Tim Yang's Travelogue

KL Stories
I've got a new project called KLStories. It's a blog with anecdotes contributed by people about Kuala Lumpur, about its people and its culture.

It's part of a worldwide project by web designers and writers called Citystories that was started a couple of years ago and includes Seattlestories, SFstories and NYstories. It links residents of different cultures in one grand global community. So far, KLstories is one of the first Asian cities to be part of this project.

Ornaments on the dashboard of a taxi driver.

The design of the site has already been started by Ling. It's a skeleton with a banner and I'll have to add the other stuff like an about me page, links and text styling. Kevin, one of her friends is keen to start contributing stories and I hope he will write stories about all the drugs and teh tariks he and his other sixteen-year old friends consume. That would be an interesting balance to my own been-there-done-that style. My anecdotal contributions will basically be syndications from my own blog.

People waiting for a bus at a downtown bus stop during peak hour traffic.

I plan to make this site open. So I'll be publishing the username and password necessary for anybody to enter Blogger and contribute stories immediately. It's not about trust... it's about user convenience. I prefer letting them strike when the enthusiasm is hot.

The site will need a lot of work and I plan to put in several nights worth. Luckily I invested in a new HTML/XHTML reference book recently. But I won't be able to start this weekend. I'll have to be in Johor Bahru, the southern-most city on the Malaysian peninsula, for a little while. plink | 9 comments

Smokers
I've always been fascinated by smokers as a subject for photography. But I don't smoke myself. The activity is a fascinating study of humans in repose or agitation as the case may be.

The office smokers. The diffused light in the stairwell is from the smoke of a thousand cigarettes stubbed out on the floor.

My office doesn't have a smoking room. The employees who are smokers use the fire escape stairwell instead. They're not supposed to, but management has turned a blind eye to that inflagration. The office is structured in such a way that one of the doors to the stairwell is a one-way door. This is the door that's the most convenient entrance to the stairwell. So the smokers have to carry a special electronic pass-key card to get out of the stairwell. The smokers are marked by pass-key cards hanging from their pockets or from a strap around their neck as surely as having a tattoo of Joe Camel on their forehead.

Our smokers however don't have to share the stairwell with smokers from the offices of the other floors. Those smokers have to leave the building in order to have a puff. plink | 2 comments

National day
August 31st is the National Day of Malaysia, often called Merdeka which basically means 'freedom'.

On the road in Malaysia. Where are the flags?

I think it marks the day when a Malaysian prime minister took over the reins of government of the country from the colonial British government. While it meant freedom from colonists, it doesn't necessarily signify political freedom. Nor for that matter economic freedom or personal freedom as the last few years in Malaysia have shown.

I was woken up this morning by military planes doing practice fly-bys over the capital. But even the engine of those planes sounded lacklustre. The mood in the city is that of a man moments before he is drowned. A few years ago at the height of the pan-asian depression, someone had thought of producing mini-Malaysian flags to hang on cars like stickers. These sold like hot-cakes. Every car-owner, taxi-driver and bus-driver had to have one. There were more flags on vehicles than there were tape-players in the dashboard. It was an exciting time when people seemed to identify with the nation's problems.

The ornate pedestrian overhead bridge leading to the national museum.

A few more days to Merdeka, there are hardly any flags on the roads. Even the flag on the parliament house seems somehow more grimy and lifeless. The economic crisis is more or less over. Retail is back in full force with the opening of several new malls. More commercial buildings have been occupied. Housing prices are on the rise.

Grabbing a cab at a taxi stand in the evening.

Yet we're occupied by thoughts of impending doom. The US economic downturn threatens to bring down Asia's. Hah, we've survived worse than that. Is it the weather? It's never been very sunny in August and cloudy skies are always expected at this pre-monsoon time of the year. Is it the prisoner in Sungei Buloh Gaol who until five years ago used to be our deputy prime minister? Although he's never left the collective conscience, he's hardly spoken of these days.

It's probably a combination of all those factors and that Malaysians don't seem to have anything positive to look forward to. The first Merdeka was in the heady days of a social revolution over 30 years ago. There was hope then. But where is hope now? plink | 1

How to build a corpse

For $20, you can get a manual on how to build a "life-size" corpse from hobby shop material. Or you can order a custom-built one from these guys. A male corpse is $650, a female one is $695. Geez! $45 for boobs and extra padding around the hips?

Morbid, but an excellent idea for Halloween house-prepping. plink | 1

Movie idea
I'm thinking of a heist movie I'd like to make. The mechanics of the heist would work like this:

Security firms with banks as clients often run robbery drills to train the bank staff to handle themselves calmly in a high-stress situation. The bank closes during the training session so there aren't any customers around.

The heist team knocks out the "robbery" team and take their place. They run the drill (with ski-masks of course), taking money from the cashiers and the safe and make their escape -- still pretending to be the security firm's trainers.

The entire robbering is conducted under the watchful eye of the helpful bank managers who let the robbers make their getaway, still quite proud at the way the staff kept calm and let the robbery run so smoothly without any violence. plink | 5 comments

Support the pirates!

We love our pirated VCD-format movies. Malaysians have had the benefit of them for so many years that we can't do without them. We watch movies all the time. While most of the population of Hollywood has never seen a French movie in their life, most Malaysians have.

