Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I'd rather be a hardy stud...
...than being asked to study hard. Just so you guys know, I'm sitting for a deferred paper this Thursday. It sucks having to start cramming again all of a sudden after the part of my brain involved in memorising facts has atrophied from what is possibly the longest summer break ever in the history of the Australian education system.
In short, I'm just lazy.
Yes, I blogged today just to make that borderline witty pun.
The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
The exchange rate has doubled in the past week! Also, the Zimbabwean government introduced the 100 trillion dollar note to 'ease the inflation'. Those misguided idiots.
The article was quite interesting, in my opinion. There's talk about how people's salaries aren't even enough to pay for the commute to and from work, and that independent economists have estimated Zimbabwe's inflation to be around 40 million percent per annum. Makes Malaysia seem like a pretty damn awesome place to be living in by contrast, don't you think? Not that Malaysia isn't pretty damn awesome without comparison. We have nasi lemak!
Pointless Fact of the Day:
Wanna know more randomness about my life? Well, you know soap? Those little things you use to clean yourself with? If you need me to go on explaining what soap does my brain's gonna be freakin' Einstein next to yours.
Anyway.
My mom thinks it's a good idea to keep soap next to clothes because they give off a nice fragrance, counteracting the natural funk you get from old, dusty, wooden drawers. Sounds smart until the day you have to embark on a scavenger hunt around the house looking for bars of soap hidden between stacks of clothes when you realise that there's no more Lux in the bathroom to clean your arse (paper doesn't clean so much as it clears!) after nuking the toilet. Add this to the fact that you'll be wandering around half-naked with a towel around your waist for about 10 minutes before you finally give up and get your mother to find the stupid soap for you and you have a recipe for frustration.
"How come everytime when I look for the soap I can find it but when the rest of you does it, you can't?" my mom asks.
"Maybe it's because you were the one who hid them in the first place!" I throw my hands up in frustration. Well, not really, because if I did that my towel would fall and that would make for an extremely embarassing experience.
But sometimes it'd be worse than that, and after 15 minutes of searching my mom would come up empty-handed and resign to the fact that we've run out of soap and that the scavenger hunt idea was silly in the first place. So she goes out to Giant or Carrefour and get more soap... and hides them in drawers again.
Now I think I know how Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes feels whenever his dad tells him that stuff like these "builds character".
In short, I'm just lazy.
Yes, I blogged today just to make that borderline witty pun.
The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
The exchange rate has doubled in the past week! Also, the Zimbabwean government introduced the 100 trillion dollar note to 'ease the inflation'. Those misguided idiots.
The article was quite interesting, in my opinion. There's talk about how people's salaries aren't even enough to pay for the commute to and from work, and that independent economists have estimated Zimbabwe's inflation to be around 40 million percent per annum. Makes Malaysia seem like a pretty damn awesome place to be living in by contrast, don't you think? Not that Malaysia isn't pretty damn awesome without comparison. We have nasi lemak!
Pointless Fact of the Day:
Wanna know more randomness about my life? Well, you know soap? Those little things you use to clean yourself with? If you need me to go on explaining what soap does my brain's gonna be freakin' Einstein next to yours.
Anyway.
My mom thinks it's a good idea to keep soap next to clothes because they give off a nice fragrance, counteracting the natural funk you get from old, dusty, wooden drawers. Sounds smart until the day you have to embark on a scavenger hunt around the house looking for bars of soap hidden between stacks of clothes when you realise that there's no more Lux in the bathroom to clean your arse (paper doesn't clean so much as it clears!) after nuking the toilet. Add this to the fact that you'll be wandering around half-naked with a towel around your waist for about 10 minutes before you finally give up and get your mother to find the stupid soap for you and you have a recipe for frustration.
"How come everytime when I look for the soap I can find it but when the rest of you does it, you can't?" my mom asks.
"Maybe it's because you were the one who hid them in the first place!" I throw my hands up in frustration. Well, not really, because if I did that my towel would fall and that would make for an extremely embarassing experience.
But sometimes it'd be worse than that, and after 15 minutes of searching my mom would come up empty-handed and resign to the fact that we've run out of soap and that the scavenger hunt idea was silly in the first place. So she goes out to Giant or Carrefour and get more soap... and hides them in drawers again.
Now I think I know how Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes feels whenever his dad tells him that stuff like these "builds character".
Zhen was here at 5:38 pm,
2 comment(s)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
And now for something completely different...
We interrupt the normal programming to bring you a special update on Zhen Yao's life. First of all, he would like to apologise for the lack of new material on his marginally popular (in other words, not at all) personal blog.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said, feigning remorse. "But I've been somewhat busy since returning from Australia, putting a damper on trying to finish the second half of "A Sale of Two Titties" (sic) for the public's enjoyment."
Indeed, Mr. Yin's life can sometimes be pretty hectic. The very same weekend he returned from Melbourne he was roped in to perform at a paid gig with his choir, the Young KL Singers. The following week was not much different, although this time around the choir performed for HSBC, a sponsor for their 2008 jazz-themed production, "Breakin' it Down!".
"I'm terribly sorry," he said, feigning remorse. "But I've been somewhat busy since returning from Australia, putting a damper on trying to finish the second half of "A Sale of Two Titties" (sic) for the public's enjoyment."
