My friend, the Autobahn Gonzalez

I saw this video at work today (yes, my office doesn't block any websites) and couldn't help laughing. German dude went up to almost 150km/h on an American highway and got busted. Serves him right. Like the officer said, they weren't on an Autobahn. The officer was a complete tool, though.

But anyway, the Germans do drive like pumas on Epinephrine. That's what you get when the national automobile industry is so awesome that people trust car makers with their lives. Back when I was working there, my daily routine included working late (sometimes till midnight) with my office mate so what we did was we would order pizza for dinner, watch a TV series, and called it a night when our codes were done compiling. He would then proceed to driving me home and that was always the moment I dreaded the most.

This dude was borderline crazy (which might be why we got along very well). The moment his car engine started roaring, he would already be flooring the gas pedal and pulling a Hamilton in the parking lot. Never had I thought I needed more than one seat belt in a car, but the first time he drove me home, I remember frantically reaching out for a second seat belt that wasn't there. And I held on to the grab bar so hard my knuckles hurt. I even rehearsed my last words in case the paramedics had a notepad with them.

Even after a month, I still had trouble getting used to his demonic driving. Once, we were so sick of eating pizza that we decided to go to McDonald's Drive-Thru for something to eat. We drove off back to work and I was thinking we were going to wait till we reached the office before working on our fries and burgers.... until I saw him reaching out for his Big Mac and fries with both hands, while driving, at a speed of 120km/h on a 40km/h street. I started freaking out so he said, "Relax, I'm driving with my knees, I do it all the time." I looked down and saw his knees just maneuvering the steering like pros (this dude was at least 1.90m tall). That completely reassured me.

Not.

But still, there we were, two kids having dinner in a car that was going at a speed not meant for such a narrow lane, both gobbing down on our burgers and none of our hands were on the steering wheel. I have to give it to the guy though, knee-driving looked awesome.

Oh and wait till I tell you about how he handled highway exits. He would go as fast as his VW Polo could take it down the highway, and 10 meters before he had to take an exit he would do the brake-and-drift like it was nothing. Meanwhile on the passenger side, on top of hurting knuckles, insufficient seat belt protection and my head going numb from the car vibrations, I also had to endure extreme centrifugal force pushing me against the passenger door all along the highway exit curve. If Tracy Chapman is still looking for a fast car, I'll gladly give her this guy's contact number.

It wasn't all bad though. In fact, looking back, it was the most fun I've had on the highway. We would go so fast everything else looked like molecules in a hadron collider, all the while having Herbert Grönemeyer's Bleibt Alles Anders playing full blast on his MP3 ("Es gibt vieeeel zu verlieren, du kannst nuurrr gewinneeeeen.....").

I've never really understood what the song is actually about, but every time I listen to it now, it takes me back to all those late nights I risked death on a German highway.

Who would have thought risking death would be so much fun?

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

I just finished watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And it is a humongous snoozefest.

I used to be big on high-school/teen angst/coming of age books and movies. I've grown out of it, though. The only reason I watched The Perks was because I wanted to see Emma Watson playing anything other than a budding witch. She's cute as a button, but sucked big time as an actor in Harry Potter. Every time she delivered a line it would seem like she didn't know how to feel about it, hence she always ended up looking like she just poopfarted and was waiting for the smell to arise.

In The Perks, her acting has improved by leaps and bounds. To be fair, her acting talent was dismal so the room for improvement was enormous and she could only get better, which she did. Unfortunately, her casting was a huge miscast. She didn't have any gritty edge needed to portray a girl who has a slutty and rebellious reputation. She was just too prim and proper for her role. And the fake American accent didn't help. She just came off as a sweet girl next door with a confused exotic accent and a made up reputation peddled by bitter dudes who tried hitting on her but got turned down. Well maybe that's the effect the producers were going for, maybe not. Either way, I didn't buy any of it.

I am also getting tired of the recycled theme of there being 4 types of American high school kids: the jocks (or jerks) , the bitches, the nerds and the misfits. And heaven forbid that any of them downplay their role. According to Hollywood, jerks are first-class bullies who trip you at the cafeteria for fun when you're holding a full lunch tray. This, of course, followed by a douchey evil laugh and all-around high fives and the whole cafeteria laughing and pointing at the fallen victim (nerd/misfit) and the bully's hot cheerleader girlfriend (the bitch) just jumping on the bully's laps for a full-fledged impromptu make-out session. I've never seen this happened in real life, ever. No one trips anyone with a tray full of food just for the hell of it.

The bitches are always the prettiest and the sluttiest, and the nerds are always bespectacled fashionably-challenged kids with big crooked teeth who are so smart they can build a spaceship just with whatever they find in the high school science lab. And the misfits are those who don't really belong to any of the other groups, but they all have seem to have one thing in common: superior taste in music and literature that others just don't get. If I had a euro for every time a high school movie starts out with a "great 60's song" with an awkward misfit walking to school holding a book by Salinger/Fitzgerald/Steinbeck/Rand or any of the famed English authors...

One of the supposedly obscure great songs used in The Perks to further alleviate this whole "great taste" agenda was David Bowie's Heroes. Okay, since when is David Bowie obscure? Heroes is one of his most famous songs so it doesn't make sense to use it as a song "only appreciated by those in the know". In fact, some of the songs used in the film were chart-toppers like Come On Eileen and Temptation, so the whole hipster act didn't really pan out well for the characters now did it?

I don't really know who the target audience for this movie is (I'm guessing the Harry Potter fans given the fact that they chose to put Emma Watson in a role she's the worst fit for), but I'm pretty certain I'm in the overly-critical demographic group this movie is not suitable for. Seeing that it got a rating of 8.1/10 on IMDb, it seems like I'm beaten by an overwhelming majority, so this movie must have a certain appeal unbeknownst to only myself.

