let's touch base

yesterday i got this mail from the company HR which goes...

'let's touch base. i got important news to tell you.'

full stop.

can you believe it? i scanned the bottom of that sentence like 20 times hoping to find some hidden messages or secret codes that could tell me more but none.

as i stared at the blank screen, i even hoped this was like that mail which had a ghost or something suddenly cropped out from the static picture as you were staring to freak you out but nada.

what news????

some people are just plain vain. this HR guy is just like those tv series writers that always like to have someone opening up the door expecting the killer inside the room, saying 'oh it's you!' without showing the killer face and then abruptly ended the scene with 'to be continued'...

except this one, i couldn't download the sequence off the net or read the next episode spoilers from wikipedia.

fortunately, my ex-colleague who was transfered to the branch where i'm applying for few years back spoiled it for me. he sent me mail which goes...

'congratulations! i heard you got the transfer'.

see? plain and simple and nobody died from this short statement. nobody i know anyway, but oh my god oh my god oh my god my god...

I GOT THE TRANSFER???

apparently i am. later that night at about 10.30pm i got a call from the new HR and i had to play surprise. ok this is so confirmed.

wow i was so ecstatic. i felt surreal, like my spirit just jumped out of my body saying banzaiiii and then came back in a second.

this is so classic example of how things turn out when you least expect it. this is like when you thought the causeway would have heavy traffics but ended up with a smooth ride, or the time when you thought nothing worth checking out the cheap sale but ended up buying lots of ripped-off discounts.

i mean, when i got a mail saying this another branch was laying off people, i kinda put my hope off. after all, when everything went mute after you asked about the result, in normal world that was never a good sign.

but i guess, good things do come for boys who wait.

at least i hope it would be good. mind you it was not easy making this decision. this is not like deciding what movie to watch for a night out, or whether my car would be white or black. this is like jumping off the ship and hope there is no shark in the water.

and i have not even told my parents yet. i told my friend this just now and she said, what a fillial son you are. i know she meant to be sarcastic, but if this sudden move could cause heart-attack, then maybe i am being fillial.

i'm just afraid how things could turn out, like people would get sad and stuff. i just like the way things are, at least for the next 2 months or so before i make my move. i felt just like becky bloomwood when she was having secrets about her 2 weddings from her parents, and look at how did that turn out.

ok maybe i should give my father a call. or maybe an e-mail saying...

'let's touch base. i got important news to tell you.'




...ed

life lockdown

i was behind the wheel waiting for the light to turn green when i saw a car almost hit a motorbike on the opposite road, causing the poor biker to slid and fall down.

ouch.

while i was glad i was not the person in the car or that injured biker, i couldn't help feeling how things could change in instant seconds.

i mean, one minute the only thing in that biker's mind could be what he should have for dinner, but out of a sudden situation changed and i believe all he wants to do now is strangle that driver alive. well at least i wanted to.

you bet i drove a bit more carefully after i witness that all the way home, feeling grateful of all the road near-misses i've had.

i guess this kind of things occur in front of our eyes are meant as a remembrance. i don't know about other people, but i'm sure guilty of taking things for granted sometimes.

be it being reckless on the road taking my safety and lawsuit-free life for granted, or playing catch and run ignoring people that matters taking their affection for granted, or even being too stagnant and easy-going at work taking the job security for granted.

after all, we never know when things could turn to the worse. just like the recent economy meltdown. few months ago my worry was which destinations to select for a year-end trip but voila, all i care now is to secure my position in the office.

especially now that it is almost confirmed that i'll be staying put in this island. to some extent, it does feel a bit relieved that i don't have to trade my current life, even though for something that could be better, but hey, i've learned to believe divine intervention by now.

you see, the company extention branch-out in the north that i almost joined last year if not for a sudden blank-out during interviews when the interviewer asked why i wanted to work there, ended up laying off 95% of its people.

ok i could be among the 5% (positive thinking) but if i were not, i'd like to believe that it was work of a higher being.

so now i look at my home and life in general from a whole new more-appreciative eyes. but as time goes by, i would tend to forget and go back to point zero and start taking everything for granted again.

until i see another near-miss incident.



