For fun and enjoyment, for pleasure and leisure, for prosperity and happiness

I'm moving!

2009-12-10T23:12:00.002+08:00

It's about time it happened. I'm starting anew at alakazen.blogspot.com

And for all you loyal fans, a final one before I set this blog aside!

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:

How appropriate is it that I move to a new blog after Zimbabwe's currency had begun stabilising (somewhat)? It's kinda hard to provide colour commentary these days when your subject of ridicule starts bucking up, putting on a suit and changing his image:

Pointless Fact of the Day:

You've all probably heard of the company, 3M, right? Started out in mining and manufacturing, then Scotch tape, Post-Its and other assorted useful nonsense (oxymoron!)? Well, they also make braces, drugs, golf gloves and even LCD TVs. How's that for diversifying your business?

Reports of my death...

2009-07-28T00:20:00.003+08:00

...have been greatly exaggeratettedetted. It's been almost four months since I last updated, and so much have happened in the interim. Among others, I have finished my degree; all that's left is the graduation ceremony. So much to tell, so little time. Especially since I'll be on a plane to Bali in just nine hours from now. Catch you guys soon (all two of you who still read my blog; yes, you and you)!

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
Ahh... Haven't done this in like, forever:

Okay, so the current exchange rate is approximately RM1 to $Z100. That's only an inflation of 63% over four months! Not bad, considering that estimates last year reached as high as 40 million percent inflation per annum. The power-sharing thing must be working out, somehow.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
When stopping at a traffic light (or stuck in a traffic jam), half of all people will brush their hair, pick their noses, pop their pimples, fluff their Garfields, etc. while the other half will be staring at the aforementioned first half in their rear-view mirrors. It's uncanny that some people consider the confines of their cars a private space.

Obviously, I'm a member of the first half. When else can a guy be bothered enough to get rid of booger?

One dude, three concerts, all awesome

2009-04-03T02:00:00.001+08:00

Concert No.1 - Jason Mraz

Those who have known me long enough would know that I'm a major fan of Jason Mraz. No, not the kind who only know the words to I'm Yours and have never heard his amazing live songs like The Dream Life of Rand McNally. The very first time I heard The Remedy, he was performing on David Letterman's show back in 2002 to promote his first album. To celebrate my 18th birthday in Singapore, I went to HMV and treated myself to a copy (the last one nonetheless) of his Live at the Eagles Ballroom album. I soon came to the conclusion that Mraz's live performances are a billion orders of magnitude awesomer than his studio recordings, and thus began months of fruitless proselytising to fellow ASEAN Scholars who dismissed Mraz because John Mayer was cooler (yeah yeah, Mayer has a couple of Grammies, but so does "Weird Al" Yankovic). Peh.

Fast forward four years and one studio album later, the great man himself decided to have a concert Malaysia (finally, since he's been to Singapore already). Desmond, Darren and I made the trip almost a month ago, on the 4th of March.

Us lying down on the floor like a bunch of hobos

Met Philip and his ~~date~~ friend from MPAC, Anna. The last time I saw her she was a hooker*

Mraz was pure pwnage. For someone with a pretty laid back demeanor, he works the crowd damn well, with none of those usual "Are you guys having fun?! I can't hear you!" routines. His backup was also superb, including three guys on brass (as opposed to in bras... man that would be weird). Toca Riviera was also there to kick ass, too. We did spend some time arguing over whether the guy on stage was in fact Toca or not, though.

Photos courtesy of Yin, who was standing at a different part of the stadium

This too

We adjourned to Hartamas (to send Desmond home to Mont Kiara) where we mamak-ed and listened to R&B/hip hop music on MTV, but not before waiting 20 minutes for the inconsiderate assholes who parked in front of us but did not have the decency to, after the show, drive their cars away immediately. Bastards.

Nevertheless, I still slept happy that night, dreaming of robbing liquor stores in Singapore.

*At least she was acting as one. It was the MPAC end-year production, and she got murdered by the end of the play.

Concert No. 2 - Sarah Brightman

On a fateful Friday afternoon, just two days after the Mraz concert, I received an SMS from a fellow choirmate, Boon Dat. Apparently, somebody was looking for a backup Tenor for Sarah Brightman's upcoming concert. Problem: 1) the concert was to be held the next evening, and 2) I was already booked to emcee the Monash Orientation Bash to be held the following day, in Port Dickson.

I decided that I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well enquire more about it. Boon Dat gave me the contact person's, well, contact number. Turned out that it was Doreen Tang, of (I only found out later through Googling because I'm ulu like that) M! the Opera and Tunku - The Musical fame. So, over the phone I made my sales pitch, telling her about my experience in a choir, my work ethic (I have one okay, especially when it comes to performing), etc. And then she started saying things that made me lose confidence in securing the thing.

"The scores haven't arrived... I'll probably only get them much later tonight, after the crew touches down in Malaysia."
"Well obviously you need musical background, because we're working with professionals here."
"I had to ask Boon Dat for help because the people we usually use are busy tomorrow night."

In all honesty, the reason I've managed to fake my way through tough choir music for so long (e.g. Lord of the Rings Symphony) is because I spend a lot of time practicing and memorising the music with the help of a notation program to play out the notes for me. I know close to nothing about music. I take forever to read notes written on a bass clef. The only instrument I play is blowing my own trumpet (in both senses of the phrase...).

Needless to say, confidence gone, I decided that it'd be better for me not to embarass myself and the others on stage by doing a shitty job within the ranks of professionals. Despite Doreen telling me that she'll keep me in mind, I later texted her Tracy's contact (one of the conductors at choir) telling her that Tracy would know people who were much more experienced and musically-educated than me.

So I went back to eating my lunch.

Two hours later, Doreen called me again, telling me that after much deliberation she decided to give me a shot despite my complete lack of experience.

Whot. Da. Freek. Ing. Hell?

I probably said thank you a million times after that. A chance to sing with the legendary Sarah Brightman on stage! I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was exuberant. I was baby Godzilla stomping on his first sandcastle. Sandcastle being Rachel, to whom I have already promised to emcee the aforementioned thing at Port Dickson... This was too good an opportunity to pass up!*

For the rest of the day though, I think might have been pretty annoying to Doreen (if I really was, sorry!). Not wanting to be a liability to the rest of the team, when night came I texted her several times as to the status of the scores; my plan was to drive over to her place immediately after she gets the scores so I can do my own notation and practice like crazy before our combined rehearsal the next morning at 10.30.

Then problem after problem popped up. Doreen did not get to meet with the crew and collect the scores, so the 10.30am rehearsal at her place got cancelled. Hence, the first time I met the other singers (there were only six of us) was at 2.30pm at the KL Convention Centre, but even then we did not get the scores to the show.

Finally, at 4.30pm, we met the conductor for the concert, and we were given the scores... literally minutes before soundcheck. To exarcebate matters, some songs had backup vocal parts but no scores were given so we had to improvise. Thankfully, the conductor was considerate enough to understand that it was through no fault of our own that we were put in such a situation. You see, handling backup singers was a low priority on their list of things to do because in Sarah's Asia tour, only the Malaysia and Indonesia stops do not follow the "giant stadium, lots of costumes, lots of dancers, lots of props" format. The search for backup singers only occurred at the eleventh hour as a result (I also found out later that Doreen only received a phone call about the gig the day before I contacted her).

All the chaos aside, we did manage to pull through relatively unscathed. Not only that, we got to listen to the absolutely mindboggling vocals of Sarah Brightman from up on stage, too... Twice; once during rehearsal, and another time during the real thing. The last note she hits in The Phantom of the Opera gets me every time I hear it on recordings, but listening to the song live and less than ten metres away from her gave me goosebumps throughout.

The only proof I actually sang with Sarah Brightman. Of course we're not allowed to bring cameras onstage! Plus I didn't wanna embarrass everyone by asking for a photo with her...
L-R: Zalina, Me, Doreen, Vincent, Chi Mei, Wen Chin

It took me a few days for the fact to sink in, that I was a backup singer for Sarah Brightman. And why not? It was a completely surreal experience, thanks to the series of highly unlikely events taking their course. Somebody's gotta pinch me, and I have Doreen and Boon Dat to thank for it.

*It turned out that the opportunity cost of a once in a lifetime opportunity to perform with the great Ms. Brightman was the chance to mess around on a beach with a ton of freshmen, half of who were girls and a further quarter or so who frolicked around in bikinis.

Concert No. 3 - Buatan Malaysia

Let's start off with me apologising if I had been really pushy the past couple of weeks. We were trying really hard to push tickets as we were working with zero sponsorship for this production. Yeah, times are bad, but the performing arts industry probably got hit the worst. It's not like I get paid (not much anyway, usually just enough to pay for petrol) for doing these things.

Anyway, our debut concert as the Young Choral Academy Chamber Choir (what a mouthful) came and gone last weekend. We've only been practicing for three months, so it was a really rushed project. We definitely could've done better, but then again, we could've done much worse too; a mere week before the show there were still many loose ends to tie up. Fortunately, those loose ends got unfrayed and we made it through the weekend pretty well.

As I've mentioned before, the aim of Buatan Malaysia was to showcase the rich tapestry of our musical heritage, be it traditional music from Sabah, patriotic songs from the 60s, or popular music from P. Ramlee and Sheila Majid. However, I'd be wasting my breath trying to explain the music to those who didn't go, but suffice to say those who did can attest to how pleasantly surprised they were when they heard Malaysian music being sung that way (I'm looking at you, Izuan).

The crew, sans our director Melissa Teoh who was holding the camera

Our formation for One Thousand Million Smiles, originally sung by Sudirman at the Royal Albert Hall, London for the 1989 Asia Music Awards. He made the country proud by winning the whole damn thing

Jambatan Tamparuli, the aforementioned Sabahan song. We even messed around with traditional musical instruments

Melody, originally sung by Rynn Lim Yee Chong and featuring Sheila Majid, rearranged by longtime friend of YKLS, Ng Shyh Poh. That's me in the middle; this is the song where I have a rap solo

Including Melissa this time; three heads to my left and then one head down, that's her

All in all, Buatan Malaysia is certainly one of the more memorable concerts I've had the pleasure of performing in. Although we definitely could've polished our act more, this is one of those rare occasions where I actually like performing all the songs. If there's ever a plan to come up with a similarly-themed concert in the future, I'm definitely all up for it.

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
No commentary today. Things have been pretty quiet over there recently... Or maybe I just haven't been following the news.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
For the past couple of days I've been sleeping pretty badly due to (overly) diligent monitoring of the American stock market, so I'm all out of gas for tonight. Anyway, I'll talk more about the blasted stock market in my next update (it begs ranting) but for now I really need my sleep. G'nite y'all.

Say what? It's been over a month already!

2009-03-03T15:55:00.008+08:00

Yeah, yeah, I totally screwed up the updating bit. But that's alright because it has been pretty interesting since the last installment of "WTF's up with Zhen's life?"

But before we move on to anything, I'd like to go on a short little rant about the traffic these days. Three times in the past week, it took me a freaking hour to drive the measly 8km to Monash. From 7am to 8am... A whole entire hour! I have friends who run 10km in 50 minutes! What the hell is wrong with the traffic these days?!

And now back on topic...

18th January 2009 - KLPac Open Day
I only just discovered that I have yet to blog about this. Let's start things with an evocative image:

That's me posing during my solo bit for the song Ellingtonia (the same song I was singing when this picture was taken). However, I vehemently opposed performing Ellingtonia for gigs/public performances anymore because:

It was the very second score we received for our production last year (the first was In the Mood). Seven minutes long and full of choreography, it didn't take much for it to become YKLS's most rehearsed song of 2008.
After our production, we performed Ellingtonia on three other occasions (KLPac Open Day included)... and each gig required its own series of practices.

Suffice to say, I think it was about time we took a break from that song already. Good thing that performing Ellingtonia for the very last time in the foreseeable future got me that awesome picture. Seriously, I need all the help I can get to look way cooler than I actually am. Heh heh.

10th February 2009 - ~~Christy Comes~~ Kristy Kommes
Some time back, a silky terrier randomly walked into our house. We believed it to be a neighbour's dog, but before we could do anything about that child of a bitch, it ran away. In any case, it sparked an interest in my brother and his girlfriend to get a dog.

Felicia the brother's girlfriend and Kristy the silky terrier

Christy's about 2 years old when we got her from one of my dad's colleagues. Apparently, this aforementioned colleague had a girl who owned Christy but could no longer take care of her because of college (wow, that was almost a tongue-twister). As a result, we got Christy for free, along with a cage and some food to boot. The only unfortunate part was that she hadn't been groomed in forever and she loves biting a little bit too much. Thankfully she's a small dog, so the damage is somewhat mitigated.

Anyway, we soon discovered that Christy doesn't really respond to her name, so we thought it might be a good idea to give her a new one. For what it's worth, I suggested stuff like Zelda and Chilli, while my brother wanted to call her (of all things) Cookie. In the end, we stuck with Christy except that Felicia thinks it looks cuter with a K (you can't say it sounds cuter because seriously it sounds the same) so Christy is now Kristy.

All together now... "Awww..."

Kristy is seriously just so adorable; she does this thing where she keeps one ear up and the other ear down (will have to get a picture of that someday). My mom, who once opposed the idea of keeping pets (especially dogs) have grown to love that little ball of fur. She now gushes about how Kristy listens to her, how Kristy doesn't bark at strangers as much anymore, etc. Kristy's fitting right into the family.

Yet that bitch still bites me pretty often, even though I play with her all the time... Oh well.

23rd to 27th February - Orientation, MOlympic Games, and Monash in general
Last week I was involved in what will possibly be the final orientation I will be involved in (unless by some sick twist of fate, I end up having to return next semester... Choi!). As usual, just a bunch of pictures (stolen from several Facebook albums)...

We celebrated Desmond's birthday, too

I was the emcee for most of the orientation, including the MOlympic games. As a result, I had free reign as to what type of music to lend to the event. I opted for the old school, feel good mood... The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, The Monkees, ~~The~~ Queen, Manfred Mann as well as Don McLean among others. The idea was that all music had to be from before the year 1990. Cici, who was pretty much the head honcho for the event, liked the music. Izuan didn't, but then again he can go huck fimself. *Wink*

MOlympic photos taken by Victor Yu (who was in my team last year):

The Purple Team (Purple Puff) and their mascot, a fairy (in both senses of the word, heh heh)

Blue Team had a rather freakay looking Smurf

The Red Team had an ASSMIT Ranger (Arts, Social Sciences, Medicine and IT). Yup, it's pronounced "Ass-Mitt"

Chicks playing tug of war (not the one in blue)

Unfortunately though, on the day of the Games the emcee table was set up next to the stage, right out in the sun. Because it didn't feel too hot that day, we (including Izuan, Leanne, Desmond, and sometimes Hasif) simply chilled (har har) out in the open.

Six-eyed monster. No, not the one-eyed monster, six-eyed

Needless to say we all got sunburnt. All in all it was as fun as the MOlympic games last year.

Oh, the Purple Team won again. Go Purple!

25th to 28th February - The Actors Studio Bangsar Gala Farewell
The Actors Studio Bangsar was established at the Bangsar Shopping Centre in 2001. Eight years later, BSC is now undergoing a massive facelift - of which TAS is unfortunately not a part of. So to bid farewell to the beloved theatre space, a group of performers, the likes of which includes comedians Douglas Lim, Afdlin Shauki, Harith Iskander, Indi Nadarajah, the Comeback Kings as well as Monty and Logi, dance groups Sutra Dance Theatre and the ASWARA (Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan) dancers, dancers Lee Swee-Keong and Mew Chang Tsing, and of course, yours truly with the Young KL Singers.

Lee Swee-Keong and his amazing contorting body (second picture ~~stolen from~~ by Nick Dorian)

The Sutra Dancers

The Young KL Singers... Who's that handsome guy on the left?

The comedians were hilarious. On one night, when Harith Iskander got onstage, he said, "I saw the Young KL Singers backstage. I looked at them... not so young. Some of them not even from KL! Talking Hokkien backstage... from Penang lah!" Which was quite an apt description of our motley crew, actually.

On the last night it became pretty emotional (i.e. there was crying) as a lot of our members had very fond memories performing on that stage. 9 out of the YKLS's 10 past productions were held there, and before the Young Choral Academy was established, that was where we went for rehearsals, too. I'll miss that place, but mostly because I really hate driving to KLPac.

Joe Hasham giving his final goodbye speech

Sayonara Actors Studio Bangsar!

Almost the entire cast and crew of The Actors Studio Bangsar Gala Farewell

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
New updates from the land of the fuckups! On February 2, Zimbabwe decided to redenominate its currency, slashing away a whopping 12 zeroes from the Z$. Here's the new exchange rate:

Don't forget to look at things this way, though. If Zimbabwe did not redenominate its currency, the exchange rates would look like this:

20th Jan: RM1 to Z$5,172,816
3rd Mar: RM1 to Z$25,743,000,000,000

Did that blow your mind away at all? That's almost 5 million percent inflation in a month and a half! More updates as and when I update this blog...

