the bandwagon

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

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

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

divit, divet, diva!

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

Vocal Talents Music presents

Divit, Divet, Diva!

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

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

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

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

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

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

discipline

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

'Ear this...

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

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

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

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

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

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

nope, no cuts or scratches on ear or neck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no, earlobe!

knee-arly there

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

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

the medical officer at A&E!

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

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

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

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

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

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

the deviant knee

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

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

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

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

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

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

blah, blah

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

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

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

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

a river of peanut sauce?

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

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

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

allergens

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

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

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

lavender's blue, diddle diddle

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

the too-perfect package

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

there HAS to be a catch somewhere!!

something.. SOMEthing about it ain't right

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

superbeng

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

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

aiee!!

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

road dangers

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

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

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

that was when i heard the crunch on my bumper.

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

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

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

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

not good.

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

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

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

then the guy in the front passenger seat got out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

dodgy, to say the least.

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

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

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

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

satay!

guess what?

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

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

reason #2837 why malaysians should learn english

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

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

of exploding generators

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

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

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

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

of internships..

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

licence to bug

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

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

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

(in)productivity...

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

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

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

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

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

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

roasted eggplant and Mostar white wine, anyone?

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

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

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

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

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

what a day #4576

wadda day.

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

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

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

nuts / loco / insane / crrr-azy

i'm still alive; i am!

was just reading the papers about the recent SPM results.

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

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

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