioned from a guy who makes a monkey throw darts at a bunch of random english words picked from
(i) a thesaurus listing of "love", and
(ii) an archive of titles of the Spice Girls' greatest hits.
and while they're at it they'll insert a bunch of photos of us sitting in a fake unbelievably-purple field of lavender, where i'm probably supposed to act out the profound meaning of the words swimming around me.

aiee!!

*a friend's relative's wedding photos actually had her posing with mini plastic pineapples in her hair.

road dangers

some young punks tailgated me and scraped my bumper on my way home tonight. nothing untoward happened, but all the possibilities i could think of kind of left me a bit shaken.

it was after a mamak supper session, and i had arrived at the traffic lights outside the Damansara Jaya school from the direction of the Damansara Jaya shops. a noisy white Nissan Sunny screeched to a halt on the lane next to me and i thought i saw the two guys inside glancing and gesturing towards my car. i ignored them, of course.

so the lights finally turn green and i go, heading for the junction that turns onto the part of Jalan Damansara leading to the NKVE Damansara tollgate. the guys tailgated so close i could see, from the rear view mirror, the zits on their faces and all the colours of their hair. i had encountered tailgaters before.. but this was at night on an empty road.... i sped up a little. at the slip road which joined Jalan Damansara, i kept to one side to let them overtake me, hoping that they would do what most tailgaters do - overtake and get on with tailgating whoever else came up next in front of them. i could hear them revving away behind me and sensed they weren't quite intending to overtake.

that was when i heard the crunch on my bumper.

oh man, they just hit my car. ON PURPOSE.

a dozen what-if's started swirling in my mind.

right. this was not my lucky day.. i just wanted to get home. i finally got onto the main road. i started reaching for my phone to call my dad, but the Nissan was following so close behind i couldn't let my eyes off the road safely enough to press the keys on my phone.

i started to doubt whether heading straight home was a good idea - they could follow me all the way home. i was changing lanes on the 4-lane road and the Nissan was breathing down my neck within inches behind, the entire time. what was wrong with these people?!

not good.

the tollgate would be coming up, and since i had no intention on getting onto the highway (and end up in a high-speed chase), i got off the main road onto the side ramp that went up to the 'bridge' to Bandar Utama. the traffic light junction was coming up. instead of turning onto the slip road at the traffic lights that would take me onto the road home, i stopped at the traffic light junction, where it was brightly lit and I was in the presence of other stopped cars. at worst, the nearest police station was at Damansara Utama, which was a U-turn and a straight road away. that decision to stop at the lights could well have saved me from anything untoward happening.

there were two or three cars in front of me at the junction. the lane next to me was empty, but the confounded Nissan stopped directly next to me (rather than going up all the way to the top of the junction itself and stopping there).

ok. i get it. trying to intimidate me. now please, just don't get out of that car.

then the guy in the front passenger seat got out.

the first thought that came to mind was, oh gosh, that's it, i'm dead.

i started telling myself, the pepper spray is in the pocket on the right, and there's a baton within reach on the door compartment.. and i took some comfort in the fact that the junction was well-lit and relatively busy and there were cars stopped behind and in front of me.. i hoped these punks wouldn't do anything stupid. i had better make the phone call now in case things start going bad. my house was not far away, and my dad could get into his car now, maybe call a neighbour or some guards, and drive out to the traffic light junction within half a minute. i picked up my phone and started calling my home number.

the guy who had got down from the car knocked on my front passenger window.

i hoped to god that he wasn't holding a steering lock or any other potential weapon, and started to think of every prayer i'd ever been taught.

he pointed towards my bumper and said in cantonese, "hey, we just hit you", as if to entice me to get out of the car to inspect the damage or negotiate. i motioned "never mind" and continued pressing the numbers on my phone. he persisted, saying "but we just hit you wor.."

now, the guy would surely realise that there have been enough reports in the newspapers for anyone to know better than to get out of the car. sheesh.. what would he do next?! his demeanour had been all too obvious - in a genuine accident, you'd expect the person who caused the accident to be somewhat more apologetic and hoping to end the matter with minimum fuss. this guy had been tailgating me for the last kilometre or so and was now practically making an offer to negotiate a compensation for the 'accident'!

dodgy, to say the least.

i also had a new worry - would he panic seeing me make a phone call? if he was panicking, would he just get back into the car and drive off, or would he smash my window to stop me? i must have motioned "never mind" about four times. at some point of time i thought also of snapping a photo of the fellow at my window using the camera on my phone, but i was afraid that i might anger him and worsen the situation.

finally, to my relief, the fellow decided to get back into the car. the lights turned green, and, to more relief, they drove off.

were they just pranksters who thought it funny to intimidate a lady driver, but in the process, miscalculated a tailgating manoeuvre? or did they intend to get me out of the car and reduce me to a statistic in the next day's newspaper? was i saved by having stopped at a busy traffic light junction? by having been seen to be making a phone call? i wouldn't know. recalling the entire ordeal sends shivers down my spine. i don't think i'll be out late for a while unless it's absolutely necessary. and all you tailgaters and road bullies - the road is a facility for you to get from point A to point B. leave your egoes, fits of insanity and immature acts at home!

and ladies.. i guess the message here is to be alert at all times and have your wits around you if you do encounter suspicious characters. don't travel alone at night if it's possible.. don't drive late if you can (though this wasn't exactly the wee hours of the morning - it happened between 10pm-11pm, at the usual time one would be driving home from supper, or back from a movie or office for some people!) also, don't think an old rickety Nissan won't be brave enough to take on an MPV!

satay!

guess what?

