i'm going verklempt

we were supposed to have the ultimate frisbee game after work last thursday but it got cancelled because of heavy rain in the morning. it was part of our department's on-going team building activities throughout the first half of the year.

it must have been love... (ok can't resist that hehe).. it must have been ages, since i last hold a frisbee, no, make it ages since i last saw a frisbee.

i don't know where you come from but in singapore, frisbee is a kind of thing you might find in the museum. you know, unless it is made into some playstation or nintendo wii fi games in the future. i even have to explain to this friend what a frisbee is, 'that plate thing that you throw away like a flying saucer', and he was like, 'what's so great about that?'.

i guess that's why not many of them were keen to play, especially those married ones. i don't know, seems like marriage not only turning you into sudden unattractive, out-of-shaped and rapid-ageing person, apparently it makes you boring too.

anyway, i was going to have my fun when the damn rain spoiled the day. i mean, where is the damn rain when i needed to take a nap in the blazing hot afternoon just now?

at least because of that, i managed to finish prison break season one. at last michael and the gang managed to get out of the prison but unfortunately missed the flight to get away from the vicinity. damn.

lucky i'm not watching it on first prime time show, imagine have to wait the whole summer to know what happens next.

but i did watch lost last week the prime time show, when they found this girl who had just dropped into the island by parachute, and mentioned to her that they are the survivors of that crashed sydney-bound flight. to which, this girl replies, 'but that's impossible. they found the plane, and there were no survivors'.

dang! and then that irritating makes-you-wanna-burn-your-tv 'to be continued' sign. double damn.

i'm supposed to survey the facts about batam tonight since we plan to go there this coming weekend, but it's already 11pm and i'm not even done with this blog yet. plus, i really want to find out what happens to micheal, did he manage to cross the border to mexico?

it's just batam anyway. no big deal. it's near, we can always return. it's not like it's madagascar.

talking about madagascar, i remember watching american idol 'idol gives back' last week, when they featured all those horrible and ugly sides of poor african people who have not enough to eat and medicine to stay healthy.

man, it was heart-breaking. i mean, i went to east point challenger just now, again, to survey the desktop pc that they have on display, thinking hard if i better buy the components in bundle from sim lim square instead and upgrade my pc, when apparently what those poor african people have in their minds always is how to survive the next day.

even when i was there in madagascar, seeing all those poor bare-footed kids who followed us around when we walked though their village, we should have given them something. like food or money. instead, what did we do? busy taking photos.

what a depressing thought.

urghh i'm going verklempt. talk among yourselves, i'll give you a topic...



...ed

one is such a lonely number

i don't understand why johorians working in singapore always have to cross the causeway going back to their hometown everytime they are not working.

it's like, 'hey what are you doing this weekend?' and they'll be like, 'oh i'm going back jb'. then i'll be like, 'didn't you just go back 5 minutes ago?'.

seriously. i mean, i have family too, but i don't the urge to meet them every single week, or every month for that matter. and i do love them a lot.

plus, everytime i cross the causeway i get headache. i don't know why. maybe because it's messy and all over the place, or the fact that i feel like i'm being watched as if i'm carrying $100,000 inside my wallet. or just that i'm a big dickhead in my own country.

so i'd never made a trip there without a box of that red panadol extra, which ironically never been sold in malaysia. i guess it's specially for those like me that tend to behave like fish in shallow water everytime we passed through customs.

and so there were just usual nothing-to-boast-about-or-say-i'm-cool activities over last weekend with my non-johorians friend. i wish i had the gut to go and try this water skiing at east coast park, but the thought of being thrown over and then have to swim all the way to the shore is just a little bit too much to bear.

so instead, i resorted to playing bowling in yishun, then tennis at my place. now that rafael nadal is winning again, tennis is back at the frontline of my life. last night's match when he spanked federer in monte carlo final is really a match to behold.

