:: writes of passage ::

break a leg, pop a knee!

2009-07-10T05:23:00.010+08:00

Am becoming a veteran of dance with orthopaedic injuries... dislocated my knee (again!) during the last rehearsal for Nunuk Ragang on Tuesday. Will be off dancing for a bit. Again. Goddess' post (whichI've been trying to leave a message on but some strange formatting prevents me from entering the word verification response) neatly describes the Knee Incident. That was one stretch I shouldn't have done. Or it could have been because I forgot to bring along my knee guard that day, though I'm not sure the knee guard would have saved it. Thanks to Goddess & Pilates Instructor for the innovative hot 'rice-pack' (which quite amused the medical officer at A&E).

I didn't realise how prone my kneecap actually was to popping again until my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon the following day. Doc was able to move the patella around like it was floating on water, and just as it was beginning to sink in how strange that looked and felt, doc manages to actually slightly shift it sideways again! It would seem that the fibres which prevent too much sideways movement of the patella are either torn or severely weakened (probably mostly from the last injury). Am to go for physio for 4 weeks, and doc will reassess the knee after that. Surgery is an option for some patients, to sew up the said fibres. But strengthening the thigh muscles and physiotherapy 'for the rest of my life' probably would be sufficient.

I can walk fine, using a patella-stabilising knee brace. This new one I got doesn't seem to be as ergonomic as the model I used the last time - the lower section is too narrow and has a deadly grip on my calf, which gets really sore by the end of the day. Also, it takes 5 minutes, friction and a lot of tugging of neoprene material on already-sore calves to take off the brace.. I could well get other injuries in the process, ha ha. Anyway, that's going to end - armed with IKEA velcro, a pair of scissors and needle and thread, I am going to make modifications to the knee brace to incorporate a slit where it covers the shin (which can be opened/closed/adjusted using the Velcro) that would allow for improved circulation and safer removal!

Was looking forward very much to performing the dance but I guess I'll have to resign to the fact that with the bad knee I really can't leap and stretch anymore without risking an aggravation of the old injury. (Tap dancing is obviously not the best thing to do to a bad knee either, but at least the movements are more controllable... though I'd probably never be able to do single-leg pull-backs on the left ;-D)

I shall leave you for now to be entertained by some old war stories:

- The last kneecap dislocation and the first physio session with the electrodes

- Easter weekend, a danged earring stud, and an absent-minded triage nurse

- The oddest fracture: Don't think I've blogged about this incident from university days, other than the brief reference to it in 'the last kneecap dislocation' above... the lesson here was, make sure you do dance practices on a proper floor; don't ever compromise on that. A team of university mates putting on a contemporary dance piece to the theme song of 1998 HK movie 'The Stormriders' rehearsed on carpeted cement floor in the Hall dining room due to lack of proper rehearsal space. Yours truly executed the mother of all front kicks on pointe (i.e. atop the hard shoes that allow ballet dancers to stand on their toes). The upward momentum threw me off balance and I fell sitting on the floor. I felt mostly just numb for the rest of the day, and nobody, including the campus GP, suspected anything more than a bad jolt and some shocked thigh muscles until the x-ray results showed a hairline fracture on the pelvic bone. So for weeks I went to classes on the university's Disability Services van, hobbled around on crutches, actually gave the campus sports doctor a scolding for scheduling an appointment to "teach me how to use crutches" two weeks after I got the crutches tho it wasn't his fault, and went everywhere clutching a cushion which i had to sit on. And obviously had to pull out from the dance. No fun.

my gila july

2009-07-07T12:49:00.005+08:00

Short+Sweet Malaysia 2009 - July 29-Aug 1

the rehearsals for Nunuk Ragang in Short + Sweet Malaysia 2009 Dance & Theatre Festival started last week. missed the first one, managed to catch up during the second one, and may have forgotten it all for tonight's third one ;-D *slap*slap*

on the dance (from the S+S website):

Nunuk Ragang
Choreographer & Dancer 1: BB Ostella Adam
Dancer 2: Doralisa Lee
Dancer 3: Joanna Tan
Dancer 4: Grace Quah
Dancer 5: Callista Chuah
Dancer 6: Chan Wen Li
Dancer 7: Melissa Wong
Dancer 8: Eric Lim Jian Hong
Dancer 9: Gayathri Paary
Dancer 10: Yharsmeen Naharuddin
Synopsis: Based on a Sabahan legend that tells why the Dusun/Kadazan tribe left their original homeland of the same name to spread across the rest of Sabah.

if i remember to bring my camera tonight i'll post up some rehearsal shots onto the S+S blog...

and i'm gonna get one of 'em S+S mugs when I hit KLPAC this weekend...

Rehearsals leading up to BBGS @ Pavilion on August 4th

in other news, the BBGS@Pavilion event happens on August 4th (for more info, click on the link and go to 'Project Revive') and the next choir rehearsal will be this Sunday.. look forward to meeting the choir members who didn't manage to attend 2 weeks ago. which reminds me.. I'm supposed to be accompanying them on the new song and I haven't tried that out on the piano!

July Graduation

My first batch of students whom I've seen since their first year... landmark event, this one...

what keeps you sane? #2

2009-04-11T00:46:00.007+08:00

in 2006, i rambled on about 'What Keeps You Sane?'. revisiting that 3 years later (for some reason i seem to be on a three-year-milestone roll..), i don't think any of the contents of that list have changed, though I will add...
reading and re-reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything - one can never get bored of Bryson's writing style.. and for some reason i particularly like the sections on volcanoes and earthquakes - nerdy me rolled on the floor laughing at the section on the 'Mohole expedition that eventually came to be known as the No-Hole'..... well nevermind... I thought everybody learnt about the Mohorovicic discontinuity in lower-secondary-school geography but maybe not...)

i'd probably have to expand the part on then instant messaging programs to social networking applications.. you know which social networking application :), it's ingenious and let's face it, it's insidiously become part of our lives!

the rarer friends who are like-minded and understand you enough to know when you don't need a lecture but just a listening ear for a second, either because you just need to have your thoughts heard, or because you need a sounding board as to whether you're on the right track.

something new (that's partly because i haven't had access to a well-equipped kitchen for a long time) - trying out new recipes (of course it helps that everything i've tried has worked out for me so far! :-D) would probably qualify for this list as well.

singing in ensembles (and the often zany camaraderie that goes with it!)

what keeps you sane?

the third summer

2009-04-11T00:03:00.006+08:00

this will be the third summer. it's been 3 years. time flies.

and summer (notionally, anyway - forgive the northern-hemisphere terminology!) comes again very soon - can't wait for the three months of relative calm and quiet when we will actually have our offices to ourselves and have some space (physically and metaphorically) to think! [Notice the absence of blogposts since September 2008!]

things to do for the Third Summer - learn the guitar maybe (i still think it's the most convenient instrument around and it's a shame that i have a guitar around and i don't know how to play it!) and take up painting of some sort again... with the dawn of the computing age, i haven't hand-drawn anything for ages!!

meanwhile, the SnL Singers will be performing at Mr Ho's Fine Foods Restaurant, Hartamas Shopping Centre, on Saturday April 18, 2009 - drop by for an evening of culinary delights and a cappella treats - jazz, barbershop, swing/doo-wop - the stuff that will have you snapping your fingers all night long! admission is free, just pay for your own drinks & food.

weekends

2008-09-19T23:59:00.006+08:00

now that hedonistic pilates early-saturday-mornings has taken a short break, this weekend's resolution is to, again, substitute that for a brisk morning walk around the block. after about 3 weeks of not being able to get out of bed or getting out of bed only to head straight to Sri Paandi's to down nasi lemak, I'm pretty sure I will still not do the proposed early-morning walk tomorrow.

to console ourselves, there's always the 21-day trial at Celebrity Fitness from the Adidas Yoga event (the link is to Janet's blog.. she has some great photos there, like the one below..), if we ever get around redeeming that voucher!

here's to weekends of heavy Malaysian breakfasts!

day will break.. and you'll awake..

2008-09-17T23:07:00.005+08:00

.. to find that you haven't updated your blog in a year!! the blame's all on the insidious Tome of Countenances. anyway, go check out Tap Raiders, a show by the Rhythm Tappers @ Malaysia that i'll be in, happening from Nov 14-16 2008. stay posted for updates.

meanwhile, do check out videos of a cappella group the SnL Singers, who performed jazz and contemporary favourites (from I Got Rhythm to Tuxedo Junction to Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours) at Phil It Up! - A Smorgasbord of Music at KLPac in August 2008.

Come Groove With Us!

2007-07-17T21:50:00.000+08:00

The http://www.geocities.com/rhythmtappers are pleased to announce the premiere of its new piece - Now and Then - to be performed by tappers from the Federal Academy of Ballet (FAB).

The piece will have its debut at the annual FAB concert this weekend. The concert is for charity - all ticket proceeds (net costs) will be donated to a chosen cause. Details as follows:

Day/Date: Sun, July 22, 2007
Time: 5.00 pm
Contact: FAB at 03-7957-3413 (for tickets)

Come support us!

Visit the Rhythm Tappers @ Malaysia online here, or at its blog here!

the year to date

2007-07-10T00:01:00.001+08:00

Just a slighly more sane little update of sorts (after the wisdom tooth rant) to fill in the 6-month void in blogposts :-D. After the Year of the Major Musical (which swept four awards at the 2006 Cameronian Arts Awards), didn't join Tunku The Musical this year, but did get involved in a variety of other musical excursions. View photos taken at a recent concert of German songs here. The Phil (refer also to the blog) has started having monthly Movie Nites.

And, speaking of movies, Transformers premiered in Malaysia on June 28th, a week before the official release in the US (now ain't that cool). The show has probably revived the car-sticker/decal business (Autobot car sticker - guilty as charged!), and has had grown men lining up for toys (grown women, too).

