With All Due Respect, You Suck Elephant Dick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

Wagyu Beef

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

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

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

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

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?

Let's Just All Get Along

"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

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

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

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

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)

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?

Morning Fuckup

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

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

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.