Recently the government has done its utmost to discourage the VCD pirates, threatening to pull their trading licenses and running several stories in the press about large VCD confiscation hauls. It appears that the movie-studios have finally matched and exceeded the price the VCD pirates have been paying government officials to look the other way. Insiders say the VCD pirates are producing much fewer VCDs and are holding back on most titles except the most saleable Hollywood blockbuster junk.

VCD pirates are quickly becoming our Robin Hoods. They've been giving us cheap and ready access to great movies, against the wishes of huge greedy studio-conglomerates like Paramount that would have charged us eye-gouging prices for them and that play movie-politics by holding good but not financially-viable movies hostage.

So several of us, including Joanne and I have been on a grassroots VCD pirate support crusade, going to all the VCD pirates and giving them verbal encouragement, telling them that there will always be a market for VCDs. We're also buying VCDs by the hoard loads to prove our point.

If you're visiting Malaysia soon, please go to Petaling Street and give moral courage to our entrepreneurs. Ok, they're not the most legal, but in a country where people are oppressed by a corrupt legal system, they're our heroes. plink | 5 comments

Aiiiieeeeee part 3
I could kill for a cookie right now. An Oreo. In fact I have a jar of them in front of me right now. They were bought for me by a friend the day after I got back from dental surgery... the bastard. plink | 4 comments

WHY?!
Why do radio DJs constantly insist on refering to pop stars in such familiar terms? They speak of people like Jennifer Lopez as if was she their best friend and that they went on double dates throughout high-school and still do.

It drives me nuts. plink | 1

Kids, don't try this at home
I was working out at the gym and I recalled a funny story.

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) was working out at home one day and his girlfriend decided to give him urm... something... while he was working out. He described it as the most exciting urm... experience... he's ever had. Pumping out on dumbell bicep curls and having urm... something... done to him was like having a double fetish macho fantasy happening at the same time. It was mind-blowing.

But he said he wouldn't recommend that I have urm... it... done to me. Because when guys ahem... finally... there is a tendency to loosen the grip of the hand. And let's just say 40lbs weights and girlfriends don't work out well together.

Okaaaaay, back to the workout. plink | 2 comments

The World According to Garp

T.S. Garp isn't anyone great. But he is special. At first because of whom he was associated with -- his mother, a famous author and political activist. And at the end, it was also because of whom he was associated with -- his wife and his family.

The World According to Garp (1982) is one of the first dramatic movies starring Robin Williams and one of the last of the director George Roy Hill who in his short directing career, he made several award-winning easy-going dramas like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting.

Garp is frustrated not because of who he is, but what he is not. He is a writer who loves writing, at first for the most unassuming reason because a girl he is interested wants to marry a writer -- "a real writer". We might think from the title of the movie that Garp is someone special or has some special outlook on life. And so does he. He is certainly imaginative. When a single-pilot plane crashes into a house he and his wife are planning to buy, he immediately declares his intention to buy the house because "it's safe -- it's been pre-disastered".

Garp is surrounded by weird and wonderful but never writes about them as if he takes them all for granted in his growing cynicism. There is the transsexual footballer, the prostitute his mother pays for, the group of women who cut off their tongues in protest against men. Instead he creates the settings of his books out of his own imagination like one called "The Magic Glove", a modern tale of a man who is protected from ever experiencing life because of the magic gloves he wears that help perform miracles. Garp is like that but his glove he wears is his frustration at his mother and with himself.

Yet, inspite of or perhaps because of that frustration, he creates a wonderful life for his children and his wife. He slowly grows to realise that his mother was right all along and that life is wonderful as a beautiful scene which creates his idea of the perfect date with his wife -- watching the kids from their car.

What Hill and Iriving (who also wrote the screenplay with John Tiesch) have created is an open-ended and tender movie not about one person's life but about how one person can focus on the important things to him inspite of life's bizarreness. This is one of those stories that makes me wish that I produced stories instead of writing about them. plink | 3 comments

Aiiieeeeee!!! part 2
If you get your wisdom teeth in your lower jaw extracted and your dentist says that there might be the possibility of you losing some sensation temporarily, DON'T DO IT! FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T DO IT!

It's bad enough to lose your sense of taste, but god, when you start to get it back, it's murder! Far better to have your jaw gangrenous with infection and amputated than to have THIS PAIN!

My tongue is tingling with sharp pain ALL OVER as the nerves start to work again. You know how agonising it is for those FEW MINUTES when you get pins and needles on your leg? Well, I've got it on my poor beaten-up tongue and it's been like this FOR DAYS! I can't eat, I can't sleep. When I think of food, I feel siiiiiiick.

Somebody please end my misery! Aiiieeee!!!! *sob* plink | 4 comments

Oyster sauce noodles
A hungry child is an inventive child.

On those afternoons after the morning session in primary school, I came home at about 3pm, without anything to eat till dinner at 6pm. There was of course the instant noodles and cans of spam and eggs that I could throw together in the pot, but that became boring as quickly as a new toy.

So I created a new dish I call Oyster Sauce Noodles. Oyster sauce is a thick Chinese corn-starch sauce that's sold in bottles and is made from the goop of boiled oysters and sodium monoglutamate (MSG). The noodle recipe is my own. No one else in the world makes it except me and mine is the best. The secret is instinctively knowing exactly at what point the amount of oyster sauce exceeds the consistency of battery acid and to have the good sense to stop just before.

