Kahuna Ashram

What Freedom of Speech Really Is

2012-01-29T16:29:00.000-08:00

To some people, one of the most important basic human rights is freedom of speech, and that means being able to express any words or ideas freely without censorship.

Which I think is stupid.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say/write anything you want. As an existentialist, I truly believe that you are free to do whatever you want to as long as you do it responsibly and execute your actions without being offensive to the point of endangering others in any way.

While I was in Trondheim, Norway, a very wise Afghan ex-minister closed one of her speeches by saying, and I'm rephrasing her quote due to bad memory, "Freedom of speech is like a long piece of wood. You can do whatever you want with it, play with it, throw it, or swing it like a whip. As long as it doesn't hit anyone, it's fine. The moment someone gets hurt, that's when you're in the wrong."

The next time I hear someone using freedom of speech to defend their being insolent, instead of applauding them for exercising their rights, I'll just dismiss them as another bigoted imbecile. Like we need any more of those.

At Last

2012-01-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

Etta James passed away this week. I've never been a big fan of her voice, but I like some of her songs.

People have been giving tributes to her by singing her most famous song, At Last. I guess it's kind of a tradition that when a famous singer dies, people would pay homage to them by singing their most well-known song at their funeral.

I just find it weirdly inappropriate that when Etta James passed away, everybody starts singing At Last. It almost sounds like we've been waiting for her death for so long that when it finally happened, people are like, "At laaaaaaaaaast!"

But not singing it would also be inappropriate.

You And Your Powerful Vagina

2012-01-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

Women amaze me.

I have a friend who just had a baby a few days ago, and she put up the baby photos on Facebook. That baby's HUGE. I have not seen that many newborns in my life so I don't really know what the average size is, but from the looks of it this one is going to be Shaquille O' Neal.

How the hell did she push something that big out of her vagina? Yeah, yeah, I know, contraction and dilatation and stuff, and women have been doing it since the dawn of humanity so there's really no magic to it. But still, pushing something that big out of any body orifice must be so painful it must have felt like giving birth to a transformers truck.

Men can jump over cliffs, swim with sharks and go to the moon, but we can't function if our balls are flicked. Women are dainty and pretty and small, but they can push out human beings out of their body. And for that, I applaud all the women of the world, because if the tables were turned, I don't think men could handle it.

This Would Make Me Very Happy

2012-01-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

You know what would make me very happy? This:

The very rare, first UK edition of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, published in 1947. When I saw this on eBay, the first thing I thought was, "I NEED THIS." No, I don't even want it. I need it. Like air.

I can't even imagine how the smell of the pages is. It must be intoxicating. The best smell of all. If only they could squeeze all moisture out of the pages and bottle it up, I would buy it and make it my default cologne. I want to walk around smelling like old, used pages from this book. When people come up to me and ask what cologne I wear, I want to say, "It's Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. First edition." The smell will be so intoxicating it'll make people around me undress themselves and have an orgy.

The starting bid is at US$ 999. Yes, a triple figure starting bid for a book.

And I can't afford that. Duh.

Renato Carosone

2012-01-08T15:11:00.000-08:00

I love old songs with humour. That's why I prefer The Kinks over The Beatles because The Kinks' songs are a lot wittier and are full of humour.

And I just spent hours listening to Renato Carosone, an Italian singer from the 50's famous for the song Tu Vuo Fa' L'Americano. If you've seen The Talented Mr. Ripley, you would remember this extremely infectious Neapolitan tune Jude Law sang in the bar the first time he went for a night out with Matt Damon. With my lousy Italian I can tell that the song is about a man who badly wants to pass himself off as an American and becomes the laughing stock of the town.

And all his other songs are just as funny. All of his songs are in Neapolitan, but you don't have to speak the language to enjoy them. Such is the beauty of music.

It reminds me of the first time I heard the song Viva La Mamma by Eduardo Bennato. I didn't understand a thing but I played it over and over during an entire weekend and ended up knowing the words by heart.

Annoying People Part MM: I Just Unfriended Some People on FB

2012-01-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

Once I saw a guy's status on Facebook which went something like this:

"Phew. I just deleted 30 people on Facebook because they are annoying f**ks."

What's that? A warning to your remaining friends? Like we'd be all "Shit this guy's on an unfriending spree, I better behave now lest he'll delete me too!".

By all means, if you want to unfriend people, do it. But you don't have to be an asshole and announce it to your remaining friends like they should give a shit. It makes you look self-important, as though we should be thankful to still be on your friend list.

I know Shakespeare said the world is but a stage and we're all actors, but that doesn't mean we should all consider ourselves celebrities. Life is not Hollywood. Being unfriended by you doesn't mean I'm going to spiral into complete irrelevance.

In other words, your self-esteem can use a little dial-down, so eat some humble pie and be thankful that some people still want to be friends with you.

Because you, Mister, are also an annoying f**k.

A Hairy Situation

2012-01-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'm not one of those people who can look great bald.

I would love to be able to pull off a bald head perfectly, you know, like Jason Statham or Sinead O'Connor. But I guess I lack the chiseled jaw.

So if I must have a resolution this year, it would be to pull off the bald look without looking like a pumpkin.

The Year of the Dragon

2012-01-03T14:53:00.000-08:00

2012 is the year of the dragon. And I was born in the year of the dragon. Ergo, this is my year.

Out of all the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, the dragon is the most powerful because it doesn't exist. I'm starting to believe that they were in dire need of a fierce animal to represent my year of birth and they decided that no existing animal was good enough so they invented a new animal that is as stealth and quick as the snake, is able to fly like the bird, has scales so it can swim like the fish, with the eyes of the tiger, has horns like the bull, and CAN SPIT FIRE like nobody's business. No, seriously, can YOUR zodiac animal spit fire?

The dragon has all the coolest elements of all species in the animalia kingdom AND it has some demon in it so you wouldn't want to piss a dragon off because it can kick your ass in ways you can't even imagine.

If that's not enough, the dragon is fiery red and orange. They could have made it dark green or even black, but no. The dragon is so cool it needs to be seen from a thousand miles away so let's make it red. The dragon is so awesome that all mangas and movies with 'Dragon' in their titles are sure to make money. Can you imagine if those writers weren't as ambitious? They would have come out with "Pig Ball Z" or "Kiss of the Sheep" or "The Girl with the Rat Tattoo". Who would want to see those?

So yeah, let's all just agree that I'm going to kick serious ass this year.

Solve This Save The World

2012-01-01T04:59:00.000-08:00

There's one conundrum of the world that is so simple yet so mysterious:

How is it that everyone needs the same thing but some have too much and some have nothing?

This day, 30 years ago.

2011-12-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

Irony of life: People who love giving advice on relationships are usually the ones who are bad at them.

I've never had a real, super serious relationship, so I try to refrain from giving unsolicited advice on how to make a relationship work because to be honest, I don't know how. The weird thing is, people who've been through a lot of relationships that didn't work out are the ones who are the most generous with the tips and tricks.

On the one hand, they've had a lot of experience so they might be wiser and know better. On the other hand, if they've failed in all their past relationships, maybe there's something they've done wrong but kept doing over and over again without learning from their mistakes, so they might not be the best persons to take advice from.

I don't really believe in soulmates. The universe doesn't really take a particular interest in your love life so if there's someone out there who might be perfect for you, the universe is not going to play matchmaker and make both your hearts beat in sync whenever you pass by each other. That being said, I don't believe in coincidences either. If somehow you meet someone who is really that piece of the puzzle that snugly fits into yours, it's just because you have things in common that make you gravitate towards each other in a natural manner. Either way, no matter how perfect you are for each other, you still have to put effort to make a relationship work.

Good things will only come out of hard work. If you think finding your significant other is hard, I think it's harder to keep them, and it's even harder to keep the flame alive. I know old couples who stay together for the kids or for fear of being alone, but you can see there's no longer chemistry between them, and I pray to God not to let me be one of them.

Which is why I would like to wish my parents a very happy 30th anniversary. Even after all these years, you can still see the love they radiate towards each other. God knows it has not always been smooth sailing, but they managed to ride through the waves, keep the mast upright, and patch up the wear and tear of the sails along the way.

Love you, Mak and Abah. Always have and always will.

Annoying People Part XII: Pretending to be Inadvertently Snobbish

2011-12-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

Someone just posted a link on Facebook about why people need to go travelling.

He was all like, "Yeah, people! Go travel the world and you'll learn and see a lot of things from different points of view and not just be trapped in your own cocoon and think in a uni-dimensional way."

I totally agree with him, of course, but I don't agree with the way he urges his friends on Facebook to start travelling around the world because that's just really inconsiderate. Listen, spoilt kid. Most people don't travel because they can't afford it, and it's not really a choice. If given the chance, I think most people would do it in a split second, no questions asked. You putting a link on Facebook asking people to globe-trot is like preaching to the penniless converted.

People don't need convincing that travelling is good, douche. It's just financially impossible for most of them. You're just lucky you've got the chance to see the world with the government's money. Putting that advice column on Facebook is just a way of implying that you have seen the world. If you want people to benefit from travelling, why not put it in writing, telling people what you have seen during your travels. That way you can impart your knowledge or even small anecdotes about other regions of the world. If all you want to do is tell people that you've been somewhere far away, do know that people would really prefer that you shut your trap.

Next thing you know, you'll be telling homeless people that sleeping on a bed at home is better than on a cardboard box in the street.

Story of a Grinch

2011-12-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

It's the Christmas holidays again, the season where atheists max out their credit cards to buy unnecessary stuff for their loved ones in the name of Jesus. It's also the season during which gaining ten kilos is perfectly acceptable, if not encouraged.

The one thing that I dread the most during Christmas season is that pitiful look I get when I tell people that I'm not going to celebrate Christmas, that my family is halfway across the world and that I'm not going to have a wholesome Christmas meal. Seriously people, I don't mind. I have never celebrated Christmas so when I say I don't have Christmas plans, that's not me fishing for an invitation to your house.

It's very nice of you to invite me to spend Christmas with your family and I am grateful to have such thoughtful friends around me. The thing is, I can be very socially awkward when it comes to other people's family gatherings. Every time I'm at a friend's place, no matter how nice his family is (they always are), the only thing I can think of is, "I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home." The good thing about French families is they play board games a lot. I once went to a friend's place where there was a Scrabble game from the '60s in a mint condition. Board games help make me less nervous because it makes everyone look like a child. And I'm pretty good at board games so my awkwardness is eclipsed by my genius. Haha.

But still, I feel very out of place every time I'm sleeping over at a friend's parents' place so I try to avoid it as best as I could without being offensive.

For these past couple of years, in order to avoid looking like the sad Asian boy who celebrates Christmas alone, I've devised a foolproof method. I'd tell people that I'm doing something or going somewhere for Christmas so they wouldn't feel the urge to invite me to their homes even when I actually don't have plans yet. I know I'm going to miss out on marvelous food and cakes and sumptuous desserts (French grandmothers make the awesomest cakes and desserts) but I prefer eating non-remarkable food alone at home than eating good food but feeling like an intruder.

So, contrary to popular belief, the French are a bunch of warm people who actually welcome foreigners who do not cause chaos in their country. It's just that I prefer being a loner so much that even a sincere invitation to spend Christmas with them makes me uncomfortable.

A Dangerous Method

2011-12-22T01:37:00.000-08:00

I just got back from watching A Dangerous Method starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley. It's a story about how Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud crossed paths which led to the birth of psychoanalysis.

Let's do negatives first. First off, Keira Knightley. I wasn't convinced by her acting and I can't say I care much about the incoherent Russian accent she tries to do. The casting would have been spot-on if it wasn't for Knightley's presence which stands out like a sore thumb. The only Keira film in which I think she did a good job was Bend It Like Beckham, where she was most believable as a tomboyish English girl. I can't actually spell out my criteria of a bad acting. All I know is that whenever Keira was on screen, I saw her as the celebrity Keira Knightley and not as Sabina Spielrein. The thing is, Sabina is such a pivotal character to the movie, the very reason of the clash between Jung and Freud. Knightley could have easily carried the whole movie, but in my opinion, she fell flat.

Secondly, I think the film is too short and condensed resulting in the story of Otto Gross being grossly (ha!) underdeveloped. I didn't quite get the whole conflict between Jung and his wife as things went so fast. The movie is so compressed that it seemingly took only two therapy sessions for Jung to completely cure Sabina who is supposed to be this hopeless suicidal nutjob. I completely understand the difficulty of squeezing a parallel biopic of two important figures in psychoanalysis within a short time frame, but such a film largely deserves a much longer running time in order for the viewers to really grasp the intensity of the dispute between the two protagonists and for the emotions to seep in. I really would have loved to see more of Sigmund Freud's character since in this movie Freud doesn't get enough screen time. The short, intermittent bits we see of him somehow make him come off as the bad guy who's cocky, intransigent, extremely self-righteous and even slightly racist. Then again, you cannot go see a movie hoping it would be as detailed as the book it is adapted from. So I'll try reading the book when I have time.

Now we'll start on the positives. Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen nailed it as Jung and Freud, respectively. Vincent Cassel, despite having only five minutes of screen time, did a pretty good job depicting Otto Gross, a fellow psychoanalyst who's also a polygamous sex addict.

The movie is set in Switzerland around the turn of the century, so you can expect breathtaking sceneries of la belle époque. The script is top notch. Not too difficult for the uninitiated in psychology, and not too simplified so as to insult the viewers' intelligence. People still need some notions in psychology in order not to get completely lost, but usually people who decide to watch A Dangerous Method are those who already know who Freud is and have a vague idea of what he did to change history.

This film is based on a true story so it doesn't have the usual beginning-conflict-climax-resolution narrative structure, and I like that.

All in all, I think this is a great movie with very heavy but not superfluous dialogues. You have to listen to every bit, every analogy and every retelling of dream.

It made me think, and it taught me things. I love going out of the movie theater feeling that I have learned new stuff.

I went with a friend who is not at all into psychology, and all he could say at the end of the movie was, "Bodoh punya cerita. Nasib baik Keira Knightley tunjuk tetek."

Heh.

Self-racism in the Asian community

2011-12-11T13:03:00.001-08:00

Loosely quoted from a friend:

"People in Asia look up to the Whites too much. Asians approve of everything the Whites do or have. If you see an Asian talking to a white person, you'll see the 'I want to please this white person' smile and the excessive nodding and the timid, self-conscious laughter. Asians just love to get approval from white people. 90 percent of Asian countries are extremely west-centric, and in these countries white people get special treatment in a lot of things, especially in the service sector. A lot of Asians associate fair skin with beauty, and beauty with superiority. This instills an inert inferiority complex in Asian children vis-à-vis their white counterparts. Sometimes I wish I was White, just so I'd get the same special treatments as well."

--

There's an awful lot of truth in what he said.

I just wished he hadn't said the last sentence. If he were to be white, it would certainly solve his problems with Asians, but the problem of inferiority complex in the Asian community as a whole would still persist. It made him sound somewhat selfish to want to get rid of the problem by joining the enemy (not that White people are enemies, but you get what I mean.)

Instead, he should have wished some Asians were not as bigoted towards their own people as they are now. Countless are the times I had people telling me to get a French wife (by saying French, white is automatically implied) so that I'd have beautiful white-mixed babies. I don't mind people telling me that because statistically children of mixed heritage tend to be considered good looking. However, I once got pretty disturbed when I heard someone say, "I know this girl who's of Chinese and orang putih heritage, but she looks more Chinese than orang putih, so she's not very pretty. Her little sister on the other hand takes a lot more after their orang putih dad, so she's really beautiful."

I would lobby for that last sentence to be chosen as the definition of 'self-hate' in the dictionary. You know, when your ultimate dream in life is for your kids not to take after your genes for fear they're going to be unattractive, you should not even consider reproducing at all because I wouldn't want you to pass that ugly self-hating gene either.

If you were a sample in my genetic algorithm project, I would eliminate your stupid genes from the population so fast you wouldn't even have the time to finish putting on that eighth layer of whitening cream on your butt cheeks.

A World Sans Comic Sans

2011-12-07T14:12:00.001-08:00

Comic Sans is the bane of our existence.

Imagine you're going on a job interview wearing the fanciest suit, talking in received pronunciation, being extra clean shaven and walking with a swag. Your whole charisma can and WILL be completely destroyed the moment you put your resume on the table just because it's written in Comic Sans.

If you can type using Comic Sans, chances are you can read. Which means you have the capacity to cogitate about the name Comic Sans. It can't get more self-explanatory than that: it is to be used exclusively in comics. Not in e-mails, not in official letters, not in notices, not in the papers, not in anything else but comics.

You can write me a super serious e-mail with all the words that count such as "urgent", "important", "attention", "a.s.a.p", "please DO NOT FORGET", etc. But the fact that you chose to write it in Comic Sans negates all the haste and importance of that e-mail, hence my lackadaisical attitude towards said e-mail.

Please. It's 2011, and in 24 days it's going to be 2012. At present, humanity virtually has a billion of fonts to choose from.

You no longer see Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" when you turn on MTV for the same reason why you should stop using Comic Sans: because it's not 1998 anymore.

Roses really smell like poo-ooh-ooh

2011-11-20T10:34:00.001-08:00

I have a German debate coming up and the motion is roughly translated as "Air travel is bad for the environment."

And I'm in the opposition. I've never had a more duh-inducing motion in my whole life. How are you supposed to find opposing arguments for that? It's such a stupid motion.

Might as well have a debate over the motion "Shit smells like shit."

The Best Man

2011-11-19T08:32:00.001-08:00

Phew.

Lost all the weight I gained during summer holidays, and then some. Well, my brother's getting married next year, so the best man's gotta look good.

Algogen

2011-11-16T17:01:00.001-08:00

I spent weeks to actually begin to comprehend a project I'm about to embark upon. It's a project involving genetic algorithm based on Darwin's natural selection theory, and I'm about to digitalize evolution. That's right. I'm going to code computer programs which can simulate the process of evolution, and apply that algorithm in fluid mechanics. I'm thinking of creating a program to optimize the wings of a jet subjected to constrains imposed by the user.

Hope the above paragraph made sense to you. I promised myself never to talk about school on my blog mainly because my school stuff bores people, especially those who aren't interested in engineering. Besides, I'm at school everyday and people there only talk about school stuff, so this blog is a vent for everything else which is not related to my studies.

But this time I'm making an exception because it's been bugging me a lot. It took me weeks to really get a good grasp of this project. And now my German teacher wants me to explain genetic algorithm to the whole class. In German. She was like, "Don't worry about complicated engineering terms. Do away with them. Keep it simple. The important thing is your German should be correct and fluent."

How can you do away with complicated engineering terms when it's a 100% engineering project? It's like asking me to describe a computer without mentioning the monitor, the mouse, the keyboard, the operating system, the hard disk, the CPU and the Internet. It's just not possible.

I have a hard time explaining my project to friends in French, a language I'm at ease with. I can't imagine doing the same damn thing in German, a language so hard it made Hitler go mad and kill a million people.

Another Pointless Jab At Our American Friends

2011-11-15T10:46:00.001-08:00

One big problem with Americans is they don't use the metric system. Out of 204 countries of the world, the United States are one of the THREE countries that don't use the metric system.

Three out of 204 doesn't sound like a big deal, because it shouldn't be a big deal. But it's America we're talking about, and they're ALWAYS a big deal.