Sate Kajang Hj. Samuri has opened a branch in damansara utama! all rite!!

PS. they have a website too - http://www.satekajang.com.my

reason #2837 why malaysians should learn english

i was making my way to low yat last sunday when i caught sight of a bit of entertainment that took away the traffic woes for a moment... there it was, a young girl happily strollling along the pavement with the boyfriend; wearing one of those tops with a statement on it... i think this particular shirt probably meant to say "pretty", but no, it read "PETTY".

(wonder if the boyfriend bought it for her...)

of exploding generators

the uni campus closed for a second day, after yesterday's incident where "a generator exploded" and left the building devoid of electrical current. yeah, "exploded"*.

so i followed a friend to view and choose her wedding photos today. while she was racking her brains choosing 20 photos out of nearly 200 shots taken, i decided to make some enquiries about their packages. it wasn't long before i decided to try somewhere else.. although they did nice studio shots for my friend [save for this one particular setting**], the outdoor shoots (which i want!) were a little disappointing, and, most unfortunately, there was a bit of a communication problem - i didn't speak fluent enough cantonese to describe what i wanted (let alone mandarin), and they didn't speak enough english to describe their packages.

*the technical accuracy of the statement has not been verified!

**a weird one - the couple was positioned peering through a small bouquet of dried branches perched in a vase. my friend thought it too 'bollywood'ish.. tho don't think it was bollywood at all.. really, what's so nice about a vase, of dead branches?

of internships..

little sis got selected for the Tisdale Public Policy Fellowship and will be heading to Washington D.C. this summer. woo hoo!! go, sis!!!!

licence to bug

what do you do when clients ask for your handphone number and the last thing you want to do is to give them a licence to bug you any hour of the day?

i normally resort to 'it's company policy that we don't give out our handphone numbers' (though a lot of colleagues are in fact happy to give their numbers to clients).

one of my bosses had the best excuse - in fact it wasn't an excuse at all, it was the truth - no handphone. none. nil. nada. (a client once thought, of course, that it was just another lame excuse, and remarked to some colleagues at a meeting sarcastically that "oh, and i suppose you guys don't have handphones either?")

(in)productivity...

yesterday was quite a day. the phone line at home was busted, so i couldn't dial-up to the Net (as for why i don't have broadband.. that's another story. but i WILL be subscribing to a wireless service soon..), but it was all the better, i thought, cos then it would be one less distraction as i had to finish up the bosnia report for the evening's deadline.

until something urgent came up on a web design project and i had to get the design specs by email out to a bunch of people before the end of the day. i would only be able to get a Net connection once i got to the campus.. and i wasn't about to head in to the campus till i had the essay done and printed!

anyway, essay printed 5.30pm, got to uni and sorted out what i had to do for the day.

and now since bosnia has been submitted, 'tis time to get back to the unfinished PHP business. since the phone line at home is still busted (the phone technician will be popping by today), i headed to the campus to use the wireless network. it was going to be a nice productive morning (ha ha), until i found that my wireless network card had busted.. it's a PCMCIA card that sticks out of my laptop, and got bent while my laptop bag was rolling around in the car on the way in. sigh. so i decided to make a trip to low yat to get a new one.

anyway, to cut a long story short, it turned out that i didn't need to get a new one after all, cos i managed to borrow a nice Lucent Tech. Orinoco card. yay!

(but it still doesn't mean i'm gonna have a productive afternoon!)

roasted eggplant and Mostar white wine, anyone?

eeks.. it appears that, during one of my blog-template-editing sprees, something or other that i did caused some earlier comments to disappear! yikes! there goes a part of history...

anyway, RE-STARTING VIOLIN CLASSES NEXT MONTH! finally dunnit!

in an adventurous mood. if anyone knows where i can learn the gamelan, lemme know.

meanwhile, need to finish a country-analysis essay on bosnia-herzegovina. it's amazing the amount of resources you can find on the Net on the Eastern European country (and i don't mean just stuff on the civil war).. can hardly decide where to start!