You take a 80g packet of Maggi Mee (a brand of instant noodles made by Nestle and is only available in Asia and some parts of Canada) and cook it in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. Strain all the noodles out into a bowl. Throw two or three thousand dollops of oyster sauce on it (only the famous Lee Kum Kee brand will do!) just so the noodles become thickly dark brown. Dash a few drops of sesame seed oil on it (fragrant corn oil will do in a pinch) and mix it together with a pair of chop sticks.

Like a lot of Chinese sauces, Lee Kum Kee has both a salty as well as a sweet taste that lingers on your lips. Thanks to the MSG inside, it provides satisfaction for several hours even after the noodles have been licked off the bowl. And the sesame seed oil makes the noodles glide down your throat straight to your belly. Juuuust right. plink | 1

Today I cried

Not from some hurt. Nor for some memory.

I was watching a movie called My Dog Skip. And as Skip lay on the operating table and as Willie cried, I couldn't help but cry along with him.

But I wept not for the boy nor for the dog. But for the one thing that I never had and I wish I did with all the heart and passion that a child only can.

It was that oddly familiar but equally unfamiliar concept of having a friend.

A friend to cry over. To play with and to share. To laugh and to sing. -- To be thankful for.

I wept for half an hour, my face blistered and blotched. And I never cry. For the simple reason that my tears had become dust somewhere in boyhood between the time that I realised what loneliness was and how alone a person can be.

But it turned into tears of happiness at the thought that perhaps there's a Skip still out there waiting for me to come home and play ball with her and to give her a neck rub. plink | 3 comments

Taste
There is a most unpleasant taste in my mouth. It feels like a wet eel squirming around trying to find its way out but simply won't just to spite me. It's the sensation of pins and needles, but on my tongue.

This is a hopeful sign, despite it's awfulness. It means that my sense of taste is coming back slowly. There was a slight chance that it wouldn't if the nerve damage was too great. It was a possibility that was taken into account during the operation to remove my wisdom teeth.

For a few days I wondered whether I would be able to enjoy Chinese food again. The thought that I might not ever was unbearable and haunted me. I lost my appetite for everything. As under-described as that sense often is, facing its loss was like losing a limb. No it was worse than that. It was like losing my iMac.

I still won't be able to taste anything until week's end. Then next week Dr Nethi, the dentist will take the stitches out of my gums. That will be about as pleasant as getting my willie chopped off and hung out to dry.

Correction, that will be about as pleasant as sending my iMac off to the repair shop for the second time in a row. plink | 1

Driving taxi drivers
I drive taxi drivers crazy. I tell them to take a "right" while my head's turned to the "left". plink |

I still can't feel half my tongue
The entire front section of the left side of my tongue is still numb. That's where the sensation of sweet and sour are accepted and transmitted to the brain.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

If this is a permanent situation, that means I'll only be able to have milk, water and English food for the rest of my life.

... sniff...

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! plink |

The surgery

Two jars of pieces of my wisdom teeth. Not worth the closer examination.

The surgery to remove all my three wisdom teeth and replace two of them with bone grafts from my jaw was several hours late to begin. That had partly to do with the horrid dispute I had with the admissions staff at 9am in the morning. They tried to force me to sign a consent form that indemnified the hospital against all liability for any operation performed on their premises. The document had so many grammatical errors in it, I couldn't tell for sure whether I was also consenting to a human-chicken brain transplant. I downright refused and threw a hissy fit.

I demanded to see my dentist, Dr Nethi right away. But he was called to an emergency consultation case in another hospital. He was as surprised as I was at the admission staff's behaviour when he got in at 1pm. When we went through the document together we found it had been mislabled as "Guarantee Agreement" and not the more accurate "Financial Guarantee Agreement" which reasonably limited the liability of the hospital in the case of payments. The thought of having people who did not know how to spell make incisions into my body did not help my nerves.

Flirting with nurses. 'Would you like to bring me some dessert after I finish my porridge?'

Furthermore, when the nurses tried to find an invitro line in the back of my right hand, they stabbed me five times before they succeeded. Forty-eight hours after that, the nerves that were damaged from the poking are still buzzing, making typing an irritating activity. I screamed. I hate needles and it took several excrutiating minutes for three nurses and a doctor to finish that one small procedure that should have been the simplest of all.

Me with a swollen left jaw, having porridge. Oh well, I always did want a squarer jawline.

The surgery took almost three hours and the anaesthetic wore off a few minutes after I was wheeled back to my room. I felt perfectly fine. Except for a sore throat and a sore right nostril where they had to insert a tube, some bleeding from the several stitches on my gums and the swelling in my left jaw which still has not yet subsided. Dr Nethi reported the surgery a success and even said that a cyst they discovered on my gums had been removed at the same time.

'Hey, wait don't run away. You know, you should be in the movies. Lemme take a few more shots.'

The swelling is actually pincing a nerve in my mouth which has paralysed all sensation on the left side of my tongue. So I have to extra careful now. With a desensitised tongue, I could bite on it in the middle of the night during my sleep and not know till they find my blood-soaked corpse the next day. Or just as bad, my tongue could roll back into my throat and choke me to death in my sleep.