that kid is already like a multi millionaire, isn't he? and i'm not even in a place to comfortably buy his rackets. i could actually, but i'd rather settle down with a cheaper version. in US today, a 13 year old won $25k by being the fastest text messager in the states. even at home in suntec city yesterday, a 21 year old girl student won herself a chevrolet by closely guessing the number of kisses on car competition.

made me think what the hell i'm doing at work when there's so much way to get money outside the office nowadays.

for me, the only time when i'm outside the office, is to spend money. on sunday i almost purchased a new pc desktop at east point challenger. it's embedded with intel core 2 duo processor (which i have no idea exactly what's the new technology is all about except it's fast, and more importantly, latest), 512 ddr ram, 250G hard disk and 512MB graphic card.

in short, the spec is awesome. when the salesman said they could minus off $300 if i let go the flatscreen monitor since i already have one at home, i felt like snow white just being offered the red poison apple by the evil witch. and bare in mind that was after i bitched so much when i found out all latest pc comes with vista.

the thing is, i'm not sure my current softwares and peripherals are compatible with it. for instance, my hp ipaq active sync. remember, that thing that runs my life? now if this one is not working later with vista, i'll really be like a fish in shallow water.

even with that red panadol extra in my hand.


...ed

Gimme' that Sunday school answer

my heart deeply goes to those perished in virginia tech campus shooting and their immediate family and friends.

it was all just plain wrong. school classrooms should be the place to nurture our future but yesterday it became the place where the present ended.

tragically.

i know this was the outcome of a seriously disturbed person, but look at the world that turned him into the beast that he became.

i tell you, the world that finds movies like the hostel and turistas entertaining, and filled with people who finds physically crushed bodies from various misfortunes in forwarded e-mails amusing and worth forwarding further.

which is just sickening. apparently i can no longer eat meat nowadays thank you very much.

there are tonnes of other things to share, right? nicer things. like, i don't know, good wishes, a guide to painting your neighbour's trash gold, or even how to survive a day long boring lectures without losing our minds.

i had one today at work. apparently we were to leave all in-hand assignments, which would potentially cause us trouble in next monday's weekly update meeting, and head to this training session conducted by this guy who flew all the way from the phillipines.

don't get me wrong, i'm all for upgrading ourselves to new knowlegde you know, but what good it could give when half way through the class i started imagining if the lecturer had 4 more arms attached on his back he'd look very much like dr octavious?

then what i could think was gosh i wanted to go off early, catch american idol and continue watching that borat movie at home.

not that i'm supportive over that movie's idea of making fun of people by pulling offensive stunts. this is exactly what screwing up our world that i mentioned earlier, but hey i'm just curious to see what's it all about. i mean, how can you correct things that you never know how it goes wrong, right?

plus, it's not that i'm watching it in the cinema or even buy the dvd anyway.

on a quiet night like this, it made my day when i found out there's actually people out there that wanted to link my blog to theirs. ok it's only one person but i'm still happy nevertheless. i'm just sorry i couldn't reply to that request earlier.

since i stupidly hardreset-ed my hp ipaq without knowing the effect thereafter, my life has been a bit of an upside down. since when i became so dependant of the pda calender, i've never realized till now. it's like having my own secretary in my pocket and not blowing me off.

now i have no idea when to top up my loans bank accounts, when to change my goldfish aquarium filter, or when to call my mother. since i higlighted my hair bright brown and thus can no longer go back to kl to visit them until new hair grows, the least i can do is to just ask them if everything's well over there.

'coz in case you haven't notice, it's a scary scary world out there.



...ed

why do all good things come to an end

today we had a small birthday celebration in office cafeteria hall during lunch for those of us that were born around this month, which includes me. they ordered in canadian pizza (mainly because its buy 1 for 1 free policy), some calamaries, garlic breads and of course, (and i'm so glad it's not fruit) chocolate cake.

i'm fortunate to have such group of friends as colleagues. it makes life in the office not as dreadful. not that it's a living hell in the office but at least it gave something to look forward to today other than the american idol with jennifer lopez. we already missed 'heroes' as they are busy creating hype for its finale end of the month.