I'm constantly finding myself doing mental acrobatics to understand the Americans. During my travels, the Americans I met would always stick out like a sore thumb because they're always saying sentences that don't make sense to anyone else like, "Wow it's, like, 110 degrees out. Luckily I drank, like, 2 gallons of water this morning so I won't get, like, dehydrated walking to the Prado museum which is, like, 20 blocks from here. Like, like, like."

110 degrees? In any other country, that temperature would turn you into a braised human, ready for consumption. 2 gallons of water? I have no idea how much that is but it sounds like a lot. 20 blocks? If you're talking about my Lego blocks, then the Prado should be merely one step away.

I have my own ballpark method to convert Fahrenheit into Celcius. I just take the Fahrenheit number, subtract 32, and divide by 2. It's not accurate, but it's close enough estimation for weather purposes. It's a simple calculation, but every time I'm faced with this kind of conversion problem, I ask myself the same damn question: How can a powerful nation of 300 million people still stick to this grossly inaccurate system of measurement?

I remember one discussion I had with some American dude about Shutter, a Thai scary movie. In the movie, an invisible ghost sits on a guy's shoulders so when he weighs himself, he clocks in at 120 (kilograms) although he's a lean man who would weigh 65kg tops. But this American dude was like, "So why did he lose weight at the end of the movie? Did the ghost suck the life out of him? Did he sell his soul to his pictures? Is there any symbolism behind this weight loss?"

He didn't lose weight, dumbass. In fact, he gained some, because the ghost sat on him. 120 kilograms is equivalent to 264.5 pounds, and that's heavy for one single guy.

The American dude was like, "How are you so sure of that? Did you see "kg" written on the scale?"

I replied, "No, but it's a Thai movie. Why on Earth would Thai people count their weight in American avoirdupois pounds?"

He didn't reply, but I bet he was still puzzled. It must be eye-opening to know that other countries besides The United States do exist.

The Winter Soliloquy

2011-11-15T07:41:00.001-08:00

"Damn. My room is an oven. A very, very cold oven."

"If it's cold, then it wouldn't be an oven."

"But it's just as unbearable. Imagine living in an oven, but an extremely cold one."

"You're stupid. Just say your room is a freezer. Fits better."

"Yeah, but saying you live in an oven is more terrifying than saying you live in a freezer."

"On what basis are you saying that?"

"On the basis that God created Hell because he knew people are more afraid of being burnt than being frozen. Which is exactly why the oven is more terrifying than the freezer."

"Touché."

The Consumerist Soliloquy

2011-11-15T06:33:00.001-08:00

"I need some new gym shirts. And underwear. And socks. I always run out of those. I need to go buy some."

"Or.... you can try doing your fucking laundry."

Oh. Right.

Phones in Horror Movies

2011-11-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

I just watched The Ruins, an American horror film. Yes, I do have classes. And I do go to them. I just know how to squeeze a movie in between things I have to do.

It's about of a group of friends going somewhere remote and deserted (somewhere in Mexico) only to end up being killed one after another by something or someone mysterious. Wait.. did I just sum up every horror movie ever existed?

Anyways.

Everyone has a mobile phone these days, and phone coverage keeps getting wider and better, and that has become an obstacle for every horror screenwriter because if every character in that movie has a phone, then they can call for help and there's no movie. So the first thing to do in every horror movie is to render the mobile phones useless. In most films (Quarantine, Identity, Saw, House Of Wax, Wrong Turn etc), they use the "no signal" or "flat battery" excuse, because those are the simplest ones and no coverage means no mobile phones for ALL of the characters. Problem solved.

In One Missed Call, the flip phone was broken in two AND thrown into an aquarium. You know, just to make sure it really can't make calls.

In The Ruins though, only 2 characters out of six have phones and NONE of the girls brought theirs (something very unlikely to happen in real life because I don't know any girls who don't have their phones with them 43 hours per day). And one of the phones has no signal (shocking!) but the other one works because "it's on Vodafone" (this screams of blatant product placement).

It's the first time a working phone is allowed to be in a horror movie. Faster than I could say, "I would like to see how this whole phone thing pans out", all of a sudden a group of Mayan people ambushed the group, killed one of them (the Greek guy who doesn't speak English) and confiscated the working phone.

You have to give it to the producers. Using Mayans to get rid of a working phone in a horror movie? That's brilliant. Might be the second most original phone-ridding scene after Hostel, where the guy conveniently holds his phone far from his body so it can be snatched by some gypsy kids running around.

I am eager to see how horror movies of the future are going to keep up with all the different communication devices to make sure they cover the otherwise glaring pothole in the movies.

One important thing I learned from this movie is, if you want to be in American horror movies, make sure you speak English because it's always the guy who doesn't who gets killed first.

The Unprofessional Businessman

2011-11-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

I'm still looking for ways to talk about money with people I like without it being awkward. In my experience, money is the biggest enemy to any kind of relationship, because relationships are built on trust, and somehow the emblem of trust in our world is money. If you can trust someone with your money, you can trust him on anything.

When a family member borrows money from you and you need to know when they can pay you back, it can get very delicate. You don't want to come across as insistent and pesky, but at the same time you need to know that you're going to get that money back. And you don't want this money thing to make things awkward because after all, these are the people you've known for a long time and probably will keep on bumping into for the rest of your life.

It's funny how the very mention of money can turn everything sticky.

I have a friend who asked me to translate his website from English to French for a fee, and he asked me to name my price. I've done translating jobs before, so the translating part is not a problem. But it's the first time I'm doing it for a friend and I have never established any 'friends and family' rates. Of course, I can keep it strictly professional and just name my normal price, but then I'm afraid that the moment money is being factored into a friendship, it's forever ruined.

It is definitely very naive of me to think so, but I owe it to the child inside me who still thinks that a real friend is someone who would help you out unconditionally without expecting anything in return. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm not going to get far with this kind of naivete. But somehow I wish I wouldn't change.

So my question of the day is: How do you negotiate business deals with friends or family?

Ghost Town

2011-11-06T04:55:00.000-08:00

Stupid movies are my guilty pleasure. And I just finished watching Ghost Town.

If you aren't familiar with Ricky Gervais, you might not find him that funny. But I've watched The Office (the original British version) and he was hilarious so the hilarity of Ghost Town kinda feeds off of his The Office and Golden Globes host persona.

Ricky Gervais plays a dentist who can see ghosts so there are well-dressed ghosts following him around town asking him to talk to their living relatives. So you can say that's it's not an intelligent film, and it's not the best film ever made. But it's exactly the film you need on a cold Sunday morning when you don't feel like doing anything remotely intellectual.

Goldfish in a Bowl

2011-11-01T03:19:00.000-07:00

This is another post about me not liking football.

It pisses me off that people are still talking about United's 6-1 loss against City. I get it. Manchester United losing to City, that's practically football blasphemy. And 6-1? That makes it even more pathetic.

It's football. Sometimes teams win, sometimes teams lose. Sometimes it's a tie, sometimes it's 3-0, sometimes it's 2-1, sometimes it's 4 to nothing, other times it might be 6-1, and it can also be 1-6. And sometimes I just don't give a shit anymore.

The thing is I don't see fans of other sports riling up the way the football fans do. Take rugby for example. You don't see the Kiwi fans rubbing it in on the French fans for a whole week. And they won the Rugby World Cup! That matters much, much, MUCH more than just a stupid EPL derby match, but the rugby people just know how to keep it professional. The winners had their day and the losers promised to do better next time, end of story.

I'm not questioning people's obsession over football. I'm just questioning their childishness when it comes to victory and defeat.

Sometimes they just to fail to just fucking GET OVER IT.

New Home

2011-10-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Extreme Makeover Homemade Edition.

I'm pretty pleased with what I've done with this blog. It represents everything about my origins, down to the littlest details.

And I have a feeling it's going to stay this way for quite a while. Get used to it.

By the way, I changed the name of this blog because The Couch Potato Diary just doesn't have the same ring to it anymore.

With All Due Respect, You Suck Elephant Dick

2011-10-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

There are certain ways you can sugercoat a criticism or an insult in order to soften the blow. But a criticism is a criticism, one can throw it like a boomerang or one can get down on one's knees and hand it on a silver platter, but if it's about something you hold dear, it'll still hurt like a bitch.

Knowing this, people are gradually changing the ways they give criticism: they just lash it out. After all, there's no good way of telling someone they suck, so why not save yourself the trouble of being diplomatic and just say what you think. Who cares if it's offensive to the other person, because he had it coming anyway.

Or, you can start your sentences with well-established excusatory expressions like "with all due respect" before telling someone what you really think. I hated it when people do that, but after a while, I'm starting to find it better to say "with all due respect, you look like shit today" rather than just a flat-out "you look like shit today." Somehow it gives me the impression that no matter how I look any day, you still have the obligation to show me some respect. It's comforting.

But I still can't stand it when people say things like, "You're wearing a green shirt? No offense, but I would never wear green if I were you." Well, it might sound like 'no offense' to you, but all I hear from what you said was, "You're wearing a green shirt? Are you blind, stupid, or just plain retarded, in which case it would still be unacceptable because even my autistic nephew wouldn't be caught dead in something as ugly as what you're wearing right now."

(That would be an awfully bitchy autistic nephew, by the way.)

I give criticisms on a daily basis, so I think I should compile a list of soothing expressions I could use before telling someone off.

You know, just for good measure.

Lame Book Names

2011-10-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Did I tell you I just rediscovered Twitter? And did I tell you how awesome it is? I just learned about Twitter trends and stuff, and it's pretty neat.

I had fun reading tweets for #LessExcitingBooknames which is trending right now. Among the best ones I found was:

The Grapes of Mild Displeasure
For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls
The Godmother
V for Vegetable
Journey To The Center of the Mall
The Profile Picture Of Dorian Gray

But the best one in my opinion is:

(drumrolls)

The Importance Of Being On Time

I literally laughed for a good 3 minutes.

My Favourite Catwoman

2011-10-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

Michelle Pfeiffer is hot. I know it's a redundant fact to echo because she was, after all, Catwoman. So her being hot is a given. No one had ever looked so good in a catsuit. And who can forget that 'meow' that makes a building explode?

Even her name is sexy. Try imagining her pronouncing her name in a slow manner a couple of times (put more focus on the movement of the lips), and you'll see what I mean. Muh-chelle... Ffeeiiffferrr....

She's really aged well. She's my favourite Catwoman. No offense, Halle Berry. You were hot in that catsuit, but the movie was a hot mess.

Going The Distance

2011-10-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

A very good friend of mine left for an exchange program in Argentina. She had never gone out of France on her own, let alone lived in a foreign country thousands of miles away for an extended period of time.

We write to each other often, and she just told me how she feels very alienated. People are very nice to her and all, but somehow she doesn't feel like she fits in. It might be the language barrier (she speaks decent Spanish but with a heavy French accent), or it might be that she's only been there for 3 months while all her classmates have known each other since freshman year so it's already a too close-knit circle to break into. Either way, she's having a problem blending in.

Upon reading her emails, I just smiled. It's not schadenfreude mind you, it's just that I know the feeling all too well. Been there, done that.

At least she's white, so she still looked like everybody else in Argentina. In freshman year, I was one of the very rare specimens of the Malayo-Polynesian species, and I didn't speak perfect French so people knew I was a foreigner, but they couldn't really put a finger on my origins. I don't really look Chinese. I'm too tall to be Vietnamese. My double eyelids say I'm not from East Asia. They're like, "Are you Mexican? Peruvian? A mix of Chinese and something else? Or are you just French with a funny face? Seriously what are you?"

It was nerve-wrecking.

As a foreigner in another country, people will be interested in you for like two seconds. After the exotic factor dies down, you're going to have to make real friends like everybody else. And this is when it gets tough. A friendship gives you a sense of belonging and acceptance, and this can only be done if you have things in common. What did I have in common with these French people? Nothing. I didn't look like them, eat the same food, speak the same mother tongue, practice the same religion, get all the French films references and quotes, or come from the same cultural background. My French was bookish and extremely pedantic, and the people around me were speaking 'youth French', with their verlans and derived expressions and corrupted vocabulary and SMS language and Franglish. I couldn't be any more different. Heck, they even had a different handwriting! In France there's a standardized handwriting they teach you in primary school so believe it or not, they ALL have the same handwriting. This standardized handwriting is so well-established that you have French Script as a font in Microsoft Word.

The only thing that saved me from being shunned into oblivion was the fact that I had a knack for languages (so it didn't take long for me to adapt to their French), and that I was an avid reader. Really, my years of being a bookworm finally paid off. In a prestigious French public engineering school, you have this highly educated environment where people actually READ, where they know how to have fun but still maintain their academia. They have this ability to switch from speaking vulgar French into formal French using proper enunciation, elevated register, specific vocabulary and impressive articulacy in a split second.

You can't keep up with that unless you have varied reading materials. I didn't know a lot about European history, and the French are a bunch of very Euro-centric bunch of people for whom Europe, with its long history in philosophy and literature, is the cradle of human civilization and thus, they are very proud of it. So I did a massive amount of reading, especially in areas of European art, music, literature, history and philosophy. To really know a people, you have to speak their language and know where they come from.

And I wasn't afraid to speak up. I wasn't afraid of getting and standing corrected, I made up lame jokes, I asked a lot of questions, I answered a lot of them too. You can't hope to survive 5 years of college without blending in with people, or you're going to end up depressed. College years are supposed to be the best years of our lives.

So yeah, this is what I told my friend who went to Argentina. The lonely feeling will creep up sometimes because of homesickness, but only if you don't keep yourself busy. And friends keep you busy.

Well I don't know why I'm worried about her. She's a party girl. So she'll be fine.

I Ain't No Scrub

2011-10-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

I put my iTunes on shuffle and suddenly it played No Scrubs by TLC.

That song was huge 12 years ago, and is considered a modern classic by my generation. But I bet no one really knows the exact words in the chorus so everybody always sings, "No, I don't want no scrub... a scrub nanananana in no love from me..."

And the rest of the song is also a series of indecipherable ghetto mumble. Heck, I didn't even know what they actually meant by 'scrub' until five minutes ago when I looked up the lyrics and saw the very first verse:

A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly
And is also known as a buster
Always talkin' about what he wants
And just sits on his broke ass
So (no)...

So thaaat's what 'scrub' actually means. And all this while I thought they were talking about a doctor's scrub. Like, why would an an all-female R&B group make a song about a garment worn by medical staff in the operating room? Shouldn't they be singing about the empowerment and emancipation of women like they always do?

And I couldn't help but chuckle when I read these lines in the second verse:

But a scrub is checkin' me
But his game is kinda weak
And I know that he cannot approach me
Cuz I'm lookin' like class and he's lookin' like trash
Can't get wit' no deadbeat ass

I'm not criticising ghetto talk, but a girl "lookin' like class" should never say "can't get wit' no deadbeat ass". Besides, how can a girl possibly thinks she's looking like class when in the music video she's looking like this:

Or this (oh God what is this?):

Or THIS:

"They say I'm a woman of colour, so I decided to own up and actually be one."

Did they change the definition of 'class' to "slutty bikini top, weird-ass threeway ponytails and chola tranny make-up"? Because if they did, I must have missed the memo.

That being said, I do think the word 'scrub' should have caught on more because the world does need a catchy word to describe people who talk the talk, but never walk the walk.

Life Lesson from Bears

2011-10-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered if I could ever be a vegetarian. I tried soy meat a couple of times and I didn't find it disgusting. In fact, if it weren't for the somewhat airy texture, I would've believed that it was real meat.

I can go without red meat for quite a long time (the longest was maybe 2 months?). The only thing that'd be really difficult to give up is seafood, but then again being in a region of France where the sea is nowhere near, I don't get to eat seafood that often anyway.

I remember five years (or so) ago my savings were running really low so I had to really cut corners every which way I could. So I decided to eat egg salad for a month and a half. I would sporadically add crab sticks, but only when I was feeling particularly fancy. Whenever I had hunger pangs, I would just eat apples, or just chew on my nails. And I survived. I felt very healthy during that period, and I lost around 6-8 kilos.

So today I got back from school and I turned on the TV. And I saw a commercial for Discovery Channel. There were two bears chasing after a salmon travelling upstream. They both got to it at the same time, so they grabbed it and violently pulled at it, tearing the poor salmon into two parts, revealing its pink flesh.

And in that gory, tear-jerking, bloodshed moment, under my breath I said, "Wow.. that looks.............. delicious."

That's when I knew for sure that I can never be a vegetarian.

Հայոց գրեր

2011-10-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through a friend's photos on Facebook (stalking pervert alert!) and came across one showing a subway station in a foreign country, with signboards in a writing I've never really seen before. It wasn't even remotely familiar. At first I thought it was Georgian but it lacked the "springs" (look up Georgian alphabet on Google Images and you'll see what 'springs' I'm talking about).

So I finally gave up and read the photo caption - it was a subway station in Yerevan, Armenia. So the mystery language was Armenian. You know, the land of the Kardashians.

Naturally I wiki-ed Armenian language and alphabet. Good God, Lemon! It seems like I've been missing out on a lot of interesting stuff. The Armenian grammar is very complete and extensive (somewhat comparable to English, but still not German) and it seems like they have a very long history in literature. I've always believed that you can easily judge a culture by its literature, which is why I think the Greeks are in a mess because they've had too many thinkers and philosophers but not enough people who would actually do something. Haha.

So yeah. Today I discovered a new language.

Annoying People Part IX: "I Dropped Out Of College So I'm The Next Bill Gates"

2011-10-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

We all know that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and those Google guys dropped out from college and went on to become multi-zillionaires. Which is cool, because that shows how drive and vision alone can drive people to the top.

I've been in the scholar system for way too many years and it bugs me when people ask me, "Why did you choose to get a Master's degree again? Don't you know that the richest people in the world are all college dropouts? A degree is just a piece of paper. You can be smart on paper, but it's a whole different thing in the real world."

Well I appreciate their concern. After all everybody around me only has my best interest at heart. FALSE. Some of them just want to see me fall so they can say "Hah! I told you so."

But let's see. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, the best university in the world for decades. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Google duo, dropped out of their PhD program, meaning they already held a degree. And they dropped out of Stanford, also one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Steve Jobs dropped out of college already knowing what he wanted to do in life.

My point is, even if most of these people are college dropouts, they dropped out of world-class universities, meaning they already had the genius in them. And most of them dropped out because they had brilliant and lucrative projects in mind, and knew that it would be better than college. They didn't become successful because they were college dropouts. They became successful because they already saw a path to success in life and college was becoming an impedance to reach their goals.

If that is your case, then by all means, go for it. Carpe diem. Follow your dreams, and success is within reach.

But if you want to drop out of college because you're too lazy to wake up at seven in the morning, because classes bore you, because you prefer spending your days watching Entourage and playing video games than listening to 3-hour lectures, then don't come to me and say, "I'm dropping out of school because it's useless. I don't know what I want in life, but I'm sure college is not it. All the successful people are college dropouts anyway."

Listen, kiddo. I hate to be the one to break it to you but those people, they are successful because they're smart (both book and street), they're driven, they know what to do in life, they have passion, they were brave enough to get out of their comfort zones and follow their dreams, and most importantly, THEY WORK THEIR ASSES OFF. If you think they got to where they are by lazying around watching TV series, then I suggest you eat rat poison and get into fetal position right now.