Yahti, Dr Nethi's hot hot hot secretary. Mmmm. She can operate on my tongue any time.

I hate operations. The last time I had one was when I was thirteen and I still have the scar in my lower right abdomen. I still remember the pain that I endured for several days from the complete lack of muscle support thanks to the over-eager anaesthesiologist. It will take a whole week to recover from this one and I want to get back to work as soon as I can. I can't let any of my colleagues including my art director fuck up my work. plink | 1

Redmeat
Bwahahahah! I love Red Meat, the comic! It reminded me to remove a hairball caught in my cat's fur today with a Ginsu knife. But how big would a hairball have to be to be considered a head? Bwahahahahaha! You're a sick man, Tim. plink |

Geocaching
Finally a good reason to get a Global Positioning Toy, er, I mean System. Now you can participate in a world-wide treasure hunt game at Geocaching. Just join and find all the caches in your area that other people have voluntarily hidden using descriptive clues and of course a position. plink |

Good mother

By Jann Arden, also featured on the sound track of Beautiful Joe (2000)

I�ve got money in my pocket
I like the colour of my hair
I�ve got a friend who loves me
I�ve got a house I�ve got a car
I�ve got a good mother
And her voice is what keeps me here
Freedom grasped, heart in hand
Facing forward, be yourself

I never wanted anything
No I, No I
I never wanted anything
So bad, so bad

Cardboard masks of all the people
Thrown about with all the rusted tangled dented goddamned miseries
You could say I�m hard of hope
But if you knew me you�d know
I�ve got a good father
And his strength is what makes me cry
Freedom grasped, heart in hand
Facing forward, be yourself

I never wanted anything
No I, No I
I never wanted anything
So bad, so bad...

Beautiful Joe is a movie of surprises. To think that two people with characters as irreverent as Billy Connelly's and as psycho-vamp as Sharon Stone's could find such a tenuous and intricate link through acting as two friends thrown together by unusual circumstances.

Connelly plays Joe, a man who has a brain tumour and has two months to decide whether his life is worth saving and so he gets into his van and goes on a road-trip but gets his wallet stolen in the process. Stone plays Hush, a woman in the worst kind of trouble with loan sharks which drives her to steal Joe's wallet. She has two kids and barely holds down a job as a hostess at a female mud-wrestling show. When the loan sharks get too close, she runs off with Joe at his invitation.

Life has made great mockery of the way they've been brought up to be, sincere, loving people. Yet they have admirably managed not to let cynicism drive them to despair. And that is the connection they make with each other.

But possibly the most surprising part of this movie is the performance by Roger C. Scott, Hush's estranged husband and father of one of her kids who was once a talented saxophonist but is serving 20 years in Leavenworth for manslaughter while trying to protect the honour of his family. With four lines and a strong on-camera presence, he communicates so much love, tenderness and strength of character that he will surely be the next Denzel Washington.

This one says Oscar nomination all over it.
plink |

Wordup!
Here's a Yahoo! group I've been looking into the last month or so. They're a group of Malaysian 'content professionals' who casually use the term to elevate themselves above 'regular' writers. That's when I knew instantly they were good for a laugh!

They can't take criticism at all. When a writer over at a raggy local business magazine wrote an opinion piece on groups of writers on the internet and mentioned them, they all got real ornery because he didn't praise them like they expected and instead suggested that there weren't any good writers in Malaysia at all. I got a real kick out of their reaction. There were two weeks of hate mail published in the group and not a single one addressed to the magazine writer. :-)

My contribution to the site is the occasional sarcky remark about the amount of spam that gets sent to the newsgroup. Haha! For a bunch of 'content professionals' (that term still slays me!) they sure tolerate a heckuvalot spam without a single murmur! And not one of the spam is about books. They're all about mobile phones, restaurants and stage productions.

If those attributes aren't true signs of low self esteem I don't know what are! :-) Tweaking these guys is going to be so much fun. I reckon they're good for at least six more months of laughs. plink | 3 comments

The OR
I'll be going under the scalpel tomorrow morning. I will have three wisdom teeth extracted or die trying, says my dentist. He was kidding, of course. I think.

Just in case, I have given my cousin Jon the password to this account. So in the likelihood that I die during the surgery, he will post a notice on this site. Send all condolences to timyang@whatthefuckhappened.com.

It is a difficult operation, but not a procedure that has not been well documented before. Still, I am afraid mainly because I will sustain terrible injuries and bruising as a result of the surgery without the chance to defend myself or to kill the person who gave them to me. I will be anaethetised as a healthy person, and wake up a beaten-up wreck six hours later.

I am also concerned that it is not unknown for people to have died during this kind of procedure. All it takes is a slightly wrong mix in the gas and I'll suffer an irreversible heart seizure. It is also not unknown for people to sustain nerve injuries that take away all power of speech or jaw movement for the rest of their lives. All this is conjecture of course. Except in Malaysia where victims of malpractice often have little recourse with the law. The judicial system is very much in favour of big businesses (such as the privatised hospitals).