I hope the book is better than the movie because I've heard great things about the book and that incited me to see the film adaptation. If the book is just as bad, then I seriously have to reevaluate the whole paperback industry and its purpose.

War and turning 25

I'm starting to get interested in war.

Or the ideology leading up to war, to be exact. I've been reading up a lot on all the major wars in ancient and modern history. I suddenly find it fascinating how millions upon millions of people would throw themselves on the front lines, risking imminent death just to protect their motherlands, knowing mighty well they might not live to see the fruit of their labour.

My ex-roommate was a war freak. He was obsessed with World Wars and Hitler and the army, and I didn't really understand that obsession. If it weren't for the government scholarship, he would surely have applied to join the army. Of course, every boy at one stage of his life has dreamed of being a soldier. I had the epiphany when I was around 6. But then I switched to wanting to be a police officer, then a firefighter, and then for the longest time I wanted to be Prime Minister. None of those ambitions got to see the the light of day, so I really admire those soldiers who stick out their childhood dream to the end. It's a noble profession.

I thought war was completely unnecessary and stupid, thus needed no glorification. It's always the same shit. War is declared, both sides get badly hurt, the whole world goes into recession, cities are destroyed, people die, both armies get weakened, an embargo is imposed, a peace treaty is signed and that's it. Why can't they just skip the whole bloody process and go straight to the peace treaty?

Little that I knew, mass civilian killings are not merely byproducts of wars - they are part of the multipronged objective. Hitler was accused of genocide, but aren't all wars about a group of people hating another group of people wishing they were dead? The Pan-Arabism movement in the Middle East was basically the Arabs wanting to get rid of Zionists and Shiites, either by ousting them, converting them into Sunni Muslims or annihilating them altogether (the latter evidently being preferred). Of course, annexing new lands seems like the general goal of a war, but the acquisition of new territories also means having to find a way to earn the loyalty of the occupied groups of people. It would be much easier just to wipe them out in the first place.

Wars are more complicated then I previously thought, which makes it a lot more fascinating. I love how twisted wars can get, how hatred ends up prevailing and trumping all logic, to the point where people just forget what they actually set out to fight for and just continue killing or getting killed thinking they are already in so deep and have nothing to lose anymore. The war in Syria started as a revolution of a people against their oppressor, and now it's an outright civil war between the different ethnics. How did they even get there?

I pity them as much as I applaud their bravery. I now understand more about the importance of war and at the same time bewildered by the stupidity of it all. I am enlightened and saddened by all the war stories I've been reading and war movies/documentaries I've been watching.


I should give up engineering and be a war anthropologist. If there's even such a job. That would be awesome.

ps: I'm turning 25 today.

Food

Ten food items I'm going to miss once I leave Europe:

1) Scallops

Sure we have ten thousand types of shellfish in Malaysia, and they're delicious and dirt cheap too. But none of those come close to the succulent God creation that is the scallop. I've been in Toulouse for a month now, and scallops here are quite cheap compared to the north, so I make it a Saturday ritual to get 250 grams of scallop from the local fishmonger also known as the fish section at Carrefour. A dab of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, 1 minute on the skillet each side, and your scallop is done. Well, when I'm feeling particularly fancy, I'd go to restaurants for a scallop risotto (did that just last night and all in all set me back 30 euros. In my defense, I just got my pay last week). 


2) Salmon

In Malaysia we are blessed with a lush selection of lean, tasty tropical fish, so I shouldn't be complaining about our fish department. If you go to a French fish market, all you can see are huge fishes with scary faces and slimy white bellies. Even their stingrays aren't as juicy as ours, and they cost a bomb too. But then you have the salmon. Now that fish is certainly a bug in the system, because it's just as beautiful as it is delicious. And very cheap too. Just last week I bought three slabs of fresh salmon for 5 euros, which is practically a steal. I used one to make salmon sashimi, and grilled the other two for Monday and Tuesday lunch at work. Paired them with fusili and red pesto, and I was good to go. (Of course I bring my own meal to work. Lunch at the canteen costs 8 euros, and it's pretty much shit on top of shit on the side of shit with shit for dessert. And my red pesto fusili with grilled salmon costs me under 3 euros to make, a no brainer. Yes I have to wake up an hour early everyday to prepare lunch, but a good healthy and cheap meal is worth waking up early every day for).

3) Foie gras

I don't eat this a lot because it's super expensive and I'm dirt poor. But every time I get to, I'd thank God for all that is good and holy in the world, which this thing definitely is. For those of you who have never tasted foie gras, I'd compare the taste to dark chicken meat ground in Parmesan cheese, with the texture of soft butter. Usually people eat it with fig jam and spiced bread, but being fancy is not my primary concern, so I just put my foie gras on a toast. Just as good, and ten times cheaper. Besides I'm not a fan of spiced bread because it's more sweet than it is spicy, and it overwhelms the foie gras flavour. A lot of people have an aversion to the way the ducks and geese are being force fed until their livers swell and they become sickly. But if the end result of the process is a sumptuous fatty liver then I say force feed away. Some studies show that ducks and geese don't have gag reflex, so the whole force feeding process is painless to them and we needn't worry. Brought this up to an anti-foie gras friend, and he asked me, "Painless? How do you know? Are you a goose? Or did a talking goose come to you and tell you that?"

Good point. But then again, these geese are fed delicious, high quality corn all day. If I were a goose and all I had to do was laze around while constantly being fed good food, why would I be complaining? That is my idea of heaven anyway: a fat me in the middle of a Coca Cola pond being fed scallop and tuna sashimi by angels all day long.