...ed

last night was a flyer

Singapore Flyer

as what the stone says...

yes. i went to the singapore flyers. ok i know this Singapore Flyer has been opened to public since.. like forever (**i checked this, it was opened on 14-feb-2008. yes, on valentines day which is so 'cliche) but i guess, just like everything else that are close to us, we tend to ignore them because they are near anyway so we thought we should be able to visit them anytime we want. i mean, i'm sure there are many parisians who haven't even go to eiffel tower yet, or egyptians who never been to the pyramids, or malaysians who haven't been into the ISA cells.

anyway, the real story is, i was driving through raffles boulevard heading to marina square when i discovered the singapore flyer entrance. this might sound stupid but even though i know the flyer is somewhere close to AYE that i always drive through, i never really properly figured out where the entrance is.

until accidentally today.

singapore flyers in many colours

ok maybe this flyer isn't the first-thing-in-the-world invention at all, but as it is one of the prominent landmark in the heart of singapore city, i did feel a bit surreal to finally see the base structure. it's like when you visited a friend's house for the first time, and felt like you know him more thereafter.

we didn't ride the flyer though. i know the flyer looks impressive and everything but there is no way i'm gonna spend 30 bucks for that merry-go-round ride, watching singapore skyscrappers view that i've seen like a million times it's practically already etched inside my corneas.

maybe in the future though, when i play host to some outside oh-my-god-i-visited-singapore-so-i-must-ride-the-flyer visitors.

where people pay to get locked up for 30 minutes of their lives

this was from the spot where i realized that the flyer was actually moving. ok i know it should be moving but the movement is so slow that it is not obvious at all from afar. as captivating as it looks, one cells exchanged people one after another before rising up high in the sky, i'm pretty captivated to the view underneath the boarding deck as well. they planted this whole mini-forest down there, complete with fountains and banana trees. i expect if i look hard enough, i would find tarzan there too, not sleeping on the park bench because then he would be fined 200 dollars, according to the new singapore law released last week (can you believe that? we cannot sleep in the park bench in singapore anymore. so if you have 200 dollars to spend, get a hotel room instead. you have been warned.)

mini-jungle underneath the boarding deck

there were shops inside the building but not many people in them. it's a joy really, to be visiting a place in the city on friday night that is not packed with people in singapore. it's like you have just found a secret underground celebrity-only spot. hip, grand but not crowded.

except this particular place...

when i first saw this bunch of legs from outside the display window, at a glance i thought the mannequins were taking a rest. until i realized that the legs were actually moving and there were zillions of small fishes nibbling on them. like they could feel anything. i say, since you pay 30 dollars for the this 30 minutes fish-nibbling session, why not put something more prominent and more value-for-money inside the water? like alligators.

Marina Bay

from the singapore flyers, we then walked down to marina bay. you know, the marina bay is just around my backyard (everywhere is around our backyards in this tiny island), but believe it or not, i think this was only my only second time being there this year, after the new year countdown.

gosh. have i been this unhip and boring?

the most recognized singapore skyscrappers view

i had camera on my hand and this night view of singapore most famous skyscrappers in front of me. so what should i do? snap them, although i've snapped this view many times before.

but wait. what's that construction underneath the highway bridge? are they building new road or something?

it looks like it. what i realized about singapore is, they are very fast in putting new stuff out. one moment it's not there, then u look away one second, and it's there. most clear example is the ERP. i mean, how many times was i shocked to find a new ERP gantry suddenly popping out like mushrooms after the rain while i drive through my normal route? just last week i found one ERP popping out near the eunos exit on the PIE (my line when i saw that was - damn you blood-sucking LTA).

i snapped these from roadside contruction board notice

ok according to the notice board above, they are building a pedestrian bridge across the marina bay.