In other news, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix premieres this Thursday. But more importantly, have you booked your copy of the seventh instalment of the boy wizard's adventures? :)

words of wisdom

2007-06-22T17:24:00.003+08:00

Warning: If you have aversions to dental treatment and drilling sounds in general... Now is the time to face your fears and read on!! (evil grin)

just back from the wisdom tooth extraction. it's the sort of thing that is so mentally and physically exhausting you just need to tell somebody.. anybody.. about it. (and yes, yes, i mean write about it - i can only make inaudible noises right now, with all that bloody (pun intended) gauze stuffed up the right side of my mouth!)

due to a combination of dense bones and the fact that the tooth in question had two curved roots and a real tight grip, the procedure took longer than expected - about one and a half hours instead of the estimated half an hour. one would have thought that one would be suitably conditioned for tooth extractions after having had four pre-molars removed during days of metallic orthodontic grins, but this turned out to be quite the ultimate test of endurance... there was a lot of what sounded like drilling (well, actually it was sawing, which doesn't sound any better :-D)... the tooth was cut into three and taken out in three separate parts. there was a lot of major pulling, jaw ache, plus the nagging anxiety that at any second the anaesthetic may wear out (am afraid i don't really have a high threshold for pain.. see other local-anaesthesia stories here..)

so, after endless rounds of tugging and sawing at the tooth and altogether 6 jabs of local anaesthetic (apparently 2 jabs are usually sufficient) you wouldn't believe the relief when the last piece of tooth finally came out.

the tooth fairy had better give me a blank cheque for this.

sights of sydney

2006-12-13T22:25:00.000+08:00

my alarm rang at 7am. i got up at 8 :-D

(i did say the bed was cushy!)

registration was fortunately a simple affair - give name, get bag. (a couple of us who attended the finance conference in NZ earlier in the year were amusedly comparing how we got a 'goodie bag' from the Kiwis but didn't get many souvenirs here!)

i found out that yesterday evening's 17 degrees celsius temperature was NOT typical of Sydney climate. apparently at this time of the year it's usually a 'steam bath' of over 30. having just come from a perennial steam bath, i'm GLAD it's below 30.

plenty of walking done today. took a late morning walk from the hotel to the Visitors' Centre, and then on to the area near Campbells Cove for a view of the Harbour Bridge, and then turned around and walked along Circulay Quay to the Opera House.

and here's a photo i took of the Harbour Bridge, viewed from Circular Quay.

one of the nicest things about Sydney, i feel, is its cosmopolitan charm - in my conference (office) attire the locals thought i worked in the city and was on my lunch break. however if people did notice i wasn't Australian, they would assume I'm from China. even after hearing that I'm Malaysian, they would still ask "But you were originally from China, no?"

people should visit Malaysia more often :)

the conference has been good so far. there are no dedicated discussants allocated for the papers, so in the free-for-all Q&A time, the battles ranged from relentlessly bombarding presenters with queries to no comments or questions at all. some (i suspect) slyly dragged their presentations on so that there would be less time for questions, as each speaker is allocated an absolute 25 mins or so. i shall need to learn the art of answering questions of stuff i haven't the foggiest idea about :-D

in the evening i took a second walk to the Opera House (i'll bet no other tourist goes to the Opera House TWICE in ONE day.. unless it was to buy tickets and then watch the performance..) because i suddenly realised that the official souvenir shop was INSIDE the building, and not amongst the regular souvenir shops outside. no wonder i couldn't find it earlier. *hits head on wall*.

there's supposed to be a free wi-fi connection at The Rocks but i can't for the life of me connect to it. would be pretty cool if i could - i can then provide a live webcam of the landmarks of Sydney to envious viewers back home, buahaha.

anyway, on the way back in the evening i dropped by a McD's to see if they had any special Australian promotions on their otherwise standard fare, and decided on getting something from the Deli Sandwiches range. i (probably foolishly) chose the Thai Chicken. it seemed to have more lettuce than chicken pieces, and tasted nothing more than grilled chicken pieces with chilli sauce. should have known better than to try an Asian variation in a non-Asian country. *hits head on wall*. ah well. so again, I got hungry at 11pm (i missed lunch, as i spent a little too much time hanging around outside) so I dialled 1 for an Antipesto Plate with Grilled Breads. I must say I'm getting addicted to Room Service..

down under

2006-12-12T22:22:00.000+08:00

taking in the view of the city as the plane touched down, i revelled in the surreal realisation that have actually been here before though i don't remember much of it - 20 years ago; my first ever trip overseas. in fact, I still have a (slightly discoloured) photo of 4-foot-something me with a cheesy grin and the Opera House in the background!

at least 4 hours of the 8-hour flight was over the desert... Australia is almost as large as the United States, and the distances between major cities is staggering, with distances of over 1,000km between, for example, Sydney and Brisbane.

names are familiar (the airport is still called Kingsford-Smith. hey, don't laugh, Hong Kong's and KL's have changed!) though don't remember much of what Sydney looked like then. As the taxi sped through the city (and I mean SPED - thought only Malaysian drivers could drive like that) at 9pm, i was reminded by the deserted pavements and building foyers that there would be no late-night shopping in this part of the world - shops close at 5pm, late night shopping is on Thursdays (now WHY did they have to schedule the conference dinner on Thursday?!)

the Shangri-La boasts a breathtaking view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. my room, of course, happens to be on the OTHER side of the building, overlooking a highway that leads to the Harbour Bridge :-D This area, The Rocks, is the birthplace of Sydney and modern Australia itself (according to Fodor's Australia 2006, the first 11 of England's 800+ ships carrying convicts to the penal colony dropped anchor here in 1788).

when I'm through munching my wondrous late-night room-service Caesar salad (gosh, check out all that cheese and bacon!), I shall venture online (yes, I'm drafting this offline - hey, Internet access isn't free!) and post this, check out some tourist-info websites, and then hopefully head on to bed early enough for me to wake up for the conference registration at 8am tomorrow!

I love the attention to detail at this place - for example the bookmark left on a corner of the bed.

And oh, did I mention how amazingly cushy and comfortable the bed is?! (it helps, too, that i have all 4 pillows to myself! :-D)

Ipoh Down

2006-11-29T00:20:00.000+08:00

Broken Bridges in Ipoh was a blast... so will it ever be restaged? If it does, perhaps Cheong Soh could make her grand entrance in No More like this. also, since there was only one Indian character in the current script, spicing up the play with a touch of Bollywood (see this very helpful video of suggested choreography) may not be a bad idea! In fact, it looks like we may already have the endorsement for this from one of the writers (heck, he appears in almost every frame of the aforesaid video!)

also, for the Ipoh run we had the incredible Monsieur Dominique instructing us on breathing techniques I wish I knew 2 years ago in order to audibly project the unseen Shepherd Boy's plaintive tune from backstage of stage left in Tosca without straining the voice (i'm no trained singer), and during all the unmiked singing while prancing around with Anna Glavari the Merry Widow, in this. therefore, the (last part of this) video is a tribute, of sorts, to the sore knees, yoga mats we wish we had, and above all, improved singing voices! (sorry, audience, private joke lah this one!)

...and that's three wacky videos to keep you occupied till the photo story coming up in the next post!

i woke up to monday (sung to no tune in particular)

2006-11-20T10:16:00.002+08:00

i woke up to monday
(boy, was it blue)
rehearsals all sunday
(yeh lai xiang for you*)

my colleagues were whining
and going mad screaming
over the loud piling
for the nearby new building

the atmosphere tense
the pressure immense
my neighbour was grumbling
enough with nonsense!

for lunch we drove out
to the village so glee
at the shut stall, we shout
what, no prawn mee?!

the evening had come
my brain declared dead
unfortunately still some
vexation lay ahead

i tried to unwind
Ipoh Town** in my mind
the yoga would do me good
(of course, after food!***)

half past seven arrived at last
the rehearsal was quite a blast
we even got to go home early
so to Caltex****, went the cast

nasi lemak, tandoori chicken
80's tunes filled the cool night air
plans were made for merry-makin'
in the days ahead so fair

the sandman is now taking over
and soon i will be keeling over
but wait, before this rhyme is over
here's something for you to ponder

GO GET YOUR TICKETS FOR BROKEN BRIDGES!
we promise it will be worth your riches
come with friends, and bring some tissue
03-4047 9031 that's how to reach us!

* a line from one of the songs in Broken Bridges (which, by the way, will be performed at Taman Budaya Perak, Ipoh, this Friday to Sunday!)

** title of our opening song

*** the time before and after rehearsals is all about food. well, actually, in Malaysia, rehearsals are all about food...

**** actually, it's the mamak stall near the Caltex station on Jalan Ipoh, where we regularly "fill up" after rehearsals. i think the stall operators actually missed our boisterous company during our 2-month break from rehearsals!

wednesday (ran out of titles)

2006-11-15T01:49:00.001+08:00

iGiveup

i found that my iPod at least still charges when i plug it in to a PC. for now, i ain't updating my iTunes any further. in fact i'm planning to get rid of version 7 altogether. found an old iTunes 6 installation file... i shall install that and hope for the best!

the Gmail accessibility problem appears to have disappeared vis-a-vis my home network. not switching email addresses back tho, since i've already set up the new account..

re-building bridges

meanwhile, rehearsals for the Broken Bridges Ipoh show commenced yesterday with a bang... it was like a reunion of sorts.. we should do this every few months! bring broken bridges to Penang! (Building the Second Bridge?) J.B. (Crooked/Scenic Bridges?) ouch.

we had four new cast members, most of whom appeared to have very impressively learnt almost all the songs already (shame on us! ah, then again, we didn't have the benefit and convenience of a CD. ha ha). one hopes, though, they won't be remembered as "the guy who's singing vincent's part" or "the guy who's doing leroy's lines"..

Leong (not his real name) christened me Gen2 for my attempts at imitating our absent pianist (named Gen. duh.) 'tis a deep honour indeed to be named after our a model of our national car. many apologies for the botched modulations, butchered chords and general honky-tonkness (the last one wasn't my fault - couldn't find out how to turn on the sustain pedal!)

ah yes, tickets for broken bridges ipoh. tickets will be on sale to the public from the 22nd to the 26th of Nov 2006 (did i get the dates right? we're performing from 24-26 but the crew will be around from the 22nd onwards) at the Taman Budaya Perak, Ipoh (where the show's gonna be). alternatively, you may contact any of us cast members (i.e. myself included) to get tickets.

for all ye who read previous blog posts and totally regretted missing the shows in KL!