4) Tuna

Okay tuna might sound like a generic fish. I associate tuna with camping trips, because every time I go camping I'd bring cans of tuna spread in my backpack. If you go camping with me, I'd be the dude with the God-awful tuna breath. But I shit you not, fresh tuna is actually a magnificent food. The red tuna flesh is a tantalizing sight in itself. Just make sure to go to a good fishmonger, though. I had a few food poisoning episodes with not-so-fresh tuna slabs, and I had only myself to blame for having prepared tuna sashimi with tuna sold in styrofoam at 50% off. Tuna is a lot more expensive than salmon, which is justified by its heavenly taste. So I decided to skimp on cheap tuna and God paid me in cash right there and then. Never had my toilet bowl gotten so much business in one weekend, and I'm lactose intolerant.

5) Milk

Good milk is expensive in Malaysia. Very much so. A liter of milk costs around RM5, and the good ones even more. In Europe however, milk is disgustingly cheap and surprisingly good. Growing up, I was used to the taste of HL milk and I loved it because of the slightly sugary vanilla taste. Now I know that milk should not taste like that. And in France, they have this milk campaign where every milk brand uses milk from the nearby region, so you can be pretty sure that your milk is fresh and it benefits local dairy farmers.

6) Baked goods

If you've ever been to Delifrance in Malaysia, you would know how... bad their croissants are. Croissants should never be dry. And they should be warm. And buttery. The one from Delifrance are none of those. To compensate for the sub-par quality of their baked goods, they stuff their croissants with chicken or tuna with three tonnes of mayonnaise so you'll have a heart attack while also getting ripped off. I'm surprised Delifrance is still surviving while it should have gone under years ago. Baked goods in France is a different story. I'm not a pastry person, so I don't really buy them. But I'm glad to be in a country where, no matter where you are, you don't need to walk more than 10 minutes to find a good bakery that sells buttery croissants for 90 cents each. Malaysia is still way ahead of Europe when it comes to white bread, though. Gardenia bread is just unbeatable. Try spreading peanut butter on Harry's bread here, and you'll get a flaky peanut butter sandwich that tears in the middle.

7) Duck

I hate duck taste when I was in Malaysia. To me it was just a greasier, fattier version of beef. And they tend to overcook duck in heavy sauce, so in the end you'll get chewy red meat bathed in its own fat and an overpowering sweet sauce. It was not good. Coming here, I've learned to appreciate the taste and texture of duck meat. I don't have it often because it's still very greasy, but if cooked and drained right, duck meat is very crispy on the outside and extremely juicy on the inside.

8) Asparagus

Asparagus is very picky for a vegetable. It only grows in a short period between May and June, it needs to be cooked right, and it needs to be eaten very fresh. An old asparagus would be hard and chewy. I don't usually give my veggies a 5 star treatment because well, they are just plants. You can stir fry any edible plant and it'll taste good. But not asparagus. During the asparagus season, you'll have to go to the market early in the morning or you can be sure to see only shitty asparagus left on display. People go crazy over these long green things, and it's perfectly understandable why. Try steaming fresh asparagus and eat it just like that, you'll never get enough. It's crunchy and juicy at the same time, and it goes well with any sauce as long as you don't drench it lest it'll become too soggy.

9) Aurora sauce

Aurora is the best Italian sauce, hands down. The first time I tasted it, I went to heaven and back. During my month-long backpacking trip to Italy a couple of years back, in every city I'd look out for restaurants with aurora sauce on their menu. To this day I still don't know what exactly is in aurora sauce, but I'm pretty sure it's the same ingredients used to make the Powerpuff Girls: sugar, spice and everything nice. (Okay a quick Google search told me it was tomato concentrate, cream and garlic.) Aïoli is another good sauce I'm going to miss, but not that much because it's just basically mayonnaise with garlic, and is jam-packed with cholesterol.

10) Firm cheese

I am a big cheese fan. The stronger the taste, the better. In small doses, of course. Given my lactose intolerance, ten trips to the bathroom after dinner are not worth any cheese except for the comté. It trumps all the other cheese in existence. I remember going skiing in the Jura last year and we had a cheese night with different types of cheese from around the Jura area. The Jura comté was so exquisite, I wasn't even sorry for what the toilet bowl had to go through afterwards. However, I'm not a fan of soft cheese like the ones they have in the north. Now that I am in the south, I'm going to stock up on cheese and eat it like it's Doritos.



So there you go. Except for foie gras, everything else on this list is cheap everyday stuff that comes by easily in France, which is the main reason why I'll miss them. Of course, you can get them in Malaysia too, but I'm pretty sure it's unaffordable.

Little Things In Life

What I've been going through these past few days has taught me one thing.

You may dream big, reach for the stars, and strive for excellence. But in the process, don't let the little things in life pass you by. You'd be surprised how beautiful they can be.

In the end, it's these beautiful little things in life that make it worth living.



On another note, I've been missing my newborn niece really badly. She's two weeks old and I've never met her. Is it strange to miss someone you've never even met?





Pak Lang loves you, Laila.

Let's hope this is not universal truth

Copy pasted from a comment on Reddit:

I've been with my wife since 1983.

Here's the ugly truth. What young people think of as romantic love has nothing to do with marriage. That is lust and infatuation. Marriage is about family. The way you stick by your parents and your siblings and grandparents. Your husband or wife becomes your FAMILY.

You stick by them when you hate them, when you love them, when you are angry at them, and when you are thrilled with them.

Why?

Because over the long decades, people change. Dramatically. She will lose interest in all of the things you thought brought you together. You both like hiking? That's nice. In ten years one of you will hate hiking. You won't have any artificial structures that helped create your relationship and bring you together.

You will have to do that all by yourselves. And how do you do that?

By not depending on romantic love to get you through. Not expecting to be "happy." Instead, do your job, do your best by them, and stick by them like you do your other family.

It's going to be a bad time, folks. And a great time. It's going to be all kinds of times.

Don't pussy out because you are disappointed that marriage wasn't fun. It's not fun. It's family.

This might be the most depressing thing I have ever read.