And that "I don't know what I want in life, but I'm sure college is not it" bit is pure, raw, first-grade bullshit. It's not that you hate college. It's just that you hate waking up in the morning, dragging yourself to school, and using that God-given thing between your ears.

I respect people who dropped out of college to follow their dreams, but only the ones who flaunt it when they've made it. If Bill Gates came to me and said I'm a fool for being the slave of tertiary education, I would bow down to him and said "Yes, master" with absolute sincerity. Because he's already successful.

If you're just some random college dropout who doesn't have any remarkable accomplishments in life yet, but who just loves to use that 'successful-dropout story' to brag about your probable success in the future, then please just shut up. Do your job, work your ass off, be thirsty for new opportunities in life, and show people that you're worth your weight in crap. If one day you become successful, then you are free to flaunt it, blow your on horn and rub it in the faces of people who looked down on you. You can even write a biography if you wish, and I might even buy it.

But till that day, just shut it. Because looking at where you are right now, I sure as hell won't believe for a single second that you're the next Bill Gates.

Life As A Sheep

2011-10-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've had it with people going around saying "Cover your aurah or else you'll burn in hell! You'll be hanged by the tongue, and hot molten tin will be poured into your skull!"

Come on, Muslims! Why can't we stop disseminating fear, but instead focus on explaining the benefits of doing good?

I'm so pissed at people just threatening each other into doing good, "or else in hell you'll be turned into a dog, with fire going into your mouth and out of your anus." Seriously? Is that how we do our dakwah?

People are not sheep. You can't scare them into doing something, even if it might be good for them. Allah actually bestows everyone with a grey matter in the brain, which makes them capable of thinking and choosing what's best for them. Ergo, if properly explained (without condescension and/or Holier-than-thou attitude), people are going to listen and they might actually do it because of the benefits, not because they're afraid of punishment, and not because they've been bribed with the idea of heaven.

We should focus more on instilling the do-gooder instincts in adults and children, so that doing good comes naturally. And sincerely.

I really, really, really, really, hate it when people become arrogant because they think they are more Muslim than others. It defies the purpose of religion, which is every man is equal in the eyes of God. If I'm not as good a Muslim as you are, tell me, teach me, and guide me. Be a friend, be an equal. Don't reprimand me, alienate me, and condemn me to Hell. You're not God, and you'll never be.

Some time last year, I talked to an atheist French guy in my class about religion. He asked me why I was a believer, and I told him why. He asked me a lot of stuff, about how severe the punishments in Islam are, and I said I tried not to look at the punishments, but instead I concentrate on why we are told to do things a certain way. He asked me if it is hard to deprive myself from forbidden foods, I said it depends on how hard you let yourself be tempted. If you don't surround yourself with temptations, the feeling of deprivation is just non-existent. And at last he asked me one very tricky question: "If heaven and hell didn't exist, would you still do all these so-called good things that you do?"

I said yes, because I know why I do them, and I can see the benefits I get from them. Even if heaven and hell were taken out of the equation, I think I would still benefit from these so-called good intentions.

Several months had passed, and after the summer holiday he told me he had converted to Islam, and he finally felt peaceful at heart.

Pierre Desproges

2011-10-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book by a famous French humorist, the late Pierre Desproges, called Chroniques de la Haine Ordinaire (The Chronicles of Common Hatred).

If I were to make a comedy film, it would be heavily influenced by Desproges' sense of humour which I think is very similar to mine: deadpan, sarcastic, a bit noir and a bit vulgar, and most importantly, jaded. I think the best jokes aren't the ones that need to be told by shouting or making funny faces. And I, too, tend to hate people I don't know.

I hate being one of those oh-so-sophisticated Malays who always look down on Malay humour, Raja Lawak, recent Malay comedy films etc. But I am one of them, because I fail to see how those things are funny. Yet, the funniest movies I've seen are P. Ramlee movies which involve 100% Malay humour. In his films, the humour is sharp, not just infantile. It's clever, not just insulting your intelligence with easy jokes. It's always several-layered, not simply to be taken at face value. It's pregnant, not empty and void of morals. Most importantly, it's mostly verbal, and not just slapstick or gestural. Slapstick jokes are easy to get, but they're easier to forget. Verbal jokes are harder to create, but the good ones will stand the test of time. Is it any wonder that after so many years, P. Ramlee movies are still heavily quoted in the Malay society?

Which brings me back to Pierre Desproges' book. It reminds me a lot of the jokes I love in P. Ramlee movies. He loves playing with irony, and whenever he points out the hypocrisy in the French society, it's always subtle but spot on. The last funny book I read was The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox (what was I thinking?) so the bar is pretty low. Very low. Which is probably why I'm really enjoying reading Desproges.

It's a shame that they don't publish Desproges books in English because this book deserves to be introduced to a wider audience. Then again, a lot of the jokes are impossible to translate so even if it did make it into the English-readers market, I doubt it would be as successful.

Rest in peace, Pierre. We need more people like you.

Snuggie

2011-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

Just a week ago we still had sunny days and hot weather, but now it's all gloomy, rainy and cold. So it's official. Summer has ended.

And I don't know where autumn went, because it's mid-October but it's already winter-like. My apartment is a fridge.

Since I don't intend to turn on the radiator and see my gas bill triple, I decided to take advantage of this wonderful capitalist-cum-consumerist society and bought the awesomest human invention since the lightbulb: the Snuggie.

It's a blanket with sleeves. Yes, it's just that. Sounds stupid, but it's actually a brilliant product. Every time I sit in my living room couch to watch TV on winter nights, I have to drag my comforter with me to keep warm. And if I feel like making coffee, I'd have to get out of the comforter and face the cold. Now with the Snuggie, I can do whatever I want without feeling cold.

It's just a fleece blanket with sleeves, but it's more than revolutionary.

First World Bullshit

2011-10-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

And to complete my posting earlier, I just read the biggest bullshit ever: "Your birthday gift doesn't have to be fancy and expensive, as long as it comes from the heart."

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Because if you only give someone a two-dollar birthday card that says "You're my best friend in the world, I love you dude" and there's some other guy who gives him a Mini Cooper AND a boat, you can bet your ass that your hope of becoming the best man at "your best friend's" wedding has just been reduced to zilch.

First World Problem II: Gift Ideas

2011-10-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

A friend's birthday is coming up and I still have no gift ideas. Yeah I know, celebrating birthdays when you're old enough to be accused of pedophilia is lame, but if there's one good thing about still being a student at 23 years old is you can act like kids all you want and it's somehow justified because you know, you're still studying.

So I don't have any idea for a gift. Here comes a very first-world conundrum: What do you give a guy who already has everything? By everything, I mean, everything. He has a car, an iMac, an iPod, an iPad, a Blackberry, an X-Box with Kinect, 3 headphones, gym membership, nice watches, perfumes, shoes, sport shoes, and he's already seen Manchester United football matches live at Old Trafford multiple times.

Any gift I buy will pale in comparison, which is why it's so hard to buy gifts for someone who already has everything.

And that's exactly what I put in my Google search this morning: Gift Ideas For The Guy Who Has Everything.

Google is nice and all, but you know what she came up with? Remote-controlled bugs. I shit you not.Yeah, remote-controlled bugs, because even if a guy already has everything, he'd always forget to buy remote-controlled bugs. In case you're wondering what the hell those are, these bugs are exact replicas of real-life bugs and they can be commanded by remote control. Well done, Google. You know exactly what a guy needs.

The other suggestions are all expensive stuff like silk ties or diamond cufflinks or cashmere socks or a cruise on the Nile. What gives Google? All my Google searches have always included the words "cheap" or "low cost" or "discount" or "I'm filthy broke", so Google should be able to read my mind by now and know that I'll never buy diamond cufflinks.

Following my unhappiness with Google's performance, I decided to be more precise with my search keywords: Gift Ideas For The Guy Who Has Everything From A Guy Who's So Broke He Borrows Money From an Obese Middle-aged Hooker.

And that search, as expected, returned nothing.

First World Problem: Soggy Cereal

2011-10-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

A friend was telling me something about his not so exciting life and he started his sentence with, "I poured some cereal and milk into a bowl, then I had to do some stuff and totally forgot about it. When I came back, my cereal had become soggy so I threw it out, and rushed to school. Which is why I'm feeling really hungry now."

Boring story, I know. But when was the last time someone came up to you at 8 o'clock in the morning with a kick-ass, life-changing story? As far as I know, all people have to offer that early in the morning is crankiness. And bad morning breath.

My resolution this year is to always look at the bright side of things. So I managed to find something interesting in that unbelievably mundane story, which is: Why would anyone throw away soggy cereal?

Cereal has always been my favourite breakfast ever. When I was 5, I even asked my mom to pack Koko Krunch in my kindergarten lunch bag. But cereal can get too hard on the gum, sometimes causing mine to bleed. So I'd always wait for the cereal to get real soggy before eating it, something I still do up to this day. The benefits of eating soggy cereal are four-fold:

1) You can eat it with minimal chewing, thus minimising energy waste.
2) No harm to the gum.
3) More time for the milk to absorb the taste of the cereal, so in the end you'll get a bowl of milk with great chocolatey taste (or whatever taste your cereal has).
4) Have you ever eaten cereal in front of the TV and you couldn't hear a damn thing because of the loud, crunchy chewing noise? With soggy cereal, you can eat it while watching TV without any hearing impairment.

So, as an advocate of soggy cereal, I encourage every one of you to stop being a brat who throws out perfectly good food for nothing because soggy cereal is, hands down, better than crisp, crunchy cereal.

Besides, if you hate soggy cereal so much, why do you even bother with the milk?

The Perfect Movie

2011-10-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

My definition of a perfect movie is Almost Famous. Why? Because it transcends all kinds of cinematic boundaries. You can be a fan of road movies, biographies, comedy, musicals, drama, coming-of-age teen movies or romance, there's something for everybody in Almost Famous. Cameron Crowe is a genius. If you can write a screenplay like that, you can do anything.

Screenplay is what makes a movie. You can have all the money in the world, but your film can still be forgettable. Just look at Avatar. It cost a lot, and it earned a lot more. But does it stay in your mind? Nope. When I was in my "I want to be a screenwriter and movie director" phase, I remember going to bed every night wishing I had written Almost Famous. It's just that perfect.

I remember obsessing over Kate Hudson for a good six months after watching Almost Famous the first time. And this movie is how I came to know the genius that is Elton John (after the famous bus scene where they all sang Tiny Dancer). And the use of Simon & Garfunkel's America at the beginning when Anita was going to become an air hostess? Just another stroke of genius.

In case you're wondering, I just watched Almost Famous for the umpteenth time and that's what prompted me to write this post.

And after all this time, it's still the perfect movie.

Overlooked Thespians

2011-10-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be a blog about movies. So let's all go back to our roots and talk about overlooked thespians or better known to IMdB forum freaks as 'underrated actors'.

I've always thought Selma Blair and Helena Bonham Carter were terrific actresses and deserved more attention than they've been getting. Selma Blair can pull off comedy roles as wonderfully as she can serious ones. For the past 15 years she's been highly prolific, with 4-5 films per year. Yet, she's still virtually unknown. Helena Bonham Carter has always been visible as well, but her unorthodox looks combined with the quirky characters she always plays make it hard for her name to become household. I'm not a big fan on Tim Burton, but if there's a reason to go see a Burton movie, it's to see Helena in action. But of course, my favourite film of hers is Fight Club.

As for the guys, I think the actor who deserves the most recognition than he's actually getting is Greg Kinnear. Every time I see him on screen, I can be sure that he'll deliver. And he always does. He gave an impressive performance as the gay artist in As Good As It Gets (a movie I've seen like 5 times which is still not enough for a Jack Nicholson film) and the caring father in Little Miss Sunshine, for which her on-screen daughter Abigail Breslin was nominated for an Oscar. He even guest starred in Friends as a paleontologist (Ross' nemesis in the pursuit of Charlie). If that's not enough, he was in You've Got Mail alongside Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Fast Food Nation, and Baby Mama, playing Tina Fey's love interest, an ex-lawyer who opens up a juice joint. In other words, he's been in a number of very high-profile movies and yet, his name doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as some other actors whose acting chops are questionable at best.

Honorable mentions: Christina Applegate, Jaime Pressley, Benjamin Bratt, John Cusack, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Connelly, Tim Roth, Liam Neeson, Ellen Burstyn.

Annoying People: Part I-Lost-Count

2011-09-30T02:56:00.000-07:00

Okay I'm going to lavish you with 2 annoying people stories.

The "I'm Lightyears Cooler On Facebook" Guy

Do you have a friend who, during hangouts, would say nothing do nothing everything nothing? As in, s/he just sits there, holding his/her phone, looking at the others condescendingly or even not acknowledging their presence? Of course you have. Which is normal, I guess. In a group, there's always that guy. But it pisses me off when I get back home and guess what I see on my Facebook newsfeed? "That Guy just checked in at The Cool Hangout Place with (tagged all of us)."

Followed by a Twitter-synchronised status (Tweetdeck?) saying, "Hanging out w/ my old-time buddies."

Followed by "Laughing so hard, almost choked on my cappucino."

Followed by "Is having a blast."

Followed by "Coolest gathering EVER."

Followed by "(That Guy just posted a photo in the album Cool Gathering)" Photo details: Self-taken where friends are laughing in the background and he's in the foreground doing the Jagger tongue and the "Rock On!" hand sign.

Yep, we get it. You lead a pretty cool life. But only on Facebook. Want to know what kind of photos I would have put for the real you in the RealLifeBook? Here it goes: A photo of you looking down at your phone. Another photo of you glancing at the others for 2 seconds before looking back at your phone (this would be a GIF). Another photo of you just sipping the teh tarik you just called 'cappucino' while texting someone. Another photo of you joining the discussion but someone just hollered you on Twitter so you stopped talking and started getting finger busy again. Another photo of you laughing for no reason with your eyes fixed on your telephone screen. And a photo transcript of the 4 words you actually uttered that night. Dude, there are more words used in your photo caption than what you actually said the whole night. Cool beans!

So next time you see someone saying they're having a blast and flooding your newsfeed with their awesomeness, DON'T believe them. If they were actually having a burn-down-the-house marvellous time, would they actually have the time to flood your Facebook and Twitter newsfeed? I mean, when I'm busy having a great time, I would, you know, make the most of it and actually have a great time. Not stand there with my phone TRYING to make people believe I was having a good time.

Okay I forgot who the other annoying person is, so forget about it. One should do for this time, I guess.

Truffles

2011-09-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I don't mind splurging for, it's food.

I'm a firm believer that you are what you eat, and that's why I don't buy junk food. I don't buy chips, I don't drink a lot of soda, I don't eat instant food, and I eat lots of veggies even those that I hate (like endives). I can see myself paying for exorbitantly priced seafood like lobster in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but I can never see myself owning things like an iPad or a luxury car. People say it's crazy to spend so much on food because it only lasts 30 seconds in your mouth, 8 hours in your intestines, and forever around your waistline. But I think it's crazier to spend so much on electronic gadgets because seriously, I don't see how an iPad is so different from a laptop that a person would need both. A friend of mine, an iPad owner, told me, "With a laptop, you have to flip the top open for it to function, but with an iPad you can just touch the screen to activate it, and it makes life so much simpler." Yeah, of course, I can see how your unwillingness to take 2 seconds to flip open your laptop justifies your purchase of the iPad.

So now, are we all agreeing that splurging on food is better than splurging on other stuff? Good.

Because I just purchased two different kinds of truffles and they cost me a lot and I refuse to feel guilty that I just used the taxpayers' money to buy them. I've never tried truffles before, and I've heard a lot about them. Today, I saw those fancy small truffle-filled jars so I just picked two of them, closed my eyes, and made the purchase.

I'll tell you how it tastes when I find the courage to actually pry those jars open.

The Because To Your Whys

2011-09-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been writing more on this blog than on the other one.

At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I must say that it takes me half as long to write something in English and given the fact that I don't have that much free time anymore, it's a lot easier for me to write here.

I love the Malay language to death which is why I rarely use short forms when writing, but I just can't afford to spend more than 15 minutes to write a blog post anymore.

Hope this clears things up.

I Still Hate Crocs Though

2011-09-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I was trekking somewhere and I saw this German guy wearing a pair of five-fingered shoes. It looked so ridiculous my friends and I had to pause for a bit, give each other the eye, and laugh for a good 15 seconds.

I mean, what the hell are those? Some kind of feet gloves? Feet condoms? He didn't care that we were looking at his shoes the whole time, because it was not just us. Everyone on the trip kept glancing at those peculiar shoes.

So the other day during my summer holidays in Malaysia I went jungle trekking. My friend told me it would be a picnic but bitch was probably delusional. It was actually jungle trekking and hiking on a barely visible steep trail. Sometimes we even had to hang on ropes and climb on huge rocks to go forward.

Don't get me wrong, I love hiking. The harder, the better. But if I knew it was going to be a hiking trip, I would have worn proper hiking attire. I wouldn't have been in my cotton Marks & Spencer shorts, green polo, and slippers. And I definitely wouldn't have brought that red picnic basket, 2 picnic mats, a laptop bag where I put all my clothes, and a freaking beach towel. It would have made the trip so much easier.

But I did.

So the whole time we were trekking I felt so out of place. I even went barefoot because slippers and hiking are uh.. just.. no. I mean, every time a person goes hiking in slippers, Sir Edmund Hilary would roll in his grave. Going barefoot makes it easier for you to move, too, because you feel the soil on your skin. If my primary school scout teacher saw me doing this he would have laughed his ass off. I mean, I was such a good scout in primary school. I remember camping at Templer Park and we had to look for bamboo and build furniture out of them. I built a kitchen plate rack like a boss, and won the competition beating 50 other schools. And I was always one of the better ones at hiking too, and this continued all the way to secondary school.

Anyways, I was with my picnic basket and towel and all, when our way was blocked by a huge rock. Bewildered, we looked at the map and yes, we actually had to fucking jump over the rock in order to continue. And to do that, we had to step on this smaller, sharp and pointy rock, swing one foot upward on the huge rock, and hold on to some tree roots and fallen branches for support. So imagine me doing that, barefoot.

During that moment I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if there were shoes that were shaped like real feet, with toes and all, so that you can feel the movement of the earth on your soles, have better grip by moving your toes, all the while having your feet protected? That'd be awesome."

And images of that German guy with the five-fingered shoes flooded my mind, there and then. So thaaat's why he was wearing those ridiculous shoes. Because it was just super practical. With looks like that, those better be comfortable. And I bet they are.

Now that I know how you can hike better barefoot, I'm dying to get my hands on those five-fingered shoes because then it would feel like wearing a condom on your feet. You feel it all, yet you're completely protected. Yep, I'm biting the bullet and eating my own words.

... And On Top Of That, He's Rich.

2011-09-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

I want to be rich, of course I do.

But I don't want money to define who I am. I have a cousin (I have lots of cousins) who start getting noticed in the family because for the past couple of years he's been earning big bucks doing some oil and gas stuff. So every time his name is mentioned in the family, it's always followed by "You know, the one who's been going offshore and earning lots of money."

I'm happy for him. I am. But I hope I don't end up being like that. I don't want to live life just being a breadwinner, toiling for money and more money, and be known only as the rich guy. I don't want 'being rich' to become the only thing people remember me by.