Pointless Fact of the Day:
And we move on to the PFotD section. At the end of this month, I'll be performing (so will my girlfriend!) with the rest of the YCA Chamber Choir at a full-length concert at the end of this month. By full length I mean a 14/15 song spectacular. The concert is called Buatan Malaysia:

Here are some snippets from the blurb we were provided:

The Young Choral Academy (YCA) Chamber Choir, the result of the merger between the YCA Youth Chamber Choir and the Young KL Singers’ (YKLS) Chamber Choir, will be announcing their arrival in the Malaysian music scene with their debut production, ‘Buatan Malaysia’ featuring arrangements of Malaysian choral music.

Through this production, the YCA Chamber Choir strives to show the audience that any genre of Malaysian music, be it pop, folksongs or even – yes – patriotic songs can be a pleasure to listen to and perform. For the members, Saw states that this production is to help the performers learn and understand their own country’s music better, and through this develop a love for it.

This production features purely local arrangers, such as Geneviene Wong, Juliette Lai, Wong Shuen Da and the choir’s very own Assistant Music Director Tracy Wong. The audience will be able to enjoy original arrangements of songs that are close to the hearts of most Malaysians, even a completely different rendition of Jalur Gemilang along with some completely original compositions such as Not Alone Anymore and Tracy Wong’s Walk With Me.

Armed with a stage director, original arrangements and compositions, the YCA Chamber Choir’s debut production promises a reminiscent night for Malaysians with a twist as the audiences will hear familiar tunes to songs they probably know all the words to in a completely different light and will be introduced to the wonders of our very own Malaysian arrangers!

Venue: Pentas 2 of the KL Performing Arts Center (KLPac)
Date: 28th and 29th of March
Time: 3.00pm and 8.30pm on Saturday and a 3.00pm Sunday matinee show.

Tickets can be purchased from the KLPac Box Office (03-40479000) for a flat rate of RM25.

I already sent out Facebook invites to everybody who are unfortunate enough to be on my friends list. It's our debut performance and it's only RM25! We're working with zero sponsorship whatsoever so we really need as much support as we can. I promise that when you leave the concert, you'll be surprised at your own predilection to hum old school Malaysian tunes all the way home.

Ibu, ibu, engkaulah ratu hatiku...

Sinaran, mentari menyinari...

Getaran jiwa, melanda hatiku...

Piqued your interest yet? You can contact me at ZeroOneTwo TwoFourFour OneZeroNineFive, or drop a line in my tag box. Cheers!

The chick in the upper right corner's my girl. Am I a lucky bastard or what?

I'd rather be a hardy stud...

2009-01-20T17:38:00.000+08:00

...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".

And now for something completely different...

2009-01-14T00:35:00.001+08:00

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!".

Zhen had a small solo part in the Breakin' it Down concert

In 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 foyer

The 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 that

Finally, 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 awesomesauce

And 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, srsly

The 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 ~~the assasination~~ Robert Mugabe to suddenly go 'missing by accident'. Then again, the usual suspects that carry out such operations (the US of A) doesn't have any vested interest whatsoever in Africa. It all comes down to an unfortunate issue of "Why should we bother?"

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!

A Tale of Two Cities (Part One)

2008-12-09T21:01:00.001+08:00

...which, were it Spoonerised, would become "A Sale of Two Titties".

Now allow me to tell you of my post-examination summer (the Australian summer) break trips to the Asian Down Under (Singapore) and the Real Down Under (Melbourne, to be exact).

But first, a little bit of introduction about the Singapore trip. Earlier this year, when Carrie and I first heard that Avenue Q was coming our way, we immediately made plans for to catch the show. However, when it was discovered that my exams and our YKLS concert will very likely clash with the dates of the show, not to mention the fact that it was the Filipino production, we evaluated costs and benefits and decided not to go after all.

But it was Avenue Q, after all, the only musical to which the both of us have memorised every song, its hilarious lyrics accompanying us on many an otherwise long and boring ride home from choir practice...

So when my dear old ~~roommate~~ officemate Cze Wien said that her sister wanted to get rid of two extra tickets for a date that didn't clash with my exams or the concert (and at a discount, too!), I just had to pick them up.

And so, on the Friday night of November 7, Carrie and I hopped onto ~~a Midnight Train to Georgia~~ an overnight KTM train from KL Sentral to Singapore.

Taking up the upper bunk. This photo was actually taken on the return trip, but as long as I don't tell you that you wouldn't know, would you?

It was actually really cozy and pretty comfortable compared to taking a bus, especially for someone who wants to read something on a long ride to nowhere. The only problem was that the train had to stop every five to fifteen minutes or so to pick people up at stations along the way. I was okay with it, but for a light sleeper like Carrie... I doubt she'll want to ride in another one of those things anytime soon.

Anyway, after 11 hours or so, we arrive in Singapore at 8.30am.

Day 1 - 8th November
We reached our hotel about an hour later, no thanks to it being located in such a secluded, inaccessible-by-car street.

On the street where we live

But it wasn't check-in time yet, so we left our luggage at the lobby and proceeded to walk all around town. Bugis Junction was nearby, so we went for a little shopping, look-see, and most importantly, breakfast.

It was deserted in the morning

I have no idea how this works; those streams of water spray upwards

We spent a whole lot of time mall-hopping and generally whiling until we could check-in. I bumped into a familiar face outside of Raffles City, though:

It was Yen Fen, sister of my pal Wen Ching as well as ex-colleague when I temp-ed at her company. I just saw her at their home a couple of days earlier, so imagine my surprise seeing her in Singapore. Which was kinda weird; I've been down to Singapore several times since I graduated from St. Andrew's Junior College, but besides planned meet-ups and such, I've never bumped into any of my ex-schoolmates. Yet here I am in Singapore and I bump into an acquaintance from back at home. Stupid thing, this Fate fella.

Anyway, after a ton of walking around, we were finally allowed to enter our room at 3pm. Check it out in its complete glory:

The sink is in the living room! That's because they couldn't fit it in the toilet. Anyway, the room was great considering its SGD80 per night pricetag (not including SGD20 peak season surchage), and they throw in breakfast too. Go to the hotel's website if you ever wanna make a booking; many budget hotels in the area are of similar quality and price range, too, so Google for them if you ever plan to have a weekend trip down there.

In the evening, we took a train to the Esplanade, where we ate at the Makansutra Gluttons Bay right outside the mall (sorry, forgot to take pictures; but the food was quite delicious!).

Inside Esplanade itself, there was this psychedelic art on display

Puppet nudity on stage (the puppet in questioned had very ugly breasts, though)!

And then the time came for us to actually watch the show we were down in Singapore for. For those of you not in the know, Avenue Q gave us such hits like "It Sucks to Be Me" and "The Internet is for Porn", and it won a Tony Award for Best Musical the year it first premiered on Broadway (2003). Let me begin by saying that the Filipino cast did not disappoint at all; heck, they sounded almost exactly like the Broadway cast recording that I play in my car all the time! Great props to them.

The only gripe I have is about the so-called 'official' merchandise; rather than replicate the T-shirts or whatever that they sell in other shows around the world, the Singapore Repertory Theatre chose to instead outsource it to New Urban Male, giving us a paltry selection of clothing none of which even sported the Avenue Q logo. If I wanted T-shirts with silly witticisms in 'funky' font, I'd head to Sungei Wang Plaza and save my money. Hell, even if I got those T-shirts printed myself I'd save money.

Our YKLS friends Jason and Alvin (whom we knew were watching the same show) ended up in the same row as we did; how's that for even more coincidence?

Anyway, after the show and after a little yumcha with the guys at Gluttons Bay, we headed back to the hotel to sleep.

Day 2 - 9th November
Breakfast provided by the hotel, of the Chinese vegetarian persuasion to be precise. The highlight was the abundance of delicious carrotcakes that they provided.

After checking out early and placing all our stuff in the lobby, we decided to drop by the (relatively) new mall in town, Vivo City in Harbour Front. But in all seriousness, what is there to blog about a mall? You've seen one mall, you've seen 'em all.

But they had Ben & Jerry's!

They also had a rooftop park with wading pools. It was really hot outside, though

And then we went down to Orchard road for even more mall-hopping at Plaza Singapura (incidentally my favourite place to hang out when I was still studying there). We shared a dinner of barbecued pork ribs (!!!) and salad at Cafe Cartel.

In a park outside Dhoby Gaut MRT that I never knew existed

Dinner! Spot the ribs

After dinner, we went back to the hotel to collect our bags, then killed time lounging and reading novels at a Starbucks in Bugis Junction for about an hour and a half... until it's time to get to the station for our train back home.

We arrived back in Subang Jaya the next day at around 7am. Later, after we've both showered and whatnot, I drove Carrie to begin her second week at her new job in Mont Kiara. Of course, thanks to the morning traffic, I left her place at 8am but only returned at 10am... Kind of a stark reminder that I was in fact back home in Malaysia.

What else is new?

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
Holy cow! A lot of shit had transpired in Zimbabwe since I took a break from blogging some time ago, largely due to their idiot premiere Robert Mugabe. Sporting a failed power sharing deal, a worsening cholera epidemic as well as spiralling hyperinflation and you have a candidate for the decade's most fucked-up nation of the world.

Speaking of inflation:

Wow-wow-wee-wah! In October I said the following:

Well, a month later, and the Z$ value has dropped by another 100%. At this rate, the exchange rates would likely be RM1 to Z$60 by the end of the year, or worse.

This is a shitload much worse than I expected. Come on, RM1 to Z$15,778? Somebody go save that country!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Izuan introduced me to this ultra-obscure government website about internet security some time ago, aptly named www.esecurity.org.my. If it weren't for their hilariously cringe-inducing 3D-animated educational videos which caught his attention, this website would've gone unnoticed like the myriad of other government websites dotting the internet.

"Today we gonna tawk abowt cyberstawking!"

In all these videos you have voice actors that sound like they would much rather be somewhere else at the moment, and for some reason, somewhere along the way someone decided that the videos would sound better if the actors spoke with an American accent. Well it worked, if by better you mean that the videos are some of the funniest attempts at the aforementioned accent by Malaysians. If you thought that some of our radio ads were bad (here's looking at you, Ben), wait till you've seen some of the videos here.

Not only that, some of the advice/warnings given are simply nonsensical:

"Cyberstalkers can remotely turn on the camera or microphone on their victim's computer"

"I told you, Red. Never tell that you're a boy or a girl over the internet. Ever since you accidentally typed that you're a girl... there's creeps keeps (sic) bugging you!"

You so gotta watch this stuff. At the very least you'll be kept laughing your asses off while learning about obscure government bodies.

A wee little hiatus

2008-11-16T00:56:00.003+08:00

Oh hey, look at the time... It's mid-November already! Just to tell everyone that I'm still alive, healthy, and enjoying it, thankyouverymuch. Once again, it's a case of the inverse relationship between being busy/active and blogging; usually the more interesting your life, the less time you have to blog. That's not to say that most bloggers are boring mofos, but as always, that's a moot point.

Anyway, since the last time I blogged (i.e. over the past month), the following has happened:

The Young KL Singers sold out all five shows (a record!) for our Breakin' it Down jazz concert at KLPac; photos are up on Facebook
I sat for my finals... at the same time the concert was happening
Went to Singapore to catch Avenue Q!

Also, next Tuesday (the 18th) Darren and I will be heading down to Clayton, Australia until the 26th for a student council visit... hence this post. This blog will be on a wee little hiatus then, but since we'll be bringing at least one laptop down under, I might actually be able to blog if there's an internet connection where we'll stay (what else is there to do in the room at night on a trip?).

I'm pretty pumped up and excited... I've never been to ~~a Western country~~ ~~a country with so many white people~~ Australia before!

Until then, see you people around. I'm off!

Wake me up when September ends...oh wait

2008-10-05T02:13:00.000+08:00

Oh wait it's October already. Yeah, it's been more than a month since I last updated, but things always pile up around this time of the year. Since then, I've emceed the Monash Ball, got semi-involved in some Student Council elections drama, performed at a wedding, got sunburnt in Kuantan, got back into Magic full swing (nerd alert!) and started giving Math and English tuition to a 12 year old Australian Chinese kid by the name of Kevin. Well, the last one I actually started a little earlier than last month, but let's not get into too much detail yet, shall we?

30th August 2008 - Monash Ball
Well, firstly, the Monash Ball, this time held at Sunway Resort Hotel. This year's theme was interesting; Mardi Gras is celebrated differently all over the world, and we had a fashion show that reflected that fact (photos stolen from Amahl):

Hubba hubba

Mardi Gras was also about masks... but Mardi Gras mask + my trademark grin = horny old geezer look, as though I'm about to pounce on some unsuspecting underaged kids or something... *Shudder*

Because I was emceeing, I was working most of the time and I didn't have the time to really sit down and take photos, unlike last year... But I'm not complaining. There were quite a number of memorable moments at the ball, notable ones including an onstage ~~kiss~~ snogfest between a Ms. Monash candidate and her boyfriend (which I think probably made everyone stop voting for her) and steamy dance performances from our very own Monash students.

Nothing steamy about this, just me and my emceeing partner, Shazeea

This, on the other hand, is somewhat steamy

And later, in a twist of irony, the most unconventional underdog ever, my good friend Vishnu aka Indian dude who hangs out in my office a little too often for my own good was voted the coveted Mr. Monash title. Also another friend of mine, Rachel, was voted Ms. Monash. Apparently she won by a close margin of two votes.

Beauty and the...I dunno, I think 'beast' is almost too flattering for him

And after the event was all over, a lot of us headed to the Ministry of Sound Euphoria for the after-party for several hours of awesome.

Rawr!

Acting cute with Thasha

And that was about it. Oh, except the fact that a lot of hoo-hah ensued following the Ball and in conjunction with the Monash Student Council Elections of which I'm certainly glad is over and settled with. Well, not really settled per se, but more like the fact that it was a smear campaign to begin with and that it was made up of mostly baseless allegations against certain candidates... Blah. Just a minor rant from me.

Anyway, from this day on I'll try the method of posting short updates but on a more constant basis and see if it fits into my time better; at the moment I think I probably write too long and too far in between to maintain anybody's attention, my own included. So, tune in next week and I'll hopefully have something to say about the Kuantan trip.

The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
Well, a month later, and the Z$ value has dropped by another 100%. At this rate, the exchange rates would likely be RM1 to Z$60 by the end of the year, or worse.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I received a forwarded e-mail (unfortunately, I still get these) recently about the supposed existence of this restaurant in China that you'd have to brave a dangerous climb before reaching, with the reward being a free meal for your efforts. However, looking at the attached photos left me incredulous.

Whoa...

Whoa!

The "restaurant" in question

I don't see no safety harnesses! It's hard to fake photos like these, yet I doubt that there'd be hundreds of people climbing this every day just for a free bowl of soup... Moreover, how the heck would they get food supplies up the mountain if you'd have to climb steep rock surfaces like the ones in the pictures?

Obviously, I had to do some research. Snopes.com didn't have anything, so I had to Google it up myself, arriving at some Brit's blog which merely described the e-mail in its entirety (click on the link if you want to see the other photos in the e-mail) but giving no verification of its authenticity.

Nevertheless, I did manage to discover that some, if not all, of the photos were of the famous Huang Shan or Yellow Mountain in China. However, based on travellogues and tourist guides from the internet, there's no mention whatsoever of the death-defying climbs and the restaurant at the peak. Thus, the jury's still out on this; can anyone help me verify its authenticity?

Birthdays and such

2008-08-28T03:14:00.000+08:00

It's been three weeks since my last post, and I'm finally able to find the time (and the mood) to update.

As you'd probably know by now, I turned 21 on the 2nd of August. When I was in my late teens, I was quite ambivalent of the whole birthday affair. Like, "What's the big deal?", y'know? But when the day drew closer, I realised that like many things, your 21st birthday is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. If I didn't do anything special on my 21st, I only have myself to blame if I start regretting not celebrating it.

"No shit, sherlock," one corner of my mind* said. "You celebrate one birthday every year. What makes this one specialer** than the rest?"

It only has meaning because we humans gave meaning to it. It's the legal age for you to sin; you can start drinking, gambling, and voting... Not that age has ever stopped people from doing the former two***. Furthermore, 21's a winning hand in Black Jack.

Lastly, why the hell not? The prospect of regret seems more undesirable than possible boredom of not enjoying myself.

Celebrate my 21st it is, then.

30th July 2008 - Birthday dinner with family
Thankfully, my parents had a little something planned; Wednesday night dinner at this place in Damansara Uptown called Izzi. The food was okay but their pizza was rather good. Should've gotten more pizza.