This is why I need a therapist

For the past 3 weeks I've read so many thesis papers and scientific publications I seriously believe I am ready to do a PhD. No, really. Sometimes after I finished reading a 400-page thesis paper I'd be like, "That's it? It took this dude 3 years to do this? I could do this in half the time and give this dude a run for his money."

Of course that's just me trash talking to self-aggrandize myself while in truth, I'm pretty sure I'd flunk my PhD due to depression since I'd be isolated in a lab somewhere with no human contact.

The funny thing is, I always thought doing a PhD was something extremely difficult and almost unattainable. As a young boy, I always wondered what doctoral fellows actually did. What are they researching about? Haven't us humans discovered it all? After all, there have been billions of people on Earth before us, what makes us think we could just figure out something new after only two and a half decades of being alive? What else is there to find out?

Turns out, we are far from done with technological advancements. The human race still has a long, long way to go before we can finally say we've left no stone unturned. There are, literally, not enough people on Earth for us to discover every single thing about the universe. For a seven billion-strong army of grey matters, we are actually moving at a snail's pace. 

A doctoral fellow is basically someone choosing an extremely minute aspect of an already very specific field of study, and spending three to five years of their lives putting that minute aspect under a microscope, trying to make something out of it.

Am I considering taking on a PhD? Hard question to answer, as it just crossed my mind these past few weeks. I had never, during all these years of existence, thought the question would even pop up. Honestly, I never thought I could do it. But a Skype session with a friend changed everything. I told him all about my Masters results, and he told me, "With those results, it would be a shame not to do a PhD." All of a sudden, it's all I can think about. To top it off, I'm spending every day doing research at work with minimal supervision, reading and analysing scientific journals. My daily correspondences include some researchers in Luxembourg and Germany, and today I found myself reading a journal written by Japanese researchers. And I've never felt more alone at work. It's as if I'm doing a PhD already.


I really need to get over this phase. I promised my family I'd be back by year end. I can't possibly bring myself to tell them I'd be staying back in Europe for another three years to do a doctoral dissertation. I've given enough false hopes and broken enough promises, and I've had my time in the sun on this part of the world. And I've about had it with missing weddings and births and birthdays and Hari Raya and everything in between.

It's about time I went back.

Me 1 - Pizzaïolo 0

I saw the coupon. Tried to look away, but couldn't. It kept calling to me, pleading, in a voice of a distressed kitten.

"10.90€ instead of 18.90€ for a giant salmon and scallops pizza. Free delivery."

All I had to do was click where it said, "Order online now!"

One click. One simple click. And twenty minutes later I would be in seafood and cheese heaven. "Go ahead, you can do it! One little click, all it takes."




I didn't do it. Couldn't do it. Been a good boy for two weeks.

And I couldn't be more proud of my self-restraint.

The Ship That Never Sinks

Truth is, it's been quite lonely here. The city is beautiful, the weather is great, the people are nice, their southern accent is endearing, the food is great etc. It is strange that I find myself missing the north very much. I have made some friends here, but it is still too early for me to feel completely at ease with them.

So I just got a call from a friend from the north. He and some good friends of mine are coming down all the way south to see me in two weeks. I know for a fact that flight and train tickets cost a bomb that particular weekend, given it will be Easter holidays and all. So I asked him how much they paid for the flight and train tickets, and his answer was, "A fortune, but don't worry about it. You are well worth what we paid."

Which silenced me for a bit. In every friendship there will come a point when money stops being an issue, and I think we have reached that point. I feel grateful to have met so many great people in my life abroad, but these guys are the very reason why, even after all these years, I still find life in France to be amazing.

Thank you, guys.

News

The past week and a half have been a turmoil. The move from the north to the south, the apartment hunting, the new job, my exam results, etc.

Everything went very smoothly, to my complete and utter surprise of course. As a pessimist, I was expecting everything to go wrong: I wouldn't get an apartment in the south so I'd have to go sleep in a barn somewhere. The new job would be a nightmare, with horrible bosses and grumpy colleagues, and everyone would be calling me "The Intern" as if I didn't have a name. I would be in charge of the copy machine hours on end as well as making coffee for everybody.

But no. The apartment is perfect. It's smallish, yes. But everything is spanking new, and it's really close to work and not that far from city centre which is a perfect compromise. My job is awesome, and I am on first-name basis with everybody. I am surrounded by extremely smart people all day long, and I can see airplanes take off and land all day long from my office. I serendipitously found out that the aeronautical town where I currently work is the twin city of the German town where I used to work last year, so I guessed it has all come full circle.

My colleagues are all young engineers, but amazingly a lot of them hold a PhD. Never in my life have I felt so inferior. There is even this one guy who cannot possibly be over 27 years old, but he is already referred to as The Expert because well... he really is an expert in thermal analysis of airplane interiors. The average age in the office is somewhere around 30-35, so the place is vibrant with energy. A young work environment means a lot of room for innovation and progress. I respect the elders, but they usually are set in their ways and leave no wiggle room for change because "I've been doing it this way for thirty years and it works fine". In an ultra high-technology industry as aeronautics where every boundary of science is pushed to its limit, everything is susceptible to constant change. New discoveries are made every day, new patents are being filed ceaselessly, and new groundbreaking ideas are thrown across the meeting table on a daily basis. The only aspect that can afford to be rigid in aeronautics are the security norms.

Well to be completely honest, work has been a bit stressful. Not because of my job scope itself, but because of this inferiority complex I am suddenly feeling. My bosses are super smart and experienced. My engineer colleagues are nerds who can point out exactly why there is a temperature difference of 4 centigrade between the cockpit and the cabin during the flight and correct it. Even their jokes are first-class nerd jokes that I do not get, and I consider myself a huge nerd as well. I mean, if you can incorporate the terms "thermal boundary conditions" in your one-liner and make it funny, you are a first class nerd. A funny one at that, though. Now I know how Penny must feel amidst her smart friends in The Big Bang Theory.