i enjoyed the food. ok, considering the calories i consumed from all the cheesy pizza and sinfully-creamed cake especially now that i'm already lack of exercise after my everyday car trip takes away my power walk when i used to commute, i think i enjoyed the gathering more.

more so than the fact that it's my birthday. gone are the days i would wait till the clock striked 12 at midnight before sleeping and wear bright coloured underwear for good luck going to work the next morning. i guess, we all get used to birthdays after some time in our lives to only treat it just like any other day. i mean, do you see an 80-year old blowing candles? (which is a good thing, really. imagine how many smoke detectors would get ignited everytime there are birthday celebrations?).

instead, during my actual birthday, we went to see this movie "sunshine" after work, starring, well, some guys and michelle yeoh. to tell you the truth i've never heard about this movie before, definitely not the way i'm anticipating spiderman 3 or the latest pirates of the carribean movie. i actually won this movie tickets from this shaw contest website that my friend sent me the link to.

which in my life's context, is very unusual. i rarely win anything. ever. well except movie tickets from starhub periodically but that was because i'm their hub club member. if any, i hope this win would be the indication of what my luck will be this year. i mean, could there be any more optimistic movie title than sunshine?

although the movie was just ok for me. they talked too much. einstein could have spoken less explaning his theories. i guess when the whole movie is based inside the spaceship (and about a second or two on the sun surface), there isn't much space to create actions into. one moment michelle yeoh was holding this plant and before you know it, she was stabbed from behind and die. where's the excitement??

luckily i already got all the excitement i've ever yearned (for now at least) during my bbq party the week before, so you see i was not expecting much. hey at least this is much better than 4 weddings and a funeral which i fall asleep to. and have i mentioned they got michelle yeoh?

i organized the bbq by the pool at my place on saturday night. i ordered satay and sambal stingray from bbqwholesale.com, prepared fried macaroni myself so at least i have something personal to take credit for and i got this popular strawberry chocolate cheesecake from cheesecake cafe in siglap (i know this place from surveying forums in the net).

but the real blast was my dearest friends, including 2 from bangkok who flew over specially to attend this. could there be friends any cooler? not only that, this guy pulled a santa clause later that night distributing presents to us from bangkok, obviously regardless to the fact that we were definitely not being holy last year. it was not even winter.

i got a cool home planetarium. gosh i just love it. now instead of pathetic cartoon-like fake-looking 2-seconds-glowing thingy i have on my bedroom ceilings, i can have a galaxy worth of stars. now i wish for shooting stars.

i swear it looks better on my ceiling than here, but you got the idea

ok back to the bbq. we bbq'ed (if that's a word) and ate intensively for like half an hour and then acted crazy for the next 2 hours. we laughed 99% of the time it was a wonder we could munched food in between those howlings that made a banshee sounded sentimental. i ever glanced at the next pit and they looked all quiet and dull. i mean, it's a bbq for god's sake, not a funeral.

i think all the surrounding blocks could hear us playing poker card game bluffing, which i ended up becoming the champion. never did i know that i'm such a natural at lying. i must remember to incorporate this talent more frequently in my daily life, or at least in my resume.


the strawberry chocolate cheesecake we had

not wanting the night to end so soon, we then decided to head up for karaoke in orchard cineleasure k-box the whole night. it was an impulse. in normal day, being potentially deprived of the night sleep and yet being charged 30 dollars for it almost sounds blasphemous, but that night it felt like a right thing to do.

well, until the next morning anyway. i have had my share of a party hangover before but not as bad as this. my gastric pain kicked in, either from the screamings all night long which simon cowell could drop dead to, or from overeating during the bbq.

i don't know. what i knew was it made me not even able to stand straight, nor consume any food without feeling nauseous. if i don't know better, i'd say i'm having morning sickness. to my horor, on my way back after deciding i could not accompany my bangkok friends to roam around town any longer, i even almost dozed off while driving alone the PIE.

i am very lucky to be alive.

and that's something worth celebrating for. you know, for not being dead rather than just being born.

that's what works for me now.



...ed