Back at home

I don't recall what I said, but it must've been friggin' hilarious; just look at Carrie

1st August 2008 - MNSM BBQ Party
Originally I wanted to make this a biannual event, but there wasn't enough time to get it going. Also, I did not plan for the party to coincide with my birthday though the coincidence was a bonus. Anyway, we had much fewer people this time around; by Friday afternoon, only about 45 people have signed up, compared to the 90 or so last year.

But when the party already started, the turnout ballooned to more than 70 people. Yet, we only had food enough to feed around 50 to 60. Consequently, we had to make two extra shopping trips to restock our supplies.

When it was around 10.30pm, Peck Yun announced my birthday to everyone and made me stand on a chair while everyone sang Happy Birthday (thanks, mate!). As the song was about to end, they revealed water guns in their posession and proceeded to soak me (thanks, mate!).

I would've loved this picture more if only it weren't so dark

I really appreciate the improvised celebration, guys. [sarcasm]So much so that I spared you all from staying back and cleaning the BBQ pits with me.[/sarcasm]

Okay I admit, I had fun.

2nd August 2008 - My "real" 21st birthday party
Peck Yun aka Darren has known me since we were 12. Who would've thought that nine years later he'd be throwing a BBQ (again!) party at his house just for me?

Okay, not just me, but Jason too, who celebrated his birthday a couple of days earlier.

Of course, tradition states that on your birthday, you have got to remove candles buried in your birthday cake using just your teeth:

And to top it all off, Jason and I got these wicked babies as birthday gifts:

Stewie Griffin boxer shots for the win!

It started out with only Cze Wien and I...

He drank and partied so much that the moment he went back to his room, he KO-ed on the bed

At the end of the day, I gained 3 kilos, received lots of presents, shotgunned a can of beer (beer sucks!), bottoms-upped a glass of whiskey, and overall enjoyed myself like a kid in a candy store. Once again, great thanks to ~~Darren~~ Peck Yun for throwing the party; I really appreciated it.

Well, all in all, I think it was an extremely productive 21st birth-week with little to be regretted. I'm already looking forward to my 30th birthday celebrations.

"Alright, you win. I'll keep my thoughts shut for now..." went the aforementioned corner of my mind.

*The pissy corner of my mind; the one that makes me dread going for classes, whine about the littlest of things and always wakes up on the wrong side of the bed in mornings.
**I just discovered that "specialer" is a real word.
***Age doesn't stop me from drinking and gambling. Money (or lack thereof) does. That and the fact that beer sucks monkey butt.

(NEW!) The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
By now, all of you should know of my strange interest in Zimbabwe, its failing currency among other things. When I last posted figures, the RM was trading with the Z$ at a rate of 1.00 to 2.48. A mere 26 days later, and this is what you get:

The Z$ has decreased in value by almost four times its value 26 days ago!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Unless I think of something better; the Monash Ball is this Saturday and I'll be emceeing. If you're a student, go for the ball and check me out! *Cough* Tickets are still on sale near the cafeteria.

Classes, Crappy Computers and A Camping Trip

2008-08-06T09:28:00.007+08:00

Classes have started again in full swing. Of course, that's bloody boring stuff (hell, I fall asleep in lectures on occasion) so we'll just skip to the next item on the menu.

Right now I'm typing this from my office computer because my PC died on me last Tuesday. It pains because it just happened without warning; I came home from last Tuesday's choir practice only to be greeted with my mom asking me why the machine refused to start.

A ~~little bit~~ lot of dusting the computer later, unplugging and replugging the cables, and some monitor-swapping brought me to a conclusion that the thing was deader than a parrot in a Python sketch.

Till today I've yet to get it repaired because I was too busy running things and celebrating my birthday last week(!). But that's not stopping me from blogging about the Orientation Bash that happened in Sungai Chongkak three weeks ago...

19th to 20th July 2008 - Monash Orientation Bash
This time around, Joyce (the Activities Chairperson) decided to organise a camp to Sungai Chongkak for the freshies. We got almost 200(!) participants this time around, including buddies/helpers and the organising committee. As usual, I'll just post photos (provided by Namie) in chronological order and provide some commentary as we roll through.

Morning saw the happy (though mostly dazed) campers being randomly assigned into teams.

Joyce enjoys playing with her megaphone. She prefers calling it a loud hailer, though.

An hour and a half riding on the bus and we arrive at the entrance to the Sungai Chongkak recreational forest reserve (I think that's how it translates to English).

Bob points at the camera. We affectionately call him the Last Kelabit (note that he isn't really the last; he has an elder brother). Girls, marry him if you want your children to be non-Muslim bumiputeras.

Group and tent assignments took forever because there were just too many people.

Trees!

Zhen points at the camera. Who da man?!

While waiting for lunch to arrive and for the games to begin, the campers took it upon themselves to invade the eponymous river.

I took it upon myself to invade an otherwise nice photo of my ~~roommate~~ officemate, Cze Wien and ~~her boyfriend~~ some guy named Desmond.

Lunch took really, really long to arrive because we were almost an hour ahead of schedule. Bored out of our minds, we simply sulked.

And then we got the bright idea of preparing a circular rock dam in the middle of the river, with stones and leaves in the middle upon which we would place Darren's portable stove, which we would use to cook food we bought from MyDin the night before.

Sadly, the rock formations were indiscriminately destroyed with great prejudice by some scouts who were camping downstream from us.

Like ~~badgers~~ beavers making a dam.

Cze Wien could only watch from the sidelines, unable to enter the water. She was afflicted with the human condition known to some as the full stop.

Food eventually came, so everyone began eating.

Sometime after the food had been distributed, I was assigned to a game station about 200 to 400 metres downstream. I took my food pack down there and waited...

And waited...

And waited some more...

Nizmi and I waited for almost an hour and a half before the campers actually came to play our game. That was terrible time management!

One of the other games being played.

Random photo of the so-called "God's Rays" effect.

The next activity of the day was the cooking competition at 4pm, otherwise known as the "cook your own dinner or starve" game. We provided them with the most basic of essentials to start their own fires; charcoal, matches, and firestarters.

Even the foodstuff provided was spartan; eggs, flour, baking soda, baked beans and potatoes don't exactly make the heartiest of meals, but we manage.

Cze Wien and Nizmi preparing egg-filled potatoes.

Some of the campers did a pretty good job with what they were given, though.

When night came, most of the campers went for the activities planned by the Joyce's organising committee. I stayed back to help Jeevan (the official camp chief chef) prepare food for when the rest return from their activities. A little bit of drama ensued later, involving the very late return of those who went for the four-hour long night walk. Obviously, by the time they came back to camp, the food was already really cold.

This is Jeevan.

Anyway, Namie didn't take photos at night, so I'll just skip to the following day. I woke up in the morning with the best idea ever; taking a morning bath in the river! The freezing water (it was really, really cold) washed away the stench of charcoal and smoke that accumulated throughout the previous day. No photos this time because nobody really wants to take photos of topless men (Desmond and Darren included) washing themselves in a river.

After discovering that my niche in this camp was starting and keeping the fire going long and strong enough to cook food (thanks to five hours of doing just that the evening before), I shied away from today's activities and remained at the cooking area.

The kitchen ~~finks~~ people.

Cze Wien cooking her sausages (duh).

Campers eating breakfast (duh duh).

Once boredom kicked in, hilarity ensued:

You gotta love that expression.

This photo was taken at the game session hosted by Joyce herself. I have no idea what happened because I was back in the kitchen.

Not much else happened after the game session. The campers came back for lunch...

...and then we packed up and left. Cleaning the campsite up was a chore, though. It's a surprise that we didn't take longer than two hours.

And that's about it, actually. Would really love to write more but I got a class to catch in 20 minutes, and rest assured the next post will be somewhat more interesting, since it's about how I celebrated my 21st birthday.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Zimbabwe finally decided to revalue its currency! Well, not exactly. The currency itself still doesn't hold much value in the foreign exchange market (except maybe as high grade toilet paper?), but at least it's not so dizzying to talk in Zimbabwean dollar terms anymore.

On the 1st of August, Zimbabwe cut 10 zeroes off its currency. Hence, Z$10 billion turns into Z$1.

Remember the last time I posted? RM1 was equivalent to Z$5.7 billion. By right, with 10 zeroes out of the picture, it should be RM1 to Z$0.57, right?

Wrong. According to XE.com, RM1 is equal to Z$2.48. That's how fast prices rise in Zimbabwe; within a week, the currency's value have dropped almost five times, from 1:0.57 to. Imagine going to the local mamak and buying nasi lemak at RM3 today, but next week, when you go there again, it costs RM15.

Zimbabwe's a pretty fucked up country, don't you think? And we're just talking about inflation here. Don't even get me started with the country's elections.

Finally, an update

2008-07-26T02:04:00.000+08:00

Yup! Finally, an update from yours truly. It's been three weeks since I last updated, but that's only because I was just really busy during those weeks (in fact, I just got back from the first day of the ~~street carnival~~ Plug and Play Youth Festival), but what else is new, eh? Since I don't wanna be backblogged too much, I'll try (emphasis on try) to make this post a little bit more concise than usual.

Anyhoo.

7th to 11th July 2008 - Monash Orientation Week
First of all, orientation was chaotic but quite worth the effort pulling through it. I can't thank the other buddies (aka student helpers) enough for making the week bearable. You see, I was a Chief Buddy, i.e. somebuddy (har har) who's in charge of leading and delegating work to the other buddies. There were six Chiefs in all, one for each school, except two for Business and Engineering because this semester's intake for those two schools were huge. A Chief Buddy is also in charge of leading a colour house for the MOlympic Games.

Being a buddy for Orientation was similar to those held in recent semesters, so I'll skip that part of the week and go straight to the MOlympic Games.

Remember how I said that to make the MOlympic Games succeed, we have to go crazy with the silly and just have fun? I may have taken it a little bit too seriously because that's what I did as Chief Buddy for the Purple Team, Business Beta; and the first thing I did was to go shopping for cloth at Kamdar with Izuan (Chief for the Red Team comprising the Arts, Science, IT and Medicine schools) to make a flag for our teams. Then we shopped for stationery, facepaints and other assorted materials at 1 Utama.

Yeah, we were two guys walking into arts and crafts stores enquiring about paints, and later into Home's Harmony to look for fabric upon which to use those paints (which we failed to do, but in the process, stopped to admire tapestries). Imagine how gay it must've looked.

Anyway, on Tuesday after orientation activities, I dragged four of my Purple Team buddies (thanks to Adam, Michelle, Neysa and Samantha!) to shop for even more materials for our booth at Mydin.

Still looking ~~gay~~ happy here

And I stayed up til 4.30am on ~~Wednesday night~~ Thursday morning making a box kite (so ambitious!) for one of the telematches, a kite flying game. On Thursday evening, after the Transitional Issues and Assertive Skills workshop (will blog on this another time), I tried flying the kite but failed miserably.

Learn to fly

The aftermath

It was promptly dismantled to make way for two more kites that also, unfortunately, did not fly. Woe are us who've never in our lives made kites.

While in the process of making said kites, our exam results were released. They were much better than my previous semester's results, though:

Bloody hell @ the single credit!

For understandable reasons though, the mood at the field where people were busy decorating booths became rather sombre.

Anyway, after all the sombre-ing, kite-making, booth-decorating and flag-designing (yeah, the aforementioned cloth that Izuan and I bought were for flags), the buddies and I got ourselves dinner at Kim Gary in Sunway Pyramid as a pat on the back after a hard week's worth of work.

Me, Adam, and (Ms) Edwina from Student Community Services

Michelle and Neysa

My awesome Double Cheese-baked Rice with Unagi and Abalone!

And nwe finally arrive at D-Day, the MOlympic Games itself! The day began with the final touch-ups on the Purple Team's booth, as well as applying facepaint on our members, buddies and freshies alike.

Preparing Edwina as the team's mascot

Purple Team's most helpful freshies

I ended up being the only one with facepaint actually applied on my face. By the way, Barney was our unofficial team mascot. He gives Edwina the power to grant PTPTN Loans

We even had a flags and oath taking at the opening ceremony, led by Yung Lin from the Green Team (Science). While waiting for the Pro-Vice Chancellor to come on stage and give his speech, the teams began engaging in a war of chants and cheers.

The Purple Team's was (my silly creation, as usual) "Barney loves you but we'll... CRUSH YOU!"

Yung Lin even said "Dum" several times to imitate the sound drums make as an indication of when to raise and lower your hands/flags for the oath-taking. Funny shit, that

The opening ceremony ends with the event being officiated by the PVC, releasing a few hundred helium-filled balloons into the sky. Being somewhat of an environmentalist, I insisted not to release about 15 of the purple balloons given to us...

And the games kicked off! Some were simple, like the Human Structure game:

The subject was "Sweet", and we made a lollipop. Notice how we're all shading our eyes from the sun

Some were simply frustrating, like the Kite Flying game:

Even the RM3 flag we bought from Mydin couldn't fly

And some were just for fun, like the Admin vs Student Council Tug-of-War:

The odds were unfairly stacked in our favour by virtue of sheer numbers

Unfortunately, I don't have photos to some of the funner, odder games, including the hilarious Blindfold Football and the physically intense Frisbee tournament.

Because the Purple Team was one of the smallest teams despite the huge School of Business intake (bloody lazy Business students!), a lot of our members played in multiple games if time permitted. But the most important thing was that we had fun.

Or so I thought.

When it came to the prize-giving ceremony, the organising committee voted me the Best Chief Buddy!

My "WTFMate?" expression (complete with hand gesture) after finding out that I was Best Chief Buddy, and after being drenched by enthusiastic friends armed with waterguns

Even more surprising was when Purple Team was named the overall champion of the very first MOlympic Games!

The Purple Team members

I suppose once again I have to eat my words for lambasting the initial idea of this event; the last time my predictions were wrong and I was this pleasantly surprised was at the Welcome Back Party. Then again, I also predicted that the event will be a smashing success so long as we go all out with trying to have fun.

What can I say? We were really just trying to have fun.

Anyway, watch out for a flurry of updates from me as I squeeze time to blog about the other two weeks missing from this blog.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Over a year ago, I commented on annual inflation rates in another one of my Pointless Facts. Malaysia's was 3% to 4% back then, but thanks to the recent fuel price increase, it has shot up to 7.7%. Also, my (everyone's?) favourite failed state in the world, Zimbabwe, had its inflation rate at a whopping 1700% back then. How about today?

It has shot up to a freaking 2.2 million% just recently.

In fact, inflation in Zimbabwe is so bad that Mugabe's government released a 100-billion-dollar note to alleviate the problem of having to carry too much cash when buying items in the cost of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars.

It must really suck for Dr. Evil if he threatened Zimbabwe in Austin Powers 2 instead of America.

"One hundred billion dollars!"

That's because one ringgit is already equivalent to 5.7 billion dollars:

Isn't it fun learning something new and interesting every time you visit my blog? That's all from Zhen, being random as hell so you don't have to.

List of Stuff That I Have to Do: July 2008

2008-07-05T23:49:00.003+08:00

Well, this is just an update while I'm still rather free before things go apeshit for almost the whole of July. You see, Monash's Orientation is just around the corner, and historically, the first few weeks of classes as well as the middle of the semester tend to be packed with the most activities.

But before I go to my usual "List of Stuff That I Have to Do", let's recap the holidays ever since my last paper ended on 20th June:

Played and completed MGS4 (whooo!)
Met up with ASEAN Scholar and high school friends a couple of times
Failed to go to Cameron Highlands
Played and completed LEGO Indiana Jones
Went to hike Bukit Tabur... but it rained about 40 minutes in

And that's about as interesting as my holiday got. In fact, out of the 23 days between 20th June and 14th July when classes begin again, I have spent and will spend a total of 14 days in uni. Talk about slaving yourself to your (and once again I remind you, a non-paying) job.

With that out of the way, let's move on to the List of Stuff That I Have to Do (for the month of July 2008):

7th - 10th: Orientation Week
11th: Monash 'Sports' Carnival aka MOlympic Games (groan...)
12th - 13th: Eventide Prerelease (whooo! Yes I'm still a geek at heart)
12th: Young KL Singers Live on Stage aka Talent Night(?)
14th - 17th: First week of class, and period of non-activity I can appreciate
18th - 19th: Orientation Bash: Camp at Bentong (hopefully this is good)
20th: Student Council meeting
21st - 24th: Clubs and Societies Week (hopefully my last one as MNSM president)
24th: Monash Sunway Campus 10th Anniversary Gala Dinner
25th - 26th: S Factory Street Carnival (really, really not looking forward to this one)

Jam packed is all I can say about this July. As for why I'm not looking forward to the terribly named MOlympic Games, it's because I find it a complete waste of time on the Student Council's part and money on the Admin's part. This is the first time ever that I hear of a university forcefeeding its student body with an activity that will most likely fail to a certain extent.