Indeed, Mr. Yin's life can sometimes be pretty hectic. The very same weekend he returned from Melbourne he was roped in to perform at a paid gig with his choir, the Young KL Singers. The following week was not much different, although this time around the choir performed for HSBC, a sponsor for their 2008 jazz-themed production, "Breakin' it Down!".
Zhen had a small solo part in the Breakin' it Down concertIn both shows, they performed the more popular songs from the aforementioned jazz concert, to which Zhen commented: "I'm so sick of performing Ellingtonia and In the Mood; they were the very first songs we learned at the beginning of the year, and by the end we were still stuck performing it! We've probably sung both songs at full-length at least 100 times by now."
At the same time, the Young KL Singers was also involved in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra's production of The Lord of the Rings Symphony, an event that our Howard Shore fan couldn't pass up performing for. "When I was in Singapore, I'd study with Lord of the Rings music playing in the background. Actually being able to sing it live with the orchestra playing in front of me was just pure awesomeness," he mused. "When I heard the strings come on during "The White Tree" section in the fifth movement for the first time during our rehearsal with the orchestra, I nearly cried."
What a wuss, some might say. Nevertheless, the show, which lasted from the 19th to 21st of December was well reviewed by the public.
Photography was not allowed within the auditorium, hence this random picture in the foyerThe following weeks however saw the owner of this blog simply hanging out with his bestest high school pals, Darren (of whom most readers would already be familiar with) and Ben (who would be staying in Malaysia for two and a half weeks before heading back to Auckland). Most of the time, however, Zhen found himself to be simply relegated to the duties of designated driver as neither of the aforementioned pals could drive then due to "extraneous circumstances".
Thus, both Christmas and New Year's Eves were spent at Darren's place, wherein his parents organised "awesome barbeque parties with lots of meat," according to Zhen.
Before he knew it, 2009 reared its ugly head. On the beautiful Saturday morning of January the 3rd, Zhen, Ben, and a few others (including the former's squeeze, Ms. Carrie Low) joined their mutual friend Ms. Boey Yin Yin for a hiking trip to the Perdik waterfalls of Ulu Langat to celebrate Ms. Boey's birthday. However, the day turned sour no thanks to the incessantly pouring rain, multiple wrong turns and epic navigational failures. However, when the hiking party finally made it to the starting point of the hike, the rain showed no signs of stopping. After waiting it out for almost 30 minutes, the gang decided to just head back to Boey's apartments to chill.
Source: Not Reuters"Good thing we went back too," added Mr. Yin. "When I tried taking a piss over at some bushes, it took me a moment to notice the twenty or so leeches rapidly making their way towards my feet. By that time I already had four of 'em crawling up my shoe! And all this while I was peeing..."
The leeches could not be reached for comment.
Ms. Boey clearly enjoys the company, what with flashing her thighs like thatFinally, last Saturday saw the long-awaited reunion of Standard 2/3 Kekwa students of SK Seafield of the 1987 batch. Because Zhen skipped the fourth year of primary school, he never saw many of his childhood friends ever again (save for one who ended up being his neighbour). This would all change thanks to the great social networking site known as Facebook.
"It started with Sharveen, whom I have not spoken to in 13 years, contacting me on Facebook sometime early in December," he explained. "I persuaded him to post our class photo online - I lost mine - and we went straight into tagging everybody whose names we could remember. Hao-Wei stepped up to the plate after that and organised a reunion at Itallianies. It's amazing how much fun food and 13 years of catching up can be!"
Pure awesomesauceAnd that, dear readers, was how our humble blogger had been spending his time. No marinated fish were hurt in the production of this special update. Also, tune in this Sunday, 10am at KL Performing Arts Centre if you want to catch the Young KL Singers in action! If you're interested at all in the Malaysian performing arts scene, come pop your KLPac cherry this weekend! Full list of activities here (and it's packed like maaaaad).
Virginity's overrated, srslyThe Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
This shit has hit the fan in our favourite failed African state. A month ago, the exchange rate was at RM1 to Z$15,778. Today, amidst the worsening health crisis, inflation has spiralled even further out of control.
The rate's a freaking RM1 to Z$2.835 million now. That's a 17,871% increase in over a month! Can you imagine paying RM1 for roti canai today and RM17,871 during Chinese New Year? You can't even cite CNY prices for that kind of financial absurdity!
Thus, for the good of all Zimbabweans I hereby vote for
Pointless Fact of the Day:
About a year ago, I wrote about voting online to get cities into the Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition. A recent trip to the local Toys 'R' Us made me come to the conclusion that it was a silly idea (the voting process) to begin with, mainly because the board now looks like it was conceived through a game of throwing darts at a spinning globe:
Call me petty, but Tokyo in the place of The Angel Islington (incidentally, the light blue spots are the most underrated on the entire board)? Where are all the South American cities? Why the over-representation of Europe? Three Canadian cities? And why the presence of places you've never heard of before? Can anybody honestly tell me that, off the top of their heads they know where in the world is Gdynia and Riga?! I am of the opinion that if your city isn't significant enough to be even considered a part in a Carmen Sandiego game, you probably shouldn't be on the "World Edition" (cue air quotes).
Goes to show how much of a shithole Gdynia and Riga must be; the people there must be bored shitless to have spent so much time voting for their city to make it into the game. Did you see the voting process? You had to sign up on their website, pick 10 different cities from a world map, and then wait 24 hours before voting again!
Of course, I'm just ranting because KL (heck, even Singapore) didn't make it. Bah. I'll never pay for that nonsense!