PS. On food in Bosnia: Bosnian cooking reflects Turkish and Muslim influences. Popular dishes include musaka (roasted meat and eggplant) and kapama (mutton with spinach and green onions). Mostar produces an excellent white wine.

what a day #4576

wadda day.

so i called up someone yesterday with an enquiry. the guy was in the middle of a meeting then and said that since he would be in a series of meetings thereafter, he would return my call in the evening at 8pm. he either forgot to, or didn't save my number, or was still in a meeting. finally, at about 9pm, i smsed my phone number over (also as a gentle reminder that HELLO, you were supposed to return a call!). next, i got a blank sms. (i actually didn't know before this that one could send blank smses..) haven't heard from him since.

next. a piece of php login code i managed to get hold of works fine one minute, and suddenly the next time i try it, the login page just refreshes itself; it doesn't log anyone in. same username and password, same php files.. i even re-uploaded the stuff; re-downloaded the original files from the source and uploaded that, and nope, it still doesn't work. i can only think that the server i uploaded it to has suddenly gone into a case of indigestion..

on a funnier note.. my dad couldn't find the Straits Times anywhere on the porch today. he had to drive out to the shops to get the paper; complaining about the levels of service of the paperboy all the way. after lunch, i happened to be gazing out of the window which overlooks the side lane where my car is parked (during a break from the php nonsense), and LO AND BEHOLD! there it was - a yellowing copy of today's paper was perched on the roof of my car. i had been driving around all afternoon with the Straits Times on the roof of my car! geez!

nuts / loco / insane / crrr-azy

i'm still alive; i am!

was just reading the papers about the recent SPM results.

this year's top scorer had 17A's. a bunch others have had 14's, 13's, 11's.

when i was a happy SPM-er, you were quite nuts if you took 10 subjects, and you'd be nuts to the highest order if you took any more than that.

how on earth does one end up with seventeen (17) subjects? are these kids taking the entire slew of science and arts stream subjects? and, no doubt it's a feat to score A's in all 17, but is it possible for a kid to study for 13-17 subjects and gain enough breadth and depth about any of them? must peer into the new syllabuses to see what kids learn in school these days ..

tipped!

i have joined the ranks of malaysians who gape at road accidents, today. but one couldn't help but look (and one had to carefully make one's way round the police-guarded heap of metal anyway) - a concrete mixer had flipped on its side at the junction of jalan ara and jalan maarof near the mobil station. from the position of the ill-fated vehicle, it looked as if it was coming down jalan ara at considerable speed and momentum, and flipped as it attemped to brake and turn left. hope nobody was hurt!

trivia: at this same junction, many years back, a lorry had lost control while speeding down jalan ara (which starts to slope rather steeply downhill towards the junction from quite a distance back), and plunged right into the compound of the house situated at the junction. - an incident my mom used to like to use as an example of a logical explanation behind the superstition that it's bad luck to have a house situated at a T-junction!

evil!

last night some young punk parked his car at the side-lane next to my house and started blasting music from his car radio into the starlit sky. at midnight. first it was a malay P. Ramlee-esque tune, and then some hip-hop by Nelly.

i wasn't asleep yet, but i was trying to read something and all that Nelly was beginning to bother me after a while. even my radio couldn't drown it out. not unless i upped the volume till my room turned into a disco.

so i whipped out my halogen torchlight (which beams penetrated even thick fog in winter back in University days), walked down to the 2nd floor leaving the lights off, opened the window that overlooked the side-lane, and blasted a beam of light down onto the windscreen of the offending car. you should have seen the guy's face as he peered up into the black void into the glare of the halogen torch. i think he got the message - he turned off his radio.

the next time he decides to blast music down my tranquil side-lane at unearthly hours, i shall cover my face with my green avocado face-mask, dress in black, walk out to the side of his car, and shine my halogen torch on my face. (and maybe take a photo of his expression and paste it up onto the net for all to see!) *evil laugh*

nouveau annee?

another new year..

i don't do resolutions cos i never remember them or the fact that i went thru the resolution process at all. perhaps reducing them into writing may help..

- try and squeeze some time out from study (it should be easier this time round, since there won't be any weekly groupwork)
- start studying earlier to avoid last-minute mess (it should be easier this time round, since there won't be any weekly groupwork)
- hit the gym (it should be easier this time round, since there won't be any weekly groupwork). achieve 25-inch waistline (yeah, right)
- eat healthily (this is gonna take some time. bakuteh and satay are hard habits to break)
- the domain name needs more to the website than index.htm
- watch all those DVDs which are currently crowding up the coffee table.
- read the newspapers
- room needs clearing up (still)
- guitar needs playing (still)
- violin needs playing (stlll)
- piano needs playing too!

and, by the way, to all ye who have been waiting patiently, 'grape' in french is 'raisin'. (now WHY didn't i think of that.) so Raisin au Fromage it shall be.*

*[What?] See, my usual party/potluck contribution is an hors d'oeuvre of grape and cheddar cheese on a stick. Never had a name for it (it was usually "Hey, dad, I'm heading out to get stuff to make the grape-cheese-thingy!" or "Hi guys, I've brought grape and cheese!" (duh)). At a recent Xmas party, the suggestion of "Chapes" was adopted for about fifteen minutes (punctuated by a possibility of "Greese") when it was unanimously decided that if any name were to be given to the glorious dish (ahem), it should be in French. Without much difficulty, 'cheese' was translated to 'fromage'. Since nobody had the foggiest as to what 'grape' was in French, the creative suggestion of "Nouveau vin", intended to mean 'new (i.e. untrampled) wine', was adopted till the end of dinner. It is with great delight to announce that the revered dish is hereby officially dubbed "Raisin au Fromage".