Sports carnivals are something you do in highschools, and occasionally, in university. Sports carnivals in which you don't actually play sports but rather, telematches, are something you should keep out of universities entirely. Especially if they're only two to three hours long but take up so much manpower (slave labour more like it) and money (thankfully, not the Student Council's money or the Admin will have an incredibly irate treasurer up their ass) and will only cater to a select few people who just might appreciate it.

I hope I'm wrong about this, like I was with the Welcome Back Party. But I heard that some people have come up with the idea of making us do things like a march-past as well as an oath before the games, and I'm more skeptical than ever.

Unless maybe, just maybe, because we realise that this event is silly to begin with, we just go crazy with the silly and not take the whole event seriously at all. Now that just might be fun.

As for the rest of the stuff that I have do this month, I'll blog about them as they occur. It's time to hit the hay for today.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
For some reason, whenever I'm in the car with Izuan we spot vehicles with funny things written on them.

I'm not censoring this one because he obviously wants his number to be known.

You can call this guy up for a shag! Maybe if I put my number on my car like he does, I might get to see some action myself.

It's a (not so) jolly holiday with Zhen Yao

2008-06-28T01:36:00.001+08:00

The exams are over and yet I don't feel any less busier than I did prior to the cramfest that is revision. In hindsight, the exams seem to be a break from the trappings of extracurricular responsibilities. To be fair, though, it's not the responsibilities that stress me out. Responsibilities I can handle, but when the shit hits the fan, I can't help but feel royally pissed off.

But I have calmed down a whole lot since then. If you were to speak to me just three days ago, you'd have gotten a rather depressed Zhen. In fact, I just deleted a 700 word long rant because my mood has cooled off (well, since depression should be cold, "my mood has warmed up"?) considerably.

Long story short, a Nature Society trip to Cameron Highlands that I have planned for almost two months had to be abruptly cancelled because an oversight of mine (opting not to collect nonrefundable cash deposits) resulted in the sudden withdrawal of more than a third of the participants just six days before the trip itself. Imagine how disappointed and angry I was calling up 32 people to remind them of a briefing set for the very next day, only to have 12 people telling me that they want out.

"Oh, I wanted to inform you through e-mail" and "I forgot to tell you", they all say. Is it so fucking hard to give me an e-mail or text message when I have spent hours and hours slaving myself and sending you updates on a weekly basis? I have lost almost every ounce of respect I have for those 12, if there ever were any in the first place.

Anyway, that completely ruined my holiday plans. Now I'll probably while my time away playing Portal and maybe even Magic. That's not to say that I'm completely free, though. The next semester's Orientation's in slightly more than a week. Normally, Orientation Weeks go without a hitch, except that this time around, the Pro-Vice Chancellor saw it fit to increase student participation and independence in organising the thing. In other words, that just means more work for the already taxed Student Council. Joy.

A group of law students from Monash Clayton came up here to study Asian law for two weeks. Though it's a holiday, they've seen me four days out of five doing work on campus. One of them said to me, "You work too hard!"

Why, how very perceptive of you!

All work and no play makes you a dull boy, they say. Hence, to offset the work hard part, I play hard too, so don't go all judgmental on me when you see me playing Counterstrike or DotA on my office computer from time to time. Or heading out of the house really often to relax and hang out with a bunch of friends.

In fact, I play so hard this holiday that my cash reserves are running really, really low. It's time to start saving again to undo the damage...

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I saw this on display at MPH 1 Utama last Monday:

It's (some of?) Ian Fleming's James Bond collection, complete with uber-cool matching covers! ~~Too bad~~ Luckily I'm not a fan, or I would have bought a set just for keepsakes.

Of Exams, Anxiety and Avocadoes

2008-06-14T21:38:00.010+08:00

The week has ended and with it, two papers that have come and gone. I think I did okay, I had relatively more intense and methodical preparation this time around compared to previous ~~seasons~~ semesters. And unlike some people I know, I completed all the questions on either paper... though the extent to which the questions were actually answered accurately is moot. You know how sometimes you don't know the solution to a particular question yet you come up with such a convincing answer that you manage to fool yourself into believing that you were correct? That explains my post-exam calmness ("I believe I did quite alright") which unsurprisingly usually unravels itself when the grades are out ("What the, I got 3 Credits?!" - Me on last semester's results).

The other explanation for the lack of anxiety is due to resignation. The paper's over; what can you do about it? No amount of discussion is going to help your psyche. In fact, it's more likely that you'll worry yourself even more. Take for example a friend of mine who rang me up after our Accounting Information Systems and Financial Modelling (Monash has mouthful subject names) paper:

Friend: Eh, how did you answer question number 3 about the two most important design principles for financial models har?
Zhen: I dunno la, I wrote about separating the spreadsheet into different sections, and then for second principle I wrote about both formula flexibility and formula efficiency.
Friend: HAH?! Aiyo, I write the formula flexibility and efficiency only... How?
Zhen: I dunno... 'Cos I saw the same question come out in the sample exam paper but gave 8 marks only... Since this was 10 marks I wrote extra a bit. I really dunno which is the most important.
Friend: Alamak, shit la shit la...

See what I mean? And I wasn't even sure myself if I was correct. It's really silly, methinks. Look at it this way, there's a one out of four (75%) chance that you're fucked if you compare answers with a friend after an exam. Don't believe me, check this simple table out:

Working from left to right, you're more likely to be fucked.

The problem is exacerbated because there's nothing you can do about it until the results are out, especially more so for us because this is our finals. I prefer to worry about the next paper, or if it's already my last paper, worry about how to best spend my holidays, thank you very much.

Regardless, to each his own. I know that there are people out there who discuss exam answers just to gloat about how much they know and how badly their buddies screwed their papers up*.

You, my friends, are fucked up.

Anyway, moving on to funn(i)er things. We all know the controversial games that form the Grand Theft Auto series. Recently, the fourth installment was released, and to rave reviews too; it received a 10/10 rating from at least eight major online gaming sites, as well as turning the best friend into a fan... which, of course, must first be preceded by his purchasing of a PlayStation 3 as well as an original copy of the game.

Ivan is this hooked on the game:

A couple of hours later, he messaged me on MSN, about a lamp post and a tree.

Well, at least I was right about the tree. And the point that I'm trying to make is, in the middle of all this studying, I had to find a release. So, I ended up doing two things; reinstall the four-year-old Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that I used to play on my roommate's laptop back in Singapore but never got to finish, as well as download and watch Pushing Daisies, of which I have just become a fan and completed the first season (which is only nine episodes long thanks to the bloody WGA strike... Grr). I recommend the latter to anybody who's interested in a Gilmore Girls-meets-CSI-meets-Enchanted kinda show, and the former to closet hitmen/warmongers (I'm looking at you, Suk Yin).

And that's about it for this week's installment of "What's up with our dear friend Zhen now?" Tune in next week for more post-exam antics!

Cheers.

Where everybody knows your naaaaaaaaaaaaame...

*By people who gloat, I'm referring to a very annoying first year (I think) Engineering student who occupies the same spot in the Monash library Reserve and Multimedia section for the past couple of days. He talks real loudly and makes fun of his lesser-prepared classmates even louder-ly. Good thing he's skinny as hell, so if he pisses me off enough in the future I can speak my mind with the knowledge that if he retaliates, I'll have no qualms in punching his smug face in.

Then again, I'm known for being able to tolerate really, really annoying people.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
The word "avocado" comes from the Nahuatl language, the same Aztec language that gave us the word "chocolate". It's meaning? Testicles. I heard it on TV once, I think it was Ripley's Believe it or Not (hosted by TV Superman himself, Dean Cain).

A couple of days ago, Melody said this on her blog:

I got given a pair of home-grown avocadoes today. They remind me of giant scrotum. Maybe I’ll keep them on my desk at uni as a talisman.

Informing her of her not-so-coincidental thoughts, I got this reply:

She even did a mad dance! What a nut (and I mean it in the best way I can!).

Season 4 Finale

2008-06-07T23:35:00.001+08:00

Last week, I finally watched the Season 4 finale of House, an episode filled with all the usual Houseisms (“I had a heart attack this morning. I can't do any more drugs 'til at least lunch.”), strange diseases and a gaps-in-information narrative that befits a House season finale; to all of you who do watch House, notice how similar the hypnotic acid trips House had in this episode was to the Season 2 finale where House got shot and ended up hallucinating through the rest of the episode? Really cool stuff, reminding me again why House is my number ~~one~~ two favourite drama in recent years (favourite TV show still goes to Monty Python's Flying Circus, sorry).

House was still my favourite drama last year. In fact, I like it so much that I even devoted an entire assignment to it. But then Lost picked up steam late in Season 3 and it's been my favourite drama ever since.

Everyone knows how Lost stole our attention away from our usual TV fare with its survivor storyline and mindboggling mysteries back when it first premiered in 2004, but when the show ended and Season 2 came around, a lot of the people I know have come up to me with the same "Watching Lost makes me feel lost" comment. I wholeheartedly agree; Lost is a TV show that pays off if you dedicate enough time into immersing yourself in the mythology of the series. You usually can't make head or tail of an episode unless you've seen almost everything else that came before.

I've seen everything else that came before (except, ironically, the pilot episode of Lost itself, which I missed when it first started airing on TV... now I download all the episodes), so when I saw its Season 4 finale just a few days back, I was stupefied. I was amazed. And for the second straight season finale, I managed to let loose a couple of tears (Desmond and Penny reunited? Awwwwww...).

Why all this talk about season finales, then? Well, I was bored one day and I started paralleling uni life to my viewing habits. You see, this is currently my fourth semester in Monash, and my finals start on Wednesday... It's a Season 4 finale too!

I've been working rather hard this semester, be it as the MUSA Treasurer, or MNSM President, as a choir member, or even as a boyfriend, brother and son. With that said, I really hope that the effort I've put in this semester has been enough to make my Season 4 end on a high note, just like those of House and Lost. But if last semester's results were anything to go by (3 Credits and 1 High Distinction), there's a shitload more of work to put into studying over the next couple of days.

And it isn't just studying that's the matter right now. My sister's PMR exams are this year, so my mom gave me the responsibility to tutor her in math, a responsibility that I've been shirking thus far. Then there's that Cameron Highlands trip that I'm organising for MNSM after the exams, plus having to worry about the first ever 90% student-run Orientation Week in the upcoming semester, and a myriad of other Student Council-related stuff (such as getting a cashbox for petty cash).

Moreover, Carrie has been really stressed lately due to work; being the typical boyfriend who just has to do something about it, I had to do something about it. Things get harder since she's one of the hardest person to read that I know. Well, more like one of the hardest person to read that I actually care about. I'm just glad that we never really had to argue before, but which guy has never had to endure a PMS fit?

Nevertheless, things often have a way of resolving themselves really nicely. Hopefully that will be the case with my Season 4 Finale. A happy ending with just enough mysteries to keep you interested for yet another rollercoaster of a season. Won't that be just peachy?

Well then I suppose I'll see you readers again next season! If my ratings are good enough and my show doesn't get discontinued, that is...

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I'm still in Monash as I'm typing this. I'll let you guys come up with your own conclusions.

Nobody wants to be a good vibrator

2008-05-26T08:56:00.009+08:00

I've completed the last assignment I have for the semester, leaving only two weeks of studying and a string of chamber choir performances between today and my first paper on the 9th of June. Holy final exams, Batman! Of course, being the natural-born procrastinator that I am (aren't we all; what are you doing reading my blog? Go do your work!), I have yet to begin my revision proper. That, and the fact that prior to this I was working on finishing the aforementioned assignment.

In any case, the Young KL Singers Chamber Choir will be performing three times, twice this weekend and once next Friday, of which two are open to the public. First up is called Singing for Funds at KLPac, organised by the Young Choral Academy:

Click on the picture, pweeeeese?

It's a charity concert in aid of the Cyclone Nargis victims in Myanmar. Admission is based on a donation of any amount, paid at the door; what excuse do you have not to come?!

Date: Friday, 30th May 2008
Time: 8-10pm
Location: Indicine, The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac), Sentul
Fee: Donation of any amount

The other public concert that we'll be performing in is the Friday evening recital at the 6th Young Singers Choral Festival.

Click on this too

The festival actually lasts four days, and there are a ton of other recitals for you musically-inclined people to attend. On the night we're performing, the Johor Bahru Chamber Choir is singing as well. It's only RM12 for an hour-long concert of 20 songs in total; what excuse do you have not to come?!

Date: Friday, 6th June 2008
Time: 8.30-9.30pm
Location: Pentas 1, The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac), Sentul
Fee: RM12; contact tickets@klpac.com or 03-40479000

So come to these shows and support the Young KL Singers Chamber Choir! Yes, our current name is a mouthful. We've been considering naming ourselves properly for once and for all. For a very long time I've been championing Schizophonic/ -phonia/ -phones/ something to that effect, but my suggestion has been falling on deaf ears. Right now I'm pushing for The Good Vibrations, but it's quite likely that that won't make the cut either.

I mean, how cool is it to be able to introduce yourself, "Hi, my name is Zhen and I'm a good vibrator"?

I suppose that in the chamber choir right now, nobody wants to be a good vibrator.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I don't believe anybody ever bothered Wiki-ing Milo up, the ubiquitous chocolate-malt drink you find everywhere in Malaysia. Stuff like these are so taken for granted that hardly anybody bothers about the story behind the Milo.

Random facts from good-ol' Wiki-ing:

Milo is created in Australia in 1934
Today, about 90% of the world's Milo is consumed in Malaysia (I think this figure is debatable, though)
Larger Wal-Marts in America do in fact stock the predominantly Asian-consumed drink... In the Hispanic foods aisle.

And all this because I saw Izuan's MSN message: "When I was younger I used to say MeeLo. Now that I'm more sophisticated, I say MyLo."

By the way, MyLo is the correct pronunciation, if you're wondering.

YKLS Sing Sing Sing to Singapore!

2008-05-22T01:33:00.002+08:00

1st to 4th May - YKLS Singapore Trip
Alright, so I'm finally going to blog a little about the Singapore trip. I don't want this to become an epic-lengthed blog post like the China one I did at the beginning of the year, so I'll just stick to the more interesting bits of the trip.

Day 1 - Thursday, 1st May
We met up at YCA (that's the Young Choral Academy) in TTDI (Taman Tun Dr. Ismail) at 9am, and a surprising number of people were punctual. Ryonn, who organised the trip, unveiled to us the rather cheesy looking (must be the colour) banner for the trip.

Cheese! In more ways than one.

Right before leaving, I had to make a trip to 7-Eleven to buy a six-pack of three-ply Winnie the Pooh tissues to deal with my occasional morning sinusitis and runny nose. Unfortunately, about two hours later I realised that my nose was on a marathon, and that it was a full-fledged cold... A theme which would pervade throughout the trip.

I'm much sicker than I actually look.

We made a pit stop at Yong Peng, Johor, as is typical of bus rides down to Singapore. Yong Peng... Where right above urinals, you have advertisements asking you to buy "Rox", a herbal supplement to cure haemorrhoids. A lot of people will know what I mean; most of the stops here have the ubiquitous sign.

Yong Peng... Still as overpriced as always.

After six hours or so of travelling, we finally made it to the Katong Hostel, our quarters for the next three nights. The place was quite alright, although I thought that its architecture was an appalling waste of space in land-scarce Singapore.

At night, you'll see hostelites taking up those tables... With no lighting at all. It's dark as hell.

At night, we took up a multi-purpose room to practice for our upcoming exchanges and performances. My nose was still on the run.

By the end of the day the six-pack of tissues had been completely used up. I went to bed under the influence of pseudoephedrine and Vitamin C.

Day 2 - Friday, 2nd May
Still sick from the cold. We had our breakfast at a nearby food centre before leaving for Esplanade, our first activity for the day.

We were given a guided tour around the performing arts venue, marvelling at the architectural wonder that is the building. Huge theatres, wonderful acoustics, etc... Stuff that makes blogging about them difficult. So I won't. Instead, I'll show you more pictures with the cheesy banner:

There's a long complicated story detailing why the Esplanade looks like a durian, but it takes too much time to explain.

And then we went sightseeing around the building. There's a shop that sold Nasi Lemak flavoured cookies (expensive, but it does taste like Nasi Lemak!), a shop that lets you personalise your own teddy, as well as a shop that sold these babies:

Are you an ass-kisser?

Similarly, are you a total bitch?

And then we went to LaSalle College of the Arts for a tour of the campus. The idea was to expose the younger ones of us to the possibility of pursuing arts and performance seriously in the region, completely contrary to what our pragmatic parents would normally tell us: "Get a real degree and get a real job!", they'd say.