Broken Bridges The Musical, a charming tale of why white coffee doesn't taste the same anymore, and which played to awestruck audiences at KLPAC in August-September 2006, goes to Ipoh this month!

24 & 25 Nov 2006 @ 8.30pm
26 Nov 2006 @ 3.00pm
tickets at RM40
Taman Budaya Perak, Ipoh, Malaysia
For more info, please call 03-4047 9031

the stage right sideshow

2006-10-20T18:27:00.000+08:00

play the above video to view the background antics to the onstage love story (in case you've forgotten - Broken Bridges The Musical, August-September 2006 :-) - which pretty much occupied all my blog posts in the past months) i've been trying to post it up for ages (i think my patient fellow cast-members have given up on me and my empty promises to update my blog)... and when the internet connection stayed sane long enough to finally enable me to upload the entire thing, i started having problems linking it in to Blogger.. and finally now i realise that i hadn't edited the orientation of the video, so, sorry folks, just flip your screen 90 degrees CCW to view this, yeah? :-P

in case i haven't raved about it elsewhere in the blog, Broken Bridges will be running in IPOH from Nov 24th to Nov 26th, 2006 (hor fun and white coffee, here we come! and oh yes, the Bidor duck noodles on the way too), so pick up your pencils/pens/styli, and mark your calendars now!

'tis the season for failing equipment. first, sis' laptop (actually, it used to be mine) kaputed of what was largely old age. then my dad's PC died of fried motherboard, which left him wondering whether he should get a new one now or patiently wait a few months for Vista (and, of course, i've run out of laptops to lend him - last one was the aforementioned one that went to sis).

and today, it looks like my PDA-phone may have decided to give up the ghost too. am using a borrowed Dopod smartphone right now; haven't had time to check out its features, except that it has a pretty cool default ringtone and an SMS alert that doesn't sound too grammatically correct ("You got message!"). the email alert is a little strange too ("You got mail!") and oh, note to self: stop tapping on the screen..

in the meantime, best wishes to all for a grand Deepavali and Hari Raya. may you have a pleasant, haze-free, uncongested (traffic-wise) drive back to your kampung if you are travelling during this wonderful 5-day weekend! after a food-filled trip to penang 2 weeks ago that probably tripped the cholesterol meter by more than a few notches, i think i'll be spending the holidays attempting to sort out a decent research proposal (everybody repeat after me now, "NERD!!").

Ipoh Town - The Unauthorised Reprise

2006-09-12T12:12:00.000+08:00


This was taken during the cast party, where someone spotted the mock-up of our Broken Bridges set lying around and started simulating the Prologue.. with the part of various characters played by handphones and plastic cups, and the part of the veg seller played by a leaf of lettuce... Don't expect ANY proper closing-of-words or clarity in pronunciation here...

would you do it all over again?

2006-09-11T08:10:00.000+08:00

two weeks passed by in a wink of an eye.

i had gotten so used to the routine that seemed to to be the reason for my existence - jumping into my car at 4.30pm and snaking my way out of the winding roads of the Back of Beyond praying for good weather and good traffic to get me into town before 6.00pm; darting from a hurried gobbling of salads and sandwiches to sweaty warm-ups on stage to rushing out to get miked-up in the middle of applying the third shade of eye shadow on the left eye; belting the instrumental parts to Miss Saigon in the dressing room with the superstars; lending cast members white eyeliner and mascara; taking in spurts of Sore Throat Spray - the elixir of life that was a panacea for symptoms ranging from parched throats to endless dust-allergy coughs; handing my locker key to our dear pianist for safekeeping; standing on stage taking in the view of the hundreds of brightly-coloured seats which would be filled with people within 45 minutes while taking in the Overture that would lead on to chorus after soaring chorus of Ipoh town; hearing what Joe/Faridah/Mervyn had to say to us for the night; returning backstage for the crucial session of vocal warm-ups while staring at the mirror patting on last-minute dashes of eyeliner; listening out for the announcements over the PA system (which wackiness went up several notches on Sunday Sept 3rd); and finally making my way out to join the Stage Left family - the schoolboys, office guys, beggar, fellow pseudo-40-something aunt, coffeeshop owner, char siew pau kid and superstar, watching the screens, exchanging break-a-leg hugs and pacing the floor; and finally, the band would strike up the familiar oriental melody of the first few bars of the Overture.. and after countless nights, the rest of the next 2 hours would run almost like clockwork.

Sunday, 3rd Sept, finally arrived. it was amazing to say the least.. we had come so far. we were passing programme books around for autographs and snapping photos at every opportunity. after messing up my eyeliner tearing up during the warm-ups due mostly to a huge surge of 'this is the last time i'll be [insert every detail of the pre-performance preparations]' (knew that would happen, being the hopelessly sentimental fool i am) i willed myself not to choke up on stage at curtain call (and even took a few extra snorts of the anti-cough sore-throat-spray before going on for whatever it was worth) but that was hard too..

and Sunday marked the curtain on two weeks of unrelenting energy on stage, equally unrelenting wackiness off-stage, the warming-up to the glare of spotlights on the stage where you take on the personality of the simple small-town character that had essentially become your alter ego, watching the screens for the 'usual' laughter-triggering sections of the show, hoping nobody would leave any more footwear or spherical pieces of processed meat on the stage, waiting eagerly for the infamous Stage Right Sideshows during Act 2 Scenes 5 and 7, running to the sound crew for mike adjustments after every other scene, running into the dressing rooms for makeup touch-ups, watching the 15-minute interval fly past, not believing the night has already progressed to "white coffee doesn't taste the same anymore", the mad rush to get de-miked after the curtain call (especially for the superstars who exit from the vormitory!), and of course supper thereafter..

the cast party had a sober feel about it. it wasn't exactly a "we'll be going our own ways now" thing (as many were people i knew i would see in future productions... and others online thanks to the Internet!) but there we were - 4 months ago we were just learning the songs, wondering if we'd remember the choreography, and freaking out over memorizing lines (with me making feeble attempts at doing it while falling asleep in the sweltering Californian summer and then in the heart of the Southern hemisphere winter). now we were holding our cheques and slowly realizing that the next day we would NOT be doing our usual thing at 6pm.. almost as if a fantasy we had been living in was over. back to reality.

i've been having a rather dreadful week at the office clearing up work built up over the last 3 weeks or so AND trying to mask the post-performance withdrawal symptoms with office routine (it doesn't help that my neighbouring colleague bought our Original Cast Soundtrack CD and plays it almost every other hour of the day!).

but it's been worth it.

and yep, i would do it all over again.

(photos in next post. haven't figured out how to distribute the infamous Stage Right videos..)

A Slipper? Beam It Up to Pentas 1, Scotty!

2006-08-26T02:49:00.000+08:00

(1) a fictitious Slipper Scene
"Leong, you are my bestest friend.. but your SLIPPER!!!"

(2) a fictitious Meatball Moment
"Aiyah, the Ah Sohs all mengarut lah.. men are actually more like meatballs... red and meaty. Period!"

(3) what will happen next?
"It dropped out of your pocket? So much for your 'A' in Science of Pau!"

(4) how far will it go?
Superstar: "Your Chan durians are ridiculous! They're full of sand! And bricks!"
Sub-superstar: "Yeah, just like the suitcase you made me lug up the stairs earlier! Buahahahaha..."

Cinderella Calls

2006-08-25T13:57:00.000+08:00

we had another standing ovation on Wednesday on the charity night. we must have been doing something right. i even managed to bump into a long-lost friend from school who attended the show without knowing anyone she would know would be in it, opened the programme book, found my face, and went "HEY, I KNOW THIS WOMAN!!!" and then flipping some more and going "HEY, I KNOW THE LEONG GUY TOO!!!" so, as it turns out, she and my fellow actor were in the same school bus. (and of course all three of us went to the same school at some point in time)

the arts brings people together!!

the smaller crowd on Thursday were delightfully responsive at times, despite most of us battling various degrees of exhaustion (especially after driving through sheets of torrential rain and the snarl on every single highway and byway between work and theatre yesterday). the topic of the night (and of mamak sessions thereafter, i'm sure) was, of course, The Cinderella Slipper (we still don't know who exactly crashed into whom or who trampled on whose foot resulting in a slipper left on stage, but the names Mark and Vincent are quite high up on the popularity (or is it blame) meter!), and perhaps also, The Curtain Miscall (ah well. knew we shouldn't have relied on Superstar for the cues!).

.. yes i'm gonna leave you with those entirely useless bits of information .. now go GET YOUR TICKETS!

anyway, i decided to stay in and work from home today to make sure i don't develop a headache by the end of the day.

a friend working with a subsidiary of the show's title sponsor turned down two free tickets for tomorrow's show to catch Eason Chan in Concert. ![insert expletive here]! anyway, i've asked the said friend to get whatever free tickets she can from her boss and pass them to me to be given away (apparently the response from her colleagues was rather lukewarm.. must be bloody Eason Chan fans....) so yeah, IF i get a bunch of free tickets to tomorrow's Broken Bridges you'll hear about it... that is, if i still have any left after giving them away...

by the way (nothing related to Broken Bridges at all) a bit of fun stuff and free advertising for the world's largest software company (not that they need me to do it).. get your free Microsoft Tech.Ed 2006 Meego (i.e. interactive MSN Messenger display picture) at http://www2.meegos.com/teched/?PUID=0006BFFD82F61EFB&TCID=2169. (i suppose i'm also supposed to also go on to say "go register for Tech.Ed 2006!" :-D)

oh yes, we have a review on Broken Bridges on Kakiseni, by Nigel.. (and i thought Nigel was here just to watch us in the show! geez.. :-D) here's the review (surf over to the original source of this article on Kakiseni, where there are PHOTOS too!):

The Scenic Bridge of Ipoh
Broken Bridges: Can a musical theatre work by first timers be entertaining?
by Nigel Skelchy
24-08-2006
(from http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/reviews/MDkyMw.html)

There is always that moment of trepidation when a curtain rises on a musical for the first time. If the impact of the first scene is less than a sonic boom, it muffles the rest of the musical. What more an all Malaysian musical written by two untried and untested neophytes? It is the rare one that lives up to the promise of their glossy literature. Broken Bridges, running at KLPac – Pentas 1 right now, opens humbly enough with a beggar woman (Fang Chyi) shuffling quietly onto stage. Then the sepia toned frames, doubling as backdrops, are whisked apart as the townsfolk enter singing “Lively town, lovely town, Where it’s bound to astound…” From the sweet solo strains of Fang’s voice as she wanders the streets at dawn to the Ah Sohs going, “how’s the kailan, not so nice, get some tau foo,” to the men joining in with their baritone, the opening number builds to a big, rousing broadway finish, and nicely segues into the introduction of the protagonists.