you know what? i think that is such a good idea. many times when i drove through the AYE across marina bay, i wish i was walking instead so i could stop and enjoy the view for a moment, and embrace the metropolitan life that i'm living. it's a feeling i guess new yorkers feel everytime they walk through the time square or the rockerfeller center, feeling every bit as though they were casts of friends on the way to the central perk, and that they really belong there...

am i making much sense? anyway, it looks like a nice modern bridge. full stop.

looking at the other side, the night was still young from the sounds and lights of (which i believe is) the marina bay casino construction site. who won the bid to build a casino here last time? was it the sands or something? anyway, the construction is going full gear to get this casino up. i'm so excited. not for the casino as in i want to gamble, but to check-out the whole new singapore outlook. i mean, how many of us could say we spend the day hanging around casinos? exactly.

under the spotlight

just beside the esplanade (or as the locals fondly call 'the durian'), we heard some balinese kind of mystic music being played. i was like wow, since when the ministry of sound dj changed trend to playing this kind of traditonal music? i mean, how are the disco-goers gonna strutt their stuff to this anyway?

wait. can we really hear the music that clearly if it is really from the ministry of sound disco bar?

oh some guys are playing the instruments in the performance arena just beside the esplanade near the ministry of sound. ok this makes more sense. apparently there were some traditional music and dance festival going on and it was the balinese music session.

me? not really in the mood the check this out, so after snapping some photos, off i went, faster than you could say 'babi guling'.

submerging in balinese feel with the fullerton in background

ok basically, those were what i really did last night, nothing out-of-this-world but like the flyer, we don't always have to be on full speed to be high up.



...ed

say hello to the big R

if you guys for once switched out of malaysian tv1 and tv3 channel, which kept on boasting about how US was immitating malaysia on ways to tackle the economic downturn, you'd realized how bad a shape the world economy is now.

when i said 'world' here, i meant the US and singapore.

the first thing i saw after i came back to civilization from hari raya holiday, was this great big headline in yahoo main page, 'it's official: singapore is now in recession'. and today it got more interesting. the line goes, 'jobs cut likely to start in december'.

aren't those make your heart skip a beat? i guess santa clause would be busy distributing job vacancy pamplets instead on the eve night this year.

my company has not been doing great for quite some time, just like a long lingering cancerous growth, all blamed on the world market price. last year i bought an 8G thumb drive for 80 dollars. early this year it was sold for 45 dollars during Comex 2008. recently my friend purchased one for only 30 dollars plus. by christmas this year i expect we have to actually pay people to buy our products. market price is free falling. how are we going to make profit? it's a matter of time before it drops six feet under and we have to start chanting lament.

to cool down some hot asses, the management clarified yesterday that there won't be any lay-offs for us. which is great, but before we went out of the room popping party balloons, they added that they do consider implementing pay-cut measures though.

excuse me, but pay cut? that's like end of the world too, right? how on earth am i going to pay for my house, my car, oversea trips, country clubs, butlers, designer clothes, jewellery, personal jets etc etc?

plus, now that US is into this bad recession, i guess i can say goodbye to my plan of making it big to the dreamland. now suddenly everything went quiet, as though a disconnected phone call when you go through a tunnel. it's understandable, because when the water level is already up to your nose, you won't think of anything else but your own survival.

one thing for sure. i must resort to being frugal from now on. if i have to, i must take drastic measures ala becky bloomwood in the shopaholic series. for example, my car is really dirty now in the parking lot below, but the new me won't send it to drive-through car wash. i must wash it myself instead. or if i'm too lazy, just leave it dirty. people say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, so people should not judge me by seeing my dirty car exterior.

in the meantime, let's just hope for the best. what else can we do? it's not like we can influence the way the world economy is run anyway. i mean, i can stay late working my ass off but the company is still going to lose money anyway.

i wonder whose fault that the world economy is going haywire like this? sometimes i think, now that all company make losses and everybody is like losing billions of dollars, where does the lost money go to? stock investors? surely someone somewhere is doing the joker laugh now while having money shower.

*bastard.