I'm currently defined by my family as "the one who's studying in France." And I'm okay with that, because in a couple of years, it's going to be "the one who studied in France, and who's now _____."

But what I want the most in the future is for people to say "You know, the one who's a good friend, a good listener, funny, a good son, a good brother, a good boyfriend/husband, a cool person to hang out with, and a good Muslim. Oh, and he's rich too."

I want the 'rich' part to come last, because it's cool to be rich, but not if that's the only thing that makes you stand out.

Because if one day you get stripped off that wealth (and in today's world this happens very easily), you'll at least have a million other virtues to fall back on and to keep friends by your side.

Put Yourself In A Rapist's Shoes

2011-09-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

I read a joke on date-rape drugs on a website (not gonna tell you which one for fear of being called lame and stupid) which I found mildly funny. I was compelled to click on the comments because I sensed a debate was going on.

A lot of people said rape jokes aren't funny OR original, and we shouldn't be laughing at them. My pretentious self had to agree, but my true self actually laughed at the joke so I thought maybe I'm a sick person. Or maybe people are just hypocrite bastards who would secretly laugh at anything but in front of people they'd put on a straight face and say it's sick and wrong to find those things funny.

Someone (a pseudo-troll maybe) said something along the lines of "If a girl lets a stranger buy her drinks all night long and let him around the drinks alone, she deserves to be raped. At least she should have watched him take the drinks from the bartender and give them to her, because then he wouldn't be able to put in the drugs. Didn't her momma teach her better than that?"

And all the other people were like, "So now it's the girl's fault for getting raped? No one deserves getting raped under any circumstances. She should have been more cautious, yes, but she shouldn't have gotten raped."

I agree with both stances, but I agree with the pseudo-troll more (so he/she might not be a troll after all). I'm the only feminist guy I know, so sue me for saying this, but when it comes to sexual stuff, Islam got it right all along. A woman, like it or not, is an impetus. Everything about a woman is a hand grenade waiting to explode. Even smelling a woman's hair from afar can get a guy riled up.

How do I know this? Well, I'm a guy. I have amazing willpower and self-control, but I have a lot of friends who don't. They're not rapists, mind you. But some of them can get off by just looking at a fully-clothed girl's photos on Facebook. And these are normal-looking people you'd find in offices and on the street. How can you tell apart rapists from other men? It's simple. You can't.

My point is, women today can't be too cautious. Someone (ahem) even told me a story about a
16-year-old girl in Pahang who got pregnant by her 13 year-old brother. That's why women have more aurah to cover than men, because women can radiate sexual vibes from the most unsuggestive body parts. And that's why in Malaysia we need at least 3 bedrooms in a household so as to separate the parents, the boys and the girls.

It's still not their fault for getting raped, but it's their fault for not having enough common sense. If you see a landmine with a sign saying "This MIGHT be a landmine", would you still go and step on it? No. And if you did, is it your fault that you just lost a limb? No, it's the fault of the aforementioned landmine, because if it weren't there, you wouldn't have lost a limb. But is it your fault for being so stupid so as to step on it despite the sign saying it MIGHT be a landmine? Absofuckinglutely.

So if a girl dresses provocatively, goes to a club and lets an unknown guy buy her drinks without supervision, I totally see why she MIGHT get raped. It's not her fault that she's a woman, but it is her fault for being so stupid.

You can't just happily jaywalk in a war-zone, assuming the best in people and HOPING there wouldn't be landmines scattered everywhere, now can you?

That Would Be Cool

2011-09-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

The most polite travellers I've met during my travels have been the Americans.

While everybody else keeps showering praises on their homelands, Americans seem almost apologetic when saying "I come from The United States." As if they knew how the world sees them so it is each citizen's duty to apologize for the stupidity of their government whenever they go abroad.

Come to think of it, no, they never say "I come from The United States." They'll directly tell you which state/city they come from as if people know where it is (and people do know). Like these girls I met in Galway, Ireland, when asked where they came from, they answered "California" because they assumed people knew they were Americans. Just last week I met a cute elderly couple who got lost in Paris, and they said they came from "San Fran."

Ah, the beauty of being the American traveller. You don't even have to say you come from America. Heck you don't even need to say San Francisco. San Fran would suffice. Sometimes people will even ask "Where exactly in San Fran?", because American cities are just too well-known like that.

I'm not complaining about Malaysia, though. I don't want to be American, otherwise I'd be fat and miserable ("But you already are fat and miserable?" Yeah, shut up and go play in traffic.) I don't want my country to be so well-known that people the world over know more about my country's politics than I do. I remember talking to this Kansas girl about the American economy and she was like, "Really? They do that?". It was cute but also disturbing at the same time.

However, it would actually be great if my saying "I'm from Malaysia" wasn't met with confused reaction, prompting people to ask the following questions, "Where exactly is it?" "Is it part of Indonesia?" "Oh, that country wedged between Singapore and Thailand?" (How can Malaysia be wedged by Singapore and Thailand when Singapore is not even a tenth of its size, not to mention both countries are separated by sea? That's like saying an elephant is wedged between a tree and a gravel stone across the river.)

But the best question I've gotten in the past is, "You're Malaysian? I'm sorry if this sounds racist but... you don't look African at all?" I guess she confused Malaysia with Mali or Malawi. A couple of years ago a French friend of mine asked me "So, how poor is Malaysia?". I told him in an obviously sarcastic manner, "Very poor. The most recent technology we got was the curtain." He actually believed it. It is disturbing to know that your country is so obscure that people would believe it if you say you still live in the jungle with the chimps and the gorillas.

I dream of the day when Malaysia is known all over the world and I don't have to tell people that we, too, have TV and the Internet, and no, we don't live on trees. Would it be great if I could just skip the whole "okay here's the map of the world and Malaysia is right over here" thing and just tell people I come from Cheras? No, not even Kuala Lumpur, not even KL, but Cheras, and everyone would recognize it.

And if I'm lucky enough, people will ask me "Where in Cheras, exactly?"

That would be really cool.

Duh

2011-09-04T01:49:00.001-07:00

Went to Old Town Coffee. Asked for an Iced Lemon Tea, and the waitress said "Do you want your iced lemon tea hot or cold?"

I was intrigued. Hot iced lemon tea sounds tempting. To find a barista that is able to defy the laws of science to keep an iced lemon tea at boiling point, now that's quite a pickle.

But I didn't want to be a smart-ass so I asked for a cold iced lemon tea.

Duh.

The Best Torture?

2011-08-27T00:58:00.001-07:00

I'm watching something on TV that reminds me of this girl in my Islamic education class in Year 5. Yeah, like 13 years ago.

We were learning about reproduction, and it was actually the first time we learned the actual names of reproductive parts. Well of course a lot of the terms are derived from Arabic as if they sound more elegant in the holy language.

The teacher was very matter-of-fact because she was trying to be clear and informative. You know, it's never easy teaching kids about sexual intercourse but I think she nailed it (pun totally intended).

So there's this one girl who kept making sad faces while the teacher was very graphically explaining how to do the nasty and get babies. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, "I can't believe what my parents had to go through to make me. It makes me love them even more. To think that I have 4 big brothers and sisters, meaning that including me, they had to do all those things 5 times! I'm glad my mom told me I'll be her last child. That means she'll never have to go through all that sex stuff ever again."

Come to think of it now, that was very cute of her. She actually thought that sex was some kind of torture you have to endure in order to beget a child.

If that were the case, I'm pretty sure teenage pregnancy wouldn't be as rampant and rapists would be non-existent.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device via Vodafone-Celcom Mobile.

The Believer's Real Home

2011-08-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I met a Persian guy somewhere in Italy. We talked about a lot of things. And by a lot, I mean we actually spent hours just sitting and chatting in front of this square overlooking a huge fountain.

"You're a Malaysian Muslim right?" he asked me. I nodded. "Ramadan is coming. Are you really going to do it? It's summer, it's like 40 degrees out, and the day is reeeeally long."

I told him I'd try. I've been doing it my whole life in Malaysia and it's not exactly chilly there either. It's all about willpower.

"Why are you asking? Aren't you going to have to do the same thing as well?" I asked.

"Nahh.. I was born and raised a Muslim, in Iran. But now I'm pretty much agnostic, I don't do Ramadan," he replied.

"So you don't believe in the afterlife? Hell and heaven?"

"Well, I do believe in God. But all the other stuff sounds made up," he said, followed by a pregnant pause. He obviously was thinking of something and choosing the right words to express his following thoughts.

"The thing is," he continued, "I watched my people get oppressed since my early childhood, all in the name of God. Hell I, too, was oppressed, only I was too young to realize it and thought that was how Islam was supposed to be. When I had the chance to go overseas, I saw different things that made me second guess my culture and eventually give up my faith altogether. By the time I discovered the real teachings of Islam, I was already too pissed to actually consider going back to it."

His voice trailed off, so I remained silent.

"Every time my people got shit thrown in their faces, the only thing they'd say was 'Let's all just persevere and get through this. We'll all get the best reward in the end. Jannah (heaven). That's what God promises us.'"

He then looked me straight in the eye and said, "And those wishful words make me hope there is actually Heaven, because these people really deserve to be in it."

Shitgivers

2011-08-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

The only way not to give a shit about something is to actually not give a shit about it.

If you complain, or rant, or become infuriated, or write a Facebook status saying "You don't like me? I don't give a shit", that means you actually give a shit. In fact, all kinds of reaction towards something are signs enough that you give a shit.

For example, a bush on the roadside is something people really never give a shit about. Nobody ever tweets, "Wow, a bush on the roadside!", since people are very genuinely indifferent to bushes on the roadside because bushes don't really have any impact on their lives.

If you really don't give a shit, the only way to show it is by not acknowledging it at all. If someone unfriends you on Facebook prompting you to write "Who do you think you are? It's a good thing you unfriended me because honestly I don't give a shit", you're clearly the sore loser in this battle because you just proved to the world that you actually give a whole lot of shit to his unfriending your sorry ass.

Kooking

2011-08-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Nowadays I spend my days watching Masterchef or just keeping up with those Kardashians. After all this time I'm still wondering what their actual claim to fame is aside from the infamous sex tape by Kim and the fact that their dad was OJ Simpson's lawyer. However, after all is said and done, I do find their shows mildly entertaining (albeit absolutely fake and pretentious), which is enough to fill the void of my otherwise long and languorous days.

And now I'm absolutely addicted to Masterchef.

I hate it when chefs on cooking shows take 4 hours to prepare one simple dish and keep repeating all the ingredients as if the audience is a bunch of dimwitted chimps. I also hate when cameramen try too hard to be artsy fartsy with their extreme close-up shots of the food to the point that all you can see are blobs of very bright colours which are actually supposed to represent crab and prawn ravioli.

Masterchef has none of that. When they say it takes 30 seconds to prepare hummus, they really do it in 30 seconds. They don't really spell out the ingredients for you (and with the Australian accent sometimes you get 'pesto' out of 'butter') but with Astro you get at least twenty reruns of an episode per day so even if you have acute auditory problems (or are just really, really dumb), you can still figure out the missing ingredient one letter at a time.

Although I do think that the contestants are incompetent. They don't seem to know the basics of cooking. I don't know where the producers found them because the lineup looks like they just picked the first people in the audition room who knew what a spoon was. Australia is so huge a country it doubles as a continent, and these people are the best they could find?

I know it's not easy to cook on TV with unfamiliar ovens, pots and pans. But they have the advantage of having everything, and by everything, I mean every single kitchen utensil ever invented and all the freshest, most expensive raw materials. Their work posts are so well equipped it makes Martha Stewart suicidal. And they can't even come up with a decent crême brulée, the most basic French dessert. No I didn't taste their crême brulée mind you, but having seen, touched and tasted more crême brulées in my lifetime than I ever should have, I know for a fact that it should never be runny or gooey.

I make awful desserts and should be banned from using an oven for baking purposes so I shouldn't be the one to talk. Then again, I don't intend to join Masterchef, so ha-hah.

All that said, I'm still hooked to the show because instead of cooking up crazy recipes, they focus more on cooking techniques. They don't spit out haute cuisine jargons to confuse the viewers. They use the most basic ingredients and tell you how to prepare them correctly and get the most out of them. I actually learned a lot of simple cooking rules from this show, like it only takes 3 minutes to cook either side of a chicken wing on a skillet. Or that the maroon spice I have in my kitchen is called sumac and has a lemony taste so it should never be used to substitute paprika.

I also learned that, even with all the utensils there is, you still have to roll your sleeves and use the most of your bare hands for best results. Don't be afraid to just pour in olive oil into a salad and just plow it all with your hands so the olive oil will really seep into those leaves.

The weirdest thing is, after all I've learned from the show, I still have never lifted a spatula at home because my mom is such an excellent cook I'm just afraid I'll never measure up. Aha.

All About Lady Gaga

2011-08-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, during my daily promenades on the internet, I would (usually accidentally) stumble upon the latest Lady Gaga pictures. And every time she'd be wearing something outrageous like a meat dress or a Kermit the Frog dress (as in, a dress made of hundreds of Kermit the Frogs sewn together) or ridiculously high heels or a transparent full body dress (I mean what's the point?).

More importantly, nothing she wears looks comfortable. In fact, everything she puts on her body looks like it's been fashioned after an ancient torturing device. I get it. It's her stage persona, it's what put her on the map. But does she really have to be in character 24/7? Isn't there a lazy Sunday when she feels like going to get her morning bread in tank top and jeans?

Then again, if people paid me millions because I was known for walking around dragging a trash bag full of dead cats, why would I stop dragging said trash bag around? It's my claim to fame, so it'd be stupid to shit where I eat.

It's just that I think a normal person would get tired walking around in those outrageous outfits everyday. Even I get tired just looking at her trying to breathe in a tight full-body PVC dress. Everybody's an attention seeker, but I think Lady Gaga would literally die if no one talks about her for a split second, so she needs to constantly remind people of her quirkiness.

I remember reading about her porcelain teacup that she carries everywhere, with its saucer of course. Well, anywhere that's swarmed with paparazzis that is. And when she's giving interviews, she'd pass it to one of her bodyguards. Now isn't that a dignifying job? Years of martial arts training and stints in armed forces, and he ends up holding Lady Gaga's porcelain teacup for a living. (I'm pretty sure she has a bodyguard whose sole job is to give her vaginal wipes.)

I can imagine the field day they were having when they came up with the teacup idea.

Manager : So we've established that you'll be covering Europop songs from the 80's, but we'll tweak the melodies and throw in blasphemous Biblical references insinuating that Jesus is gay, and insist that the songs are original Gaga. You'll also be wearing ridiculous outfits made by failed designers, you'll carry handbags made from authentic walrus skin, and you'll walk around with your left nipple showing. Is that controversial enough?

Lady Gaga : Um not quite. I think we're missing something. I think handbags are too boring. I need something weird, something flaky. I'm pretty sure what I need is a random household item so as to make a stronger fashion statement.

Manager : You mean like a vacuum cleaner?

Lady Gaga : No, something smaller, and more fragile. And of course, completely useless. But pretty.

Manager : Ummkayy.. How about a spoon?

Lady Gaga : A spoon will deflect those camera flashes and distract the viewers from looking at me. How about a porcelain teacup?

Manager : That's such an inspired idea! It's small, fragile, completely useless and random. I think we have a winner. But try to hold it with your right hand so people can still see your left nipple.

Lady Gaga : Will do.

And so the infamous teacup was born. The worst thing is, I really think that's how it really happened.

I'm not asking her to stop her idiosyncrasies though. We live in a very stressed out society, so any source of amusement is highly welcome.

Wagyu Beef

2011-08-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

For all steak lovers out there, you just have to try Tony Roma's Wagyu Ribeye Steak. I had always wanted to try the very sought after wagyu beef, and after my first taste of its heavenly juiciness, I know for sure that all the other beefs are never going to be good enough anymore.

It costs a pretty penny, but if you really really love steak the way I do, I can guarantee that it'll be well worth the money. It literally melts in your mouth.

That is, if you order it rare or medium rare. If you're thinking of ordering it well done, then there's no use in forking out RM 120 for the wagyu. Might as well just go to a run of the mill steakhouse and order a normal black pepper steak.

Manama, Bahrain

2011-07-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Bahrain,

There's no use having a 3000 sq ft of duty free stores if you don't have any ATM machines.

Sincerely,
Mr. Too Cool To Carry Cash
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last week we were frolicking at the beach in the south of France when someone broke into my friend's apartment where I was crashing, and stole a whole bunch of stuff including my perfume (so if you see some scruffy, barely literate person walking around the south of France smelling so good, you know you've found the thief). So now I'm walking around unscented and have the smell of 9 hours on an airplane on me. That's when I thought I should buy a new perfume. So I asked the guy at the airport info point where the nearest ATM machine was. His infuriating answer was, "We used to have 4 machines. Now we have none."

It was as if someone told me Starbucks stopped selling coffee. It makes zero sense.

"So how are people supposed to purchase stuff from your humongous duty free store?" I asked, annoyed.

"They go to the money changer and get themselves all the dinars they need," he said with a smirk.

This is one of the drawbacks of relying too much on your credit card. When you're in a foreign country where ATM machines are scarce (even at the airport WTF??) and stores don't accept credit cards, you don't know what to do. I scraped my bag for every piece of euro notes and coins that I had, and in the end I managed to get the money changer to give me 7 Bahrain dinars which is just enough to get me 2 hot dogs, a Sprite and fries at JASMI'S, the local fast food chain.

Bahrain is an oven. I've been to Dubai, Qatar and Jordan and I know how hot it is on this side of the world. But that doesn't mean I'm used to it. We're in the middle of summer but it was still 15°-20° in Paris when I left France, so I'm not really used to practically having the sun breathing on my back. Taxi drivers here (like taxi drivers everywhere) are big cheats. The trick of the trade is to appear nonchalant when hailing a taxi, and act like you know Manama (the capital city) like the back of your hand. That's what I did, and I was charged 4 dinars to get to the city centre.

Okay need to look for power source for my computer.

The Impending Death of 3D Movies

2011-07-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Let's talk movies.

This year has been very disappointing, movie-wise. I saw Bad Teacher last week and it sucked. Well, granted, I saw the Spanish-dubbed version because I was in Valencia so I didn't get all the jokes but even then, I could still see that the film sucked ass. As for Justin Timberlake, he's as good an actor as David Hasselhoff is a singer, and that's NOT a compliment. Moral of the story is: Stick to what you do best (not that David Hasselhoff is an excellent actor, but for Hollywood, he's tolerable).

Then again, Justin Timberlake is still lightyears better than Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in the latest Harry Potter. Yes folks, I watched the last installment of the Harry Potter series for the sole reason that someone literally dragged me to the movies, paid for my ticket and forced me to watch it. I fell asleep for 15 minutes before waking up, more determined than ever to understand the Harry Potter hype once and for all. I remember sitting through the first movie and telling myself that Emma Watson was really cute, but she had no clue about acting. During the last movie, I still thought she was cute (maybe even 'hot', now that she's no longer a minor) and her voice has matured, but she's still as stiff as a morning wood. It's surprising to see Daniel Radcliffe still struggling to be convincing as an actor, because he's done Broadway, and Broadway is the birthplace of excellent thespians. As for the ginger one who plays Ron, I think he did okay. And Ralph Fiennes is great as Voldemort, but then again he's always been great so no surprise there. And the film itself? Personally I think it's shitty. Well, I might not be in the position to judge because I've never read the book and I don't know what the hell they were running around, fighting gargoyles, chasing dragons, lashing out stupid Latin terms at strange looking creatures for. But I do know that the film wasn't as good as it should have been, because a friend of mine who's possibly the most gigantic Harry Potter fan (the one responsible for dragging me to the movies) said so.