Set in Ipoh of 1959, Ming and Leong are teens who have just completed their Senior Cambridge. Leong is content to eventually take over his father’s business and make a brand out of Chan Durians. But Ming, son of a coffee shop owner, Wong, is full of dreams and is chomping at the bit to leave Ipoh and make a name for himself.

Chan and Wong, the boys’ fathers, however have other plans. They waste no time in arranging the marriage of Ming to Chan’s 17 year old daughter, Siew Yee. With great reluctance, Ming goes on a date with her. The three aunties, Yat Soh, Yee Soh, and Sam Soh (although she has a Chinese title, she is, in Muhibbah Malaysia, an Indian), coach the adolescent girl in the arts of attracting a man (men are like char siew pau, “white and clean on the outside but red and meaty on the inside”).

When the two youths return from their date, the fathers joyfully announce their intentions much to Ming’s dismay. It is this conflict of interests that drives the plot to its unexpected but appropriate end.

Likeable small town folks

Broken Bridges, as directed by Joe Hasham and produced by Datuk Faridah Merican, is structured in typical musical theatre style from start to end and makes no pretensions to be anything other than a piece of great entertainment. And as entertainment, it naturally stars some heavy hitters. Douglas Lim, of Kopi Tiam fame leads the cast of very seasoned veterans in the role of Ming. Other notables include the cabaret comedienne Joanne Kam Poh Poh as Yat Soh and popular TV actor Tony Eusoff as Ringo. Choir trainer Colin Kirton plays Ming’s father, Wong. Ming’s best friend Leong is played by Ho Soon Yoon and his father, Chan, is played by comedian Monti.

The leads have their coming timing down pat and the one-liners are delivered with much aplomb. The audience is naturally drawn to the likable small town folks. The loyal friend is played to great effect by Ho Soon Yoon who injects his performance with empathy, and frivolity. Douglas Lim PERFORMS – as opposed to just SINGS – his role to perfection. His theatricality, the larger than life gestures, and the emotive singing are perfect for musical theatre. And Yes, Douglas Lim can sing!

Kudos to Colin Kirton who acts with such nuance that although he plays this tradition bound father who is overly strict with his son, you feel for his pain and bewilderment.

Yat Soh, Yee Soh, and Sam Soh, the dragon ladies, played by Joanne Kam Poh Poh, Chan Wen Li, and Pangasaanii G, add much colour to the fabric of Ipoh society as portrayed in Broken Bridges. The trio are reminiscent of the mice in the movie Babe. Unlike the mice however, they are active participants in the plot and sub-plot.

Do the right thing

Tony Eusoff does his usual star pirouette but his role begs more development. We don’t know enough about him for a character who is the catalyst for Ming’s decision to leave home. Same problem with Ming’s girlfriend, Mei Ling, played by Janice Yap, in the second half. She is introduced as a smart, modern girl with a penchant for reading and thinking – a stark contrast to the girls introduced to Ming by the intrepid trio of dragon ladies. Without much explanation however, she is eventually reduced to being the small town Ipoh girl stereotype. These two seem to have interesting back stories which could be explored further.
Another question mark is Ming’s argument with the townsfolk over Mei Ling’s fate. While it is obvious that the townsfolk blames Ming, his retort that it is their fault is not explored, leaving a feeling that the townsfolk have too readily accepted his judgment in the matter without any discussion. It feels glossed over, this issue of personal responsibility and how people need to do the “right thing”.

While it’s unlikely that the composer and writer are intending to create a musical with issues, it’s the issues that make a story interesting. In a sense, everything that Ming’s father was driven to do – arrange the marriage, dismiss his son’s aspirations as frivolous, and ultimately deliver an ultimatum that becomes too hard to retract – stems from his own desire for his son to be secure and protected. The issue of the father-son relationship is at the heart of this musical and to a large extent any aspect of the plot that has an impact on it deserves some exploration. For example, what does Wong think of Ringo, Ming’s cousin, for example? It’s possible that Wong despises Ringo. It’s also possible that he thinks the world of his sophisticated nephew. Would he have been more willing to listen to reason if approached by Ringo about Ming’s leaving for Kuala Lumpur?

Thankfully, however, none of these unsolved mysteries affect my enjoyment of the musical. They remain as intriguing questions that could be answered in part or in full in the next run, perhaps?
And for completely personal reasons, I think another portion deserving of more time is the cabaret boys scene. They come out looking like outtakes from a Chippendales show and before you can blink, it is over. In a musical, any excuse for a cheesy, corny, sexy number is ALWAYS welcome. Choy Le Roy, nice arms.

No pretensions

Pacing is superb. There is not one moment when the story drags. The singing is polished. The ensemble is well rehearsed by Mervyn Peters, timing is tight and the mood is nuanced. The music, directed by James Boyle, sounds obviously computerised in parts. But given the budget and the small orchestra, the music is pretty okay. Some voices sound tight and do not have the polish of Broadway performers (in a manner of compliment, I don’t think it is unfair to compare them to the industry’s best at all).

The choreography by Pat Chan is not spectacular but is nevertheless serviceable. Look out for Joanne Kam’s four-fingered instructions.

The production designers deserve special mention. Loo Jia Wei and Arica Chia outdo themselves with the clever use of mobile sets and those sepia toned photos of straits settlement shops on the hanging frame. Discordance, disharmony, and discontent are visualised by skewing the hangings and using projectors to display images of cracks.

For a musical that moves forward almost 47 years in 2 hours, costumes can be particularly challenging. But Chin Khin Yeow deserves much praise. From pleated A line skirts to the drainpipe trousers of the men, Broken Bridges is certainly well-dressed for its times.

In musical theatre, plot is secondary to the music. The music needs to be singable, clever, and able to advance the plot. No matter how cheesy or corny the plot could be, the music needs to reflect the mood of the scenes while a central theme tie the entire musical together. The opening number “Ipoh Town” seems to be the theme song but it is not reflected in the interludes. Hence it seems like the song is repeated 3 times rather than being used as a central motif binding the musical together like a ribbon on a present.
The melodies are catchy and the lyrics original. The “question and answer” format of the conflict music – with the singers “arguing” with each other – produces some of the slickest and cleverest songs I’ve heard in a long time. Look out for “Proud,” “Why,” and “No More” to catch this exciting bit of musical creativity. You will never have guessed that the composer and writer, Teng Ky-Gan and Lim Chuan Yik, are first timers.
On the whole, Broken Bridges is accessible, empathetic, and ultimately entertaining. Everything a good musical should be. It has no pretensions to be anything other than what it is. Like a good Malaysian food court, it has something for everyone. Fun songs delivered well, interesting conflict to make the audience root for the characters of their choice, poignant relationships, love, anger, and blind ignorance. In short, people will find it very easy to relate to, whether you are a child, a parent, a sibling, a best friend, or even a well meaning neighbour.

Huge claps on the back for everyone especially to Teng Ky-Gan and Lim Chuang Yik. When’s the next one coming out boys?

Broken Bridges is running at KLPac – Pentas 1, from Sat 19 Aug – Sun 3 Sep 2006. Tel: 603-4047 9000.

Glad to Have You Around!

2006-08-22T01:48:00.000+08:00

we had a standing ovation tonight.

in fact, the near-full house audience were great and wonderfully receptive throughout. it was a pleasant surprise, as most of us didn't feel (or i didn't think anyway) that we put on an exceptionally stellar performance tonight, possibly due the exhaustion from the weekend opening run. for me, yesterday's 'break' turned out to be a day of catching up with work instead.. so i was rather difficult today to get into the swing of things.. it seemed ages since i last stepped into the theatre. the usual 45-minute warm-ups in the car didn't inspire my unresponsive grey matter, and after getting miked i had started to nod off (horror of horrors!) during the soundcheck process.

thank you all ye wonderful people who attended our show and provided valuable feedack thereafter.

also, contrary to what was told to me by Box Office staff a few weeks ago, i found out that tickets ARE in fact still available on Saturday August 26th. both RM80 and RM60. so go get your Broken Bridges tickets! Box Office Tel 03-40479000!

Come on down to Ipoh town!

2006-08-20T20:52:00.000+08:00

This is Ipoh Life!