When I told this to a colleague, she said, "You'll be fine. In fact, if you must know, a lot of people applied for this job but you got it because F. (my boss) thought that you had an impressive résumé and your telephone interview was solid."

She thought she helped, but somehow that extra bit of information added more pressure. What if I don't measure up? What if I am only good on paper? What if they suddenly think that I am not cut out for this job and fire me?

It is all only in my head, I am sure. But there were times when I wished I was surrounded by dumbasses so I could feel like the smartest in the group and feel superior again. Yeah, I am full of shit like that.

Good news is, I just got all my final exam results, the last exams of my life. Verdict? Well, I don't mean to brag but my foot is sore right now because I kicked some serious ass! Looks like I am heading straight to Graduation-ville for both my Masters, and I couldn't possibly be more proud.

As per usual, this post follows my classic pattern of: jumbled up shit -> story development -> conflict -> arrogant ending.

Last Minute Man

If I were a superhero, my name would be Last Minute Man because I do everything at the last minute, almost with no exception.

No matter how grave the situation at hand is, I can never get things done without the help of adrenaline. Last Minute Man doesn't pack until 2 hours before having to leave for the airport. He doesn't board until the final call is announced three times. He doesn't go apartment hunting until 2 days before he has to start working in a completely new southern French city. He doesn't buy train tickets until all the second class seats are all snapped up and only first class seats are left. Well, Last Minute Man is also Comfort First Man, so a first class seat doesn't sound too shabby for him, especially for a 9-hour high-speed train ride from the north to the south of France. Think of all the extra legroom! And he made sure to request an island seat so he doesn't risk having an overly chatty neighbour with bad breath. If only there were a Kid-Free Zone on the train, he would have chosen that option too. They do have a Kid-Friendly Zone though, so Last Minute Man made it a point to steer clear of that.

Last Minute Man is starting work on Monday with a giant in the aeronautics industry, and he hasn't even started to read up about his mission. He thinks he has plenty of time Sunday to finish reading some serious thesis papers on a highly technical material physics stuff. Of course he does, because between the unpacking, grocery shopping, cleaning the new apartment, and some friends from the South hollering him for a meet-up downtown, he has all the time in the world to read thesis papers.

Last Minute Man is a pessimist, but when it comes to getting things done at the eleventh hour, he's the most optimistic guy in the world. And believe it or not, by hook or by crook, he always got them done just in the nick of time.

Last Minute Man is a true Malaysian superhero, because in his shoes, many would fall apart under the extreme pressure of juggling a million things all at once, but Last Minute Man just keeps going. He lives on stress, and he binges on pressure. Last Minute Man sort things out one after another, and by the looks of things, he's not going to stop.

Not now. Not ever. All hail Last Minute Man!

Here's Johnny!

We arrived in Tangier on New Year's Day after a long train ride from Marrakesh, hungry and exhausted. So much so that we didn't even bother to haggle with the taxi driver who probably charged us quadruple the normal amount for the short trip from the railway station to our hotel.

It had been so long since I went to a hotel with a doorman, and this one had two. We thought that after 2 sleepless night in nomad tents in a freezing desert, we could use a little comfort. On the internet site where we made our reservation, the hotel definitely looked a lot fancier than the dodgy back alley European hostels I usually frequent, and it cost less because we were in Morocco after all, where luxury comes cheap.

The moment I stepped into the lobby, I felt goosebumps on my back. The place was fancy all right, and it could've passed for a 5-star hotel... if we were in 1950. The utilitarian furniture reminded me of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. The sitting area looked like it was inspired by the hotel where Humphrey Bogart ran around in Charade, minus the telephone booths. People were smoking in the lobby, exactly the way it used to be in the olden days. The suspended luminaries were outdated in design, and the table lamps had caps in the shape of tubes. The reception counter was wooden, painted in mahogany. In keeping with the ambiance of days gone by, there was a clerk behind the counter typing furiously on a typewriter. A typewriter!

The place was very clean and well kept, but something about the frozen-in-time look made me uncomfortable. Like I'd seen it all in a horror movie before, and something terrible was about to befall upon me. The doorman was a pleasant guy with a permanent smile on his face, but he terrified me the most. His uniform was a faded orange Nehru jacket and a matching sarouel, with long white socks that went all the way to the knees and a bright red tarbush nested on top of his head, very reminiscent of the creepy lift operator at Disneyland's Tower of Terror horror ride where you get into the lift and plunge to your death while the lift man eerily laughs, showing his rotten teeth, and vanishes.

The hotel probably spent all their money on polishing their outdated post-war furniture because the doorman also doubled as the bellboy. He showed us to the lift and carried our bags to our room. I felt plenty rich at that moment, because I was so used to cheap hostels that my travelling mantra was "Please God let there be an empty bottom bunk in the 16-bed dormitory with shared bathroom." And here I was with a bellboy carrying my suitcase, and all of a sudden I felt like Bill Gates.

Despite all this, I still felt uneasy. The dim hallway, long, empty and very, very quiet made me nervous. The bellboy's silk tarbush tassel swung from right to left in a hypnotizing manner, which made the walk to our room even more like a stroll down the death row for some inexplicable reason.

"This place is creepy," I remember telling my travel companions. They just looked at me without saying a word, most probably because they were too fatigued to entertain my childish remark. A 20 dirham tip, and the bellboy left us to enjoy the extremely vintage looking room. The closet doors had maroon cushions on them, that's how vintage it was. And don't get me started on the bidet in the bathroom.

The next day we went down to the lobby using the stairs just because we felt like it. I saw some framed photographs on the way down, and they were all dated to the pre- and post-war period. The stairwell floor was covered in small black and yellow square tiles and I had to double check the date to make sure we were, in fact, already in 2013.