It's a rather nice place, all things considered. Then again, hey, it's Singapore.

I just thought that this shot looked cool.

They made us sing for them after their presentation, too.

This here is Regina, Susanna's daughter and YKLS unofficial mascot. She's not even four and she's already a diva.

The evening was almost upon us when our tour ended, giving us about three to four hours before our next activity. Carrie being Carrie and me being the dutiful boyfriend, we spent that time shopping in Orchard Road. By we I mean Carrie (sorry dear, but it's true! Heh heh). That's when we discovered Anything and Whatever that I put up in the previous post's Pointless Fact of the Day.

After that, we headed back to the hostel to grab the bus to meet up with the Singapore Men's Chorus. They're a bunch of fun-loving and friendly guys. In my opinion, this was the highlight of the trip, especially since they sang a bunch of really good and really funny songs; Ji Lang Ji Pua, anyone?

Meet and greet.

Warm-ups. And you thought choirs only warmed up their voices before singing.

Them singing.

Us singing.

Group shot.

And that marked the end of day two of the trip. I still had my cold and runny nose, though. To make things worse, Carrie was falling sick too; people tell me that it was my fault. Bah!

Day 3 - Saturday, 3rd May (no kidding)
Still sick (what else is new?) but by now, so were Tracy and Alvin (somewhat). Everyone were beginning to fall like flies! It didn't help that the very next choir exchange we had was a major one, with the choirs of Nelson Kwei and Zechariah Goh (Victoria Junior College and Meridien Junior College choirs respectively) , both known to be very good at what they do. Hell, I knew how good they were because I used to sing in a Singaporean choir. We met them at a community centre.

Unfortunately, YKLS did not deliver. I'll leave my rant about this to the end of the post so as to not ruin the mood of the post thus far.

Warming up... There were around 200 people in the hall that day.

Group shot.

Group shot again. If you look carefully, you can see my finger up Alvin's nose.

We had our lunch ~~nearby~~ somewhere a distance away, forcing us to walk in the searing afternoon sun. It helped alleviate my marathoning nose problem, but the constant alternating between really hot and really cold environments isn't good for your overall health.

Anyway, after lunch we had one final stop on our itinerary; the Acapella Society. It's a group of youths that come together to sing. First up, we had an amusing hour-long lesson on beatboxing by Ryan, a JC student.

Ryan showing off his mad skillz.

Then, we got them to sing. They're a real acapella group, i.e. their sound leaned more towards Boyz II Men than towards the Vienna Boys. Really nice song arrangements, too.

Performing Fire by the Pointer Sisters.

And then it was up to the chamber choir to match them with our Sinaran (by Sheila Majid, arranged by our very own Tracy Wong).

And then the full choir with In the Mood. Probably our best-sounding performance during the entire trip.

I promise you, this is the very last of the cheesy banner that you'll see.

And that was the end of the trip's itinerary. We were free for the rest of the day, so I took this time out to meet up with old choirmates from my time in Saint Andrew's Junior College. I couldn't contact a lot of them in time, so only Jee Cheng, Yang Hong and Hana made it for the little reunion. Haven't seen them in two years, in fact.

We met up at Miss Clarity, a place I had rather fond memories of. Pardon the gaudiness of the place; that was its charm!

The brightly decorated Miss Clarity.

Jee Cheng, Yang Hong, Hana and I.

My only regret was that I couldn't round up more of them in time. But oh well, you settle for what you can get. After that, we went walking around Orchard Road for a bit before bidding our goodbyes once again.

Carrie and a few others were allocated a room that had a common area with a television, so the both of us watched Shark Tale on TV3 late into the night. The homosexual undertones was rife in the movie, seriously.

Anyway, as I went to bed, Tracy's sickness has gone worse, and Nick (her boyfriend) has started falling sick too. Man, this bug is spreading real fast.

Day 4 - Sunday, 4th May
What's there to blog about? We left the place in the morning, and arrived home in the evening. Overall, the trip was a great experience, and definitely an eye-opener for a lot of the new members. In my case, I just tried to have fun the best I could, despite my nostrils insisting on spoiling the effort.

Oh, by Tuesday I discovered that almost 10 out of the 30 or so people who went down to Singapore had fallen sick, most with the same symptoms of runny noses and fever, Carrie included. It really sucks to know that you have unintentionally subjected your girlfriend to two weeks of illness (it took her that long to recover, poor girl), but what can you do?

Especially since she refuses to see doctors. Bleargh. Anyway, that's all for my Singapore trip. There'll be more of these kinda blog posts coming up; I'm planning an MNSM trip to Cameron Highlands after the exams, so rest assured that there'll be no dearth of interesting nonsense to read in July.

Speaking of exams, mine's starting on the 9th of June, leaving slightly over two more weeks to study. Yikes!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Jimmy Kimmel is the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, his very own talk show, where at the end of the show, he would usually say "Apologies to Matt Damon; we've run out of time." As a joke, his girlfriend Sarah Silverman (probably America's most famous female stand-up comedian) appeared on his show one fine day early this year and announced that she was "Fucking Matt Damon". Take a look at hilarity:

A month later, Jimmy Kimmel retaliated by enlisting the help of his fellow star friends. Even more hilarity:

Personally, I find Sarah's song to be the catchier of the two... But you just can't fight with "He's got bigger tits"!

Finally, the rant:
You know how people like to hide behind the cover of their blogs and rant in the hopes of the people they're criticising see what they wrote just so they can avoid a face-to-face confrontation? This rant is something like that (until one day when I'm justifiably irritated enough to make this comment).

Our performance in front of the other two choirs was nothing short of embarrassing, in my opinion. However, when it comes to choral singing, success and failure depends on group effort... We simply just weren't as hardworking as the Singaporean choirs.

But what pisses me off was when people from our choir suggested that "Singaporean choirs don't know how to have fun when they sing." Fuck that! When I was in the SAJC Choir, I had the time of my life! Even a friend of mine who used to be under Nelson Kwei can say the same. YKLS's problem is that a lot of the new members this year just don't see how much effort it takes to become that good. In SAJC, we used to practice anywhere between two to five hours every day for two weeks straight just to get prepared for our concert and SYF. In YKLS, two hours plus and you already have people complaining.

I understand that the situation's different. It's the defeatist attitude that we have that's hurting our progress. I felt so embarrassed when Susanna pointed that out to us when we were in the holding room, because it aptly described the state of our choir. When we see the Singaporeans doing better than us, we come up with silly excuses like "They don't know how to have fun".

Granted, "They're students" is a valid reason, since we have many working adults in our choir, but take a look at people like Sherry and Joel and Wai Fun and Tracy dan lain-lain who are just as busy but still make the effort to at least learn up their parts before coming for Monday practices. Hell, I'm a student but I'm also busy with my club and student council and all that jazz, and I still screw my singing parts up quite often, but at least I make an effort to get better! Carrie's notating the song parts all nicely done in Midi and Mitchell's disseminating it to everyone, is an hour a week of learning on your own too much to ask?

This begs the question: Did we learn anything from the trip at all?

I think that there's a message that needs to be driven home into the minds of some of the newer additions to the choir (the old ones are alright, most of them already understand). YKLS isn't a vacation. It's a commitment. People who don't seem to make even the slightest effort to improve themselves should really invite themselves out.

Damn it feels good to get that off my chest. And to think that all this started because someone (I forgot who) said "Singaporean choirs don't know how to have fun when they sing."

2:44AM

2008-05-15T03:32:00.002+08:00

It's 2:44AM in now and I'm still wide awake. Well, more exactly, I'm doing work after having three hours of sleep, and I thought that it might be a good idea to work up my thinking muscles* through a little blogging before I get to doing my assignment. Furthermore, it's very, very unlikely that I get around to posting my Singapore trip around here due to this week's workload. It's the dreaded assignment-test combo all over again, resulting in the usual self-induced insomnia just to get in that little extra bit of work before your body completely exhausts itself and you crash.

In other news, my pal Aaron Teoh, who some of you know as the hyperactive little kid who's actually much older than he actually looks, follows Family Guy like religion and bursts into Chewbacca-inspired growls from out of seemingly nowhere, etc. will be starring in his college play (Sunway College's Performance & Media Department, to be exact) entitled Equus, about "a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious/sexual fascination with horses". Sounds like a good premise for a play, no? It's also the one that got worldwide attention when Mr. Harry Potter acted as the aforementioned young man, in the nude.

These look almost like publicity stills for a superhero movie. The Shirtless Horseman?

I can't tell if Aaron is in this photo or not

By comparison, the Sunway version will definitely be less controversial due to the lack of exposed dick. Anyway, Aaron will be playing the part of the psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Dysart, and here's the details:

Title: Equus
Venue: Sunway College Roof Top Theatre
Date & Time: Thu 15 - Sun 18 May 2008 (Thu-Sat: 8.30pm; Sun: 3pm)
Tickets: RM10 (limited seats)
Ticket Contact: 012-350 0626

For more details, check out KLue and Kakiseni.

It's 3:10AM now and I just realised that I spent the past 20-odd minutes doing nothing but plug Sunway College's play. I should get paid for this...

*There's actually no such thing as thinking muscles, just neurons ~~firing up~~ in frying up your brain

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Here's a little tidbit* before I actually post about the YKLS Singapore trip. In Singapore, you can buy anything, and you can buy whatever:

Specially created for the enjoyment of people who just can't bloody decide what to drink when they go out to eat, or those who are usually totally indifferent like me. The premise is that you don't know the flavour of your drink until you pop the tab. Anything refers to the carbonated version, while Whatever is non-carbonated. The flavours include:
Anything: Carbonated Orange, Root Beer, Apple
Whatever: Lemon Tea, Grape

Personally, I think it's a product that covers a niche market really well, i.e. the market of people who just don't give a shit what they're drinking.

*Speaking of tidbits, I find it so funny how so many Malaysians spell it as titbits. It's like, "Would you like some bits of tit?!"

Monash Street Carnival

2008-05-07T22:54:00.000+08:00

I'm back from Singapore and back to classes again. It's terrible how a long weekend spent in another country makes one forget that it isn't the holidays yet. On an unrelated note, I was sick throughout the entire trip; I spent about RM5 worth of tissues throughout the trip, half of which were used on the first day! Almost ten other people fell sick after the trip too, rousing suspicions of an epidemic of some sort.

Anyway, while I wait for photos of the Singapore trip to trickle in, I'll be blogging about the Monash Street Carnival first.

26th April 2008 - Monash Street Carnival
First of all, (almost) every club was assigned the task of preparing a booth for the Street Carnival. Being the resident Nature Society and all, we decided to come up with a recyclable-themed booth; a recycled dart game made out of old newspaper and nails! And sell J.Co donuts (how original), too...

I had to be in Monash early to set up the booth, so I swung by McDonald's first to get myself some breakfast. I used the vouchers for free Sausage McMuffins that Darren/Peck Yun gave us earlier that month (he got them from the magazine, MYC):

I planned to get five and give four to those who were helping out that day, so imagine my surprise when the cashier told me that they ran out of Sausage McMuffins and if Fillet-O-Fish(es) are okay.

I totally forgot about Filet-O-Fish's American spelling with only one 'L'

Why the hell not?

And then we got working on the board; Leanne, Thasha, Sriram, Shanq Yeet and I. It took us almost four hours to get everything up and running because half the time, it was only Leanne and I doing the work as the rest were busy with other things. We were done by around 1pm.

Testing the board with our darts

Because it was a long day and there were so many booths at the carnival, I'll just skip to the fun bits. First of all, it was themed "Wet and Wild", with a section specially designated for playing with water...:

...an inflatable gladiator arena...:

...and a mechanical bull:

And there was also this Carl's Junior burger eating contest that I totally sucked at (shoulda just ate the burgers slowly and enjoy every bite):

Constipated face like anything

And then there were performances! A whole slew of them, and everyone came to watch. Quite a good turnout too, almost three times the size of last year's crowd.

Freeloaders Inc., Monash's most popular in-house band. They're real friendly guys too, which helps a lot.

This bunch danced and won the Nike Women: This Is Love event, bagging RM30,000 worth of Nike products in the process. Obviously, the guy in the picture (Aaron Teoh from choir!) was a late addition to the team.

We were still selling donuts at this point, though... Check out Desmond and his sunburn. His skin is still recovering as I post this! So are Darren's, Jason's, and Alvin's respective dermal layers.

The highlight of the night was the guest performances, of course. First up: Ben's Bitches! Can you spot the groupies?

Dude, we so gay! Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.

And this is the "Jolok-mosh" aka we did during their famed Aku Suka Jolok song. Good times.

DragonRed and Bus Company performed too, but I wasn't really a fan of their music, so I was already ready to close down the booth and call it a day... But not before camwhoring one last time.

When I got home, it was already 2am. Imagine spending 17 hours in uni, outdoors, and without showering; now you know how glad I was when I finally went to bed.

And I'm spent. Normally I'm much more verbose than this, but I really need to get to doing my work.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Do you know of Snopes.com? It's a super useful website for determining the truth (or more commonly, lack thereof) of an urban legend. Seriously, could you guys (I'm not naming names) research these things before forwarding them to my e-mail? Bloody spammers. I just received this today:

Recently a woman in Taiwan suddenly died of blood flowing from her every orifice. Lab test result shows it was due to the deceased having taken vitamin C after eating a lot of shrimps. Shrimps contain an ingredient when combined with vitamin C in human body, can generate a kind of poisonous substance like white arsenic which is fatal to the body.

Please tell everybody & those you care not to take vitamin C after eating seafood!

A quick search told me that this is not true, as well as the reasons why. Everyone should start visiting Snopes more often before telling me about HIV needles at petrol stations and telling me to forward e-mail so that Bill Gates will pay me.

Idiots.

I'm annoyed

2008-04-27T21:15:00.000+08:00

I'm annoyed that I have a class test and a presentation due this Wednesday.

I'm annoyed that I have an assignment due this Friday.

I'm annoyed that because of the choir trip to Singapore, I will have to finish my assignment by Wednesday; the day of my class test and presentation.

I'm annoyed that none of my friends in Singapore bothered to reply me if they're free to meet up while I'm down there.

I'm annoyed that I busted my ass off to start an a capella group, had my hopes raised during the auditions, spent another 10 hours over the weekend practicing only to be rejected because we were deemed inappropriate for a Battle of the Bands.

I'm annoyed that the poster merely said "Monash Street Carnival auditions" and nothing about bands.

I'm annoyed that if I had been contacted on Saturday morning like I was promised rather than Monday morning like what actually happened, I would have saved the aforementioned 10 hours of my (our) time.

I'm annoyed that the 20 hours or so I spent forming and practicing with the a capella group could have been used to prepare for said assignment, class test and presentation.

I'm annoyed that after busting my ass off and having my hopes dashed, I discovered that there was in fact a separate category for non-band performances at the Street Carnival yesterday that almost nobody was informed of.

I'm annoyed that I couldn't draw up enough courage to confront that person who rejected us because I sort of consider him a friend.

I'm annoyed that I couldn't draw up enough courage to confront another different person that for some weird, inexplicable and unknown reason consider me a friend.

I'm annoyed that because of said assignment, class test and presentation, I'm missing two choir practices today, and possibly the one tomorrow.

I'm annoyed that my brother had to shower just when I wanted to, and that my dad had to shower just after my brother finished.

I'm annoyed that I have this bloody painful headache dogging me since I woke up this morning.

I'm annoyed that the bloody painful headache is slowing my assignment, class test and presentation work.

I'm annoyed that I'm annoyed enough by the bloody painful headache to blog about these annoyances.

So, thank fucking goodness for Ben's Bitches, crazy friends, ~~Ai-ca~~ eye-candy, Carrie and paracetamol, or I'll be even more annoyed than I am now. Oh well.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I'm annoyed that I'm not any good at eating contests. Also, I promise that my next post won't be as annoying as this.

Where there's lots of things to do

2008-04-25T01:51:00.001+08:00

20th April 2008 - MNSM Zoo Negara Volunteer Trip

As a departure from the usual "Let's visit somewhere and get dirty and have mindless fun" (no I'm not referring to sex), MNSM organised a volunteer trip to Zoo Negara last weekend. 45 of our members could be spotted cleaning up the zoo compound, performing activities which ranged from washing cages, raking leaves and waxing (really!) turtle's shells (turtleshells?). I wish I was helping out at the Reptile section, though, because chelonians are cool.

45 volunteers! One of the few times where everyone turned up.

Getting briefed before everything began.

Instead, I was posted to the big cats section. We had to brush the insides of the cages and everything, as well as rake leaves from the roaming compounds. Boring stuff of which descriptions do not make for good blogging material ("We purposefully piled the leaves with rakes, following up with skillful manipulation of straw baskets to get rid of them methodically"?), so I'll fall back to using good old photos; once again taken by our club photographer, Izuan.