(photo on left taken during a rehearsal)

am still reeling from Opening Night Euphoria... the culmination of 4 months of hard work has been nothing less than a thrilling rush of exhilaration... imagine watching your favourite musical from the stalls and wishing you could be one of the actors on stage, revelling in moment after moment of rapture and giving all you've got to the audience.. now imagine actually being up there on stage. this was not my first stage appearance, but certainly a debut appearance in musical theatre... and first freaking LEAD ROLE in ANY musical performance... i suppose this is a pretty significant milestone in anything in the performing arts i've done in the past 6 years (strangely enough, not even being a Grisette in Merry Widow - my first major dancing role - came close!)

could almost not deal with the magnificent surge of backstage adrenaline rapidly welling up as as the band striked up the Overture to the serene Beggar's opening to the rousing first 8 bars of the signature tune (which, by the way, has been my all-time favourite moment of the play - the strings, piano and drums setting the mood and revving us all up to our first appearance as townsfolk of an town awakening to the hustle and bustle of a typical morning).

everything seemed perfect.. from the klutzy cha-cha amongst the drink-drinkers (our Ringo says I look like Olive Oyl in the costume - complete with lanky limbs and hair up in a bun - I must say I haven't heard a better analogy!! :-D) .. to the energy, passion and intensity of the second Act.. tears were coming on as if on cue... they might as well have included boxes of Kleenex on the prop rack ... i could swear a good majority of the cast was so emotionally involved in the story they were trying awfully hard not to choke on their tears by the time they got on stage for the requiem scene and thereafter..

i'd figure if there was such a thing as pure rapture, the Opening Night of Broken Bridges would come pretty close. (and i don't think it's the champagne in me speaking! :-D)

it was quite amusing how some friends thought that the musical accompaniment was "pre-recorded by an orchestra"... (now WHOM did you guys think we were acknowledging at when we turned to face the back of the stage during the curtain call? :-D) i guess the band should take that as a compliment.. i.e. that the music was so perfect it sounded too good to be live.. There IS a 4-piece live band at the back, folks! and (God forbid) in case anyone is guessing, we were singing live too.. (each of us was carrying a few thousand dollars worth of equipment on our heads and around our waists, which had to be subject to painstaking sound-checks before every performance..)

must say i was pretty impressed with our programme book too ... 76 freaking thick glossy pages in full colour where everyone looked absolutely stunning .. and they even printed freaking lyrics to all the songs... all that at a value-for-money 10 bucks! i was quite taken by the simplicity of the cast's unassuming biodatas... right now you guys are the people i love most on this planet...

oh yeah, also, i have a new warm-up CD now for the long drives to the theatre the next 2 weeks ... the Original Cast Recording of songs from Broken Bridges The Musical! i play Track 1, Ipoh Town, and i start to cry. i'm going nuts!!

tickets to Broken Bridges The Musical are still available! call the KLPAC Box Office (03-4047 9000) to get your tickets NOW!

here's to a grand 2 weeks ahead, all you wonderful Ipoh towners!!

of tents

2006-08-16T02:48:00.000+08:00

3 more days.

time to brace self for long nights of tech and dress rehearsals.

must eat well and drink lots of water too, in order that i shall continue to look glowing and resplendent in the floral tent of a samfoo. no, no, really, it's quite comfortable. airy, too. one of the most comfy costumes I've ever had (second only to the the nun's habit in Tosca). and no, you're not getting a photo of the Floral Tent.. you'll have to come and watch the show! :)

spotlights

2006-08-11T01:53:00.000+08:00

one week to opening night! can't believe we've actually made it through all those months of rehearsals already.. it wasn't too long ago when we were gaping awestruck at the killer rehearsal schedule and sitting in the rehearsal room trying to remember the melodies and lyrics.. or when we were sitting around outside the audition room waiting for our turns.. in no time it will all be over and we'll be wondering what we ever did with our lives after office hours :-D

will there be life after Broken Bridges?

there's SongFest and Xmas stuff with The Phil which i hope to still have the time and stamina to join in by then (family members who haven't seen me much in recent months may start to forget that i exist!). i can probably also get back to watching some shows (especially the ones that are up for judging, before the organising people of the awards start shooting me dirty looks, haha). and to get back to leisurely late breakfasts on weekends without having to worry about whether my digestive system would revolt later on during the warm-ups.

BUT OF COURSE, there's the Ipoh run of Broken Bridges which i can hopefully join depending on the rehearsal schedule! who knows, perhaps somebody will want us up in Penang too (and all our lines will have to be Hokkien-ified ... I can see it already ... "Rule Number 2! Always look down! Pai-seh a bit...")

anyway, for now, am glad for tomorrow's day off. the huge mouth ulcer that has been maiming me for the past four days can finally take a break!

in other news, heathrow airport is in chaos after security measures were put in place resulting from the revelation of a (foiled) terror plot. disturbing. sometimes things are more disconcerting when you think of what *could* have happened rather than what actually happened. (like the incident last year that could possibly been an attempt by road bullies to get me out of my car) anyway, a friend is due to fly back from london within the next few days, and another is due to fly there tomorrow. wonder how their travel plans would be affected.

auntified and ancient

2006-08-05T01:08:00.000+08:00

oi, haven you heard the latest news? the Bloken Bliges show ah, sold out aleady on Saterday 26 Auges and Saterday 2nd September wor! yalor, tiket all moh sai. No More! so laku one. but then ah, they say ah, still got a lot of tiket on Auges 19.. nehh, the one they call opening night lor... so ah, anyway, you all must go and call the Kay El Pack faster faster and buy. ha. cannot just stay put lidat one, mus take some action lah! make sure that you not too late!

okokok i tell you all secret lah. mus watch one this show, very keng one, got all the ipoh place inside one. nehh, Hiu Loh Street*, Cathay cinema, all that they got say one. Tiger Lane also got say.. haiyo, so long never hear Tiger Lane.. now that road dunno call Sultan Aslan dunno wat name lah, so hard to lemember one... surrender, surrender (sigh)! haiya but better than Kay El lah, still stuck in that.. wat they call ah? nutshell.

yalor ipoh famous aleady after this show. hai, din know the people who write the show were so lek chai..

haiya, sorry ah, Day By Day become yee soh for so long aleady, the Lingo also become lidat aleady...

eh, don read anymore aleady lah. afterwards people think you are not doing your work...

* Hugh Low Street . Aiya, the spelling just seemed too refined, lah.

opportunities

2006-08-03T11:19:00.001+08:00

was flipping channels on the telly last night (that's about all i do nowadays after rehearsals) when it landed Maximum eXposure and i spotted the Malay translation their tagline "we have lots of Really, Really Bad Days for you" flashing away as "kami ada banyak hari-hari yang malang untuk anda". it's a literal translation, nothing really wrong about it, but it just sounded.. weird. dunno. maybe some taglines aren't meant to be translated.

anyway, today has started off as a pretty Good Day. received an encouraging review on one of my academic papers. this particular paper is also possibly one tiny step closer to being published in a journal. *fingers crossed* also, i hope the boss approves my second overseas conference for the year in December! *more fingers crossed* and i hope the conference won't clash with the usual Christmas festivities of the Selangor Phil! *run out of fingers*

we received news yesterday that the PM will be attending the Sept 2 Broken Bridges show, which will coincide with the official opening of the KLPAC. sweet. he attended our performance of Tosca back in 2003 when he was DPM, together with PM Mahathir (as he was then); and i have a somewhat odd photo of self shaking hands with Dr M, with a man in a bloodied shirt and red lipstick standing on my right doing the introductions (well actually that was our Director who played Cavaradossi that night, who was shot dead at the end of Act 3 - hence the bloodied shirt) but unfortunately the photographers probably thought DPM Abdullah (as he was then) wasn't quite important enough to have photos taken shaking hands with the cast. ah well. i'll try and get my Abdullah photo this time lah. and at least i don't think i'll have any bloodied men standing near me who will need Photoshopping out ;) (yipes.. unless we have the Ghost of Mei Ling or The Unborn Child! :P)

anyway, we're having our photos taken for the programme book tonight. found out this morning that i ran out of concealer.. and started wishing that i worked in the city, where a dozen shops selling makeup would be within walking distance. ah well, will have to rely on Photoshop as usual lah.

Sneak Preview of Broken Bridges!

2006-08-01T12:43:00.000+08:00

This was taken by Nazrul who attended our press conference last Tuesday. Enjoy! Also check out the post by Jasiminne (who also attended the PC) who also has some nice photos of the actors on stage..

We also appeared in the Weekend Mail on Sunday July 30th.. if you have a copy I can take/borrow (to photocopy lah)... I owe you teh tarik! Or perhaps Ipoh white coffee!

And if you're a reader of periodicals, check out the August issue of Her World where some of the ladies of the cast gave their few sen worth of what Malaysian women want.. (In other news, the FCUK top I wore in that shoot has finally entered the sale racks :-)) Anyway, don't bother trying to figure out which is me. I looked so different it took me quite a few seconds to find myself in that photo..

Broken Bridges - The Original Cast Recording

2006-07-25T02:34:00.000+08:00

Title sound canggih or not? :-D

We spent a weekend in Pentas 2 recording the songs .. under the intense glare of spotlights and under the influence of good food - Joe's chicken soup, pomelos all the way from Ipoh and nasi lemak (we tried lah, to restrain ourselves, when it came to the sambal), just to name some!

This photo was taken on the Sunday. I think we were listening to the nth take of either Just This Once or No More. Sorry gals, for choosing an angle that captured butt cracks but no faces..

Buatan Ipoh

2006-07-24T17:51:00.000+08:00

Broken Bridges is in the New Straits Times today!

It's a made-in-Ipoh musical
New Straits Times, 24 Jul 2006

Look out for Kuala Lumpur Performing Art Centre’s first original musical Broken Bridges, written by two diehard fans of musicals. FARIDUL ANWAR FARINORDIN writes.

EXPECTATIONS are high for Kuala Lumpur Performing Art Centre’s (KLPac) first original musical Broken Bridges, directed by the irrepressible Joe Hasham who is also the establishment’s artistic director.

A musical in two acts, it is Hasham’s third effort in putting together a cast who sing and dance after sharing the director’s chair with the late Krishen Jit for Opera Uda & Dara, a sleeper hit for The Actors Studio and Five Arts Centre (2002) and The Tree (1997).

Hasham may need help to differentiate between flat and sharp notes, but with composer/producer James Boyle on board as music director and Hasham’s better half Datuk Faridah Merican as executive producer, everything should be smooth sailing until the show’s opening night on Aug 19 (until Sept 3).

However, one can’t blame the show’s writers, Lim Chuang Yik and Teng Ky-Gan for being anxious. For the two best friends from Ipoh, the project — their first ever collaboration for a musical — is more than a labour of love. It’s their life.

Set in Ipoh, the story spans three decades and revolves around two childhood friends who end up seeking their destinies in very different directions. It is a drama that questions loyalty, family values, materialism, traditional values and other matters that can be set to serious music.

In an interview recently, Teng, 24, said the story “was initially our version of (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s) Camelot”.

Lim, 27, added: “We realised later that it didn’t work out the way we expected it to be. What we had in the beginning was an over-the-top musical which was actually based purely on our whims and fancies. After finishing the first draft in 2002, we realised that it was too grandiose.”

Diehard fans of Western musical theatre traditions, the two named musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein (King and I, The Sound of Music, Camelot), Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Phantom of the Opera) as well as Boublil and Schonberg (Les Miserables) as their favourites.

“We made references to the well-known international musicals for some of the scenes in Broken Bridges, just so that we understand the kind of emotions we want to convey. There are (Les Miserables’ protagonist) Jean Valjean-inspired scenes, for example.”