...adie

reaching for the light

so it was friday night. it was time to put the work mess on hold and moved away from the hari raya trails. who says the party is over now that all the lemangs and ketupats are all history?

this month, the hindus will be celebrating their diwali which is also known as the festival of light. so when we pondered where to go for the night, i thought let's give little india a visit.


Diwali (Deepavali) in Little India

true enough, when we arrived in little india, the street was already submerged in the glowing light of many blinding colours. i felt like alice just found wonderland. ok maybe not really, but still it was nice to look.





even the smaller streets were decorated. wow someone do have lots of money to sponsor this. this is many times better than the hari raya light-up, which is pretty sad actually. but again, nothing should ever be compared to this mother of all light-ups. after all, the lights for hindus signifies victory of good over the evil within every human being.

and from the look of it, it was a one sided victory, hands down.

actually, it's quite a good place to buy things around little india, because you know you're not gonna be slashed off your throat. price wise i mean. having said that, i didn't buy anything. i was just got curious by that tangles of flowers beside this fruit stall. there were many tangles of flowers like this sold at every corners. my friend said they use those during prayers, and i thought, really? like how??

while strolling along the main street admiring the beauty (most of the time through my canon G7's LCD screen), we found this small roof-covered street that was packed with goodies. i never noticed this street before. looks like a lot of activities inside there so we ventured in, feeling every bit like harry potter just discovered diagon alley.





you know, if harry potter was mesmerized by the magical stuff on display in diagon alley, i was mesmerized by all these diwali decoration stuff. i thought wow, are there people actually buying all these things? everywhere i set your eyes on, there would be things on sale. everywhere. if my eyes could choke, it would by grasping for air in no time.




we bought a couple of these sweets. it costs 70 cents a piece. i don't know what they are called, but what i do know is that they were freakingly sweet. very very sweet. it's like stuffing sugar in my mouth, only in different texture. as i chewed those stuff, my mind went, 'diabetes.. weight.. diabetes.. weight'.



and i guess these bad boys do not need any introductions. what's interesting is that they were on air. bottles and bottles of muruku hanging for their lives. someone please save them and buy one quick!




all in all, it was quite a good night stroll. well, good in the sense of something different anyway. at least, we were together celebrating the victory of good over evil within ourselves.


and hey, maybe the spirit will carry over to next week when i hope the light is strong enough still to help me fight the evil in the office.




...ed

ode to the cow dung

i've completed my mission.

hari raya was fun. well, as fun as it could be now that i am celebrating it as an adult. which means it was just like any normal day but with nicer clothes and yummier foods on the table.

oh and significantly less money too. but again, i go through that in many parts of the year as well.

i could not believe how much meat i consumed. gosh, i think i ate more meat in that few days than what i ate the whole year. no wonder at my grandpa's village in rembau, negeri sembilan, i could only see dungs on the road but no cow.

mind you, that was so a sight to behold right now because, get this, i heard they are going to demolish the whole village by next year. yes demolish. which means by this time next year, there will be no more village and no more cow dungs on the road.

evil? i think so too.

you see, my grandpa's village in negeri sembilan is located just by the railway track. it's so strategic that we could enjoy the peaceful environment of the countryside one minute, and get a taste of urban development by the sound of the rushing train in another.






apparently someone has just decided to add in another railway track beside the existing one. which by the way, is so puzzling for me because who on earth takes the cross country train in malaysia these days? like 3 people in the whole year.

anyway, so they are going to add in new track. now, how wide is the train track? less than a meter wide. and how wide area beside the existing track that they are going to take for that so-called railway track building project? almost 50 meters. do the math.

hmm i'm not in a position to comment because i'm not as intelligent to understand the logic behind this. for all i know, i'm dumb-founded, as were my grandpa. these people, they can travel through time. or else, how could they enter the villagers property and did some area measurements stuff before even discussing anything about the plans, the compensation etc etc with the locals?

deal or no deal, we just have no say. it's the government anyway, it's not like they can ever do anything wrong. so it's a safe bet to say by next year, all the cow dungs on the village road would have become history.

i guess, that's the price we have to pay for development. we would want our country to prosper. we want to build the tallest building in the world and live in flat houses like the singaporeans, even if it means letting go of our own wide land for some stuffy houses with zero compound.

so where will we celebrate the next hari raya? in the city and the supermarkets just like what the singaporeans do. it will be ok. we will still have our nice clothes and yummier foods then.

even if it's made of frozen meat that did not litter any countryside roads.