The huge lobby with utilitarian furniture, the typewriter, the long and quiet hallway, the pleasant bellboy with an eerie smile. Suddenly it all added up, and it hit me: I was staying at The Overlook, that creepy hotel in The Shining where the innkeeper murdered his wife and twin daughters, where blood comes out from the lift doors, where room 237 was haunted by a naked old woman's ghost, where Jack Nicholson froze to his death while chasing his son with an axe in a blizzard.

That's why I felt so nervous and spooked. Tangier was a lovely city, and the people were nice. But if I could do things differently, I would gladly pick a dodgy back alley hostel over a spooky vintage hotel that looks like the one they used to shoot The Shining, a horror movie that makes my hair stand on end every time I hear its title.

When we finally left the hotel, I felt relieved. And I'm glad curiosity didn't get the best of me, otherwise I would've sneaked behind the reception counter and taken a peek at the typewritten sheets just to check if they were, in fact, just hundreds of pages containing one single sentence: "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy."

In which case I would be traumatized till the end of my days.

RM 10

Whenever I go back to Malaysia, I never cease to be surprised by how expensive things have become. As a young boy, I remember looking at 10 ringgit bills like they were messiahs disguised as red banknotes, with which all my wishes would be exalted and all my wantings satisfied. A misplaced 10 ringgit would spark a fight between us siblings, because a lost 10 ringgit really felt like your world was crumbling down around you.

But now, a 10 ringgit bill seems more and more like what it really is: a simple piece of paper. It still holds a value, but not the one it used to have. Not to me, anyway. These days I can never be so confident as to go to 7-11 with only 10 ringgit in my pocket, hoping to buy 2 grocery items as staple as milk and eggs. Even if it was enough, the change would be small pieces of metal even a vending machine would spit out in disgust.

I go back to Malaysia once a year, which seems like such a short time for significant changes to occur in KL. It is not. KL is such a dynamic city buzzing with all kinds of excitement that KLites change eating habits the way they change phones. Whenever I ask friends for makan recommendations, I'd get a plethora of new or up-and-coming makan places, and all of this new eateries happened to sprout out within the short period of time I was absent from the country. It's impressive, and one of the utmost reasons why I love KL so much.

The only problem is that most of these eateries charge exorbitant prices for their food. I wouldn't mind spending more on exceptionally good food or great ambiance. I just don't think it's logical to be spending more than 10 ringgit on bubble tea, or 15 ringgit on a simple nasi goreng ayam. Let's not get me started on Tutti Frutti. That stuff is good, and I went there 3 or 4 times during my last holiday in Malaysia. But a small bowl can cost around 15-20 ringgit, and the big one can set you back 40-50 ringgit.

When I really think about it, a lot of my freshly graduated friends' salaries are in the vicinity of 2000-4000 ringgit, with some making more than 5000 ringgit and then a few who are cashing in over 10K a month, but these two latter groups are not the majority. So how they hell do they manage on a 2-4K salary to afford going to these expensive places on a weekly (if not daily) basis? Either these people are excellent at minding their money, or they are in denial that they don't make as much as they'd like to.

When I first went out with my girlfriend, it was Starbucks-Tony Roma's-Pizza Hut-fancy salmon laksa at The Curve kind of affair. Then I realized that neither of us was actually that fancy, so we toned things down - way down - and started hanging out at mamak stalls and Rasta, where I felt more at home. Come to think of it, I don't think any of those people we saw at those posh restaurants were really all that fancy anyway. No matter how dim the lights are and how jazzy the music they play in those restaurant, Malaysians will be Malaysians. We talk loud and laugh like no one's business, negating all kinds of romantic ambiance you are going for. And table manners? We don't follow them, which is yet another reason why I love Malaysia. I once licked the side of my knife in a restaurant here because some good sauce was dripping, and got stared by almost everyone. Apparently in France it's impolite to lick one's knife at the table, and I, honest to God, couldn't give a flying f- to the French complicated table etiquette with their ten thousand pieces of cutlery neatly arranged on both sides of the plate, three million types of glasses (you could give me a bowl for all I care, I just want to drink water dammit!), and napkins in the shape of constipated swans.

But I digress.

So my point is, knowing my splurging self, I can really imagine myself being one of those people who live beyond their means when I go back home. I have to develop the skill of saying no whenever people suggest glitzy restaurants, and remind myself that I just can't afford it. All this while I've been going back to Malaysia on holiday, so I spend money according to what I earn in euros and everything looks dirt cheap. But now the moment of truth is approaching and I'll soon have to stop dividing all prices by four and start spending like the poor fresh graduate that I will be.

Hopefully at that time the 10 ringgit bill will regain its former value in my eyes and I'll appreciate its existence in my pocket.

Resolutions

My ultimate goal in life is to win a Nobel Prize in Physics and a Man Booker Prize. Well, I thought of winning a Pulitzer as well but opinionated as I am, I can never be good at journalism where you have to be objective and stick to the hard facts. My piece on the Syrian civil war would have been titled "Let's make those uneducated Muslims fight among themselves so the rich countries can swoop in and suck their oil."

It's 2013, so I guess it's the perfect time to have new resolutions.

Hence this year, I am going to start writing a book that will get me that damn Booker. As for the Nobel Prize, I'm thinking of inventing human teleportation but as of now, I've got nothing yet.

Organic food

In France, consuming organic food is seen as something only the rich (or the pretentious) do. At the supermarket, the organic food section is usually small and secluded, and looks like an afterthought section created once every other section is done. At peak times when the whole supermarket is overcrowded and the lines at the cashiers snake into the aisles, one section remains deserted - the organic food section.