The roaming compound for the tigers. You can't see them because they're crouching.

Photographic evidence that I did my share of the work...

...and so did other people. Such camwhores, aren't they?

This tiger was really friendly; not a single roar the whole time we were there. But when the other tigers did roar, it sounded like we were in Jurassic Park, what with the booming noise reverberating within the cages and all.

Izuan took this photo when he was at the veterinary section. This is the tail (or lack thereof) of a lioness who accidentally bit it off in a squabble with another lioness.

After several hours of volunteer work (nothing too taxing, really), we were allowed to roam the zoo. Just a couple more interesting photos:

Flamingos! The silliest looking bird in the world which automatically makes them one of the coolest in my books.

Tapirs can also be found on the Malaysian Nature Society logo. Seems like environmental NGOs have a predilection towards black-and-white animals as mascots, e.g. WWF with its panda.

Giraffes, aka the animal which gives amateur artists splitting headaches when drawing them in weird angles.

Try drawing this without a picture aid.

Elephants can't jump, y'know.

Striped hyenas look nothing like the spotted ones you see in The Lion King. They're much larger than I thought they would be, too.

Check out this hyena pup! Awww... Soooo cuuuuuute...

And finally, a picture of a gaur to bid you adieu.

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

If you got that reference, I'll give you a virtual cookie.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I wanted to write about blue flamingos, but then they are as real as red herrings.

I don't know which is more distracting.

Red herrings are rather useful to distract and mislead people, especially in the first Monkey Island game. For those of you who didn't play the game (you should!), here's a couple of screenshots:

Guybrush steals a fish from a seagull (which has already flown away).

A troll blocks Guybrush from crossing a bridge...

...which can be appeased by paying it its toll.

The first time I played the game (I remember it well, I was still in Singapore and just a week or two away from leaving my hostel for good), I got stuck at this puzzle for almost two hours. Fear the fiery fish.

I actually went back to play the game just to get those screenshots. Not that I mind, though, Monkey Island is a classic. Anyone who wants the game (I have Monkey Island 2 and Day of the Tentacle, too), just bring your thumbdrive and ask me for it. It can even fit in an e-mail; it's less than 5 megs in size! That's the pros of playing a game released in 1990.

Isn't it interesting how I went from flamingos to Monkey Island? It's the work of the herring, I tells ya!

"Oh well"

2008-04-22T09:51:00.003+08:00

"Oh well." I've gotten used to saying that quite often these days. Whenever the tiniest little thing goes wrong, or when shit hits the fan, a lot of times I find myself exclaiming, "Oh well."

When I lost my pencil box at the Monash Ball last year along with my thumbdrive and the half-completed assignment in it; "Oh well."

When I drove my car into the back side of a truck, denting the MyVi's red hood; "Oh well."

When the ex sent me a Dear John-ish e-mail from California; "Oh well."

Yesterday, two more came my way. First, I was told that the a capella group I had just recently formed for this weekend's Monash Street Carnival was deemed inappropriate for the carnival's Battle of the Bands, despite the posters merely saying "Monash Street Carnival auditions". I wonder what happened to the dance group that auditioned before us. Although I had invested somewhere around 15 to 20 hours in this project, from acquiring scores to transcribing songs with my non-existent musical training, this turn of events elicited only an "Oh well" from me.

Secondly, the results of the Film Studies assignment I was speaking of were returned to me. Normally, I'd be overjoyed with the High Distinction, but knowing that there were three people who got 98/100 made me a little unsatisfied; I did an obscene amount of research for a simple assignment, and while some have told me not to be so kiasu about it, it was difficult to lay this issue to rest until I've seen the papers that received almost perfect marks.

But then I said my "Oh well"s and all was fine with the world again. You see, to me "Oh well" marks the middle ground between optimism and pessimism. You know how people who set their expectations too high often become disappointed when things don't go their way? You're not ensnared by that trap with an "Oh well". It also stops me from being a morbidly morose moron moping my days away because of an insignificant pothole in the highway of life (dig that metaphor, suckers!).

Thus, the "Oh well" is the ultimate (as far as I know) ambivalent stance anyone can adopt. It's equidistant from both the positive "Hell yeah!" and negative "Bloody hell!", and sure beats the apathetic "I don't care" any time.

Until next time... Oh well.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Just two little announcements here today. The Monash Street Carnival is going to run from 12pm to 12am this Saturday. There will be carnival and water games, inflatables (not dolls) and even a bull-riding machine! The afternoon will be filled with performances by in-house Monash bands, while at night Ben's Bitches (whoooo!), DragonRed and Bus Company will be working the crowd. It's going to be huge, so be there and join in the fun!

Take not of the phrase "Free Entrance "Larh"". "Larh" is what happens when you let international students spell Malaysian slang. I found it highly amusing.

Second announcement: I'm going down to Singapore from the 1st to 4th of May. I'm not sure if any of the friends I made in Singapore still read my blog, but I'm free on the night of Saturday the 3rd. Anybody wanna meet up?

Well, I know this isn't that much of a PFotD entry, but oh well.

If you're bored... Part Deux

2008-04-14T07:32:00.007+08:00

If you're bored... Here's a really good webcomic for you, Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida. According to the good people over at Wikipedia:

The subject matter of Sinfest is often human nature, with particular attention paid to sexuality and religion. Less frequently, the strip will parody popular culture or indulge in political commentary. There are some recurring types of strip, such as "You Had to Be There" (where the reader is not told what the characters are discussing), "Japanese Calligraphy" (where one of the characters transforms over four panels into a kanjiideograph, usually related to the strip in some way.), "Porn Script Readings" (where Monique and Slick read porn star dialogue in deadpan style, except for once where they used flash cards for a Silent Film reading) and "Ninja Theatre" (where the characters take on the roles of heroes and villains in a martial arts movie). Though there is little in the way of overarching story in Sinfest, the central characters do undergo continual development.

Among characters such as Monique, Slick, God, Jesus, the Devil, and Buddha, there's a cat-and-dog pair named Pooch and Percy who are just too damn cute. They're especially cute in the following strips, resulting in my sudden urge to show it to everyone.

I hope I didn't need permission to link all that. Anyway, Ishida's been updating almost daily since 2000, so if you're really bored you can spend around five hours reading all 2,777 (as of today) strips.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Proton cars are more well-known than you thought. Well, they used to be, at least in the UK. In the Mr. Bean episode "Tee Off Mr. Bean", the eponymous Bean hit a golf ball up the exhaust pipe of a Proton Saga, or MPi as the Brits called them. Oh, you gotta love them silly Brits.

That's our good friend Bean in the back there, if you haven't realised.

April showers bring May flowers...not

2008-04-09T11:57:00.000+08:00

March and April showers bring much annoyance to one and all; I've lost count the number of times I stayed back in Monash until 8pm just because it rained too damn heavily at my usual leaving time of 5pm. That's what you get for living in this part of Malaysia, I guess. On the bright side, it isn't as hot here compared to the rest of the country (like Melaka, which I returned to last weekend for Cheng Beng).

Anyway, I've already finished two major assignments that were due last week, thank goodness. Hopefully good grades will come my way, especially for the Film Studies one I wrote on Napoleon Dynamite. It'll be slightly lighter this week with no major activities coming up this weekend.

Speaking of activities:

22nd March 2008 - MNSM Dark Cave Trip
The Dark Cave is this cave that's one of the Batu Caves, and MNSM had a trip over to that place. There was a lot of walking, quite a bit of wiggling through crawlspaces barely a feet high and a hell lot more waiting around because we had a group of 40 people. Of course, after doing some spelunking, it's a crime not to get dirty. Time for some photos (courtesy of Su Ying)!

Top-down view of the entrance.

[Drama]Right at the gates of the dark pits[/Drama]

The ubiquitous Batu Caves monkeys feeling all patriotic.

Into the abyss... You see the hole in this picture? Don't let it fool you; about four metres into the passage we had to crawl through an ultra-claustrophobic tunnel that hugs you on all corners. People have gotten stuck there before, according to our guide.

Because 40 people had to take turns going into that tunnel, we spent a considerable amount of time waiting.

Who the man?

This is a photo taken at the other end of the crawlspace while I was still waiting for my turn to go in.

Cave cockroaches! They eat bat crap.

Finally, before I stop talking about the Dark Cave, before and after shots taken by Izuan:

Sebelum.

Selepas.

And I'm spent.

4th April 2008 - Monash Cultural Night
I don't have much to say about the Cultural Night, actually. The highlights were the spectacular array of costumes that people came in and a couple of notable performances. Oh, and because I dragged the girl along, too.

I never realised that Elaine was taller than Carrie. Or maybe it's just the angle and the pose...

Speaking of the girl, as of yesterday, we've been together for half a year. I know it doesn't sound much to most people but considering that both of us are kinda new to this relationship thing, I must say we're making rather good progress. Here's to many more six months to come, sweetheart.

I gove my lirl.

Note: I tried my best to tone done the mushiness. I hope it worked.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
I came across this rather interesting case study in my International Economics textbook (Pugel, 2007) as I was doing research for my assignment. Anyway, do you know what a tariff is? It's a tax imposed on imports coming into a country aka the reason why imported cars are so bloody expensive in Malaysia.

Most countries apply tariffs to certain groups of products, for example, fruits and veggies as opposed to apples and broccoli (mmm... broccoli). Thus, sometimes items are classified really strangely in order to escape tariffs:

Carrots are considered fruits in the European Union, allowing Portugal to sell carrot jam (I didn't know there was such a thing!) throughout Western Europe without high duties.
Also, land snails (French escargots) are considered fish in the EU. Friggin' flippin' fish! Because of that, snail farmers get to collect fish farm subsidies.
In the US, toys that depict humans are known as dolls and are subject to 12% import tariffs. However, in 2003 a judge ruled that although most action figures are dolls, the X-Men (among others) depict nonhuman mutants and thus are subject to the 7% import tariffs imposed on 'normal' toys!

Ah... The stuff you learn as an economics student. It's the silly little things like these that keep me alive in my degree.

When I haven't any photos...

2008-03-27T12:26:00.004+08:00

...I start musing.

I'm more than halfway through my week-long mid-semester break which, funny enough, isn't even in the middle of the semester; it's after the fourth week of study when the semester's 13 weeks long. Silly Aussies and their holiday systems.

Not that I'm complaining though. I have two assignments due next Friday, one of them being a paper on Film Narrative (FTV1050 - Contemporary Film Studies). If you recall, I did Contemporary Television Studies last semester as an elective and got hooked immediately, not to mention that studying for the subject was what brought Carrie and I together...but that shall be a story for another day.

Anyway, I'm once again doing excessive research to score highly in my assignment and I hope it pays off like it did last year. In fact, through excessive research last year (by excessive I mean above and beyond what is normally expected in a first year subject), I managed to produce a (high distinction-scoring) piece of writing which until today I read and reread now and then for a session of self-indulgent glee. Hell, it might be craptacular in a true academic's eyes, but for humble ol' me I was the smartest bugger in class.

Plus I wrote it during the extremely heavy first week of October i.e. student council elections week. And the week before that was the YKLS production. And the weekend before that was September with the Monash Ball, and the weekend before that MNSM went to Kuala Selangor to clean up a swamp, and the weekend before we went river hiking at Chiling. Craaaaazy.

Which made it all the more sweeter when I got my results back. If you'd like to read my discourse on gender performativity in House, M.D. (the one with Hugh Laurie), click here. Told you I'm self-indulgent. Still, try not to plagiarise? Thanks.

Moving on to other news...

I fell sick last Monday (the 17th) from a throat infection (complete with phlegm-coughing, fever and sore throat) which seems to hit me once every quarter. It became really bad, subsided, and then went away almost completely yesterday, but came back to haunt me again this morning just to spite me, leaving me hacking and spitting. Maybe this has something to do with that cup of coffee and that bar of Cadbury Crunchie I ate yesterday.

In my defense, because of the sickness I had to completely eschew coffee and chocolate for almost two weeks; I couldn't stand the deprivation any longer! The cough this morning is preventing me from having another cup today...Grr...

That germ's a bitch. I really need to find out what this annoying affliction is from the doctor. Oh, and also stock up on antibiotics in anticipation of future outbreaks.

And I'm spent. I was about to go on rambling about being a coffee addict but I've been delaying my work on that Film Studies assignment for the past hour with this blog post. I hope you guys are happy (that you have something to read, that is...).

Until next time, may you not fall sick as I did.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
On the topic of Cadbury Crunchies, there's this really cool Crunchie ad that was screened unchanged for almost 20 years in Australia and New Zealand. 20 years! Even the DiGi Yellow Man ads only last for around half a year despite their novelty and hilarity.

Take note that this ad first screened in the 70s.

When I have photos, this happens

2008-03-15T16:15:00.008+08:00

One of the major banes of my blogging frequency is the severe lack of photos to go with whatever it was I did that I deem interesting enough to blog about (as I am wont to complain really often). But that's not the case here, thanks to my efforts in coercing Izuan to transfer the pictures onto my (brand new 4GB!) thumbdrive immediately after the party. As the official photographer for MonGa, the student publication, he managed to take many good photos of the party. If any of those photos actually get published in the magazine, well, you can say that you saw it here first!

And the party I'm referring to was the very first Monash Welcome Back Party that happened last night, right on our very own campus grounds. I never knew Monash students needed welcoming back.

14th March 2008 - Monash Welcome Back Party
As the Student Council Treasurer, I was initially (very) doubtful of the viability of the event as I was the one signing off on all the expenses involved; the lighting, the decorations, the food. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the sight of the campus cafeteria converted into what seems like a club on a shoestring budget. The tables were covered with either black or white runners, befitting the theme.

Believe it or not, this is the Monash cafeteria.

Cze Wien and Desmond, the couple that isn't.

Leanne (fellow SAJC ASEAN Scholar and MNSM vice-president) and her Korean friend Young In in the middle.

The party was marred first by starting about an hour and a half late, and then by heavy rains. But once the rain subsided, the performers got up the stage to work the reluctant audience.

You could say that we were the only unreluctant ones.

And then Icky started rapping and everyone crowded the dance floor.

He paved the way for a really great night. Even after he left the stage, nothing could stop the crowd from dancing to the other performances throughout the night.

Bird's-eye view of the party.

Throwing our hands up in the air like we just don't care~

We even had crowd surfers!

That's me trying to dance, as usual.

The main man of the show, Manil de Run, one of MUSA's Activities Chairpersons and the one mostly responsible for the party, showing us how to dance to a Sri Lankan tune.

The crowd trying to bhangra (and mostly failing at it)!

Well, there isn't much for me to say here besides the photos, is there? It was a complete blast, and all that without the stench of alcohol and cigarette smoke permeating the air, the two turnoffs that make me shy away from clubs. And having it outdoors enable better air circulation, too! I'm already looking forward for a bigger party next semester.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Tracy (the choirmate who came up with an album recently) showed me YouTube clips of this Australian comedy group called The Chaser. There's this segment of their comedy show where they'd interrupt the humdrum of a random bystander's daily life by converting it into a musical. Watch and be entertained!

Semester 1 2008 and "What I think about the elections"

2008-03-13T18:37:00.004+08:00

It's been a whopping three weeks since I last updated, and I apologise for that; just getting used to the new semester, that's all. Being the Student Council Treasurer as well as the Nature Society President both at the same time ain't easy work, and to top it off, not forgetting my choral and academic obligations as well. Then again, what else is new?

Anyway, the new semester started off with a rather hectic orientation. This semester marked the first time that the student body is being more involved in conducting the orientation than merely acting as buddies/guides throughout the week. Despite that, we managed to survive and orientation ended on an unceremonious note; as happened in previous semesters. Of course, I'm looking forward to increased student involvement in the coming semester as it'd bring Monash Sunway Campus closer to the idea of a typical university orientation program. We'd need a lot of planning for that, however.

Probably the only interesting photo I took during Orientation Week

On the other hand, this year's Orientation Bash was crazy. Typically, the Orientation Bash/Party is a free-for-freshies event that happens on the first weekend of the semester in order to further orientate students in the new intake. This time around, there were 220 participants and only about 30 or 40 buddies to manage them, resulting in widespread chaos. Nevertheless, the second half of the day spent in Sunway Lagoon as opposed to remaining on Monash grounds, allowing us to enjoy the theme park in the company of newly-made friends. If it weren't for the Sunway Lagoon portion, I would've (sadly) branded the event a disappointment. Fortunately, it wasn't.

My Orientation Bash group at Sunway Lagoon. And what a great bunch of people they were.

And now for a change of topic; the Malaysian general elections have just recently ended. For the first time in history, the opposition parties have control of five out of the 13 Malaysian states, with Selangor (the most developed one) under the PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat). Prior to this, many Malaysians' woes have fallen on the deaf ears of the ruling coalition; with more than 2/3rds majority in Parliament, many of the people in power have taken their positions for granted. Now that the opposition has taken over, I'm expecting major changes to the country in the coming years.