And I still think 3D movies are a rip off. I strongly believe the novelty of 3D movies has worn off and in all honesty, we can all do away with those 3D glasses. It gives me headache, and it's not all that magical.

GQ

2011-07-22T02:54:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through the magazine section of a Relay store at a Parisian railway station, thinking I should probably start reading more printed newspaper and magazines. I've always read books and novels on the train, but sometimes it bores me. Yes, I do get bored with books sometimes, especially if the book I had intended to read through the whole journey turned out to be crappy and I've no other reading materials.

I had forgotten how many magazines there are in circulation today. And at any Parisian train stations, given the number of tourists, they always have a whole section dedicated to foreign publications. I was spoilt for choice. I remembered buying a lot of magazines as a kid, and everytime I went to the bookstore I would feel like I was already in the future because in the beginning of June, you can already buy the July issue of any magazine. Now somehow, I felt weird browsing through the magazines. It's like I was revisiting an old hobby.

It's funny how at the forefront of the store they always put the trashy magazines, with headlines ranging from "Which D-list celebrity cheated on her E-list celebrity husband" to "How To Intensify Your Orgasm". And women flock to these magazines like moths to flames. I'm not judging these women because you don't need an intellectual read for a 2-hour train ride. And these magazines cost a mere 1 euro, and with the amount of who-cares crap you can know about your favourite TV star, it's actually value for your money.

And for the guys, they had all kinds of themed magazines, and it's surprising how specific these themes can be. You have "Sports Cars" or "Headphones" or "English Premier League" or "The iPad Magazine" or "Speakers" or "The Hunting Digest" or "The Fisherman's Digest" or even maybe "The Hammer Magazine". You name a masculine tool, I can show you an entire magazine dedicated to it. My knowledge of hammers is limited to "they drive nails into things", and that's about it. So I wonder if these magazines are issued every month because with almost 200 pages per issue, this must mean that there's a HUGE SHITLOAD of things I don't know about hammers. Or maybe hammers have a kinky lifestyle of their own in a parallel universe that you can only discover by buying the magazine. I, for one, don't care about hammers all that much so no thank you.

Since I had a 10-hour train ride, I needed something insightful, with varied topics, not too heavy (like Business Week), not too trashy, not too adult but not too young. And most importantly, not too expensive (all the imported magazines cost quite a penny). After much deliberation, surprisingly I chose GQ France. In other countries, GQ is the magazine with topless women on the cover, and it covers topics like "How To Get Her Off In 10 Steps". But to my surprise, in France they've chosen a completely different route, a lot classier and a lot more French. They put the legendary footballer Michel Platini on the cover and they talk about sportsmen, about stars fallen from grace like Mel Gibson, they interview female politicians and ask them about their lives in a male-dominated world, they had a geography section where they discuss Namibia, they have articles on obscure French cologne brands. They have French footballer Florent Malouda posing for the fashion spreads, making it appealing to the mostly male readers because, although they're not homophobic, seeing effeminate men modelling men clothes doesn't really speak to them.

And it cost 3.50€. So I bought it, and after a 10-hour train ride to the south of France, I reckoned it was a good choice.

Napoleon Dynamite: Story of My Life

2011-07-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Someone told me I should loosen up and stop being the nerdiest, most boring person ever.

Let's see. Every day, at 6.05pm without fail, I'll be in front of my TV to watch Questions Pour Un Champion, a French general knowledge quiz show akin to the American Jeopardy. I even registered myself on their website to be a contestant. Earlier this year, the production came to my town and invited me to participate in the preliminary test comprising of 50 very difficult, random general knowledge questions encompassing themes from science, mathematics, mythology, art, literature, cinema, gastronomy, music, history and everything in between. I got 13 answers right, but I needed at least 20 to qualify for the second round. And I was the only person in the room who knew the answer to "What is the name of an energy center in tantra?", the answer being "chakra". I was quite disappointed for not making the next round, but I was still quite proud of myself for being one of the youngest participants that day and the only non-French in the room.

I spend my days reading books or surfing the net just reading trivial stuff. My favourite Internet-related pastime is clicking on a random Wiki page and just keep on clicking on subsequent interesting links I see on each page, just reading away. Since I was young, I love committing silly little facts to memory for no reason.

As much as I say I hate computer-related stuff, I can get very easily engrossed in computer programming. I remember spending 3 straight days of April in front of my PC building a math program using C language. To do this, I had to construct algorithms from scratch and by the end, I had almost 15 pages of algorithms consisting of mathematical equations transformed into loops. Programming is all about the maths. I told everyone it was hell, but actually I secretly enjoyed it because after all the debugging was done, I had a beautiful, flawlessly functioning program that allows people to solve complicated matrix problems like a boss. And as much as I hate computer-related stuff, I managed to repair my old computer quite a number of times on my own, and it worked great for 5 years.

I like watching old movies, all the way back to the silent era. I have a huge collection of them, and my friends used to call my external hard disk "the hard disk of death" because according to them, just browsing through the list of films I had made them want to hang themselves. I organize my movie collection based on the genre, then the year of release, and then the director. In two weeks, I'll be attending a Stanley Kubrick retrospective held by a small movie theatre in my town.

I love museums. I can spend hours just looking at one painting. I studied about art movements. I read extensively on impressionism. I love Claude Monet, and one of my biggest dreams is to go to the MoMA in New York.

I love philosophy and can talk for hours about Jean Paul Sartre.

Most of all, I'm finishing my master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, and I'm fascinated by fluid mechanics.

So in short, yes, I am the most boring, nerdiest person in the world, and I'm actually proud of it. What's wrong with being a nerd anyway? A couple of years ago I tried to be one of the cool guys, but I felt like I fell short.

Being cool is awesome. Everyone adores you and wants to be like you, but at the end of the day all that pretense wears you down and all you want to do is just be yourself and do the things you really like no matter what people say.

Since I was a little boy I've never been one of the cool kids. Even in my family I've always stood out as the nerdy bespectacled boy (I'm the only one of my siblings to wear glasses). So I don't see why I should start caring about being the cool kid now. If being a nerd means being ambitious, having goals and a passion in life, then please God let me be the biggest nerd out there.

So to all the nerds out there, don't let the cool people bring you down. Do what makes you the happiest. If people slag you off for being a nerd, just remember that Jim Parson, the actor from The Big Bang Theory, is one of the highest paid actors on TV right now for playing Sheldon Cooper, the most humongous nerd of all time. So who's cool now, eh?

Should I Give Up, Or Should I Just Keep Counting Calories (Even If It Leads Nowhere?)

2011-07-02T05:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did 30 kilometers on a stationary bike, did another 2 on the treadmill and 1 km on the rowing machine, all in a bit under two hours. My personal best. After the workout, even Camille, my hot gym coach, noticed I was outdoing myself.

My gym might be small, but the equipments they have are state of the art. What gym has elliptical bikes with touch screens that allow you to watch TV, surf the internet, listen to the radio and play games? And in case touch screens creep you out for some retarded reason, they also have iPod docks and USB ports if you feel like hooking in your mobile hard disk so you can watch a movie. And trust me, entertainment is not just a corollary part of a workout. It is essential. No one likes working out, so I applaud my gym for making this trip to hell a bit more bearable.

The rowing machine is the biggest sonofabitch I've ever encountered in my whole life. It looks pretty cool and harmless, but you take one ride on it and it feels like you're rowing up the Niagara falls. Your arms hurt, your legs throb, your heart explodes, you get stomach cramps and it can throw out your back like a mutherfucker. The bitch who sang 'row row row your boat' obviously did not try my gym's rowing machine or else the end of that song would be 'killing me, killing me, killing me, killing me, life is but a cramp-inducing whore'. But it burns 1000 calories per hour (equivalent to a large Big Mac meal), so it's your pick. Personally, I think it's bearable only because the rowing machines at my gym use actual water-resistance rowers, allowing you to see and hear real water splashing around when you row, which is kind of fascinating. Other rowing machines I have used in the past were the air-resistance kind which is lame because all you do is compressing air into a pneumatic tube, and that's not what rowing is about.

All in all, I think joining this gym was a really good idea because that way I get to enjoy my food without guilt. I'm not big on food deprivation, so my best option is to pig it out on my favourite food and later spend 3 hours at the gym to burn it all back off. Sounds like I'm torturing myself but actually, I find depriving myself of good food is more torturous than anything else. Going to the gym is just the lesser of two evils.

And seeing Camille work that stepping machine every day definitely does not hurt either. Aha.

Desperate Houseboy

2011-07-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

My whole room is carpeted and I have sinus problems. Bad combination.

I hate vacuuming because my vacuum cleaner is a cheap one and it sucks. I mean, it doesn't suck. I mean, it sucks because it doesn't suck as hard as I would want it to suck, but I digress.

So I don't like vacuuming. A week ago I saw this iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner, a type of robot you can just switch on and it will roam around your house vacuuming every inch of your floor without supervision. I like the idea, but I think I'll pass. As much as I hate vacuuming, I need to do it myself not just because it's vital to my nasal health, but also because I need to make sure that all corners of my room are covered, and a robot is not going to make that happen. When I vacuum, I apply pressure on the nozzle in order to assure complete vacuum and optimize suction. I bet the robot doesn't do that.

Why am I writing about my vacuum cleaner again? I don't know. I just realized I'm lame, comparing myself to a household robot like that. So the point of this post might be that I'm such a huge control freak that I won't let a robot do its job. If I want things done, I have to do them myself. Heck I even need to check on the washing machine every ten minutes to see if it's cleaning my clothes properly, which most of the time it doesn't.

Which brings us to another problem: my washing machine. Stupid bitch vibrates so much it feels like Japan in here (too soon?). Well kids, that's what you get for being a cheapskate.

In the next entry I'll talk about my oven, refrigerator and maybe even my radiator if you're lucky.

This post is lame.

Youtube Snobbery

2011-06-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was craving for some moist chocolate cake, and I'm not one to just get over my cravings without doing anything. So I decided to look up on Youtube on how to make one.

The recipe looks straight forward even for people like me for whom baking is like rocket science (it's an inappropriate expression here because I do know a lot more about rocket science than on how to bake a cake.)

After watching the chocolate cake video, Youtube suggested I watch another video entitled "How To Lose Weight."

So now I'm thinking twice about actually baking it. When even Youtube knows you're fat, it might be time to hit the gym.

A Beautiful Mind

2011-06-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder, how would it feel to have the very complicated, borderline-twisted, but extremely brilliant minds of writers and thinkers like Umberto Eco or Jorge Luis Borges?

Or musicians like Freddy Mercury. I mean, Bohemian Rhapsody is a masterpiece, and if it could be framed, it would hang in the Louvre and be worth millions, guarded with maximum security.

Or mathematicians like Joseph Fourier, the founder of the Fourier series, one of the most pivotal mathematical elements being used in almost every advanced physics and engineering field including electronics and quantum mechanics. The most mind-numbing thing about this is that electronics and quantum mechanics were discovered and developed after Fourier's death, and that's almost... mystical.

It's just fascinating to just imagine the things running through these people's minds. And it's very humbling too. Next to these people, you are shit. Every time I feel like I'm better than others, the thought of these people never fails to put me back in my place and makes me want to crawl back into whichever hole I came out of.

That's when you realize that you can read all the books in the world, but you'll still have not the slightest clue about this vast Earth. Or life. Or even anything at all.

When A Stranger Calls

2011-06-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

My phone rang. Private number. I don't usually pick up if I can't screen the caller's ID but I thought what the hell, I'm not that busy.

All of a sudden I heard some tacky music and a computerized voice saying, "Your call is important to us. Please hold the line. One of our consultants will be with you shortly."

I was confused. They called me, and not the other way around. Is this a new telemarketing strategy or something? Calling people and making them think they are the ones who called in? Fat chance.

I hung up.

Let's Just All Get Along

2011-06-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

"Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Adolf Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers."

- Yusuf Al -Qaradawi, 28 Jan. 2009, Al-Jazeera

Since when are religious leaders allowed to incite the killing of another human being and segregate people by choice of faith? In this day and age, I don't get how people can still endorse the Holocaust. This man, who is considered to be the most respected Islamic ideologist in the world, has set Islam back 200 years and give it a bad name. How can Hitler's killing of the Jews be considered 'divine punishment' when neither Hitler, nor the Nazis, represent divinity?

If that's not enough, his blatant criticism of the Shiites being heretics has probably incited civil wars between the Sunnis and the Shiites, both being of the Muslim faith. So, not only he wants the Muslims to hate the Jews, he also wants them to hate other Muslims from different schools of thought. He knows that there are people who hold on to his every word, those mindless fanatics who live without bothering to think for themselves. Thus, whatever he says can have major consequences on the Muslim world, and how Islam is perceived by the outside world.

If there's one thing in common among the Bahrain Uprising, the Cyprus dispute, the Lebanon conflict, the Bosnian war, the Palestinian war, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Liberian conflict, the Mindanao unrest in the Philippines, the South Thailand insurgencies and even the great American War on Terror, it is the use of God's name to justify mass murders (and I don't think it's a coincidence that all of the conflicts stated above involve Muslims). Where religion is supposed to guide people and give solutions, it has become the cause of the problems.

I love Islam and have seen its beauty in depth, but the Muslims are the problem. The hypocrisy, the hate and the intolerance. I've never seen more hypocrites than in my country Malaysia, where people judge people for almost everything and where the holier-than-thou attitude is just widespread. It's like everybody's looking around for bigger sinners than they are. Those who pray five times a day would see others as slacking Muslims. Those who don't pray five times a day would say, "At least I still wear the hijab and cover my aurah." Those who don't wear the hijab would say, "There's no use putting on the hijab if the rest of your outfit is body-hugging." But both would agree that people who drink alcohol are worse than them, and people who drink alcohol would say, "Well as long as I don't eat pork." And those who eat pork would say, "Well what's the use of being a devout Muslim and praying 5 times a day and not eating pork if you're doing it just to show off to people that you're a better Muslim. That's riak (bragging) and the Prophet frowns upon that, it's the worst thing ever," and that brings us back to the devout Muslim who prays 5 times a day and who doesn't eat pork and who judges people who don't perform their 5 daily prayers, and so on and so forth.

In the end, everyone finds a bigger sinner than they are and they'll live happily ever after. The vicious cycle of hypocrisy benefits all Muslims.

So in the words of the aptly named band War, "Why can't we be friends?"

Living On Plastic

2011-06-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

I rely a lot on my debit card. I seldom carry cash around, for two reasons: coins are heavy and banknotes get lost easily. And of course, because most shops in France accept debit/credit cards.

I love it that I can just go out anywhere carrying just a piece of plastic. It's like having a very, very thin wallet, only thinner. Aha. If I'm carrying cash and it gets stolen, it's real money I'll never see again. On the other hand, if my card gets stolen, I can just call my bank and cancel it without a cent of my money budging from my account. That's the beauty of having the Carte Bleue system in France. All debit/credit cards are smart cards with PIN codes, so if they get stolen, the only way they can be used is using the Internet. Even then, they can trace where the Internet purchase was being made and might catch the thief. Either way, the cardholder will not be charged.

When I go back to Malaysia for good, I'll insist on having a debit card, not a credit card. With a debit card, the money is taken from your bank account right away after payment, and payment is refused if you don't have enough funds. This way, I'll be prudent with my money and only buy things I can afford. Using a credit card is basically just borrowing money from the bank and repaying the debts at the end of every month, which can be very, very dangerous because swiping your credit card at the cashier really feels like you're creating money out of thin air.

Now I have another reason to be prudent: my banker just called me and offered me a Visa Premier (you know, that shiny gold card) due to my "unwavering loyalty and trust in our services". Translation: We see you as a big spender and we'd like you to spend even more. I told him I thought I was too young to carry such a fancy card ('being too young' is my excuse for everything). But he pointed out that in the past 4 years I've called him many, many times to ask for an override in weekly payment limit, because sometimes I needed to pay for things like flight tickets and hotel bookings and stuff, and the payment limit of my current card doesn't allow me to. He told me with Visa Premier I would have a much higher payment limit, so this very irritating problem can be avoided.

I was still on the fence, until he told me the other advantages I would get with a Premier card which include travel insurance (flight cancellations for any reason and lost luggage), and 25-30% discount on car rentals. On top of that, since I'm not yet 25 years old, the exorbitant monthly fee for Visa Premier is waived. And in certain airports I might be able to enjoy the airport lounges as a card holder. That was when I got sold hook, line and sinker. It's a win-win.

But I told him I still needed him to call me every few months to advice me on my spending, or every time there's an anomaly in my Visa activities. That's why I love my banker. I don't know if it's me being naive, but he always seems like he has my best interest at heart. Our relationship might be platonic, but it's one of the most meaningful relationships I've had in recent years. He even called me when I was on a cruise in Turkey 2 years ago to remind me about the Euro-Turkish Lira currency conversion rate and to tell me how much I've spent up to that point of my travel and that I should be careful not to splurge on unnecessary stuff. It's kind of like having your parents breathing on your neck all the time, but I feel like I needed it otherwise I'd spend beyond my means without realizing it.

I know I'm contributing to the capitalist system, but I've never thought of capitalism as a bad thing. So the guilty conscience just doesn't exist. Some people regard the use of payment cards as evil, I see it as a practical way of spending. I can be a big spender, but I'm never reckless with my spending. As long as I don't feel the urges to live beyond my means and abuse my credit cards, I think I'll be fine.

The Alphabet Of Manliness Sucks Big Time

2011-06-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

Remember I talked about Maddox's The Alphabet of Manliness?

I hate to say this, but it's an utter disappointment. On his website he's crass in a very smart and witty way, in the book he's just crass. And somewhat misogynistic. Talking about boobs and cocks and boners is always funny... but in small doses. Of course there are a billion euphemisms for male genitalia, and if you run out of those, you can always make up a billion more. But you are not obliged to use all of them in the hope of having an intellectual book. Not for me, anyway.

All the respect I had for Maddox has now gone to the sewers. I don't know what I was thinking buying a book titled The Alphabet of Manliness anyway. It reeks of chauvinism, and the sole reason it's written is for stupid people to get a cheap laugh out of sexual innuendos and even scatophilic references (like the different types of shit men produce). I'm not a prude, believe me. I talk about those things he wrote in the book, shit and all. But I don't plan to write a book about it. Hell no.

I felt violated reading the book. It's a scam. I paid good money based on his reputations alone, all because I thought his blog was awesome. I liked his blog because it's educational in a very vulgar but not at all patronizing way, but the book is just at the other end of the spectrum. Very vulgar, but utterly stupid. The first chapter discusses about how to punch a guy in the crotch. As I was turning the pages, I was waiting for the clever bits to appear, but nichts. It's just that. How to punch a guy in the crotch. With figures and illustrations and supposedly-funny step-by-step instructions. And the second chapter is about how to grope women's butts and boobs. I mean, who is the target market for this book? 18 year old boys with gigantic zits and raging hormones who would jerk off to almost anything?