Their fascination with musicals happened when both were still in primary schools. Teng starred as one of the princes in The King and I (with Mano Maniam playing the role of the singing ruler), while Lim claimed The Fantasticks left an indelible impression on him.

With Broken Bridges, Teng said, it’s all about telling a good story. “It’s relatable and realistic, not something unusual and out of this world like The Phantom of the Opera.”

Still, it was difficult to find a producer who’s willing to put it together. “After completing the script in 2002, we approached a lot of people in the local theatre scene, mainly to find out if it is good enough so that we know where we are and what areas to improve on. But a number of them didn’t even bother contacting us back.”

Unperturbed by the lack of encouragement, the two soldiered on. The script was later handed on to the Perak Society of Performing Arts in 2004 to be staged, but nothing materialised. Months later, it found its way to KLPac’s theatre manager Teoh Ming Jin.

Lim recalled: “I was ready to throw in the towel. I told Ky-Gan: “Give it up man, nobody wants our script-lah”. Basically, I got tired of going around in circles. But Ky-Gan’s persistence paid off when Joe got hold of our script.”

Days later, the two received an e-mail from Hasham. “He said that he hadn’t the time to read it and we went ‘oohhhh, not again’”. When our first first meeting with him was postponed, we honestly thought that this was not going to happen. We finally had our first meeting with him on Jan 7 this year.”

On the outcome of the meeting, Teng recalled: “He (Joe) seemed to like it, although he didn’t look like he had read it. He also gave hints that he was interested to produce it only after listening to the music.”

Lim, who reads music “very laboriously”, came up with the show’s basic melody line and chords. “However, I knew nothing about moods, time or tempo so I sought help from Geneviene Wong, who is the show’s rehearsal pianist.”

Now that their baby is seeing its light of day, how do they feel now?

“When it dawned on us that Joe is directing it, we went “whooaaaaa... we got Joe Hasham, of all people!” After the initial “shiok”, we found ourselves getting more excited because there are such big names in the theatre scene who play the roles we created,” Lim said.

Broken Bridges stars Douglas Lim (Ming), Colin Kirton (Wong), Tony Eusoff (Ringo), Monti (Chan), Ho Soon Yoon (Leong), Joanne Kam Poh Poh (Aunty), Janice Yap (Mei Ling), Chan Wen Li (Aunty), Cristina Yap (Aunty), Maybel Chan (Cheong Soh) and Rachel Tan (Siew Yee).

“When we first wrote the characters, we only had our actor friends from Ipoh in mind!” Teng said, adding that he and Lim have been attending the rehearsal process and was happy with Hasham’s interpretation of the story.

“Joe actually removed a big chink of dialogue and replaced it with a non-spoken actions between some of the characters. It was mind-blowing to see how intense the scene came out. It is interesting how your story can be improved at the hands of someone so experienced like Joe.”

Lim now works for a pharmaceutical company in KL, while Teng recently began his career with a healthcare company.

The musical also features a huge chorus ensemble featuring cast members in multiple roles. They include Fang Chyi, Davina Goh, Emily Yoon, Yen Lin, Nicole Fuchs, Callista Chuah, Pangsaasanii G., Joanne Poh, Carol Wu, Vincent Lee, K.C. Lam, Choy Le Roy, Carliff Rizal Carleel, Patrick Teh, Johann Lim, Nick Dorian, Mark Beau de Silva and Azmir Abdullah.

There are 24 songs (including reprises) so far in the show and “Joe just asked me to write one more,” said Lim. As for the set, designed by Loo Jia-Wei and Arica Chia it is expected to be “the most elaborate KLPac has ever seen.”

I can hear the song in my head now, the emotionally-charged Do You Hear the People Sing? from Les Miserables. Ooh, the anticipation.

Note: Broken Bridges will be staged at KLPac from Aug 19 to Sept 3. Showtimes at 8.30pm daily except Sunday (3.00pm). There will be no shows on Monday. Tickets are priced at RM50 and RM30 (students, disabled and senior citizens only).

For tickets, call KLPac’s box office at 03-4047-9000 or The Actors Studio at Bangsar Shopping Complex at 03-2094-9400. You can also visit www.klpac.com for more information.

Get Your Tickets!

2006-07-22T21:55:00.000+08:00

For the people who have been getting earfuls from me of "I'm in a musical called Broken Bridges" and "I can't join you all lah, got rehearsal tonight.. tomorrow also got... the next day also got... sunday also got... next week also got... next month still got...",

TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW for Broken Bridges - The Musical!

Duration: 19 August - 3 September 2006 @ 8.30pm, Sunday shows @ 3.00pm (no shows on Monday)
Venue: Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC), Pentas 1
Price: RM80, RM60, RM40 (students, disabled & sr. citizens)

I love our poster:

The words in this shrunk softcopy of the poster are probably slightly blur with the exception of the Director's name (;-D) so here's what it says:

The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre presents
The World Premiere of

BROKEN BRIDGES - The Musical

By: Lim Chuang Yik and Teng Ky-Gan
Executive Producer: Dato' Faridah Merican
Musical Director: James Boyle
Choreographer: Pat Chan
Directed by: Joe Hasham

With:
Douglas Lim, Colin Kirton, Ho Soon Yoon, Joanne Kam Poh Poh, Tony Eusoff, Monti

Rachel Tan, Janice Yap, Chan Wen Li, Cristina Yap, Pangasaasanii G, Maybel Chan, Fang Chyi, Davina Goh

Ai Wen, Azmir Abdullah, Callista Chuah, Carliff Rizal Carleel, Carol Wu, Chi Mei, Choy Le Roy, Emily Yoon, Joanne Poh Yuet Foong, Johann Lim, K C Lam, Leo Selvaraj, Mark Beau De Silva, Nick Dorian, Nicole Fuchs, Ooi Yit Boon, Patrick Teh, Vincent Lee, Yen Lin

First time my name's on a poster after 6 years of dabbling in the performing arts. Kinda proud of it. (Normally I'm doing stuff too insignificant to warrant precious poster space, e.g. Random Chorus Member, Random Soloist with Insignificant Line, or Unseen Person in the Wings Who Opens Act 3 by Singing Songs a Shepherd Sings to his Sheep)

Anyway, I'll be playing the role of a middle-aged Aunty in 1950's Ipoh who, inter alia, dispenses dating advice and makes feeble attempts at matchmaking the protagonist. Shan't disclose any more, go watch the musical lah!

More about Broken Bridges from the KLPAC website:

"BROKEN BRIDGES is set in Ipoh in the 1950's. The protagonist, Ming, seeks to chart his own destiny while his father, Wong, has his own ideas for his son. Wong is the quintessential Chinese towkay, to the extent of arranging his son's marriage. Ming's best friend and neighbour, Leong, plays the obedient son. The stark contrast in these two characters begs the question: 'So what's wrong with the old ways?', and on the other hand, 'So what's wrong with the new ways?' With a persuasive cousin from the big city, Ringo, appearing on the scene, Ming finally decides to go against his father's wishes and leaves for Kuala Lumpur. 10 years later, Ming returns as a successful contractor, whose project is to tear down the marketplace and in its place, erect a new building. Problems occur; an unhappy relationship with the beautiful head-strong and self-opinionated Mei Ling; construction problems; promised sums of compensation never arriving...the townsfolk become troubled and angry. Wong, in a final act of fatherly love, makes a sacrifice for his son, totally unknown to Ming. Ming leaves Ipoh, humiliated, disappointed and totally ashamed of his father. In the epilogue, Ming returns 30 years later, and only then discovers the fate of his father. BROKEN BRIDGES is a big musical with an even bigger story; wonderful charm, humour and drama. There are 24 musical numbers, inclusive of reprises. There are 11 lead and supporting lead characters. There are also an estimated 15 chorus members playing multiple roles. BROKEN BRIDGES is a truly Malaysian Musical; but above all, it's absolute entertainment."

The press conference happening on Tuesday.. so look out for stuff on Broken Bridges appearing in a newspaper, postbox, wall or pillar near you!

Surrealism is..

2006-07-21T21:25:00.002+08:00

.. doing up a website in a language you aren't terribly familiar with. especially if it isn't romanised. in particular, the Chinese version of the English site I had recently finished designing for a client. Sure, I've been given a bunch of text and instructions on what to cut-n-paste and where, but my forgotten knowledge of Chinese characters is rather limited to start with and to be honest, I don't know what most of the stuff given to me means, and obviously they assumed i did. (for all you know they're saying "we're never wrong. any errors on this website are the responsibility of the web designer who worked on this Chinese version of the site, who, by the way, doesn't know Chinese".) that's what you get for being a banana*. well at least I know enough about the strokes in Chinese characters to make informed comparisons to ensure consistency within the site.. but I seriously need to re-learn Mandarin, properly...

Speaking of learning. I wanna learn the drums too. (Empress is gonna lecture me for this :-D)

*Person of Chinese origin who doesn't know Chinese (Bananas - white on the outside, yellow on the inside!)

Of Recordings and Resurfacings

2006-07-21T15:11:00.000+08:00

We will be recording the songs from Broken Bridges for a double-disc CD to be on sale during the run of the musical (Aug 19 - Sept 3). While the Ipoh 'field trip' to check out the places and types of food we've been singing and talking about has been cancelled (for this), it looks like we're still having a feast anyway - we'll be having a potluck of sorts for breakfast, elevenses, lunch and tea of healthy food (i.e. no chocolates, curry, chilli, PINEAPPLE LUMPS and anything else that may result in a cacophony of croaking). Will probably bring some Raisin au Fromage if I have the time to go grocery-shopping today. (Cheese isn't banned, right? :P)

Oh yes... TICKETS ARE ON SALE already for the musical... more info coming up on that!

In other news, the maid has rearranged the study room during our 2-week absence (with the best of intentions, of course; nobody can face the sight of a hurricane aftermath and not do anything about it), and I can't find a lot of things now (I have a photographic memory of where I put things and it's horrible when I can't find something I knew I placed *right there* a few days ago). On the bright side, things I've not seen for a long time have resurfaced.. like this photo of me and Form 3 classmates on an afternoon of gallavanting in the Lake Gardens (though I can't remember the reason we were there!) (Guess which is me.) I know at least three in the photo are married, at least one is in Singapore.. Wonder where everyone else is!