Normal people would maybe pick a carton of organic almond milk or some gluten-free energy bars from this section, but I have yet to see anyone filling their carts exclusively with organic foodstuff. The French are a bunch of highly critical people, and most of them do not really buy into the idea that organic food is really organic, and they might be right. After all, the ecosystem consists of a very long and complicated chain reaction where everything is related and nothing is standalone. So imagine an organic farmer who stays away from DDT in the hope of growing beautiful organic lettuces, while just a mile away another farmer is heavily using fertilizer and pesticide for his cabbages. Both farms are interconnected by soil and underground water. Who's to say that the organic lettuces are not contaminated by fertilizer and pesticide used a mile away?

Besides, despite all kinds of apocalyptic warning about the world's energy supplies running low, we still pollute on a daily basis to maintain a certain level of comfort at the expense of the environment. It would be extremely pretentious to consume organic food when one spends half an hour in the shower, wasting hundreds of gallons of heated water.

Of course, these arguments are used to support - or mask - the real reason why very few people choose to buy organic food: price. Organic food in France is very expensive. People are not willing to spend three times the amount they would pay on normal pasta, because pasta is part of their staple diet. On the other hand, they would be more lenient towards the idea of splurging on the occasional organic raisins or sunflower seeds.

Which brings me to the core of my thoughts this morning: how do the Germans keep their organic food at low prices?

When I was living in Germany, one of the things I loved was how cheap foodstuff was. I particularly loved their approach to introducing organic food to the masses. Instead of making it the food pariah stashed away in some remote corner people would usually overlook, they would put organic spaghetti next to the normal ones, and they cost exactly the same. They have eliminated the most crucial deciding factor, so I have no excuses left not to buy organic food. In the beginning I was almost always guilted into buying it, but that kickstarted my conscience about eating healthier and it quickly became a habit. I would automatically pick out organic carrots and rucola at the veggie aisles, and I would quickly scan the muesli row for the big green BIO label before rushing off to the checkout. After a while, it became unthinkable to buy so-called chemical foodstuff when organic food was widely available and cheap. I was not a firm believer in the wholesomeness of organic food, but at those prices, 'why' easily turned into 'why not'.

And I felt healthier and happier when I was there. Maybe it was the breathtaking nature surrounding me everyday. Maybe it was the positive energy of the Germans in contrast to the whiny, cynical behaviour of the French. Maybe it was because I loved my job. But I am somehow convinced that organic food played a big role in it. Now that I am back in France and buying organic food is financially challenging, I do not feel as healthy or happy as I was back in Deutschland.

So I am thinking of switching back to organic food, but that will require a substantial budget change. I am not famous for my thrifty ways, and eating organic food will definitely put a huge dent in my wallet. But I guess like it or not, well-being comes at a price.

I cannot get a beautiful home by the river like I had in Germany. I cannot get amazing view of apple and prune farms out of my bedroom window anymore. And I certainly cannot get the sincere smiles people gave me when they said 'moin moin' every day. The only thing I could try to emulate is the food I ate when I was there.

So I am pencilling that into my list of resolutions: eating more organic food.

A macaque who votes is a dangerous primate

"Taken out of context."

The oldest, most worn-down excuse ever existed to explain verbal slip-ups. As the most undiplomatic person on Earth, I am at the risk of having to resort to using this excuse very often in the future, given my whimsical and outspoken nature. Every day I come home regretting at least 5 things I've said during the day. Good thing I am constantly surrounded by intelligent people who are able to take everything into context, think over and analyze my statements instead of passing swift judgement and taking offence easily.

The only problem is that in the future, I might not have the luxury of always being surrounded by smart people. Now that my tertiary education is coming to an end, I have to prepare myself for the prospect of having to face the real world where people may or may not be as smart as those I'm used to having around me, and worse, of having to carefully weigh my words instead of just blurting them out.

I am only capable of conveying my words according to my own understanding of the logic behind them, but I cannot be in control of the listener's interpretation of those words. I can only hope they would ask me to clarify should there be any doubt, and not simply jump to the wrong conclusion that is the complete opposite of what I am trying to say.

Let's take Nurul Izzah for example. A demure, pious and intelligent Muslim Malay young woman with a striking beauty to boot. She had the misfortune of having to deliver an intellectual public speech in a country like Malaysia where politics are run by idiots, and where a lot of people are so badly infected with acute stupiditis that they always put two and two together and get five. In her case, people get "Izzah supports murtad (apostasy)" from her sentence "there is no compulsion in choosing faith, even for Malays." A perfect case of affirmative conclusion from a negative premise.

I am apolitical, thus I do not adhere to any particular party. But I pity her. I pity her for having to explain herself to people who have the IQ of a retarded macaque, time and time again, in the most rational, diplomatic and unnecessarily apologetic manner, just to be met with immature reactions from her opponents who may only be satisfied once Nurul Izzah has been lynched.

More importantly, I pity my own people who - even after the government has institutionalized critical thinking into our education system - still manage to make idiotic assertion on a fairly simple concept.

The saddest part is that most of these people are deliberately dumbing themselves down for the sake of politics.

The demise of sense

Skylar opened the garage door, leading Walter to a stack covered with a piece of flower-patterned cloth.

She lifted the cloth, revealing a pile of crisp dollar bills neatly arranged in packs of ten thousand dollars each. The pile of money took up almost half the space in the garage and reached up to an adult's thighs. It was the money she had been laundering from Walter's meth dealing, using the car wash as a front.

"How much is this?" Walter asked.

"I have no earthly idea. I truly don't. I just stack it up, keep it dry, spray it for silverfish. There is more money here than we could spend in ten lifetimes. I certainly cannot launder it, not with a hundred car washes," whimpered Skylar in resigned agony. "Please tell me, Walter, how much is enough? How big does this pile have to be?"


His response was a cold, pregnant stare.

Voice of reason

I got a call from someone who needed me to be the vocalist of his band for their gig this November. It's been a long time since I last had a gig (by the way I can't really pull off the word 'gig') and I don't really have anything planned in November so I thought what the hell. I said yes.