Damn I'm pissed.

Hash Tags And Internet Memes Are Stupid

2011-06-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hash tag jokes and Internet memes. Those are getting old, and some are getting really, really old.

I've never found hash tag jokes funny, and now it's bordering on irritating. In case you don't know what a hash tag joke is, it's the supposedly relevant funny joke people put at the end of a status update or comment on Facebook, preceded by a hash (#) symbol. For example:

Feels like eating something sweet and delicious now! #HornyForChocolateBananaCake

It is completely useless and totally unfunny, mainly because people who use them are lame unfunny fucktards who saw someone do it once on Twitter and found it weirdly funny so they started doing it and can never stop. They probably laugh at their own hash tag jokes too. I admit, I took so long to understand why I started seeing hash tags after status updates and comments on Facebook. I even had to ask a friend what they meant. She said, "If you actually used your Twitter account, you would have known that hash tags are used to categorize your tweets so people can search for them."

Which is a great idea because the world now is going at a billion tweets or so per second, so it makes perfect sense to be able to look up other people's opinions on a particular subject . But why am I seeing them everywhere on Facebook? Can you look for people status updates and comments on Facebook using hash tags too? No. So it's really just a way of integrating nonsensical Twitter function on another social network in the hope that the humour will transcend. Well, it doesn't, because I don't think it has ever been funny even when correctly used on Twitter. If these people actually knew anything about programming, they would know how programming syntaxes differ from one language to another, and it's extremely important not to mess them up because a language might not recognize the commands or functions of another language. So I think it should be the same with social networks. Anything that is intrinsic to a network, should remain intrinsic.

Internet memes on the other hand, used to be funny. But I suppose it's because I was pretty young when I discovered them and it was fun to see unsuspecting people's reactions when you used them because these memes usually make zero sense and are filled with errors, grammatical, spelling or semantics. Plus when someone actually recognized the meme (and replied using another one), it made you feel somewhat cool because you have an inside joke of your own that other Earthlings don't understand.

The problem with that is, now that all the young kids want to grow up really fast and jump on the cool bandwagon way before time, they keep using and reusing old Internet memes until they wear very thin. Everywhere you go on the Internet you'll see people using phrases like, "U MAD?" or "Challenge accepted" or "om nom nom". Or any random memes from Lolcats. Some of them don't bug me as much, or at all, because they're relevant to the situation. Like when people say "EPIC FAIL" to depict a person's failure at achieving something, it's because well... that person is actually failing at something. But some memes bug me to the core, especially this kind:

UNFUNNY MEME IS UNFUNNY.

It's basically just using the same adjective twice in a sentence, making it redundant. Whilst I can see some humour in that, it's becoming really old and uncool. People who first used them aren't using them anymore, but their spawns are multiplying everyday which is why we still see them being used almost everywhere on the Internet.

Maybe I'm getting too old for Internet memes, so I don't blame young kids for using them because I used them when I was their age too. But when older people than me use uncool, worn down Internet memes, it makes me sad. It's like they're mentally retarded. Dude, you're 30. Use proper language. It's like the Internet has become their reality, and they refuse to grow out of it.

The thing is, some of my friends use them (hash tags and Internet memes) even on BBM. While hash tag jokes are obvious and easy to ignore (I just don't dignify them with a response because jokes don't need replies), it's usually harder to sidestep the meme. When I just replied to their message without acknowledging the meme, they're like, "It's a meme. Get the fuck out of your cave, batman."

I know it's a meme. I'm on the internet every day, of course I'm familiar with the term. I just don't find them, or you, funny. That's all. There's nothing wrong with being unfunny. It's only wrong when you try to squeeze a laugh out of people using cheap tricks.

Books and Baby Talk

2011-06-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground.

It's a grand book. In every sense of the word. Not only in its premise, but also its execution. The choice of words, the phrasing, the tone, the subtexts. In my opinion this has a lot to do with the spectacular Russian to English translation by Constance Garnett.

I have always regarded book translators with utmost esteem, because not only do they have to carefully interpret the authors' ideas and convey them perfectly in another language, they also need to keep the cultural subtleties intact while doing so. Mediocre translators can easily translate words, but all art will be lost in translation.

Which makes me wonder, if the book is so good in English, a language with which Russian has almost nothing in common, then how must it be in Russian? The thought of being able to even decipher the original Cyrillic-written back cover of the book is tantalizing enough. Hmmmm...

No, I'm not high. I just love my books. A friend once saw me very upset after I accidentally puppy-eared the cover of my Catch-22. He jokingly said I took my books way too seriously. I do, but only with the good ones. I couldn't care less if someone would tear my copy of Mary Higgins Clark's Two Little Girls In Blue into pieces and burn them in a voodoo ritual. It's a shitty book, by an overrated shitty author (I bought it at a train station in Venice because it was one of the very, very few English books they had and I was going on a 6-hour train ride to Florence thus desperately in need of a reading material). But if something were to happen to the good ones, I'd be almost devastated. The pages of my Midnight Children fell out of their binding months ago. And I still haven't gotten over it.

That's why, three years ago when I had my bag stolen on a trip to the French Riviera, I decided to end the trip there and then and go back home. It wasn't because of the camera or the iPod I had inside it (well, only a little bit). It was mostly because I also had a rare early hardcover edition of Madame Bovary for which I stayed up all night bidding on eBay.

This obsession might be due to the fact that every day I dream of having a huge library in my future house, and I would like for the books there to be used, but in very good condition, just like in a real library. Used, so that the library will smell of yellowed-paper (the best smell in the world). And in very good condition, so that they will still be appetizing for my kids to read and not be put off by their ungodly appearance. Oh, and my kids will not just have those huge-ass pictorial books with pictures of talking farm animals on them. The moment they know how to read and write and speak fluently, I'll make them read Stendhal's The Red and The Black. I'll also be the no-nonsense father who doesn't use baby talk with my children. I still remember people baby-talking me up until I was six or seven, and I found it annoying as hell because I was already very eloquent since I was four or five. Baby talk is cute, but it doesn't help with children's mental growth whatsoever. If anything, it makes them dumb because they'd think that's actually how adults talk.

It's Good To Be A Malay Man (Part II)

2011-06-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

My favourite actors are (in brackets the name of my favourite film(s) starring each actor):

1) Sean Penn (I Am Sam)
2) Jack Nicholson (As Good As It Gets, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest)
3) Gael Garcia Bernal (La Mala Educacion)
4) Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer)
5) Jean Paul Belmondo (A Bout De Souffle)
6) P. Ramlee (Ibu Mertuaku, Madu Tiga)
7) Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird, North by Northwest)
8) Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita)
9) Javier Bardem (Mar Adentro)
10) Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire)

Honorable mentions : Benoît Magimel (Les Petits Mouchoirs), Colin Firth (The English Patient), Soumitra Chatterjee (Apu Sansar), Amitabh Bachchan (Black), Ewan McGregor (I Love You Philip Morris), Tom Hanks (Philadelphia).

My favourite actresses are :

1) Sandra Bullock (Demolition Man)
2) Renée Zellweger (The Bridget Jones Diary)
3) Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice)
4) Marion Cotillard (La Môme)
5) Tilda Swinton (Young Adam)
6) Reese Witherspoon (Sweet Home Alabama)
7) Eva Marie Saint (On The Waterfront)
8) Audrey Hepburn (Breakfast At Tiffany's)
9) Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine)
10) Sarimah (Ali Baba Bujang Lapok)

Honorable mentions: Saadiah (Musang Berjanggut), Penelope Cruz (Non Ti Muovere), Dian Sastrowardoyo (Ada Apa Dengan Cinta), Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins), Umie Aida (Embun), Helena Bonham Carter (Fight Club), Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca), Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman, Erin Brokovich).

Mind you, those are not just some token Malay actresses I put up there. I was actually in love with Sarimah when I was little because I thought she was one of the smartest actresses of her time (not to mention extremely beautiful), because she always played smart characters. In Tiga Abdul she played the cunning wife of the smartest of the Abdul brothers. In Ali Baba Bujang Lapok, she played the resourceful maid to Kassim Baba. In Madu Tiga, she played the third and most intelligent of Mr. Jamil's wives, the one who actually came up with the idea to set ground rules on her husband's polygamy.

Same goes to Saadiah who played a smart wife in Musang Berjanggut. She even seduced the king with her witty words in Siti Muslihat.

This goes to show my love for strong, smart women who aren't afraid to speak up for themselves. The character Sarimah played in Tiga Abdul is a strong-willed woman who knows what she wants, but who is a loving and caring wife to her husband at the same time. She's still sensitive, homely and every bit a woman, but a woman who knows to say it out loud when her husband does something wrong or crosses the line. Women don't have to be weak, clingy and submissive to be loved. They can also be smart, goal-oriented, outgoing and self-sufficient, all the while being a loyal wife and a pious Muslimah.

Shocking isn't it?

One of the reasons why Malay men stay the way they are is because Malay women are happy enablers. In my previous entry about Malay men, some anonymous said I had to read more and not just write according to what I see. I don't want to blow my own horn but I probably read more books in a month than he/she reads in a year. If he/she even bothered to read more about the Prophet Muhammad's wives, he/she would know how Aisyah was a very stubborn and determined woman who would stand her ground no matter what. She was a very jealous woman who would not settle for mediocrity, she would strive to beat others. She was also very keen on knowledge and was an avid learner.

The prophet's first wife, Khadijah, was 15 years older than him, and was a rich, successful merchant. In fact, he depended a lot on her wealth during their marriage. This goes to show that women can, too, be the breadwinner in a marriage. There's nothing wrong with the wife being more financially successful.

Women and men exist for different reasons. We are NOT equals. If we were, God wouldn't have bothered creating two sexes. But one sex is not supposed to be superior to the other, because one completes the other. If women only marry for financial security, and men marry for sex, how is that different from prostitution?

Hot

2011-06-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

I just found out that I'm friends with the brother of one of Indonesia's top supermodels. When he told me his family name, I knew it rang a bell but couldn't put a finger on it.

That's pret..ty cool.

Morning Fuckup

2011-06-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

There are certain things you're sure will never happen to yourself. When I see people having misspelled tattoos, I just know it will never happen to me simply because I'll never allow myself to even be near a tattoo parlor.The mere sight of it makes me cringe.

When I look at homeless people, it's like looking at a life I'll never have. I know that I've been working this hard since very young, so I'll not end up being like them.

When I see women in skirts walking around town with a big run in their stockings, I can't help making fun of them because that is the kind of problem I'll never have to deal with.

I've always thought of myself as a messy person, but organized enough to still be fresh and clean when going out of the house, wearing fresh clothes. I'm a last-minute person, but somehow I always manage to put things together and walk out the house not looking like I've just rolled out of bed after a rough sleep.

Except for yesterday. I was running so late to an important class that I took a very quick shower (a normal student in France wouldn't have bothered with showering but I just can't start my day without it) and just put on random pieces of clothing really fast and dashed out of the house. I was running half an hour late to class, a personal best.

When I finally got a seat on the tram, that's when I could actually take a breather, calm the fuck down, and make sure I didn't forget anything.

Unfortunately, I did. I forgot to put on a matching pair of shoes. I have Fred Perry on my right foot, and Veja on my left. I've seen it happen to a lot of people, and never thought it would happen to me. Next thing I know, I was walking around campus the whole day looking like I had just rummaged through a Red Cross charity basket.

It's good to be a Malay man

2011-06-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

It's good to be a Malay guy. No, really.

I still remember during any festivities back home, the guys could leisurely watch TV or take a nap while all the females of the house were cooking, cleaning, taking care of kids, ironing clothes for their husbands, brothers and children, and no one was complaining because it was the norm. Women are just expected to do house chores.

When a Malay guy smokes, no one says a thing. When a Malay girl smokes, everybody will start questioning her morals, her upbringing, her way of life, even her faith.

A Malay husband can actually play God and threaten his wife, "You'll never see heaven if you don't do what I ask."

An unhappy Malay wife, if forced into housewivery by her husband, has practically no way out if one day her husband chooses to turn his back on her and neglect his duties. She can't leave him, because she has no job and no savings. What does she do? Fake it. Fake it all the way till death, while the husband can pretty much go around gallivanting and philandering without the slightest care in the world.

Even if a divorce takes place, guess who people will put the blame on? The Malay wife. She doesn't cook well. She doesn't take care of her body. She nags a lot. She looks too old for her age. And of course, the Malay husband can find another 20-year-old wife just like that (*cough* Salleh Yaakob *cough*) while it's slim pickings for the ex-wife to find another financially and emotionally stable husband.

A Malay mother is expected to raise a child single-handedly, because the father is supposed to work and bring the bread. So what happens when a child turns out bad? People will blame the mother.

A Malay husband who just got back from the office can say, "I'm tired, I'll do this later," and just go take a long nap in an air-conditioned room. A Malay wife, even after a long day at work, has no excuse whatsoever. She still has to deal with the pots and the pans and the laundry and the kids after work. Husbands helping in the kitchen? Almost unheard of. How can you expect the guys to help with cooking when they aren't even capable of washing the one plate and one glass they use after dinner? For a Malay guy, there's no use buying an automatic dishwasher because he can just put his dirty plate in the sink and it will miraculously clean itself.

And now Malay guys will have another reason to rejoice: our wives are now encouraged to take classes on "How To Be Better In Bed Than High-Class Hookers." You know, because when things go awry in a marriage, it's almost always because of the sex. And if the sex is bad, it's almost always because of the wife. Which means, in order to keep a Malay husband from sticking his penis into a hooker's vagina, a Malay wife has to be a hooker herself. You know what they say, if you can't beat them, join them. Isn't it funny how Malay women have to bend over backwards (very literally, in this case haha) to accommodate their husbands. It's like women are supposed to control their husbands' penile blood flow. And if one day Malay men are all inclined to have sex with cats, there will be classes for Malay wives entitled "How To Have Sex Like Cats".

You might ask, why don't we just create a "How To Stay Loyal To Your Spouse" class for the men? Haha, what a silly question! You know how thick the Malay male skull is. It's way easier to manipulate Malay wives than the Malay husbands, because since a very young age, Malay girls have been taught that the only way they can go to heaven is if they obey their husbands. Thus, Malay husbands can do no wrong! It's always, always the woman's fault. Accept it. Your heaven is on our feet remember?

It's good to be a Malay man. Really, it is.

My Own Tyler Durden

2011-06-05T01:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when time is running out, when things get out of hand, when fear takes over, I feel like creating my own Tyler Durden.

Tyler Durden doesn't get scared. He doesn't get stressed out. He always, always gets the job done. In no time. And Tyler Durden gets all the girls. Heh.

I haven't had bouts of insomnia. I'm no schizo. But I still think it's nice to be able to split yourself in two and get things done twice as fast. One half doesn't need to know what the other half is up to, although both halves know exactly what they need to do.

Tyler Durden is smart.. ish. Except when he said:

"Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club."

Talking about not talking about it, is talking about it, or is it not? Well Tyler, looks like we need to chop your balls off.

Growing Up Is Hard To Do

2011-06-04T05:06:00.000-07:00

"They say that growing up is hard to do, now I know, I know it's true."

That's my take on Neil Sedaka's hit song, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, with slight alterations to suit my situation.

I wonder, how young is too young to get married? I've always thought, people should get married when they're ready. In my mind, I'll only be ready when I'm financially very stable, and that's not going to happen before I hit 30. When my good friends started pairing up and getting serious about settling down, I was like, "Shit, don't start getting married on me."

But they eventually did. While people's general reaction to weddings is happiness, I somehow managed to sit idle on the other side of the spectrum, skeptical. I thought it was not reasonable to get married now. Not while we're still struggling to take care of ourselves.

But then again, when more and more friends got hitched, or expressed the desire to get hitched like it's the only thing they can think of, I started to reevaluate my whole mindset. Is it them, or is it me? Are they too immature to think that marriage is simply two people tying the knot, or am I the one who's too immature to still think that youth equals singleness?

Seeing photos of a very good friend getting married yesterday, I got my answer. I am the problem. It's me who refuses to grow up and jump out of the cradle. It's stupid to already be 23 and still think you're too young for anything. My parents got married at 21 while my father was still studying, and despite the ups and downs, it looks like they're going for "till death do us part".

Getting married means taking risks and shouldering bigger responsibilities. It means thinking for two, and always making compromises. It means doing anything to make it work, because you can't just walk away when things turn sour.

If you aren't yet man enough to do those things, don't blame others who are. If getting married seems like too big a responsibility for you, then maybe it is. Wisen up, and you'll see why others are more than happy to do it.

Selamat pengantin baru, Izzat. Semoga bahagia ke anak cucu.

The Tree Of Life

2011-06-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

I watched The Tree Of Life Yesterday and didn't like it.

I've said it and I'm going to say it again: Brad Pitt is a lousy actor. Call me jealous, but he is without the slightest doubt a pure product of Tinseltown's pretty face agenda where everybody thinks beauty can compensate for talent, like there's a link between the two. I can think of a billion other actors who could have pulled off Mr. O Brien's character in the film way better and in a more memorable way. I've seen him in quite a number of films and keep getting disappointed every time.

Now let's talk about the film. I have to admit that I've been convinced by the buzz it's been getting since Cannes. The reviews have been polarized: you either love it, or hate it. I choose to love the story part of it and hate the slideshow/documentary scenes because I found them too long and at times unnecessary. Believe it or not, there are actually dinosaurs in this movie and I don't have any idea or the slightest intention to understand why.

I really liked the story of a father being hard on his sons to the point of them hating his presence in the house. I can relate to that. In fact, a lot of men in my culture can relate to that. In a Malay household, a father is to be regarded not only with respect, but also with fear. Malay dads are known for their fiery temper, and you wouldn't want to mess with that.

There's this term, "menjawab", that is omnipresent in the Malay familial hierarchy which people use to denote the act of children trying to answer a rhetorical question from parents even though they know that no answer will ever be good enough. For example, you come home 4 hours after school has ended and dad is waiting in the living room. He asks you where you've been. You say "to the game arcade place." He then asks you, "Why are you wasting money and time playing arcade games? Don't you have some revisions to do?". This is where the situation gets tricky, because his tone makes it sound like a question, his raised eyebrows make it look like he's awaiting an answer, his silence makes it feel like you have a 5-second grace period to produce a solid defending argument, when actually it's really, really not a question at all. It's only a trap to see if you're ballsy enough to muster up a verbal response. Those who fail to grasp this idea will be tempted to cook up a feeble lie or, if they're anything like me, will try to be a smart-ass and come up with a clever answer. And it's always, always the wrong one. In fact, any sound that comes out of your mouth will be considered as "menjawab". The act of "menjawab" is usually followed by a slap if you're lucky, or a good round of beating with a leather belt if it's your bad karma day.

So I can totally relate to the story of kids being utterly frightened by their fathers. When my French friends told me they sometimes objectify women and make sexually explicit jokes with their dads, I was fascinated. It's really rare to see dad and son becoming best friends in my culture. With your dad, you'll always have a distance, boundaries, and perpetual awkwardness. And that sentiment is conveyed perfectly in The Tree of Life.