A Kampung Scene

2006-07-19T10:07:00.000+08:00

The office is so quiet.

Man, this place is so quiet you can hear kelapa sawit drop!

In other news, I found 1/4 of a packet of Pascall's Pineapple Lumps still lying around in the coffee area from Monday. Shows you how empty the office is. How can anyone NOT stop popping Pineapple Lumps into their mouths? If no one else eats them up by 5pm I'm taking them back.. heh heh. Perhaps the Broken Bridgers may still have some to eat if I don't finish them up before I get off the Cheras-Kajang Highway!

She Speaks!!

2006-07-18T11:14:00.000+08:00

Gaa.

Me guilty of not updating blog.

For ages.

So here be a quick 10-second summary of what's been going on in my life.

New job.

Sold old car to get this one. (And of course I'm replacing the front and back logos with Peugeot lions!)

Got involved in this musical.

In June, went here to attend sis' graduation. Traipsed around Palo Alto and San Francisco for a week unwittingly getting a tan and hoping I still remembered my lines for the musical when I got back.

Got back and had to start packing my room in the office cos the department was moving to a new block.

In July, went to New Zealand for this conference. Toured the South Island before that. Saw lots of sheep. Plenty of adventure. Car veered off icy road and got stuck in snowbank, had to hitch a ride to small town 40 km away to get a truck to tow car out.

Got back home with lots of Pascall's Pineapple Lumps to appease all the people I may have inadvertently irritated in some way or another by my being MIA for 2 weeks. Check out the TV ad in New Zealand for Pineapple Lumps.

Found out we still hadn't moved to the new building yet. Not till next week.

And all my worldly possessions in the office have already been neatly packed into 4 boxes.

Re-opened boxes.

Couldn't find coffee mug so using papercups for this week.

Wanted: Cure for Sore Throat

2006-02-15T11:33:00.001+08:00

'Tis the season again.

It absolutely plagues and cripples you. You can't sleep, you don't feel like speaking, and you won't have an appetite even for the most tantalising of gastronomic feasts.

Have been drinking honey lemon (2 teaspoonfuls of Manuka honey in water, with 3 slices of lemon) the whole day and that seems to have been a great help. Well, at least the zesty lemon taste helps.

Woe to sore throats!

What's In Your Handbag?

2006-02-12T17:43:00.001+08:00

I found out, after getting home, that I just couldn't zip my handbag close anymore. Stuff was just spilling out of it. Excuse to get new, bigger bag? Buahaha. Well, it's gotta fit:-

Phone - which is huge

Wallet - which is huge. And no, not because i have reams of currency or sacks of coins in it. More of accumulated payment receipts, actually.

Car/house keys - Kinda huge too. I don't know what half those keys do :-D

A tube of Mentos (Ice Mint flavour) - Perfect post-bakuteh fresheners, these.

Yellow Staedtler Textsurfer Classic highlighter (What's this doing here?)

Casio Scientific Calculator, Model fx-570s (What's THIS doing here?)

Laser mouse and its wireless receiver (No, I don't usually carry mice in my handbag.)

Thumbdrive, with lanyard - Nowadays, you don't leave home without your thumbdrive.

Black ballpoint pen, Cross - Someone gave me this before I left to study in the UK, all of 10 years ago. It's amazing how I haven't misplaced it yet.

Zebra Drafix Mechanical Pencil - Geeky-looking one. Had a similar one during my picture-drawing days, of course lost it along the way, and sis bought me a replacement ALL the way from the only Japanese stationery store in San Francisco, CA! :)

Lipstick - L'Oreal, Amazing Coral. Come to think of it, WHAT a name for a colour.

Minyak Angin Cap Kapak, 3 ml - Me is my name, headaches are my game. (Minyak angin is therapeutic, really.)

Piece of paper scrawled with access password to the students' common room - The lock on the door to that room used to be a little cranky. I once closed the door, from the inside, and somehow couldn't get it open again. I had to signal someone walking by (fortunately it was a glass door) to help me open the door from the outside. With the campus having just moved to new premises and all, she didn't know the password, so I had to mime the numbers to her from behind the glass, from memory, hoping that I had the correct figures, because otherwise I would be sitting on the floor throwing randomising devices (e.g. dice) hoping to obtain the correct combination out of 6.76 million possible permutations (26x10x10x10x10x26). Yup, that could easily have turned into a Really Long Day.

What's in your handbag?

2000-2005 In Retrospect

2006-02-07T16:56:00.001+08:00

New year, new Chinese year, new clothes, new hopes, new resolutions.

And because I'm brain-dead from a designer's block on a web design job, here are 10 Milestones of the First Half-Decade of the 21st Century!

1. Learnt how to drive on KL roads

I only started driving after I graduated as I had all of 2 weeks between getting my licence and flying to the UK (and btw my driving-test session was the very last of the batch that didn't need to go thru P-licences!). My baptism of fire was having to drive from PJ to the Istana Budaya in Jalan Tun Razak, for a Carmina Burana rehearsal; my usual ride wasn't available that day. After having to go through the massive bits of construction at Jalan Damansara (the flyovers weren't ready yet!) and the even more horrible mess at the junction of Jalan Tun Razak and Jalan Ipoh, I got home with a stiff neck and even stiffer hands.. but that was it, I was a Certified KL Driver.

2. Got admitted to the bar

No, i don't mean the type that serves drinks.

3. Got a job

'Cos that's what graduates do when they come out into the job market. Doh. ;-D

4. Learnt enough about web designing (I hope!) to do it for others

Not that I felt I was so 'pro'. I was broke when I decided to give up comfortable monthly pay to do the MBA! :-D (Am still broke.)

5. Got myself a blog

The actual story (never revealed before!) was that, after a bunch of stressful months at work, I decided maybe I wanted to be an arts writer/journalist, and the idea of a blog came to mind as a means for practice. Well, I didn't become an arts journalist, but the blog stayed..

6. Wrestled enough time to take up my neglected second instrument again

And that would be the violin. And I don't pretend I can confidently say "I play the violin" without shivering in fear of someone asking for a demonstration. Whoops, I've got a class at the end of this week and I haven't practised.

7. Wrestled enough time to start tap classes

By the way, here's a recent article in The Star about the tap classes I was taking, and the instructors!

8. Dislocated a knee-cap, thus putting No. 7 on hold for more than half a year

There's something about orthopaedic injury that keeps hindering my efforts at doing something with dance. (Or maybe it's just mother nature trying to tell me that I'm clumsy :-D) Back in uni, I fractured my hip bone during a fall when practising a dance co-choreographed with Hall-mates for the Malaysian and Singaporean Society ball. I can't remember the other historical incidents but let's not bore ourselves with war-injury stories anyway..

Anyway, I'm still not sure my knee can take it yet. Dang. I wanna go back. It was the first dance of any type I attempted that I didn't have a screeching teacher yelling at me asking me to try and be more graceful. ;-D

9. Got an MBA

New knowledge, new outlook, new friends, new opportunities. Am terribly glad I did it!

10. Got married

Possibly the most significant milestone of all. And with it comes new abode, new family, new box to check on forms, new NAME :-D

(You know, the thing I like about numbered lists, apart from being structured, is that it gives the illusion that you've done a lot during the time-span under discussion..)

Anyway here's to another wonderful half-a-decade ahead (and hopefully the end of my mental block for this afternoon!)

YAAAM SENGG!!!

did you forget to feed your parking meter today?

2006-02-02T10:41:00.001+08:00

today is a public holiday in KL.

today is NOT a public holiday in Selangor!

being PJ-dwellers and KL-workers, we forgot that the poor Selangoreans (or Selangorites, or perhaps Selangorees..) have to go to work today, and that the MPPJ officers could therefore be feeling mean today and decide to go on a parking-ticket-giving rampage on poor KLites who thought it was a holiday and forgot to put 60 cents in the pay-n-display machines. (got caught early this morning when we headed out for breakfast in Sec 14. fortunately we got the lower fine of 30 bucks as opposed to the (is it 300?) cos we happened to have a bunch of old tickets left on the windscreen - due to that the offence was categorised as "displaying expired ticket" instead of "no ticket displayed". thank God for loopholes, ha ha.)

so all ye gallavanting in merry Selangor today, DON'T FORGET to pay your parking, lah.

2nd chord sounds in world's longest lasting concert

2006-01-22T20:16:00.000+08:00

HALBERSTADT, Germany (AFP) - A new chord was scheduled to sound in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert that is taking a total 639 years to perform.

The abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany, is the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by US experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992).

Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.

The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord -- G-sharp, B and G-sharp -- not sounding until February 2, 2003.

Then in July 2004, two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded and are scheduled to be released later this year on May 5.

But at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Thursday, the first chord was due to progress to a second -- comprising A, C and F-sharp -- and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project.

Cage originally conceived "ASLSP" in 1985 as a 20-minute work for piano, subsequently transcribing it for organ in 1987.

But organisers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to take the composer at his word and stretch out the performance for 639 years, using Cage's transcription for organ.

The enormous running time was chosen to commemorate the creation of Halberstadt's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361 - 639 years before the current project started.

That original organ, built by Nikolaus Faber for Halberstadt's cathedral, was the first organ ever to be used for liturgical purposes, ringing in a new era in which the organ has played a central role in church music ever since.

As part of Halberstadt's John Cage Organ Project, a brand-new organ is being built specially, with new pipes added in time for when new notes are scheduled to sound.

Cage was a pupil of one of the 20th century's most influential composers, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Cage's avant-garde oeuvre includes works such as the
notorious "4'33”", a piece comprising four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence, all meticulously notated.

The organisers of the John Cage Organ Project say the record-breaking performance in Halberstadt also has a philosophical background – to "rediscover calm and slowness in today's fast-changing world".

From Yahoo News

More at BBC News

Website of Organ2/ASLSP:
http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/new/index.php?l=e

what keeps you sane?

2006-01-17T18:06:00.001+08:00

what keeps me sane?