But you already know that.

What you don't know, though, is my opinion on the matter, and here it is: I can't stand partisan politics. I'm not too happy with the way the country had been managed in recent years, but that doesn't mean that everybody in Barisan Nasional is a corrupt, good-for-nothing, power-hungry man (and at times, with an ugly toupee to boot). Conversely, that also doesn't mean that everybody in the opposition is a country-saving messiah. In national politics, you can't expect both sides to be idiot-free; something that probably should be taught in Political Theory 101. Hence, people should vote not for which party they think is best for them, but for the person they think is best suited to do the job. Unfortunately, partisanship seems to be the primary determinant of voting decision in Malaysia. Except in the cases of how corrupt, good-for-nothing, power-hungry men (and in one case, with an ugly toupee to boot) are finally voted out of power. Thank goodness for that.

With that said, I'm still happy that the opposition has more say in Parliament now. I won't be irrationally exuberant about it, though, unless I start seeing results. The opposition now has a huge burden to bear; the next four or five years will be a hot-water test for them and if they fail to deliver, I won't be surprised if Malaysia kicks them out come the next general elections.

And for the last time, JUST BECAUSE WE ARE A PETROL-PRODUCING NATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT PETROL PRICES SHOULD BE CHEAPER IN MALAYSIA! Someday I'll write something with my shallow knowledge of economic theory and tell you the reason why and act all smart about it.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
And now for something completely different. I have here three pictures that should elicit a giggle or two from you people. First up is a van I encountered today while in Izuan's car on the way to Sunway Pyramid:

Suitably censored to protect the identity of the vehicle.

"The Leading Choice for Impotence Management" it says. Helps you (or your man) during the general erections.

And while we're on the subject of male anatomy, here's a condom that two unrelated friends of mine gave me on separate occasions:

It's the NYC condom from the Museum of Sex in New York! Totally unassuming, it's your run-of-the-mill family planning kit you normally keep in your back pocket. And then you turn to see the back side of the condom:

Good to know that Malaysia's helping in the worldwide fight against STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Do I hear someone saying "Belilah barangan buatan Malaysia"?

Pro Tour: Kuala Lumpur and me

2008-02-21T13:17:00.008+08:00

I've never been embarrassed to admit that at the core, I've always been a geek. I don't play or even follow sports on TV (except 'pro' wrestling like the WWE for a while), I'm easily amused by silly references to bits of geeky trivia (especially Monty Python ones), and I squeal like a Japanese fangirl when the latest Fallout sequel was announced two years back after a six-year hiatus; congratulations! I'm a geek.

That, and the fact that I play Magic: the Gathering, the number one trading card game in the world. Nothing screams geek more than grown men playing with and paying through the nose for pieces of colourful cardboard. Except maybe grown men dressed as elves and wizards and Jedi in a gaming convention.

To tell you the truth, the only reason why I haven't done cosplay is because I'm neither that crazy about anime nor do I have the money to do so.

Back to Magic. Each year, Wizards, the company that makes Magic, organises about four large scale tournaments called the Pro Tour around the world. A bunch of friends and I, being the Magic geeks that we are, had to go when they had it in Kuala Lumpur last week; it was a once in a lifetime opportunity as the Pro Tour never occurs in the same city twice, let alone in the Southeast Asian region.

My very own planeswalker card!

And so, I joined in the many side events that were organised during the four days of the Pro Tour. That's when I found out that I was bad at being a geek just as bad as I was at being a sportsman; out of more than 15 games I played, I only won a whopping three times. What's worse than being a geek? Being bad at it.

But that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Furthermore, playing Magic for four days made me realise one thing; no matter how much I try, I doubt I'll ever be able to quit the game for good. It's just too fun, to say the least. Maybe go on a hiatus or something, but I'll likely keep on playing even if I keep being bad at it. Plus I have friends who can help me stay on in this game, and I sorta figured out a way to keep this hobby alive without killing my wallet or my grades (too much).

Anyway, the Pro Tour is over and done with, and as usual, I took quite a number of pictures. Because people sitting around a table with their noses deep in cards don't make interesting photos, here's some of the more interesting highlights of the four days.

We spent a lot of time trading and selling cards, which allowed some of us to leave the KL Convention Centre with more money than we entered.

This here is Seishiro Ookubo, a Japanese man who makes spectacular 3-D art with trading cards.

An oversized 3-D Clone up close.

He makes abacus-like life counters too!

Pokemon! He wouldn't take it out until we begged him because Pokemon was no longer under Wizards.

The main event at the Pro Tour was, of course, the Pro Tour. To tell you how huge this event is, a total of USD230,795 forms the prize payout, with USD40,000 going to the winner of the Pro Tour. The winner of Pro Tour: Kuala Lumpur is none other than Mr. Jonny Magic himself, Jon Finkel.

That's the typical expression of a Magic Pro; head in hands, deep in concentration. In one word, that translates to "constipated".

Being the obsessive fanboys we are, Brendan and I took pictures with Jon.

And then we headed to Chili's for dinner, where we refilled our bottomless Nachos four times.

One other memorable occasion was when one of us (Sam) lost his trade binder worth anywhere between RM500 to RM1,000. To cut a very, very long story short, we found out that it had been stolen by a judge thanks to the wonders of CCTV technology. We got the binder back, and the judge got a shitload of penalties thrown his way, probably worth as much or even more than the binder itself. This shows you why you shouldn't steal, kids!

All in all, spending four days playing Magic served only to cement the geek in me. Even though I know I'll never be able to earn thousands of dollars at geekery, seeing the Magic Pros doing well at the game and earning money while they're at it gives me a small sense of pride that I'm part of this much-maligned and misunderstood community. Hey, Bill Gates ~~was~~ is a geek, too. May geeks prevail!

MONEYYYY!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
The wildly popular Fallout role-playing game series started in 1997, continued in 1998 with Fallout 2 and hasn't received a proper sequel since (the spin-offs all sucked badly). It had a very cool 1950s-inspired post-apocalyptic (of the nuclear kind) future atmosphere to it; by 1950s, I mean computers with vacuum tubes and underground fallout shelters. If you like playing computer games, give the series a try. In fact, I'm currently replaying the ten year old Fallout 2 in anticipation of the upcoming Fallout 3 later this year. If you want the CD, I can lend it to you. Spread the (geeky) love!

Valentine's Day 2008

2008-02-19T01:30:00.008+08:00

A little late to be posting this up, but I was busy last week (more on that in a future post). In fact, I'm also helping the new Monash batch with orientation this week, which once again results in more blogging material but not enough time to write them.

Back on topic. Last year I wrote a poem about Valentine's Day; not that it's not stupid and pointless (despite myself never having celebrated it with a significant other before) but merely a commercialised, hyped-up occasion based on Saint Valentine, a person who may or may not have even existed. An analogy would be comparing Valentine's Day to Christmas; how did the birth of Christ lead to Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman?

This Day Of Remembrance

And so it arrives, knocking at the door,
The day of remembrance of an overlooked saint
Whose name remained in popular lore,

Yet causes unwarranted stress and strain,
Birthed from tales of sacrificial lambs,
An excuse for birth of affection feigned.

Though love so pure can from normal men stem,
More often than not, the heart does lie,
Catastrophes blamed on bodily phlegm.

Pitiful are flowers that wantonly try
To draw in a bee with petals of flame
When nectar alone will get them by,

For even Venus beat the fly at the game.
So thus I lie in waiting for the one
Who pierces my being by the whisper of her name,

And then I shall make this day of this month
No more or less important than another;
Every moment burns, fiery like the Sun.

The foolish are not mistaken, but rather
Seizing the day for unconditional love.
I too realise the folly of my endeavours,

But never will I let the florists and cardmakers gain
From this day of remembrance of an overlooked saint.

Of course I've already met someone who fits the description in the fifth stanza, and life is good.

But as I've mentioned before, Valentine's Day is not pointless. It gives people an excuse to be nicer to their partners, and to do things that they normally wouldn't do for somebody they love (like putting up a billboard advertisement to propose to a girlfriend). Nevertheless, for personal (and financial) reasons, I refuse to allow "florists and cardmakers" earn money off me on Valentine's Day. Yeah, I'm a cheapskate and will friggin' be one until I start earning a five digit (non-Indonesian rupiah-style currency) income.

Hence, on Valentine's Day eve, the girlfriend and I cooked lemon pasta for dinner. It turned out rather well, except for the fact that we overdid with the lemon as well as the portion; we made enough to feed four!

That's real Norwegian Smoked Salmon we're talking about here!

So, because we did this on the 13th, technically I still have yet to celebrate Valentine's Day. Props to me, huh? Now you can't call me a hypocrite for celebrating it.

Pointless Fact of the Day
Courtesy of Ms Lai Suk Yin, the polymath who usually follows me to choir.

Pasta al Limone
Serves: 2 people

Ingredients:
1/4 cup or a bit more lemon juice - you'll need about 3 or 4 lemons
depending on how big.
1/4 cup of chopped parsley
Grated Parmesan cheese, however much you like though about 1/4 to half
a cup works fine

Optional ingredients:
A nice big chunk of crab meat, or fake crab sticks cut up (the second is easier)
OR: thin slices of smoked salmon

1) Boil enough pasta for 2 people. Half a box, 3/4 box should do, any
extra, keep it for lunch.

2) Drain the pasta, season with salt and pepper, then toss with the
parsley, lemon juice, and grated Parmesan.

3) If using fake crab sticks, slice them into long thinnish strips,
put a teaspoon or two of butter/margerine into a small frying pan,
wait for butter to melt. Then quickly fry the slices up, just enough
for it to smell good and maybe get just a little brownish, but don't
need to. Just sort of cooking it to make it taste better only. When
done, pour onto pasta and mix it all up.

4) If using smoked salmon, just slice it up and set aside on a plate.
Don't mix with warm pasta or it'll become cooked smoked salmon, unless
that's what you want.

Serve with a nice green salad, with some tomatoes, if desired.

Chinese New Year 2008

2008-02-14T11:36:00.007+08:00

Chinese New Year is back again, so welcome to the year of the Rat (not Mouse as Disney would prefer)! As usual, I spent the first four days in my hometown of Melaka, where 95% of my rather huge extended family lives. Four days of tidbits and relatives and house hopping, oh my! Must be fun, huh? To be frank, I usually face the CNY with some sense of dread, because the typical house visit goes as follows:

Enter house and exchange pleasantries and angpows (yay!)
Parents chat animatedly with the hosts, with intermittent comments by the kids
Kids become bored after about 10 minutes
Effect continues until ~~end of turn~~ we leave the premises, anytime between an hour and a half (at least!) and four hours

Cousins' children getting a feel of the CNY spirit.

One of the aforementioned kids' dads, performing his fatherly obligations. That's my sis in the background.

Ain't she cute? Aww...

I think this pattern applies to many youths out there too, or maybe it's just because the banana in me finds it tough to communicate well with my relatives, or sometimes there's just too few people my age to speak to, or the shows on TV were all in Chinese and without subtitles, or because I don't have a portable gaming system like a PSP and didn't dare bring a book back to read because they say it's rude to read while visiting people's homes and that the Chinese word for "book" sounds the same as "lose" and overly superstitious folks chided me for doing so in the past before.

Wish I had a PSP myself, or a DS. Nintendo FTW!

Sigh. But as Reb Tevye can attest, it's tradition... TRADITION! But at least I had an okay phone camera to alleviate the boredom, and I actually enjoyed myself at some of these visits.

Boredom in action. Wait, that's sort of a paradox.

Oh, and this year's angpow collection increased after slumping for several years! Whoo! I suppose everything else are necessary evils if you wanna get those red packets of dough.

My brother got a taste of his celebrity-hood when a random dude approached him for photos.

Well, there's just a couple more days until the end of the CNY, so enjoy them while you can. And if you aren't Chinese, go visit one today! But make sure that there are married people around first if you want them angpows.

A cousin of mind is getting married to a cool Indian dude, which explains this picture.

On the other hand, nobody is marrying the Hamburglar since the 70s.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Our Prime Minister, Abdullah Badahwi first said on Tuesday that he won't dissolve the parliament on Wednesday, only to dissolve it after that statement has went to press. What gives?

Resolutions, schmezzolutions... again

2008-02-06T03:34:00.000+08:00

Ofttimes I want to blog about something but was just too lazy to get around to doing it. Now that I'm in the mood, I suppose I'd better get around to writing about this ASAP. Also, all of you know how bloody verbose I can get.

Technically, I'm already an entire month too late to be making New Year's resolutions, but who the hell makes the rules anyway, eh? But first, let's take a look at how far along I've come since last April when I last checked on my 2007 resolutions:

Pick up music
Run (and generally exercise) more
Be a good ______
Game less
Continue or rewrite my NaNoWriMo project
Do well in my papers
Stick to all these resolutions

1. Pick up music (FAILED)
Sorta expected. I just couldn't find somewhere to fit even more classes (or even self-teaching sessions) without some adverse effect on my studies... or wallet.

2. Run (and generally exercise) more (GREAT SUCCESS, IS NICE!)
Well... I definitely exercised more in comparison to 2006, though not by a very large margin.

At the Malay Mail Big Walk... Walking. Really quickly.

3. Be a good ______ (GREAT SUCCESS, IS NICE!)
This was just a catchall for the commitments I had in 2006:

SJBAYS/TQ - With a camp and an unpaid (it's charity!) emceeing gig, I would say that I've done well.
YKLS - Became a member of the chamber choir, sang at the annual production, went to Jakarta for the Asian Choir Games and even found myself a significant other; definitely a great success!

The Young KL Singers at Move It!, our 2007 production.

You really do meet people in the choir. *Wink*
MUSA - The Monash Student Council had a rather bumpy, drama-filled rollercoaster ride of a year that would put The O.C. to shame. That was supposed to happen! Seriously.
MNSM - I went from being the Nature Society's treasurer to being its president. And our membership ballooned by almost fourfold, and we had like four (or more?) successful activities last semester. Hell yeah!

In Pahang with elephants.

Family - I am still the child who does the most chores around the house. As far as I'm concerned, I'm all set.

Whoo!

4. Game less (HALF-HALF LA)
I probably still played the same amount of computer games in 2007 as I did in 2006. Even if I did play less, the extra time was probably filled with other things like downloading and watching Heroes, House, Lost, and an assortment of random movies.

5. Continue or rewrite my NaNoWriMo project (FAILED)
Gah! Not only did I spend 0 hours on writing fictional rubbish, I couldn't participate in last year's NaNoWriMo due to an extremely busy November.

6. Do well in my papers (EFFING FAILED!)
I'm pretty much particularly pissed about not pulling off this one. Out of the eight subjects I took last semester, I got 3 High Distinctions, 1 Distinction, and 4 Credits! That's four subjects within the 60~69 mark range! Pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed.

7. Stick to all these resolutions (FAILED)
To my credit, at least I kept 2.5 out of 6 of the resolutions I made for 2007.

Nevertheless, I still think that 2007 had been the highlight of my life thus far. In the past year, I've done so much more with my life than I thought was possible (at least by my standards).

My 2004/5 in Singapore comes close by a margin.

In fact, whenever random people (especially aunties, they tend to be nosier than most) ask me about the activities I'm involved in, with great pride I'd roll the list off my tongue as though memorised - Student council, Nature Society, Choir, temple activities, and for a while, the performing arts club - and then go into expository mode, droning on and on about the amount of time I spent on each activity every week.

Self-satisfying ego masturbation, call it what you will, but it's moments like these that remind me why I burden myself with so much on my plate in the first place: ~~To show of~~Self improvement. I believe that with everything I join, no matter how much or how little effort I put in, I'm living my life just that little bit fuller. Especially at this stage in life, when I'm merely a student without as much responsibilities as a full-fledged adult, I have more freedom to indulge in endeavours that interest me.

I may not be in a place to say this as I'm no paragon of a student (look at my results!), but I do have an advice to fellow students out there; if something (or for that matter, someone) tickles your fancy, do something about it right now! You may not have the chance or opportunity anymore once you're working-aged.

Carpe diem!

And at the end of the day, you can always brag about your successes to your friends or heck, even your children. Bwahahahaha! Until an even more successful person comes along...

Of course, that's no reason not to keep on trying to do good with your life, eh? With that in mind, as well as taking into account my failure to meet half my resolutions for 2007, I'm coming up with a relatively more achievable and realistic list for 2008.