Remember. If you visit Malaysia, don't ever ever ever get sick. plink | 6 comments

Scenes from a crossroad

One of my favourite things to do in the evening is to walk around the city centre and take people shots. One of my favourite spots is along a road called Jalan Cheng Lock where old Kuala Lumpur meets new Kuala Lumpur. Where wooden push carts soaked black with decades of rancid fruit juice can be seen in the same view as a modern light rail train. Where the view from a Starbucks looks across to a shop selling a famous Chinese herbal soup made from an ancient family recipe.

6pm is the perfect time to take photos in Kuala Lumpur. The sky is just clouding over. The steel reflections from the heat-reflective windows of the skyline scrapers have just melted away. And all my humble subjects are coming out, quitting work and preparing to go home, go shopping or go drinking.

I stand on the corner and just watch as characters pass by. A blind woman makes her way, perhaps to an alley shop in Chinatown from which she operates a discreet blind masseuse parlor. A lime juice vendor steps away from his street stall and grabs her left arm, cruelly startling her, reminding her of a moment not so long ago when people didn't casually handle her. He quietly asks her if she needs help crossing the road, she declines, her heart still palpitating. plink | 1

Shudder
Just found out today, my birthday is the same as my boss'. plink | 1

Drinks on me!
Tonight, the newly-installed regional head of creative for the ad agency I work for decided to treat everyone in the creative department to drinks at a bar called 'Alexis'. It was a "getting to know everyone" session for him. And also a "getting to know me" session for everyone.

Alexis is in a part of Kuala Lumpur called Bangsar which is a high street on the outskirts of the city and is home to a collection of trendy bars and restaurants (and far too many fashionable cafes) all packed in a 200-square metre area. Imagine Leicester Square in London, but with all the multi-plexes replaced by watering holes and even more neon lights. Still, Bangsar is better than that because the bars here close at 3am instead of the ungodly 11pm.

The regional head of creative introduced himself as the soon-to-be-wed Stephen Fraser who recently moved to Malaysia with his Turkish fiance. Fraser, a Scottish national who built a rather successful career as head of creative in several of the middle-eastern branches of the agency network, spent the evening telling magnificent tales of his house in a tiny village in Turkey that was built for the paltry sum of USD$65,000 (the house, not the village) and has a jacuzzi in the bedroom.

It was quite a fun evening and everyone left at about 11pm, but only because we had to work the next day.

I myself had five or six beers, all Tiger, and a shot of Vodka neat within a two hour period on an empty stomach. Which might explain why I found this picture in my camera later and why you're now looking at a photo of my naked butt. plink | 9 comments

It's that time of the year again...
I'm considering a new domain-name host. Found an excellent one... it's used by my mirror site. It's called whizhost.net. $3/month hosting, PHP and CGI support, 50mb space, unlimited transfer, unlimited POP email addresses. Cool or what? plink | 2 comments

Damn I lost the touch!

One of the things I'm good at, or at least I was a couple of years ago, is the shooting games at the arcades. You know, the ones where you hold an infra-red targeting device shaped like a gun attached by a cable to an arcade machine and fire at pixels on the screen. Usually they come with names like 'Virtua Cop', 'Time Cop', 'Haunted House' and 'Kill the Stupid Parent'.

(Nah I made that last one up. But damn, if I had a game like that, I'd make gazillions.)

In most places around the world, they're a quick way to kill time and a deep place to dump money. In Malaysia, they're a cottage industry. The best players become legendary in shooter circles, drawing crowds of up to two or three dozen enthusiasts pitched around the machine every time they walk into an arcade centre.

Malaysians developed a way of playing shooting games so that we trick the infra-red targeting system into reloading the gun every time it runs out of virtual bullets without shifting the targeting focus off the screen. We hold the gun with one hand on the trigger and one under-handed on the barrel with the index finger covering the infra-red projector. Every time we need to reload, we finger-block the projector instead of pointing the gun off the screen as would normally be required.

No where else around the world, except for Hong Kong, have I observed players using this exact technique to reload. I guess that's because no where else can you practice for hours on end and develop advanced gaming techniques without fear of owing half the national debt. Each game costs just RM1 (or less than an American quarter).

If Namco decided to run, say, a world-wide Virtua Cop tournament, Malaysians would take the top 300 spots easily. Any one who says this is a game and not a sport should try training on these machines for four straight hours. You walk into the arcade a 100lb weakling, you walk out pumped-up with gorilla-sized rear deltoids and forearms from holding up the gun and performing hundreds of trigger pulls. (And they come in real handy whenever some idiot tries to challenge you for hogging the machine for four hours...)

But I spent two years in England where these games cost BP2 (USD$3.5 per game). I couldn't indulge and keep in shape. Today, I went to the Sungei Wang Plaza arcade centre and died within the third stage of the new 'Ninja Assault' system. Argh! plink |

Aieeee!
Stabbed myself in the left thumb tonight during dinner. I was eating steamed crabs served in an herbal broth. Crabs are eaten with fingers in Chinese restaurants and this particular variety of crab had huge hooked protrusions along its claws.

I try not to use a shell-cracker tool (mainly because the bloody Chinese waiters never offer you one anyway) and pulled the shell apart with my fingers to get at the crab meat inside the claw with my thumb as the lever. Now there's a nice bloody gash there from one of the hooks.