- instant messaging programs - ten years ago i downloaded the first version of ICQ which changed human communications forever (as far as i was concerned anyway).

- mamak or coffee with friends! - requires no explanation.

- music - listening to it, producing it (an exception would be violin music, in that, right now i still prefer listening to it played by someone else..).

- Calvin & Hobbes comics - the best thing to read in bed. lets you think happy thoughts in your sleep :-D

- Appendices to The Lord of the Rings - next best thing to fall asleep reading. (Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that the Appendices are boring. Really.)

- Making things - in school i hardly ever bought a wallet or a pencil case cos i made them all. haven't had time to do much these days but i should get that bag of sewing things out of the cupboard and make something!

what keeps you sane?

lazy tuesday afternoon

2006-01-17T17:34:00.001+08:00

it was real hot and humid out there, and the bag of apples i bought 2 weeks ago would be making cider in the fridge if i didn't do anything about it, so i made an exotic (or so i think) drink out of red apples and ginger, topped with a stick of lemongrass (bruised on the thick end) and a bit of lemon juice. it actually tastes quite good, there's a refreshing whiff of lemongrass and a tangy lemon aftertaste.. except that i think i overdid the ginger (my throat is now seething with heat), and unless you're into sour drinks, a bit of syrup may come in handy.

i'd take a snapshot of a glass of the potent potion and post it up but i can't remember where exactly the camera is after the moving-of-stuff-around over the last week in preparing for the festivities..

speaking of which, i'd better start packing up the stuff i need to move over to the new digs. there isn't much pressure to pack quickly cos the two places are 10 minutes apart in good traffic.. nevertheless i think some stuff HAS to go over today.. since i'll have to get out of the post-vacation vegetation state and do some real work soon :-)

me the nomad.

bali hai

2006-01-17T10:39:00.000+08:00

bali was great. the after-effects (well, two for now, cos my brain is still a little veggied):

(1) having to get used to the absence of strange road habits

(i) the balinese use car horns like there's no tomorrow. they honk at passing motorists to "alert them of your presence" (this was from a guidebook). yup. when a motorcycle emerges at the upcoming junction and your driver goes *honk*. in fact you would honk at virtually every junction. your driver changes lanes and while passing the guy who was in front of him, *honk* (and i don't think this was cos he knew the driver of that car). when they're stuck in a traffic jam, when it's obvious nobody's moving, *honk*. car accessory shops and mechanics must have a good life there.

(ii) they hardly use their brakes. going up a mountainous road MAY be an exception.

(iii) officially, they drive on the left side of the road. but more often than not, they seem to prefer the right side. (overtaking-lah)

(2) it's such a RELIEF now that you don't have to bargain every time you step into a shop!

i don't see why bargaining is such fun. it's an awful chore. every time you approach a shop they probably think Ooo, here come rich tourist, we must sell everything at sky-high price because tourist don't know better. for goodness' sake, do you seriously think i would purchase a pair of wraparound pants from a side stall in Bali at Suria KLCC prices when i can get the same thing at the Thai Fair near Carrefour's at RM10 without even having to bargain? and i'm sick of the i'll-have-to-say-take-it-or-leave-it-and-walk-away-but-you'll-come-after-me-anyway-yelling-the-last-price-i-wanted.. look, i just wanted to quickly grab a souvenir so i can move on to a bit more sightseeing and and you KNOW you'll sell it to me at that price anyway (and i don't look anything like a gwailo so i don't have any coffers filled with so much Rupiah equivalent the number of zeros will bust your calculators) so how bout we quit the whole charade? (i later found out that at the new Sogo store in upmarket Nusa Dua, you can get little batik-lined souvenirs at less than RM10 each. all in comfortable air-conditioning and no pesky salespersons and no bargaining necessary)

and speaking of Sogo bags, i should have left them at the hotel before venturing out into the stalls outside the Nusa Dua entrance..

"Oo, sir, ma'am, shopping?"

"Oh, So-go!"

"So-go shopping!"

"Eh, So-go!"

"So-go, ya?"

"You want shopping? Oh, So-go!"

"So-go!"

if i stepped into any of those shops then they'd probably be trying to sell me wraparound pants at the price of Benetton cos i'm bloody Japanese and i shop at Sogo (hubby does carry a bulky canggih-looking camera anyway and i lug a tripod around, so of course we're Japanese-lah). never mind that my Sogo carrier bag which attracted so much attention just contained stuff the stalls would sell me at twice the price.

the balinese are a friendly people, they really are. i wish they'd stop trying to make use of their charm to give me the "please ma'am pity me, i'm not even breaking even, i haven't sold anything today" pitch. i'm glad nobody this time round in Bali has resorted to "i've got kids to feed" thing or i'd have imploded (i'm too nice to explode, so i implode). hey, i'll do charity when i wish to, to a cause I feel like donating to. and after all i'm only a millionaire in Rupiah terms..

and voila, the hand-made guestbook! :)

2005-12-30T01:02:00.001+08:00

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

2005-12-29T12:27:00.000+08:00

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

2005-12-24T10:28:00.000+08:00

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

2005-12-22T15:36:00.000+08:00

"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

2005-12-17T20:12:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-12-13T13:51:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-12-13T00:07:00.002+08:00

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

2005-12-09T23:59:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-12-08T02:25:00.002+08:00

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)

2005-11-28T01:02:00.003+08:00

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!

2005-11-27T21:57:00.001+08:00

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)

2005-11-24T18:42:00.000+08:00

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

2005-11-21T13:49:00.001+08:00

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..

2005-11-19T20:43:00.001+08:00

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!

2005-11-17T19:08:00.000+08:00

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

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

2005-11-17T17:34:00.000+08:00

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'

2005-11-11T07:08:00.000+08:00

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 ....

2005-10-25T12:52:00.001+08:00

.... 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

2005-10-20T21:15:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-20T00:34:00.001+08:00

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 *..

2005-10-18T20:24:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-18T09:57:00.001+08:00

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..

2005-10-17T08:36:00.001+08:00

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!

2005-10-13T13:03:00.001+08:00

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?

2005-10-06T23:16:00.000+08:00

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

2005-10-01T23:00:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-18T15:37:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-10T00:31:00.000+08:00

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

2005-08-04T16:28:00.000+08:00

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..

2005-08-02T21:42:00.000+08:00

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

2005-08-01T03:13:00.000+08:00

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

2005-07-25T01:33:00.000+08:00

(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...

2005-07-23T03:25:00.000+08:00

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

2005-06-25T14:10:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-06-21T18:33:00.000+08:00

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

2005-06-21T15:28:00.001+08:00

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...

2005-06-21T11:39:00.007+08:00

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 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

2005-06-20T14:22:00.002+08:00

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

2005-06-19T17:53:00.003+08:00

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

2005-05-14T10:38:00.001+08:00

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?

2005-05-12T23:57:00.000+08:00

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

2005-05-12T23:49:00.000+08:00

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

2005-04-25T00:23:00.001+08:00

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

2005-04-20T02:26:00.001+08:00

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. 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. geez, i thought, another bunch of idiots who seem to have never seen a girl before.

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, and the road home was not a busy one. i was changing lanes on the 4-lane road and the danged car 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, i got off the main road onto the side ramp. a traffic light junction was coming up. instead of turning onto the slip road at the traffic lights that would take me home, i decided to stop at the lights. that decision to stop at the lights was probably what saved me from anything untoward happening.

i wasn't alone at the junction, there were two or three cars in front of me. 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 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, 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 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, people are normally apologetic and hope to end the matter with a wave of "sorry!". 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 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 the fellow got back into the car. the lights turned green, and, to much 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. the entire ordeal kinda 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 lesson here is to be alert at all times.. don't travel alone at night.. don't drive late if you can.. and also, don't think an old rickety Nissan won't be brave enough to take on an MPV!

satay!

2005-04-17T23:42:00.000+08:00

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

2005-04-11T10:01:00.001+08:00

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

2005-04-05T23:54:00.000+08:00

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..

2005-04-03T22:48:00.000+08:00

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

2005-03-31T15:49:00.000+08:00

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...

2005-03-23T13:49:00.000+08:00

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?

2005-03-18T09:10:00.000+08:00

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

2005-03-16T17:14:00.000+08:00

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

2005-03-11T14:33:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-01-31T23:43:00.000+08:00

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!

2005-01-20T15:02:00.000+08:00

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?

2005-01-08T01:57:00.000+08:00

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".

situation vacant

2004-12-21T15:58:00.000+08:00

knew it! i'm in the totally wrong profession!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Spatial Intelligence

You've got a good sense of space and how the world around you looks. You can close your eyes and "see" images. You have an innate artistic talent and an eye for color and shapes. You are also a natural designer. Since you think in pictures, visual aids and demonstartions help you learn best. You would make a good navigator, sculptor, visual artist, inventor, architect, interior designer, or engineer.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

iBought iT!

2004-12-21T09:50:00.000+08:00

i have surrendered to the forces of Coolness and have purchased a mac! :)

an iBook G4, to be exact.

been itching to make the purchase for a long time, and the sight of the promotion bundling in an AirPort Express sealed the deal.

also obtained a USB-powered massage device which came as an 'xmas free gift' courtesy of the shop.

actually, TWO USB-powered massagers (another 'xmas free gift' since i decided to also purchase AppleCare).

so, if anyone wants the use of some massage devices.. (they look like a cross between shower heads and lotus seed-pods).. well, you know who to look for.

it figures

2004-12-18T09:07:00.000+08:00

after 60 hours of eating, sleeping and breathing financial statement analyses, all i have to say is..

.. boy am i GLAD i'm not an accountant! :P

there was much progress, considering that we took four gruelling, tiring, excruciating, [insert similar adjectives] days to complete 95% of a project most other groups took weeks to do so. (though after a fresh look through the report over this weekend, i wouldn't be surprised if we'll have to restate the said figure to a lower value!)

whatever happens, two things are certain for now:

- it's scary that at by the end of the course, i may start talking like a lawyer and an accountant all in one. (though i can't guarantee i will be able to cook your books AND make it legal..)
- i'll be counting sheep in PE ratios of 4 decimal places tonight.
- at the end of this, we'll all be really good CPAs*.

* Copy & Paste Artists.