But then the film cuts to scenes of a heart pumping blood through the whole body, or images of nature, or a scene of a wounded Loch Ness monster, and dinosaurs just running around. And I got confused, before getting bored.

I hate it when things get too preachy, and this movie looks preachy right from the beginning. I don't like going to the movies to be educated, so that's why I didn't like the more "educational" part of the movie.

So I'll give it a 6/10 for the storyline (when it has one), and 0.5/10 for the rest of the movie, which totals up to 3.25/10 overall.

Cannes jury can suck my balls.

Picking favourites

2011-05-29T02:50:00.000-07:00

Since I'm getting my hands on Maddox's The Alphabet of Manliness in a few weeks (days if I'm lucky), I've been watching his speeches at book signings and stuff. The thing that bugs me is during the Q&A sessions, people keep asking, what's your favourite video game, what's your favourite band, what's your favourite this, what's your favourite that.

I get it why people ask these questions. A person's favourite things say a lot about his/her character, so it's a good way to know that person. But after a while, it just gets dumb. Each of these Q&A sessions is like 5 minutes long, do you really want him to waste his presence by answering silly questions?

Here's a guy whose sole ambition is to eradicate all the dumbfucks that make this generation unbearable. He's been doing it with his blog, his Youtube videos, and his books, all the while being right on money about everything. Well, most of the things anyway (I don't share his views about vegetarianism). Here's a guy who's complaining about how the world is getting dumber although information is getting more and more accessible, because more and more people are choosing to be stupid by watching stupid shows on TV and subscribing to the likes of Fred and RayWilliamJohnson on Youtube. And here's a guy who's not just complaining about it, he's also doing something to change the minds of this generation.

You have the occasion to meet him up front, and all you have to ask him is, "What's your favourite cartoon character?" ? Are you kidding me? No, I don't want you to ask him about the relativity theory or anything. I just would like it if the questions were to be more about his motivations and his brilliant mind or the turning point in his life that made him start writing.

If you're wondering, yeah, of course I'm talking from experience. Haha. I used to like answering people's questions on my other blog, but out of 10 questions, 6 would be about stupid stuff (usually by anonymous people. By the way, just because you put a nickname doesn't make you not anonymous. And I never reply to anonymous, no matter how good their questions are). And you guessed it, some people just loved asking about my favourite stuff. One girl even asked me, "What is you favourite historical age?". What do you say to that? Like, "I like the Middle Ages. It's awesome." Are we supposed to pick favourites for everything?

Vista point

2011-05-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

When I told people I've never watched Star Wars or The Lord of The Rings, a lot of them were shocked, and I didn't understand why. I know most of the important characters, the gist of the movies, and the leitmotivs of both franchises so it's not like I'm completely in the dark about it or something, it's just that I haven't had the chance (or actually the motivation) to watch the films. They are too damn long, have too many characters than I care to remember, with no plausibility whatsoever. Movies born out of pure fantasy, which is reeeeally not my cup of tea.

That's enough of an excuse not to watch a movie right? WRONG. People just don't accept it. I used to find that really odd. Like, just because I haven't seen Star Wars doesn't mean I'm cinematically retarded.

But then something happened.

A close friend of mine just told me he hasn't seen any of the Terminator movies. Not even the second one (which is the best one, and you don't even have to have watched the first one to understand it.) I felt really strange, as if he just told me he had never drunk milk. He told me he just didn't feel compelled to watch them, any of them. I was baffled. But then again, it's exactly the same feeling I have about Star Wars and LOTR.

This just goes to show that you don't have to always agree with someone about something, but you have to at least put yourself in their shoes and try to understand why they think that way.

Daddy Issues

2011-05-28T03:35:00.000-07:00

"I need some cologne suggestions," I asked a female friend.
"You should try Eau d'Hermès. It smells sexy," she said.
"Really?"
"Yeah. My dad wears it."

That's... very disturbing.

The Traveller's Dilemma

2011-05-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Before venturing into the working world, I'll make it a point to take a sabbatical year and just go travelling alone around the world (excluding Europe of course, because to be honest, I'm getting bored by it).

After much experimenting, I figured I'm better off travelling alone. Somehow travelling with others, even if it's with only one travel companion, stresses me out. For me, travelling is all about being inspired by the moment, and being whimsical. If I feel like doing something, I have to do it right away and not have people questioning my motives. I don't like compromising, and when travelling with people, it's all you do. Where you're going next, how long you're going to stay there, what to eat, should we take the bus or just walk, etc. It's all about keeping everybody in the group happy, because trust me, travelling with grumpy people is the worst thing in the world.

Being the nice guy that I am, I always find myself meeting people halfway or even conceding all the way to people's wishes and get frustrated at the end of the day. I'm not that little kid who always wants to get his way, but travelling is an expensive activity, and I don't pay that much money just so people can decide on what I should do. And even if I did get my way, after the day is done I'd always find myself wondering if the rest of the group enjoyed what we did, which gives me the most unsettling feeling.

I've been asked a lot of questions regarding my loner tendencies. The most common question is, "Don't you get bored, having no one to talk to and share stuff with?"

The answer is a categorical NO. How can I get bored if I get to be extremely selfish and choose all the activities myself? And I travel to meet people, so I always have people to talk to. Believe me, I've had many, many conversations with people who didn't speak any of the languages I know, and we managed to understand each other and even laugh at each other's jokes no problem (well, our humour threshold tends to be considerably lower in a foreign language, and that definitely helps).

I'm a very choosy person in real life, and I can get really anal about stuff. But somehow when travelling, all my obsessive-compulsive propensities go out the window. I can become really laid back and devil may care to the point of being irritating. Travelling with people makes me feel rushed, and I don't like that. I need to be able to sit at a cafe, read, write, watch people and miss a train if I have to, without it being a problem to anyone else. I need to be able to try questionable looking food without anyone criticising my palette. I need to be able to absorb my unfamiliar surroundings without familiar faces ruining the mood by talking a familiar language.

I need to be able to get confused by unpronouncable street names and get completely lost, without anyone raising serious doubts about my map-reading skills, because sometimes, I actually want to get lost in a new city and just discover new things I wouldn't have discovered if I had taken the beaten path. I don't mind losing my north point because I'm like a cat. I always find my way back.

But mostly, I need to travel alone because I know myself very well: I'm an annoying travel companion. I don't know what it is, but I can get on people's nerves very easily. Maybe it's the fake accent I put on wherever I go (and in every language too). Maybe it's my splurging ways (travelling on a shoestring is not my thing). Maybe it's my inability to stick to a plan. Maybe it's the fact that I get easily fascinated by unremarkable stuff like how the Spaniards say "dime" when answering the phone (which means "tell me"), but can get totally indifferent and unmoved by things that should actually matter like imposing tall buildings or huge ass war monuments (I've never even seen the Tugu Negara. I mean... glorifying war, really?).

There's one big problem though: travelling for a year is going to cost me a pretty penny. After my studies and before working, I'll be in what I call "the financial uncertainty period". I won't have an income, so I'll have to rely on my savings. By the look of things, I won't be able to save that much by the time I complete my studies. And I don't want to be completely broke by the time I start working.

It's a serious dilemma. Really.

Hail to the Shitheads

2011-05-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm an avid fan of Coke Zero. I don't drink it often, but when I have to choose among different carbonated beverages, I always go for a can of Coke Zero. The taste is better than Diet Coke, and the design on the can appeals to me. Like it's not too feminine to be drinking Coke Zero because the can is black or something. You know, like when men buy Axe shower gel instead of Nivea because Axe's designs are sharper, more masculine and dominated by the colour black. It's still soap, but one that people buy to reaffirm their masculinity.

Today whilst I was surfing the net and drinking a can of chilled Coke Zero, I got myself wondering if it is indeed better than normal Coke. So I typed in "Normal Coke vs. Diet Coke?" on Google search. I was redirected to this forum full of holier-than-thou shitheads, all high and mighty, claiming they would choose neither and stick to plain, purified water because it's good for your health. They also generously tossed in great tips on how to lead a healthy, wonderful life without having to resort to evil stuff like carbonated drinks.

Listen, shitheads. When I asked "Normal Coke vs. Diet Coke?", I was specifically asking about comparisons between those two drinks, and those two drinks only. Imagine a world where only normal Coke and Diet Coke exist, I want to know which one you would choose. Of course water is better. I know that. My neighbour's dog knows that. Duh. It's such a simple question with a more than probable objective answer. Why do you need to add water as an unwanted third option and try to convince the world of your superiority only because you "would not drink sugary fizzy drinks if my life depended on it"?

If you don't have any thoughts on normal Coke vs. Diet coke, kindly refrain from giving retarded comments about other healthier options. Nobody cares.

If one day these people were to ask questions about which car insurance is better for them, I would be happy to answer "Don't use a car. Jog to your workplace every day. It's better for your health."

And just ride away on my high horse, chin up, all high and mighty, like I just gave them the sickest piece of advice that would change their lives forever.

Libros

2011-05-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

I have friends who would be the first ones to get in line for the latest Apple gadgets. I have friends who spend most of their monthly allowances on games and gaming devices. I have friends who would pay a lot for good weed (and that goes for around eight to twelve euros PER GRAM) and smoke it all away in one session. I have girl friends who would spend literally hundreds per month on make-up stuff. I have friends whose hobby is eating pastries, and would allocate at least 5 euros per day for pastries alone.

A lot of them are easily disappointed. The iPhone 4 has an antenna problem and doesn't have integrated GPS. The new PS3 car chase game is just too repetitive and it takes too long to unlock a new car. The lauded Afghan weed only gives a mild effect and the taste is awful. The new make-up line from Sephora irritates the skin and is apparently comedogenic. The apricot oranais is too sweet and not crunchy enough.

Which is why I think I'm lucky to have the cheapest hobby in the world: reading and observing. And both of them come hand in hand. Reading makes me observe, so as to confirm that what I just read is actually true. Observing makes me read, because when something deserves my keen observation it makes me want to know more about it.

I don't really get disappointed with my reading materials because I don't have a favourite genre, so I don't, or rather can't, really compare my books. Plus I try not to read two similarly themed books back to back in order not to be bored (the last time I did that was with Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns which luckily didn't disappoint). Many people, after having read a good book, just have to rush to the bookstores and get another one from the same writer or in the same genre, in the hope of getting their literary libidos exalted the same way the first book did. And only a few will get lucky, mostly because people always start reading a writer's magnum opus before going for his other works which of course, will not compare to the aforementioned magnum opus. Besides, psychology has proven that the first experience is always the best and the most memorable, the reason why we cherish our first love, our first payslip, our first time travelling abroad. Which is why we would somehow prefer the first book we read from an author, and the rest are just sloppy seconds.

I just finished reading the unbelievably famous Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, a very interesting read albeit a bit laden with too many a satirical jab at the modern society, for wanting a better description. (Or maybe it is just me, irritated by people who jeer at the current world and spend their days languishing about a non-existent utopia, completely failing to wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.)

So I just ordered The Alphabet of Manliness, a book by Maddox, the funniest, most wittiest writer of our time (I've been reading his blog for the longest time and laugh my intestines off every time). Thank heavens for Amazon, I got the book for a good price. After reading Catch-22, I'm just feeling like having a cheap but intelligent laugh. And Maddox is the perfect go-to writer for that. Somehow he manages to make me burst out laughing with my IQ and all my neurons still intact.

The Virtue of Silence

2011-05-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

"Don't you hate that?"
"Hate what?"
"Uncomfortable silences. Why do you feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?"
"I don't know. That's a good question."
"That's when you know you've found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence."

- Mia Wallace & Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction.

Straightening My Priorities

2011-05-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

I still remember how I would use simple grocery store calculators to spell BOOBS and stupid things like that, and it was so much fun. You know, a time when a calculator was just an ugly square object with not more than 20 buttons the size of your fingertip, and using it was all about doing extremely simple calculations that your brain was just too lazy to do.

So today I felt like I was in a parallel universe when I spent half my rent on a super advanced Texas Instruments TI-NSPIRE graphic calculator that, looking at its thickness alone, is capable of doing almost anything save for maybe washing my dishes. Or can it do that too? I don't know, haven't bothered to read the manual. And remember when manuals were just simple instructions in 30 different languages, all of them contained in a flimsy 3-page booklet? Not anymore they aren't. The manual for my calculator is actually part of the Dummies series, 360 pages in total, all in one language. I'm not even sure what makes it so expensive, or if I'm going to use even a third of its functions, but I sure as hell am excited about bringing it to school and using it to solve fifth-order differential equations under a minute. Like a boss! And maybe if I rub it right, a genie will come out. With a price tag like that, you never know.

I've never spent so much on a school item. Of course I had to think twice before buying it, but then I thought, I've spent so much on travelling and shit. Maybe it's time I invested a bit more in school stuff.

So I did.

Priorities: Straightened.

p/s: You can actually download applications on this calculator. And play poker on it. If that's not the definition of cool, then cool has no definition.

Natalie Imbruglia

2011-05-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

I still think Natalie Imbruglia is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Those lips, those eyes. Next to her, Megan Fox looks like the bald, obese fruit vendor with 4 missing front teeth at the Sunday market near my place.

Unintended Racism?

2011-05-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

"I think that girl's cute," I said, pointing to an Asian girl a few meters away.

"Well, maybe she is. I'm sorry, I'm not sure what parameters to consider when judging the cuteness in Asian people," said my obviously non-Asian friend.

Should I be offended?

The Road Ahead

2011-05-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

I was walking through downtown Oslo a couple of months ago with a friend, navigating the old cobblestone streets with extreme difficulty because of black, slushy and really slippery glaze ice. It was freezing cold too, and there were like 2 feet of snow everywhere. We were looking for Vår Frelsers cemetery where Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch are buried.

I had this big map (I'm an avid map reader) and with my finger I was tracing the way we could get there the fastest. It was an uphill walk in the snow, so I wouldn't want to waste time zigzagging the cobweb-like streets of Oslo.

My friend asked me why I was taking so long. I told him I was looking for our exact location, and the shortest way to get to the cemetery.

"I'm getting really cold, and it's just going to get colder. Let's just move in the direction of the cemetery. I don't know where it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere on that hill," he said, pointing to a higher ground in the vicinity.

"But I'm not sure where we are now, I can't find it on the map," I said.

"Well," he said. "We don't always have to know where we are, as long as we know we're going the right way."

So I threw away my map, and started walking.

Potato Potahto

2011-05-08T02:13:00.000-07:00

"Let's go to a sport's bar and watch a camel polo match," I said to a friend.

"Camel polo? Didn't know such a thing exists. Where does it take place?" he asked.

"Dubai."

"And you're a fan of that?"

"Oh yeah, huge fan. Especially the Tahlaqal Hujon team, they're the best. I collect their jerseys, sticks, and I have posters of them in my room."

"Are you being serious?"

"Of course I am. I even bought myself tickets to watch the finals of the Camel Cup 2008. It was awesome. I could see players like Hassan Alghari, Nawwar Huda, and the most famous camel polo player of all time, Siddiq Taghlul."

"Do you have other friends who like this sport?"

"Yeah, tons. In fact I used to have a best friend who I've not talked to in ages because he supports Zirqa Hujon, a team I really hate."

"Haha. That's really weird. You're ready to pay that much money on a foreign country team who'd never even heard of your country. You buy their memorabilia. You know the names of all the players. And you even cut off a friendship for that? It's a stupid sport, played in a faraway country. How can you be so into that?"

I smiled at his question, and retorted:

"Well.. what about your obsession over the English Premier League? You know all the players, you pay a lot of money to visit their stadiums and buy memorabilia, you insult every single one of your friends who show loyalty to other teams, and it's played in a faraway country where people might not even have heard of your country. How is that different?"

----------------

The above conversation never happened. But the next time someone asks me why I don't like watching EPL or the Spanish Football League or the Bundesliga etc, I might use it.

I need a Benzedrene strip

2011-05-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

I just downloaded the albums The Very Best of Moby and R.E.M - The Best Of R.E.M. (In Time 1988-2003).

I've always loved Moby. He might be the hipster icon, but that's not why I like him. I like him the same way I like Björk: because his music is weirdly refreshing, like Kickapoo. At first sip you're like, "What in the name of hell is this?" but after a while you keep going back to 7-E for it. Whenever I tell people I like Björk, Moby, or Jamiroquai, they're like "So you're into alternative rock, acid jazz and funktronica?" I don't know what any of those words even mean. I'm really dense when it comes to musical genres. In fact, for the longest while whenever people said pop, I used to think it was some kind of rock. And I didn't even know what rock reeeally means until 5 years ago when a friend sat me down and explained to me the the different types of rock and why two types of music are still considered rock when they don't sound anything like each other. I have since completely forgotten what he said, but at least now I know that you should never just go out on a limb when guessing music genres.

And they seem to come up with a thousand new genres every second (like dub step, speed garage, Japanoise etc). For a normal layman music listener like me who is still having troubles remembering the classic labels (and who couldn't care less, frankly speaking), it is just too difficult to keep track. Not that I'm trying hard, or even trying at all anyway, but still. People should stop giving inane labels to music genres. I don't see why they do this especially when the differences are so minimal (like the case of reggae and ska).

Is it just that sometimes, their ego is so big that they need to distance themselves from their inspiration so as not to be called copycats? It's completely normal to inspire and be inspired. Originality is an archaic notion, as nothing is original these days. Making up a new music genre doesn't make you original, it just makes you an arrogant bastard. Just because you add a sitar sound in your rock song, doesn't mean you can label it 'orient maharaja rock'. Just call it rock, asshole.

And now let's talk about R.E.M. I used to only know one R.E.M song, the classic Everybody Hurts. A couple of years ago, I was listening to the radio and the song Man On The Moon came up. Needless to say I fell instantly in love with it. Since then, I've been gradually building a R.E.M playlist on my iTunes. The good thing about a R.E.M song is the supernova effect it seems to have. It starts out plain. You start by kinda liking it, and you'll probably end up putting it on repeat for a week, and move on to another song. It takes a really long time to actually fall head over heels in love with one whole album, but you'll get to it all right.

Now somehow I'm listening to What's The Frequency, Kenneth? and it's been 2 days.

I just love R.E.M. Their songs are just... audiorgasmic.

Opening The Door to Slavic Languages

2011-05-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've learned, or been exposed to, quite a few number of languages in my life. A lot of these linguistic encounters happened naturally (which is the case for Malay, English, Arabic, Chinese, Tamil, Hindi and many, many Malay dialects from every region of Malaysia). A lot of them were practically imposed on me (like French and German; French because I had to learn it to be able to study in France, German because it is compulsory to take up a third language at my school). But mostly my linguistic experiences are due to self-interest which led me to take extra classes (e.g. Italian and Mandarin). I actually taught myself a couple of languages (Spanish, Sanskrit and most recently Japanese with the help of the very famous Michel Thomas Method) but I can only be proud of my Spanish, in which I am fluent enough not to be ripped off at flea markets, but not as fluent to talk about the recession or human trafficking.

But there's still one very big family of languages that I can't even begin to decipher: the Slavic languages. That means Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Macedonian, Czech, and everything in between. When I was in Norway with people from all over the world, I could pick up or recognize words in a lot of the different languages spoken around me (I even played Charade in Norwegian, a language totally alien to me but which surprisingly I could crack down with the help of my German skills) except when it came to any of the Slavic languages. And it was extremely frustrating.