Then they sent me the playlist. One quick glance at it, and I told myself, "Oh God what did I just get myself into?"

If there are two bands in the world that I can't stand, it's Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys. I seriously, from the bottom of my heart, honest to God, think their music is shit. Pointless, noisy and extremely annoying. Yet, on the playlist I can see songs from both bands. That I'll have to cover. And I'll have to make it look as if I'm enjoying singing them.

But there's more. Scrolling further down on the list, you'll see Muse and AC/DC. Okay, I'll admit that eventhough I'm not a big fan of AC/DC, their music has grown on me. Muse, on the other hand, I can't even. Since a lot of my friends are huge Muse fans, I've tried to keep an open mind and listened to Matt Bellamy's I-just-got-my-balls-caught-between-elevator-doors wailing voice every time they put Muse on during parties, at full volume no less. But never in a million years would I actually play Muse on my iTunes when I'm alone, let alone cover them on stage as if I endorse their garbage.

As if that's not bad enough, the list also includes songs from Rage Against The Machine. They wrote down 4 songs from RATM, and asked me to choose one. So I listened to all four, again with an open and receptive mind (well, as receptive as one could be when listening to yelled gibberish). I wasn't really familiar with RATM's music before. Now that I've listened to their music, I thank God that for all of my existence on the face of this holy earth, he's spared me from the scarring psychological harm that is RATM's music. Their songs make me feel violated, confused, depressed, angry, bewildered, and maybe even a bit deaf. Then again, I'd take deafness any day over RATM's music.Why am I never in a band whose playlist include tunes like Ray Charles' Hit The Road Jack or Quartetto Cetra's Crapa Pelada?

Fortunately, The Kinks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Metallica figure in the list. You can never go wrong with The Kinks. And Lynyrd Skynyrd is also good. Metallica is only awesome because I grew up listening to it, otherwise I would have dismissed it as shit. Just like Linkin Park. I found their later albums crappy but I loved their first album, and that's weird because all their albums actually sound the same. Then I realized that I listened to their first album before puberty hit, and the later ones post-puberty. Therein lies the difference.

I don't want to be the asshole who insists on overhauling the whole playlist (which I actually can do, because I'm the singer and singers always have the last word, not to mention they earn more money). So I'm thinking of backing out.

I don't think I'll be able to live with myself if I go through with this gig, knowing that I've inflicted bad taste and shitty music to everybody in the concert hall.

Born To Be A Nomad

A friend shared this article entitled Moving Around Without Losing Your Roots on Facebook and tagged me on it. It's an article about the meaning of home in a globalized world.

I have to admit that after so many years living abroad, the notion of home gets a little fuzzy to me. Well in truth, even before I came to France, I didn't really know where home was. Since a very young age, my family and I have been following my dad moving from one place to another, so we never really had one place where we felt attached to. When my family finally settled in Kuala Lumpur, I got two full years of staying put in one place until I had to go to boarding school in Perak.

Right after SPM, I went to UM for two months before going to INTEC for three months and then off I went flying to France. You'd think that I would finally be rid of the moving hassle for years until I graduate, but no. In France, all Malaysian students change cities at least once, and on average we move house 3 times during the whole study period. In my case, I've called 8 houses home for the past 7 years.

One problem with moving around is you have barely enough time to make good friends, and when you finally do, you suddenly have to move again. I sincerely don't know the whereabouts of 90% of my childhood friends. This was before social networks and mobile phones, so moving away meant losing your friends forever.

I can safely say that I have lots of acquaintances, but very few good friends. One reason why I'm so secretive and such a loner is because I never had the chance to spend enough time to trust or to gain trust from my friends. I grew up knowing that all my friendships had expiry dates, so there was no point in establishing BFFs because before I knew it, I'd be leaving again.

That, unfortunately, has become my lifestyle. People who know me know that I never really go the extra mile to maintain a friendship. I'm never the go-to friend of anyone, because I myself don't have a go-to friend.

I'm not blaming my dad for working in a field where we had to move so much. In fact, I'm entirely grateful for it, because my siblings and I had the chance to learn different dialects and see different cultures at a very young age. Growing up was never boring because we always experienced new things and ended up mastering the art of adapting to a new environment. But in the process, little by little we lost the ability to feel attached to another person who's not a family member.

So I have mixed feelings about the article. On one hand, you want to feel proud to say that you're a citizen of the world, a vagabond who lives on a ship without an anchor and who knows people at every port in every country. On the other hand, you lose the sense of belonging. Everywhere you go, you're the outsider.

When I have kids, I hope we'll be able to stay put long enough for them to create everlasting friendships.

I loved my childhood but in retrospect, I would also love to have one place where I can safely say "this is where I grew up".

The Rapist

I'm thinking of getting a therapist.

Well, no, I'm not depressed or anything. I'm happy as could be. But there are some things in my life I need to sort out and I think I need to talk to someone who is impartial and unbiased about any of my life decisions.

The problem is, I still have trouble believing in talk therapy. My understanding of talk therapy has somewhat improved ever since I met that lady in Grenada. However, every time I hear the word shrink or therapist, I'll still think of all the American movies I've seen where the shrinks get paid a lot of money to sit around and do nothing.

But that's not the main reason why I have a hard time buying into the idea of having a therapist. My biggest problem is this: every therapist has a therapist of their own, because even therapists have problems.

Why is that an issue?

Well, supposed I am a mechanic. I fix cars for a living, and get paid handsome money to do it. But the day my own car breaks down, I have to go to another mechanic to get it fixed. That must mean that I'm not a very good mechanic, right?

Same goes for therapists. If they can't solve their own problems, why the hell should I pay them to solve mine?

But still, there's a FOC therapist in my school. I'm graduating soon, so I need to take advantage of these last few months to actually make good use of all the free stuff you get as a student in France before it's too late.