Serves me right for being a carnivore. plink |

Another bloody counter
Found Stats4You, another free counter service, through Blogdex. It's different from SiteMeter and ExtremeTracking because it drops a cookie into each computer that accesses this site and so is able to tell me whether the visitor is a returning visitor or a new visitor. I've been looking for something like this for ages.

SiteMeter is nice and has a really good page-view/reload cross-referencing system, but it lists only the last 20 visitors and referals (or some other really limited number) so it doesn't do anybody with a daily average visitor count of 100+ any good. ExtremeTracking is great because it offers a virtually unlimited list of visitors and referals, but it doesn't have that return visitor feature. Stats4You limits the list of visitors and referals to 60 which is a real downer... but it will do.

In any case, I use all three because of the different strengths and weaknesses of each system. plink | 2 comments

An ode to youth
She has no future. She irritates me with her Bambi-ness. She wants to be taught but she doesn't know how to learn. I feel the urge to get a 4x4 and run her over. Nevermind that I don't know how to drive.

She is a junior art director.

All she can look forward to is ending up the housewife of some guy who beats her every day and has her bare-foot and pregnant with 18 kids.

You know the kind. They jam their foot into offices, selling nothing but a way to kill time. The local colleges churn them out like ants to curdled milk. Stupid kids with no future. And a complete waste of two square feet of office space.

But she's been put on one of my accounts and I ignore her all the time. Go away! You thief my time. I don't have to share anything with you. And if I did, it wouldn't do me or you any good because you don't contribute. You will never contribute because you are lacklustre in both personality and ingenuity. You have no passion, the driving force of human endeavour. You have hope but that will do you no good without a staff of ability.

You are an empty vessel waiting to be filled but you are so small, you can contain naught. plink | 9 comments

Bad photo album
My Fotki photo album is acting up. That's why,

a) it takes even longer for my pages to load

b) many of the photos are missing

I am sure this will pass. They're probably doing some upgrading of their service somewhere. If it doesn't happen in a week or so, I'll shift the photos to Webphotos. They're one of the very few non-stingy photo album services that don't cut the photo quality to save on space and they also offer a link to the photo in its full and original size.

The tentative solution I have is to cut the front page length of the blog to the past three days' entries to ensure that fewer pictures need to be loaded up for the page to appear. And all my pictures hence forth will be loaded up to Webphotos instead or until such time as the Fotki problem is resolved.

Part of the slow-loading problem is my host which is f2s.com. That cannot be resolved until another host somewhere comes into play that offers the same thing f2s.com does. That is, FREE 20mb of webspace, NO banner ads and PHP and CGI support. Nobody I know can beat that yet.

So come back y'all hear! plink | 1

Mr Bubbles
I am in direly-close to getting a new nickname in the office.

Apparently I suffer from flatulence as a result of stomach upsets caused by stresses of being in a work envionment with too much 60s-style fluorescent lighting and poor ventilation.

... which is definitely not a good place to get flatulence. plink | 2 comments

Kuala Lumpur by night

One of the best places to see and take photos of Kuala Lumpur by night is in the KL Tower, a communications tower quite like the CN Tower in Montreal. I would have mentioned the Petronas Twin Towers instead but they don't let anybody into the observation level after 5pm.

While I was in Paris, I climbed up the Eiffel Tower and had a panic attack. Half way up to the base level which is about 80 metres high, I looked down at the ground and it struck me that if I needed the bathroom right then, I couldn't run anywhere. And suddenly I did. Fortunately, the KL Tower has an elevator which travels 6 metres a second for exactly 421 metres to the reach the observation deck in exactly 58 seconds.

How do I know all that? Because the KL Tower has a funny dark-skinned little man with a slim and neat moustache called Mohammed who operates the elevator and informs all the visitors to the KL Tower of those very facts. He is quite well-practiced at it and beams while he parrots it for the umpteenth time of the day to me. Never having spoken any other words in his entire life, he was quite taken aback when I asked whether the observation deck had a toilet (just in case). "Yes, sir," Mohammed finally said. "And this elevator will take you there while travelling at exactly 6 metres a... "

Certainly the toilet wasn't a disappointment, and neither was the view. The construction of the tower however was. If the architect stood in front of me there and then, I would have taken him straight to the nearest House of Mirrors and locked him in there for the rest of his life to prove to him that having reflections aren't always so fun. Especially when my view of the city is partially obscured by it.

What lame-brained idiot builds an observation deck and uses cheap reflective glass on it so that the internal lighting from the numerous fluorescent and colourful neon lights are seen clear as day in it?

Automatic-focus cameras, which are abundant among visitors to the KL Tower, are only able to take blurry pictures of the scenery outside. The cameras are tricked by the reflection in the glass into thinking there is an object three feet away and therefore not shift the focus to infinite to capture the view clearly. This is especially true at night when the reflections are even clearer in the glass. So I ended up with a collection of 23 blurry photos.

Kill. Kill. Kill. plink | 3 comments

Surrounded
I believe that many things can�t be taught. But they can be learned. Simply, by association. If you want to be funny, surround yourself with funny people.

While I was growing up, I had the incredible good fortune to be surrounded by incredibly smart people. There were several members of my family who are businessmen, and are justifiably successful. Not simply because of lucky breaks. They also had keen minds that could objectively evaluate people and situations and plan reactions not just for short term gains, but also long term ones.