...ed

10 thoughts on hari raya

1) hari raya is such a family day
we prepare for the big day together (clean and decorate the house, prepare the foods etc), then we spend the big day together (have the same sumptuous meals, go to the mosque in the same car, visits relatives) and then spend the after raya effect together (getting sick of the same food, feeling bumped out about having to return to our lives) too. in short, for that few days, we always see the same face, and we liked it.

2) duit raya giving should be abolished
i mean, that money in green packets all working people is expected to hand out to non-working people during hari raya, as if we didn't already spend a lot preparing for the day. well at least, make it to be given only by married people. it's not fair for non-married people you know, who's already miserable answering question about marriage plan by relatives, and then have to part with our only money soulmates. ok it's not like i'm miserable, but still... hey, teach our youngs the pain of earning money, shall we?

3) forgiveness is such a sad gesture
really. everytime me and my siblings asked for forgiveness from our parents on the morning of hari raya day, we cried. almost, for me anyway. my sister is the worst, she could barely speak and her mascara and eye liner all went down the drain.

4) it's a drive-cow-towards-extinction day
because that's all that we eat for that few days. beef. eat lemang (that glutinuous rice wrapped with banana leaves cooked inside bamboo pieces) with beef rendang, eat ketupat (that compressed rice cooked inside coconut leaves) with peanut sauce added with beef serunding. these dishes were in almost every house we visited too. no escape. our bodies are screwed.

5) i have 1001 living relatives
i may not meet them for any other part of the year. for most, i don't even know their names or remember their faces or know how we are related, but man, do i have lots of blood relatives. when i was in my grandpa's village, people kept coming in visiting and i was like, who the hell are these people? it's almost a wonder why siti nurhaliza wasn't one of them.

6) teenagers do the craziest(stupidest) things
like sleeping on the train track. i heard that during the last fasting month, 5 teenage students from nearby hostel escaped from nightime hostel curfew, then somehow ended up sleeping on nearby railway track. in the middle of the night, the train came and 2 of them didn't manage to wake up on time. stupid? well, my auntie said they were sniffing glue that night, which would make more sense...

7) ghosts do exist. or do they?
ok i risked tagging this site with RA-21 with this. i heard story about this black furry without-head figure that likes to pin people down on the bed from a neighbour's house at my grandpa's village. that house has an old grave underneath the stairs. plus, the old abandoned houses in the village has many 'mysterious beings. apparently, last time the villagers like to rare these, well, paranormal beings to help them in their everyday's work. when these villagers die, these 'things were left unattended in the emptied house. have you ever wonder why some abandoned house become bad so fast, but when people stay there without doing any house fix it won't become bad at all? call mulder and scully!

8) the government is evil
they want to add in a new railway track in addition to the existing one that runs across my grandpa's village but i heard they are going to take the villagers' land that could make 20 railway tracks. the notice is up but the villagers were not told of any compensation deal yet. this looks like a losing battle. if this is true, i'm left without a village by next year.

9) everybody looks for chicken after hari raya
call it post hari raya effect. after we returned to the city, we decided that we were sick of hari raya food. so we went out to buy some kfc. the take-out line was long. looked like everybody was sick of hari raya food too. alternative? chickens. everybody was buying in buckets until they ran out of fried chickens. so we drove to mc donalds instead but there we were told to wait 30 minutes for them to prepare another batch of sold-out fried chickens. it was a night of fried chicken hunting and we failed. we ate pizza hut instead. not without queing.

10) ermmm.. i thought of writing this haha...
ok no more thoughts. i'm sleepy. it has been a busy day so i want to sleep now.


..till the next year hari raya!




...ed