So my summer resolution (yes, there is such a thing as a summer resolution) is to start learning Russian, and from there I'll move on to Polish and Croatian. My Russian-speaking friends (natives and non-natives) have all been telling me that Russian literature can only be thoroughly enjoyed in Russian, that not even the most loyal translation can do justice to it, and that if I don't read Pushkin in Russian before I die, I might as well have never lived.

I love the way they roll their r's, and the fact that they sound 10 times as passionate when they speak in their languages. I have this Croatian friend who would sound like an amazing storyteller when she spoke Croatian, but who would sound totally flat and uninterested when she spoke English, notwithstanding the uncanny American accent that she must have picked up via TV series.

I'm downloading Michel Thomas' Russian module. I love his "be fluent in 3 days" method because it's intensive, fast-paced and efficient, but there's a gigantic downside: you only learn how to speak, but not how to write. In the end you'll be a very talented speaker of Russian, but you'll have no clue on how the words are written, and Russian being written in Cyrillic won't make it much easier.

But I guess I'll do it one step at a time. It's better to be able to speak and then learn how to write, than being able to read fluently but not understanding squat of what you're reading.

Osama's dead. And my pet dragon got the flu.

2011-05-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

It has all come full circle. Osama bin Laden is dead.

Yes, the head of Al-Qaeda is finally history. It took the US plenty of crusades, invasions, proxy wars, ten years, and millions of lives to get here, but they finally did it. They killed the number one most wanted terrorist of all time.

Haha. Even typing those words make me squirt out my hot milk. Such funny thoughts. I'm a firm believer that if Osama and Al-Qaeda exist, then so do unicorns and leprechauns.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. In fact, I'm the last person you would want to talk about conspiracy theory with, because I try not to have any opinion regarding such issues. But come on, Al-Qaeda and Osama? It all reeks of set-up. What Al-Qaeda did has allowed Bush to prolong the Americans occupation of Iraq, all in the name of fighting the war on terror.

I'm not even going into details about how the US has benefited from the existence of Al-Qaeda and Osama, because we read about them in the news every day, and the number of times we say "O RLY? how convenient!" has been increasing each day. It's like Osama and Al-Qaeda are enough of an excuse to rob sovereign nations of their own powers and kill their people. It might have been at least a bit convincing if it weren't for the fact that Americans have been stealing oil from the countries it invades, a HUGE chunk of it, making it harder to believe anything they say. And it's their words against the words of poor, gullible countries, so guess who wins?

Even if Osama exists, now what? Now that he's finally dead, is America going to retract its soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan? Are they going to help redevelop countries they have completely destroyed? Hell no. If anything, they'll stand up and say, "Listen Iraq, we might have destroyed your country, but at least Osama's dead and Saddam Hussein doesn't rule your country anymore."

It's like if you're having a rat problem in your house, then America comes and burns your house down, and says, "You've lost everything you own, but at least you don't have a rat problem anymore." That's so nice of you, Uncle Sam.

And don't be surprised if, in the midst of Osama's death celebration, another high-profile terrorist comes along and creates chaos. Osama might be dead because America thought that ten years is too long a time for even the most well chalked-up lie to withstand. So they killed the myth of Osama, but not the need to occupy and invade other lands. The modus operandi stays the same, but the gambit needs to change. The solution: the birth of Osama 2.0. ("Oh how convenient!")

Just wait and see.

Raw Milk

2011-05-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

I just bought this raw milk, straight from the farm, fresh and unadulterated. And will definitely go bad in three seconds too. I swear I can see cow hairs in it.

I like raw milk. But somehow this one really tastes.. cow-ish. Like there's raw meat in it. Is that how raw milk is supposed to taste? So all the other raw milks I'd bought were not raw enough? Or is this one just extra raw?

Anyway, since I'm lactose intolerant, I've been having this most unsettling feeling in my stomach and I don't think it's about to go away. But somehow I feel less gassy than when I drink normal milk. So does this mean raw milk is better for the lactose intolerant? I'm not sure. Although even if that were the case, they still wouldn't have it at Starbucks meaning I'm going to have to stick to my skimmed latte.

ps: When I went to Italy I ordered my usual latte and the girl looked at me weird. "Sola un latte?" she said. It took me 5 seconds to realize that she probably thought I just wanted a glass of hot milk since latte simply means 'milk' in Italian. So I scanned the menu very fast and changed my order to latte macchiato, the proper italian term for what the rest of the world calls 'latte'. And they don't have Starbucks in Italy. Perhaps because Italians prefer real coffee.

Did Your Breath Just Shit On Itself?

2011-04-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm very fussy when it comes to overall hygiene. To me, it's okay to be messy, but it's definitely not okay to be dirty. I can be very disorganised at times, but my mess is not nasty.

But if there's one thing in life that I don't take for granted, it's oral health. I feel most self-conscious when I'm not sure about my breath, or when my teeth might look like I just ate something disgusting. I've been flossing religiously since I was twelve. I started with stray threads from clothes or towels, but after a while I reckoned that those threads are too hard on my gum and caused it to bleed, so I started buying dental floss. I can still remember the time when the dentist came to my school for the annual visit in Form 3, and he said to me, "You have very clean teeth. Good job." And when I told him I flossed, he said in a very funny accent (he's a Sikh), "You should tell that to your friends, and show them how to do it."

Whenever I meet people who tell me they have never flossed in their lives, I start imagining the amount of foodstuff they've been amassing in between their teeth over the years, the multiplying bacterias and the smell of it all. I have friends whose breath can make flowers wilt and sun stop shining, and every time we talk, I feel like grabbing his scrawny face, look him in the eyes and quote the officer from Con Air, "Your breath smells like someone just shat in your mouth."

Oral hygiene is very simple. You brush your teeth for three minutes, giving extra attention to under the tongue and the back of the mouth because that's where the bacterias flourish. If you have Listerine, gargle it for 30 seconds. Then you floss. Do this twice a day and you won't have halitosis.

I have friends who depends exclusively on Listerine to keep their oral health intact. That's just stupid. You still have food residue on your teeth, and plaque can still form. It's like not wiping your buttcrack after crapping and just spraying perfume. What good does that do?

An unbelievable amount of people in the world are infected with bad breath, a fact that that I fail to understand. How can you live your life knowing your teeth are decaying, and your breath smells like shit? I'm not saying my breath is always Wrigley's chewing gum smelling. In fact I have my own litmus test. Every once in a while I'd lick my wrist, let it dry and smell it. If it smells like shit, chances are my breath smells the same way too. So I'd ask for gum, or just gargle hot water and spit it out. Keeps it smelling clean for a while until the next flossing session.

Sometimes I even ask myself if I'm obsessed with flossing. But then again, being obsessed with oral health is probably a lot better than not giving it any attention at all.

I have, on more than one occasion, closed my heart to a very cute and smart girl just because I can't stand her bad breath. It might sound immature and stupid, but hey, everyone has a deal breaker. And if mine concerns basic oral hygiene, then people are just going to have to deal with it.

Annoying People Edition: Bruno Mars

2011-04-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying Bruno Mars is a good vocalist and songwriter. He's hip and young, so he corresponds to the mostly youth demographic who listens to the radio today. He's good looking, which is a plus. One of my girl friends even said "His songs speak to me in a special way, like he's writing about my life."

Yeah, because I'm sure you've caught tons of grenades and jumped in front of trains a bunch of times for your boyfriends.

Suffice to say, Bruno Mars is an all-around terrific musician. Except for his lyrics.

Let's start with the song Just The Way You Are, the autumn anthem of last year. You couldn't turn a corner without listening to someone humming the song, and it was like all fast-food restaurants and department stores just agreed on ditching muzak and just played Just The Way You Are all day long. It was an invasion. I don't mind the melody because it is somewhat catchy, but let's be real. When a girl asks you, "Do I look okay?", a normal boyfriend would use the standard expression "You look fine/great/amazing." Period. But no, not Bruno Mars. For such a simple straight-forward four-word question as "Do I look okay?", he would reply, "When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change, cause you're amazing, just the way you are, and when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for awhile, cause girl you're amazing, just the way you are."

And according to the song, he does that every.damn.time the girl asks him the same question. Yeah it might be romantic the first time, but after a while, it does get irritating. Like 5 months into the relationship, your girlfriend is in a rush for an important meeting and while making a run for the car, she just wants to make sure her suit and her shoes match, her makeup is even and there isn't a run in her tights, so she briefly turns around to ask you "Do I look okay?". You'd be like "When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change, cause yo--" before being cut off by a 3-inch high heeled shoe shoved right down your throat. That's what you get for pulling a Bruno Mars on a rushing girlfriend.

Then there's Grenade, his second single (I only know 2 of his songs, so as far as I'm concerned, Grenade is the second single.) If my post about the burqa was about submissive women, this song is the epitome of a submissive man. If a girlfriend throws your heart in the trash multiple times, why would you catch a grenade, throw your hand on a blade and jump in front of a train for her, knowing she would never do the same? That makes zero sense. There's romantic, and there's too romantic. Romantic is when you prepare a candlelight dinner in the park on Valentine's Day for your girlfriend. Too romantic is when you write a song that can make even Romeo and Majnun say "What the fuck?" in perfect unison.

If a girl doesn't like you, just let go and move on. Or if you're as lucky as Bruno Mars to be able to catch a grenade, then release the pin and throw it back to her face. Mission accomplished.

Sidestepping The Real Problem : Why France Should Stop Being Stupid And Lift The Ban On The Burqa

2011-04-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

France just passed the law banning the wearing of the burqa and niqab (face veil) in public which, to me, is a slap in the face and a kick in the balls to the nation's founding words: liberty, equality, fraternity.

I'm not speaking out because I'm a Muslim. I'm speaking out because I deem this an insanely massive violation of human rights. The French are the first ones to lash out against anybody who steps into their personal space or deprives them of free speech. In fact, the most common phrase in everyday French is "je m'en fous" (I don't give a shit) followed by "c'est comme tu veux", meaning "as you wish". And the most common phrase used to win an argument is "je fais ce que je veux" (I do whatever I want) and it's guaranteed foolproof. Rest assured that saying this can get you out of explaining yourself in any situation where you've obviously made a stupid decision and your plan backfired, but you don't want to lose face or hurt your ego. It gets people off your back instantly.

So it goes without saying that the French come hand in hand with their existentialist ways: I make my own decisions, you make yours, and I don't give a shit about what people think of me. They've been raised to say no to any kind of submission and to see everything with a skeptic magnifying glass, which is why they rejected religion and, as a group, are highly sarcastic.

Which raises the question: If you can practice your freedom of expression, why can't these women practice theirs?

My friends told me it's because these women are pressured by their husbands into wearing burqas, which is against the gender equality policy for which France has been fighting for so long. The problem is, most (if not all) of these women wear burqas voluntarily because of their faith, not because a man told them to. If it's their wish to do so, who are you to say they can't?

In my opinion, the ban on the burqa is a veiled (pun intended) attempt at ignoring the big elephant in the room, which is France's fear of Islamisation, a term they coined to denote the growing number of Muslims (mostly Arabs) in France and thus, the expansion of their cultural influences on the French constitution. It has nothing to do with protecting Muslim women from being oppressed by their husbands, or the fact that burqas might present a threat to society in the sense that hooligans could use burqas to hide their Kalashnikovs and rob banks in broad daylight.

The simplistic argument most used by the French to discredit the burqa (or any type of veil worn by Muslim women to cover their hair and body) is that it's degrading for women. For them, religion views women as lepers who should cover themselves in public. Anyone who obeys to this religious exigence is thus submissive and an outcast of the society.

The first thing they should understand is that the burqa is cultural in Arab countries, hence it shouldn't be associated with all Muslims.

Secondly, if a burqa is degrading because it reflects women's submission to men, then let me ask you a question. If a non-Muslim woman wears a sexy, body-fitting dress which hugs her curves in all the right places, is it not because she expects a certain degree of validation from onlooking men (and jealousy from onlooking women)? Is it not because she needs her physical prowess to be validated by others? This woman is thus dependent on people's perception of her body, which in turn brings her self-esteem and confidence. If her confidence is determined by men's approving glances, doesn't this constitute submission to men? Can this woman be considered in total freedom, or is she a slave to men's extremely high expectations when it comes to feminine beauty? A Muslim woman in a burqa doesn't need men to acknowledge her existence by using her physical attributes, which makes her independent of superficial prejudice. In this regard, she is more in control of her freedom than the skin-showing woman, which is a complete turnaround from the original stance that the burqa is degrading for women.

This is exactly why I think the French should stop getting their panties twisted, wipe the hypocrisy off their constitution, call a spade a spade, and deal with the issue at hand differently. I'm going to lay it down for you real easy: the French society views the Arab population as poor people with lack of education, benefactors of the French well-oiled health and social security system without contributing to it. They are perceived as a nuisance in an otherwise peaceful country, and their culture is impregnating the French national identity deeper and deeper, slowly shifting the traditional French values. This imposition is more and more seen as an invasion, as the Arabs are very vocal, passionate, and demanding when it comes to their culture. The problem is, the Arab population is multiplying exponentially and so is the visibility of their generally disliked habits. In areas of low-cost housing where the Arab population is predominant (usually in suburban areas of big cities), crime rates are very high.

So clearly what the French want is lower crime rates, which translates into smaller immigrant population, which also means "we need to get those Arabs out of here". That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is, the crimes are the result of lack of income and education, and the burqa is not in any way the cause of these crimes. If there is a pressing need for any law to be reinforced in order to curb the uneasiness caused by the Arab population, banning the burqa is certainly not the way to start. It will only cause even more segregation between the French and the Arab populations, and increase sentiments of hate among the people.

Sidestepping the real problem by nitpicking on a garment is nonsensical. Time to strap on a pair and man up, France. Say what you really want to say, and stop penalizing the wrong people. Who cares if people see you as a bunch of fascist bastards. You can do whatever you want and you don't give a shit, remember?

Hypnotizing Futuristic Lover

2011-04-09T02:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while in the car back from school, Katy Perry's new single, E.T. came on the radio. Judging by the title and the opening beat, I knew straight away that the song was going to call for many, many semi-scientific, futuristic jargons and apocalyptic references.

Boy was I right. It's like the whole Scientific Vocabulary for Dummies series just threw up on the song. Lines like "Your touch is so magnetizing" make her sound so smart. I'm too lazy to Google, but she says something like "you're a futuristic lover with a different DNA". Genius. Makes me wonder what a futuristic lover does that makes him so 'magnetizing'. Does he have multiple genitalia? Can he cuddle forever without falling asleep? Or does he just ram her with his futuristic vibrator and make her see God in 3 seconds? And don't we all have different DNA makeups? So the argument about her lover being with a different DNA is moot, since no two DNA makeups are exactly alike. Unless his DNA doesn't have the double-helix structure, he's nothing special.

Right after the chorus, she says "You're so supersonic..". I was like, whaa? Is being faster than the speed of sound a sought-after quality in a partner now? Seriously, Miss Perry, enlighten me. How exactly can one be supersonic? And how does that make a relationship better? Or is that just an euphemism for premature ejaculation i.e. he comes so fast it's supersonic? Although if that were the case I don't think she would shower him with praises. It's like the writer of the song just ran out of futuristic adjectives so he decided to give Katy Perry's lover a non-anthropomorphic attribute that doesn't make any sense. As an engineering student who's skinny dipping in fluid mechanics all year long, I can assure you that supersonic flow in fluids is not that hard to achieve. If you're looking for a good scientific-ish adjective to describe your out-of-this-world lover, Miss Perry, may I suggest you say "You're so planetesimal", which means that he's like an asteroid or similar tiny celestial bodies, in keeping with the cosmic theme of your song.

The song is not all bad, though. There's something about it that reminds me of t.A.T.u's All The Things She Said, which was huge back when I was in high school. Besides, Katy Perry being an international superstar with major influence on kids, this song will surely enrich the 3-word vocabulary most kids have these days (regardless of whether they actually understand the words).

Instead of saying "This is fucken awesome", it would be nice to hear a kid say "This is transcendental", thanks to Katy Perry's E.T.

Keep up the good work!

All About My Nose

2011-04-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

So it's my birthday today. Am not feeling any different than yesterday, aside from the uncool runny nose.

Maybe it's spring that's riling up my sinusitis. Or maybe I just congested my nostrils with too much chlorine from the swimming pool yesterday and today they are showing signs of protest. I'm leaning towards the latter, because I actually inhaled an unhealthy amount of swimming pool water due to too many people in the pool causing me to swim below people and have an irregular breathing rhythm, which led to my accidental inhaling under water and hurting my nose.

I'm going to have to change my swimming schedule, because with the weather getting better each day, more and more people are going to the public swimming pool after class/work so it gets really crowded around the usual time I get there. I'm going to have to go on Sunday mornings. Believe it or not, the French hate doing anything on Sundays so the pool is pretty much deserted.

Sounds like a plan.

This One Commercial I Saw

2011-04-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

I've had many phases in my life. One of those was the "Fuck it all I want to be a filmmaker" phase. You watch one too many Kubrick movie and suddenly you're a film director.

Once I almost participated in a short film contest. 5 minutes to be exact. But I didn't have a video camera, actors or time, for that matter. Most of all, I didn't have a plausible script. What can you tell in 5 minutes? I asked myself. Nothing. All the stories I had in mind needed at least 10 minutes to be told properly, and that's double the allotted amount of time. No can do.

So I didn't go for it.

Not long ago, I discovered this commercial for an insurance company on French TV. The first time I saw it, I thought it was extremely well-made. Now it has become one of my favourite commercials.

This is an example of a perfect usage of classical music in a commercial. The way they tailored the commercial to seamlessly suit Shostakovich's Waltz no. 2, bit by bit, is amazing. The guy was born, had a wonderful childhood, grew up, fell in love, got married, had a fight and got a divorce, got married again, bought a house, had kids, went through a war, and grew old. All of this told backwards (à la Memento), with the tagline "If life began at the end, we would prepare our future differently."

Most importantly, everything is told in 38 seconds.

This goes to show that if your story has substance, time is of no importance. The best stories (jokes etc) are the shortest ones anyway. As long as you know how to convey it properly, 38 seconds can be all it takes for the effects to steal attention.

Bye Bye Winter

2011-03-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

Winter left exactly a week ago. Do I miss it? I must say, I do. Not that it has totally left though, because the chilly weather is still lingering around.

I like winter because it brings out the artist in me. I don't know what it is, but winter makes you think a lot. Maybe because you go out less in the winter, meaning you'd rather stay at home, sit in a cafe, a library or anywhere that has a working heater. And the gloomy weather brings melancholy, which is why I think winter is the best time to write. When Sartre started writing his famous Huis Clos, I'm pretty sure it was in the middle of winter at Cafe de Flore in Saint Germain, Paris.

And my winter iTunes playlist reflects a lot of what my winter was all about. David Bowie, The Who, Supertramp, Madness and Ray Charles. All the classics. Who would have thought in one winter I would turn into a hipster, minus the pants and the glasses.

Now that spring has arrived, I'm thinking about overhauling my iTunes playlist. That means including a lot more contemporary artists. I'm now listening to Adele. She's pretty good, and a breath of fresh air considering the airwaves are now congested with the likes of talentless broads like Katy Perry who somehow managed to convince people that she can sing.