This was thanks to one member of my family who could be said to be a much better human resource manager than a smart man. His name is Robert K. (his famous last name is obscured to prevent journalists who would like nothing better than dirt on him from finding this website). He surrounded himself with keen and bright minds, almost always Chinese, whom he could mould toward the style of planning and ideating that he saw in himself. He made millions in ventures around the world through the astute advice of and executions by his generals.

Thanks to these people, I was gifted at a developing stage of my life with role-models on whom I could build and extend my abilities. Robert K. kept his network, and his sharpness. Mine has just dissolved.

My workstation. 60s-style fluorescent lighting and all.

Kishore Mahbubani, an Asian philosopher, asks whether Asians can think in an opinionated but somewhat observant book entitled "Can Asians Think?". If Robert K. and his people have proved, yes they can. But it is only through exposure to the right elements and maintenance of that exposure. Unfortunately most Asians are not. Mahbubani observes that members of Asian societies do not think as deeply as members of western societies. That deepness of thought is unfortunately a pre-requisite for long-term success in business which relies on astute planning and open discussion of issues.

While Mahubani examined Asian societies from the point of historical development, I concur with his observation from the point of view of a resident. I am wading in the shallow end of the pool right now. And slowly through the lack of challenge, I can literally feel my mind ebbing away like so much porridge. The people I work with complain about being over-worked. They have no concept of what work really is as they have never observed how the British involved in commerce perform in their work environment. They work from 8am to 8pm, and on the ball for much of the day. In contrast, Asians in Asia are caterpillars that are so slow, they're caught and eaten by turtles.

Too many unwanted assumptions are made in the processes at my workplace for ignorance and the mental laziness to pursue timely and credible information. I see research used that are made by research companies preying on my ignorant colleagues who aren�t aware of how to read and analyse data which lack well-documented methodologies. There is an over-prevalence of the pursuit of short-term gains as 5 o'clock rabbits along.

Nobody has heard of the words "critical analysis" around here. Some can't even spell it. plink | 1

Soniatrevino.com update II
Well, Paul has acknowledged that he did take his site concept from mine. And that he will be using the randomising pictures idea when he's finished with doing up his site. He assures me that it is a compliment of the highest order! :-)

I reckon since his site and mine are both free personal sites, it's probably bad web designer karma to report him to his registrar or his host provider. Besides which, he's just the web-designer. The site is Sonia's. I don't think it's fair to her to have her site yanked on account of the web designer she employed.

In any case, I think it's wonderful! I must be the first and only blogger in the world to have his own mirror site! :-) Check it out when it comes up! plink | 1

Soniatrevino.com update
When I wrote to sonia@soniatrevino.com last week and asked about why she took the entire file of my top frame and used it on her site, the email address didn't work. The mail was returned. I just tried again and it did.

A reply came from someone identified as "Paul" who at first flatly denied using any code from my site and said it was all public material. Then he said he probably took the code from someone else who took it from me (which of course excused HIM from doing the same thing to that person he took it from). Finally he said he takes (read: steals) code all the time because he is "a developer". (Dude, "developer" means you have to "develop your own".)

Ok, NOW I'm mad. plink | 3 comments

Movie bonanza
Recently the governor of the capital state announced that crimes such as rape had gone up. When he was asked what he attributed the increase to, the first thing the little sod said was, "Pornography". Whaddayaknow? The last thing he was watching the night before is the first thing out of his mouth.

He didn't mention pornography on the internet. He clarified that he was thinking of the pornography sold in VCD format by the street vendors. The next thing everyone knows, the newspapers are printing stories of open threats by the bureaucrats to oppose renewal of street vendor licenses and to oppose applications for new licenses.

So all the VCD sellers play nice-nice and store away all their pirated movie VCDs (pornography included) or transport them to other states for sale. Ironically all the pirated music CDs and pirated software CDs are still being sold.

The only place that movie VCDs are still on sale in the capital state is Kuala Lumpur's own Petaling Street market at the going rate of RM5 (USD$1.30) per movie. The Chinese gangs that control the area are far too vicious for the local constabulary who wisely shy away.

I went looking for a movie called Pay It Forward tonight (I'm in the mood for some aw-shucks Disney-style uplifting viewing). And ended up panic buying an extra 40 movies to squirrel away for the next two weeks. Oh yes, we in the capital surely expect this to blow over in two weeks time and pirated VCD movies (pornography and all) will once again go up on the rack. This isn't the first time some bureacrat has blamed VCD sales for his incompetence.

Chances are the bureaucrats are working in collusion with the Chinese gangs that control the VCD business so that they can increase the prices. A few years ago, they did just that and the prices rose from RM10 to RM12. But for only a year. So I've now got stuff like Easy Rider, All Quiet on the Western Front and American Gigolo (amongst others) to amuse myself with when I'm not on the internet. plink |

Sign up!
I get a couple dozen repeat visitors to this site every day (the other four dozen come and go and never come back). And it's scary to me and I sit up late into the night wondering, "Don't these people have a life?!"

Well since you've got so much time to spare, sign the goddamned guestbook. I want to know who you are so I can finally put my weary curiousity to bed. (I hate the idea of an anonymous readership, especially if there's a reader who is good looking and dateable.)