1. Maintain a Distinction average
Truth to be told, I didn't put 100% into my studies last year (surprise surprise). I really got too caught up with my activities to the extent that I became disillusioned with my course (a Business degree, incidentally). I lost interest to put it simply. However, I discovered the simple reason for this; it's because I didn't go to enough classes to understand and appreciate the subjects I took. Not this year, though. I'll make it through simply because of the following equation:

Because I pay RM2,500 per subject in Monash (not taking into account miscellaneous fees) and have a total of 36 contact hours per semester (3 hours per week over 12 weeks of study), that makes up to RM69.40 per hour. This means that for every hour of class I skip, I'm wasting RM70!

RM70, OMGWTFBBQROFLMAO!

So, the next time you decide to skip a class, think of the amount of money you're wasting. I will, and hopefully that will help me get better grades. A Distinction average is a realistic target, too.

2. Cut down on buying so much food
I don't drink much and I can't stand cigarette smoke; the only vice I have would probably be my expenditure on food, especially junk like chips, candy, chocolates and chicken (mmm... fast food). Yeah, I know I don't look it. The main reason why this resolution is here is not to protect my health but my finances.

3. Get myself a new laptop by year's end
I bought this desktop PC at the end of 2004; by the end of this year it'll be four years old, and probably time to retire this machine and move on to a more powerful, more portable one. Besides, I really really really want to play Fallout 3 when it comes out. Hopefully I'll earn or save up enough by the last quarter of the year. Nothing beats indulging in something with your own hard-earned cash.

And that's about it. I won't get too ahead of myself like I did last year. If there's something I learned, it's that coming up with too many resolutions defeats the purpose; because you already expect to fail at some of your goals, you might not try hard enough to achieve them. Hopefully, with just three I can concentrate better.

But that doesn't mean that adding more to the list in the future is out of the question either. Like I've said earlier; who the hell makes the rules about resolutions anyway, eh? Until next time, cheers, and have a happy Chinese New Year.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
A little plug for my choirmates Ian Chow and Tracy Wong. They released their joint album last month entitled "He Says / She Says":

A little blurb on the album:
"Ease yourself into a summery blend of soulful melodies and breezy folk-pop/rock. Without pessimism and affectation, Ian and Tracy, two Malaysian singers-songwriters, simply show the full range of their eclectic influences over the 13 songs from their debut album."

Yeah, that doesn't really shed a lot of light on the music available on the album. So take a listen to them at http://music.download.com/ianandtracy/! I especially like Bidadari. If anyone's interested in getting themselves a copy (RM20 for a limited time as opposed to RM25), you can inform me or you can get in touch with them directly on either of their blogs: Ian's / Tracy's

Support the Malaysian music industry! Buy the original.

Alternatively, sit in my car sometime and I'll let you listen to the CD.

This is my December (Part 2)

2008-01-31T01:10:00.000+08:00

Yeah, it's silly writing about December when February is just a day away, but I have to finish what I started. Also, I have a lot more stuff to write about in the next few days, so I'll keep this one short.

22nd December 2007 - SJBA YS 15 NOW
First of all, the Subang Jaya Buddhist Association Youth Section 15th Anniversary Concert: The Night of Wonders (aka SJBA YS 15 NOW) was a smashing success, at least according to my standards. Initially, I was quite worried about pulling the emcee role off (what else would I be good for?); I always try to be funny, but because everyone knows that humour is relative, during the full rehearsal, almost nobody at all laughed at my funny bits (and I'm not referring to what's tucked inside my pants).

But it was laugh after laugh during the real show, and there were even giggles at parts that I didn't intend to be funny at all, so it was all good. Heck, my name got printed in The Star (albeit only as a passing mention), too! Happy happy, joy joy. Now if only I wore contacts and remembered to cut my hair before the thing...

Courtesy of Alvin Low; all the pictures my dad took were blur.

27th to 30th December 2007 - SJBA YS 16th Youth Dhamma Camp
It was one temple activity after another; I was one of the two programmers in this camp, the other being the aforementioned Alvin Low. Too much happened during that four days and three nights than I would bother to write about, so once again I'll let the pictures do the talking...

...except that I don't have any with me at the moment. Watch this space for updates, but if we're unlucky, you won't get to see any (I don't have any from last year's camp, either).

31st December 2007 - Countdown at The Curve
Fresh from the camp, we gathered once again to celebrate the new year at The Curve. It was quite fun with a turnout of more than 30 camp participants.

Jumpshot!

Another!

Jumping on TV!

30 or so familiar faces at The Curve.

And I'm spent. For now.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Hasbro is coming up with the Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition where you can buy property from cities around the world. The thing is; which cities would make the cut? That's where we come in. People can vote for their Top 10 choices at this site. You only have 30 days left! You can also check out the leaderboard here, it's really interesting to find out what the most popular cities are. KL is currently at 49! Only the top 20 will make it, plus 2 wildcard nominees.

For what it's worth, I voted Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, Dublin, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, and London.

I Like Chinese

2008-01-11T20:35:00.000+08:00

"I like China" would have been more appropriate, but I couldn't resist giving the Python crew a little nod. Anyway, Part 2 of my December updates regarding the emceeing job, camp, as well as what I did on New Year's Eve won't come up until I get all the photos to those things; it's not fun to post without pictures.

Back to the topic. But before I begin, let me just add that because this trip lasted a whole week, be prepared for pages of incoherent and probably grammatically-incorrect babbling (if Blogspot actually had pages). Also, my mom packed the wrong (borrowed) winter jacket for me, which resulted in me looking morbidly oversized in almost all the photos we took.

You were warned!

Day 1 - 2nd January
On the wee hours of the morning of the 2nd of January, my family joined a tour group (of only 17 people in total) to visit several cities in China. This is the first time my siblings and I are travelling to somewhere farther than Thailand, and the first time any of us will be experiencing winter. The trip got off on a good start; the flight was at 2am, and I spent most of it sleeping soundly on the plane as a result. We landed about five hours later in Shanghai. Soon we were up on a bus and introduced to our tour guide.

The first stop on our trip was a place was called City God Temple. The Chinese built an entire tourist hotspot around this temple, but we ended up not buying anything (because we'd be able to find them cheaper later during our trip) except a large Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks (which wasn't that cheap either).

The apparently perennial queue for the famous City God Temple Xiao Long Bao. At less than 2 yuan a piece, it's surprisingly cheap considering Shanghai city's high living standards. However, we didn't buy it because the queue was just too damn long.

Just messing around with a suspended teapot fountain.

Immediately after that stop, we headed straight for Wuzhen, an ancient town built around a river, some two or three hours away. If I recall correctly, the inhabitants of this town are paid a government subsidy to preserve the area's architecture. On the outside, you see wooden walls and brick and mortar, but on the inside, some houses had tiled floors and television sets. While some of Wuzhen's people lived in the 1900s, others were in the 21st century; a true anachronistic juxtaposition (big words omg!).

One of the traditional economic activities practiced there was the distillation of rice wine. They let us try some with over 50% alcoholic content, which led to a drunken brawl between my brother and I...

Another such activity is weaving and dyeing. Frankly, I thought they were shabbily made.

From Wuzhen we immediately went on to the city of Hangzhou, another couple of hours away. Had dinner there and lodged at a hotel for the night.

Day 2 - 3rd January
Hangzhou is rather developed but didn't have as many ongoing construction projects as Shanghai did. As a result, I felt as though we were in a middle-class part of Japan in the 1980s... or at least, how middle-class Japan looked like on TV in old serials and movies (I've never been there).

Our first stop in Hangzhou was the West Lake, yet another beautiful tourist destination. It rose to prominence thanks to the works of a certain poet named Su Dongpo. It had a small exhibition centre and a series of parks surrounding the lake.

This just shows how huge the place actually is.

Then we went on a boat ride around the lake, during which I took pictures of various objects of interest propped up against its banks. For some reason, nobody in my family was as excited about the winter scenery as I was.

The well-known Leifeng Pagoda. It was rather misty that day.

Then we got off on a different part of the park, with a ~~carp~~ ~~koi~~ carp pond and (oh boy!) free-ranging peafowls.

I'm quite fond of this picture I took, except for certain parts where the lighting's screwed. I love taking pictures but loathe changing camera settings.

In the afternoon we headed to a plantation selling the renowned "West Lake Dragon Well Green Tea" aka Xi Hu Long Jing Lu Cha. We bought a couple of packets back, but we later decided that we sort of got ripped off somewhat; they were expensive! And even then, you're not sure if the quality is 100% up to par. Who were we to know, eh?

Nothing far too interesting happened there except for what I called a 'magic show' by the tea sellers.

Day 3 - 4th January
We were still in Hangzhou. That morning, we were taken to a Chinese traditional medicine pharmacy for tourists where they had a guy promoting to us their products, just like the tea plantation did the day earlier. However, being somewhat skeptical of traditional medicines as well as not knowing much of neither Mandarin nor Cantonese didn't help with the boredom. Instead of staying to listen, I ventured out to the garden/park right outside to take even more photos of the scenery. But first:

They sell Iguana-on-a-stick! Actually a gecko... But if you got that joke, you're my new best friend for a day! Then again, most of you who got it probably are some of my best friends already, haha. Anyway, the garden/park/garpark was beautiful:

Trees with red leaves are always nice subjects.

Up close!

I took a photo directly at sunlight just to see how it'd turn out. Not too bad I suppose.

My current desktop wallpaper!

They had electric streetlamps that looked like this. I thought they were cool.

Hence the fetish with lamp poles.

Certainly a much better way to spend 30 minutes instead of sitting through a sales pitch for products I know I'm never gonna use, right? If only I were any better at photography (I completely suck), I would've gone crazy over there. After I rejoined my family who ended up not buying anything (phew), we waited for the tour bus to arrive. In the meantime...

We waited out in the open; the sun made it warm enough for me to take a picture without my jacket on. Finally!

Who the man?!

This, my friends, is an electric bicycle, the number-one choice of transport for the Chinese, next to a traditional bicycle. Note the pedals on the thing. I think they're pretty cool, plus they're cheap and super economical. Maybe I should find a way to import one into Malaysia in the future.

And after that, we had lunch and headed straight for the next stop, Suzhou. During the two hour long ride I took the pictures of a few interesting sights:

This huge church was right outside where we lunched that day.

Travelling on highways and passing rural areas, you see houses occasionally bearing advertisements like these on their walls. I think the homeowners do it to supplement their meagre income.

Our first stop in Suzhou was the Hanshan Temple. It was okay as temples go; while travelling in Suzhou, I saw grander temples around the place. I'm still wondering why our tour decided to head there instead of one of the bigger ones.

They reared geese in the temple! How quaint.

From there, we went to a nearby fort, or more exactly, its remnants. Known as the Panmen Gate, it was the oldest landmark in Suzhou, estimated to be around 2,500 years old. Of course, it's still around due to reconstructions and renovations over the years. Not much to do except take photos over there, and fending off ever-present street peddlers.

After dinner we went to a shopping district/road in Suzhou, similar to Orchard Road in Singapore when at night. However, it wasn't that big, and all I bought was a cheap sweater.

Day 4 - 5th January
Went to a place of interest of which name I cannot recall at the moment. However, having been to Wuzhen town earlier during the tour, this spot in Suzhou wasn't as interesting.

Next, the tour guide brought us to a silk factory. The stuff there was (unsurprisingly) mostly expensive, so my dad only bought a pillow for himself. Frankly, I found Suzhou to be the most boring stop in my tour. We soon headed for Nanjing.

Nanjing was more interesting, having been the capital city of China for several dynasties. Our first stop was the City Wall of Nanjing, a huge wall surrounding the city's ancient borders. This made for a number of nice photos.

And then we went to another one of those Orchard Road-like places. This one was much bigger than Suzhou's, and the entire tour group just went crazy with shopping and haggling. I'm a little proud of myself to have managed to get the price of a bag down to one-fifth its original selling price (I usually suck at bargaining). And because we were all so busy shopping, not many photos were taken.

You can see the obligatory tour group flag in this picture.

The neon lights were so loud, even the deaf covered their ears.
*Ba-dum-cha!*

All in all, most of us went back to the hotel happy.

Day 5 - 6th January
Today, we went to the Nanjing Yangtze River/Chang Jiang Bridge in the morning... all of 80 metres up in the air.

Facing one side of the bridge.

The other.

Downstairs, they had a gallery of this amazing artist who draws pictures on the inside of transparent pots, globes, and vases. Once again, unsurprisingly expensive.

These are just two that we managed to shoot before we were told to put away our cameras. The amount of detail was mind-boggling.

From there, we headed for a jade shop...for tourists. In fact, the place was called the Nanjing Shopping Centre for International Tourists or something along those lines. Like the tea, medicine, silk and thingamabob shops before this, tour guides seem to always drag you along to places specially catered for tourists (do I hear a "Duh!" somewhere?). Even more interestingly; all of those doing the sales pitches speak Cantonese (at the tea farm, the pharmacy, all of them!). And all of them try to give you a run for your money... Sigh.

Anyway, jade is expensive too, so we didn't buy anything before taking the bus to Wuxi. We went to the Three Kingdoms City, a huge spot in Wuxi built specially for the CCTV series based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. When we arrived, we were greeted with a reenactment of the battle at Hulao Pass where Zhang Fei, Guan Yu and Liu Bei fought against Lu Bu.

The extras, bored from trying to look busy. Or were they busy looking bored?

Zhang Fei and Guan Yu against Lu Bu in the middle. It took two of them plus Liu Bei to drive Lu Bu off... What wimps. Then again, you don't give Lu Bu the highest stats in Dynasty Warriors for no reason.

The set was huge, all 350,000 square metres of it. The Chinese converted it into something akin to a mini theme park. It was fun to go trigger-happy there.

They had nylon back in those days?

At night, of all places, the tour guide brought us to Parkson. Parkson!!! A small part of Malaysia smack-dab in the middle of China. That's what happens when you join tours, people.

But who was I to complain? My brother and I bought a pair of original Converse shoes each for cheaps over there, heh heh.

Day 6 - 7th January
The second last day of the trip started with a visit to a pearl farm, apparently the largest in the world. The guy in charge (who unsurprisingly speaks Cantonese, too) opened a young oyster for demonstration, as well as told us the method of differentiating genuine and fake pearls. I don't know how accurate or even how true it is, but it was a convincing show.

After that, we went to a traditional Chinese teapot factory (for tourists, *groan*) where we weren't allowed to take pictures. Bummer. But everyone haggled like mad for good deals and my dad being the tea-drinker came home with two sets of teapots and cups.

Finally, after lunch, we move on to the last destination on our trip, also the first: Shanghai!

It was already rather late in the evening when we arrived; the ride took us about four hours. We went straight for the Xintiandi, or "New Heaven and Earth", a place where old Shanghai buildings were refurbished to become an extreme-upper-class shopping and dining area. It's not just expensive here, it's exorbitant. But the place looked cool, so...

Who the man?!

After dinner, we took a ferry cruise around the river cutting through Shanghai. Even more photos abound, including the city's several landmarks. We also took pictures of the Shanghai Bund, but they were on my brother's camera because my dad's went out of batteries. Sad case.

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower, or as I like to call it, the stick with two balls.

The young couple Kevin and Maxine plus the three of us siblings. An interesting story: Kevin was an ASEAN Scholar from VJC and Maxine is a Singaporean who used to be in NJC. And they were both from the 2004 batch! We all had mutual friends to gossip about. Plus my mom acted as their surrogate mother when haggling for cheaper prices at the aforementioned jade place. By the end of the trip, the whole tour group was well-acquainted and hunted and hounded for bargains like a huge extended family. Talk about relatives you never knew about, haha!

Day 7 - 8th January
Our last day in China was the most uneventful of the entire trip. We headed to a Feng Shui shop specialising in the making of Pixiu (something akin to the Qilin/Kirin) ornaments, large and small. Because I've stopped believing in Feng Shui and astrology some time ago, I was bored out of my skull. We were also brought to yet another shopping district, but we've seen everything before at Nanjing and at cheaper prices, so it was just a matter of wasting time until the bus came to bring us to the airport.

There's no end to Chinese piracy; this was the fourth or fifth Clio Coddle store I saw during the trip.

One of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games mascot! He looks really shabby though.

You could easily tell how bored we were.

And it didn't stop there; it took almost an hour to get to the airport, and the flight was delayed from 7.30pm to 8.30pm, and it was a five hour flight... Everything just screamed boredom. To alleviate it, we gave China the farewell it deserved with one last photo.

And I didn't actually reach home until 2.45am the next morning. But all in all, I found the trip to be extremely eye-opening; the China I saw was a lot more developed than I expected (none of those dirty toilet stories you get from people visiting Beijing). Plus our first brush with winter was great experience! I've never worn the same bunch of clothing for so many days in a row before, and my feet had never been smellier.

I would go on more about what I thought about the trip, but if I do this'll go from a short story to a novella. Furthermore, 90 uploaded pictures is a new record for me. To sum it all: The trip may have been draggy, but it certainly was fun enough for me. Thanks for watching!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Come on, you got this far already. Just click the link: Linkety link.