If you're from around here, don't sign it if you don't want me coming round to your house in the middle of the night. I'm crazy like that. plink | 1

Destroy them! Destroy them all!
Why settle for putting a frog in a blender? Get your hands on low-culture high-popularity cultural icons like Britney and Oprah and blow them sky high. Or spank them. (Britney, not Oprah, eeeww, get that image out of my head!) Just play with the fab interactive movies at Must Be Destroyed. Omigod! They killed Pokemon! The bastards! plink |

Anti-gravity picture holder

I was thumbing through some of the ideas at Gadget Universe today but it was Kate who found this interesting gadget that uses magnetic forces to hold a cube-shaped picture holder that displays four pictures while rotating in mid-air without physical support. The product description says the scientific principal is similar to that used by the Mag-Lev trains in Japan and Germany. (Probably not a good idea to operate it on a plane.) Ozzy says "it is both freaky and cool". plink | 2 comments

Anybody read Dutch?
What does "een errug nuttige site, waar ook handige opvoedings-hulpstukken te verkrijgen zijn" mean? I found it at this blog in reference to my site. I'd ask the owner but he/she didn't leave a discernable link to an email address. And Babelfish has yet to work on a Dutch-English translator. plink | 4 comments

Designer innovations: The child clubber

This nifty and handy household item is a simple and well-designed child clubber. With it, you can expand your child's mind, says the product literature. I think you'll find it more useful than that.

It is both an effective and efficient tool for administering corporal discipline on all children under the age of 10. Notice how the big googly eyes convey a false sense of security to the child so you don't have run around and chase it like you usually do. The unique and cutish look has been purposefully created in the mode of the toys you see on TV today, like Pokemon.

Its lightweight and springy material ensures that repeated use does not damage your sensitive wrists in any way. Boy, they really think of everything!

Ladies, it's also very handy to keep in your handbag for those shopping days. Or times when you simply cannot find a baby-sitter.

I found it personally very easy to use. The ergonomic grip at the base of the handle was most comfortable and seemed moulded for my fingers. I tested it out on an irritating child at the department store pestering its mother for sweets. Wham! It worked like a charm! And I must say those people at Tangs are so helpful in the disposal of bodies.

Brought to you by the wonderful people who produce such indispensible items as the Dinner-Tazer ("Can't eat? Won't eat? Taze it!"), the child clubber is available at the household goods department of Tangs department store for only RM39.99.

You can't experience all the joys of motherhood without one. plink | 1

Human for sale
Human For Sale poses a questionnaire based on a person's age, health, education, attractiveness, income and profession. And then on a monetary gauge evaluates the person. I'm worth $2.3 million. A 26-year old, 6' 3" manager with 200IQ is worth over $4 million. But where the hell are you going to find a manager with 200IQ? plink | 1

Frightening, isn't it?
This well-written Performance Review Generator and Mission Statement Generator at the Dilbert site are strangely and inexplicably useful. *Shudder* plink |

Lab tests online
Oh yeah! I've been looking for a site like this for ages. I've grown a general distrust from having to survive the Malaysian medical society for so many years, that I've long desired to find out exactly what the hell tests they always order on me. I swear at least two parts of my intestinal tract and one part of my brain is missing.

The site categories the tests according to the name of the test, the condition being tested for and the type of patient that such tests are conducted on. It's not so detailed as to be frightening but it's a really good place to start to build a malpractice suit. plink |

Kuala Lumpur at night

Joanne arrived from Johor Bahru, the southernmost city on the Malaysian peninsula, today for training at the Starbucks office in Kuala Lumpur. She is a manager of a Starbucks in JB. She came with two of her colleagues who shall remain nameless because they're both jerks and I care not to recall their names.

What's-her-name said "nice to meet you" and dandily shook my hand while looking around the Starbucks store at KL Plaza for another colleague. And What's-his-name took a look at my digital camera and said "that's nice" while patting my head. If I was a just little bit smarter, I should have taken him outside and showed him a five-movement punch-kick combination that I personally think is bloody fantastic. (What else can you expect from a guy who professes to wear only polyester and rayon?)

We took a walk around Bukit Bintang which is the main shopping district in Kuala Lumpur. Every city has one of these. In London, it's Oxford Road. In Singapore, it's Orchard Road. In Hong Kong, it's, well, the whole island. Translated from the native Bahasa Melayu, Bukit Bintang means Star Hill. And well does it shine.

Shopping is one of my favourite things to do in Kuala Lumpur although more often than not I leave without once fidgeting my credit card. I do enjoy the atmosphere of life and the living of it. Simply to walk among the walkers and to gaze at all the shop windows, not in envy or desire but in wonder with the newness and the spirit of innovation that they preach.

Bukit Bintang at night is surely a daring little tramp. It strips itself of decorum and streaks across the city centre. It says dance with me and fuck me all night long. It is at night that it fears no authority or religious police and it is the police, the Muslim priests and the politicians who fear it.

No other city I know of, save for Amsterdam, is quite as free at night like Kuala Lumpur. London by comparison is as solemn as a bouncer. Paris has the reservation of a whiskey brewer. Kuala Lumpur bursts. And its rainbow torrents on the horizon all night long. plink | 3 comments