Patriotic, I am.

I'm having the worst case of lower back pain but yesterday I decided to give it a big f-you and go play squash.

It was my third or fourth time and I totally enjoyed it. It's a very intensive sport where you have to sprint in short distances during the whole match and hit the ball with all your might to ensure it goes bouncing at a high speed randomly across the walls and trap your opponent. Much like swimming, you don't feel tired while playing squash. But later when you've finished a match, you'll realize that you're sweating like a pig, you're crying for air, and you have never wanted water so bad in your life.

After the game, we went to pay and I saw this huge poster of Nicol David hanging next to the till. I was so proud that I blurted out to the guy, "Hey, you know that this girl is the best squash player in the world and she's Malaysian? I'm Malaysian too!"

The guy was like, "Of course I know Nicol David and that she's Malaysian." And he smiled at me.

I felt stupid. The guy worked at the squash courts, of course he's good at squash and naturally, he'd know who Nicol David was and where she came from. I am just so used to having to introduce Malaysia to the world that I forgot how, in some very specific fields, Malaysia doesn't need introduction.

Nevertheless, seeing a poster of a famous Malaysian athlete made my day.

Reading shit is better than not reading at all

I go to 9Gag for cheap laughs. Nowadays it's almost always repeat jokes and stale stolen gags from other sites, but for some reason I still find myself typing "9" on the address bar, scrolling down, and clicking on the first link every once in a while.

I don't get the double standard on that site. It mocks people who like Nicki Minaj, Twilight and Justin Bieber, but gives too much praise on Harry Potter as if it is real literature. Please, I don't see any difference between Harry Potter and Twilight. Both are void of aesthetics. Maybe they have storyline, but we don't read books solely for the storyline. In fact, I read books for the emotion, for the language, for the wonderment of how much thought the writer puts on a simple phrase, for the use of words, for the witty ways to describe each and every character so the reader can vividly imagine how he/she looks like, for the ways they qualify the crispness of the air, or the excruciating cold, or the sweltering heat, or simply the butterflies a little boy feels in his tummy when the babysitter he has a crush on comes to babysit him at 10 o'clock every morning while his mom goes grocery shopping. All of which cannot be adequately translated onto the silver screen no matter how much we try. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it sometimes leaves out ten thousand more.

As my mom says, a book today is written in scenes, and we read them as if we're watching a movie, which is not what a book is all about. And writers like Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Stieg Larsson, John Grisham, Dan Brown etc., they don't write books, they write screenplays, and screenplays care a lot less about aesthetics which makes reading a lot less enjoyable.

That being said, I don't have anything against Harry Potter or Twilight. I mean, yes, I classify both of them as rubbish literature, but not a long time ago I realized that we shouldn't be against anything that gets kids today to actually read. Most people in the civilized world are literate, but people still make a huge deal out of people who actually read, and those who read are very proud of their penchant for the written words. We are living in a world where working out and reading are accessible to almost everyone, but are somehow regarded as activities for a chosen few. Of course I'd prefer if my kid would read Pushkin rather than Stephanie Meyer, but if reading Stephanie Meyer keeps them away from watching MTV, doing drugs, drinking, and getting (a girl) pregnant, then I'd buy them all the Stephanie Meyer books they want.

The point of this post is, 9Gag should stop its double standards on people's taste. If it wants to mock Twilight, it should mock all other writers of the same caliber. Otherwise they should stop making fun of people who read, regardless of their choice in reading materials.

Honestly, if I can get my youngest brother to read even Harry Potter rather than spending so much time on 9Gag, I'd be happy enough.

I'm Selfish And I Know It

"If it wasn't for Facebook, none of you guys would've wished me on my birthday. Thanks anyway, guys." - A status on Facebook.


So now it's a bad thing that Facebook reminds people of your birthday? Of course, some (or most) of those wishes might not be sincere, but those people did still devote five seconds of their precious time typing out those words. Five seconds might not sound much, but considering that being born is not actually an accomplishment whatsoever, an insincere birthday wish from anyone is actually more than generous. Seriously, how did you contribute to your birth? Did you burst the amniotic sac yourself, pat your mom's belly from the inside and said,"Relax, I got this", before climbing out of the vagina without assistance? Yeah, didn't think so. If anything, our birthdays should actually be the days we celebrate our mothers. They literally risked their lives just to put us out to the world.


It shouldn't matter how people remember your birthday. It's their action that counts.

It's like those who criticize people doing charity for Africa saying, "Charity is actually selfish. A lot of people do charity to feel better about themselves, to portray a better image of themselves, to show off."

Maybe there's some truth in that. Maybe some people do good because they know that they'll feel good about themselves in return. Some people do it just so it can go on their resume.

But I seriously don't see any problem with that.

As long as you're doing something to make the world a better place, your intentions should not matter. Even if it's an obviously staged photo-op of Kim Kardashian helping a blind person cross the street for publicity, she has still helped that person cross the street. Good has been done.

Sometimes I pity rich people. They get booed for not giving back, and when they do, they get booed for not giving enough. And when they do, people say, "Why did he do that? So his publicists can add a 'Philanthropy' section on his Wiki page, that's why."

The world needs charity. No matter how much we give, we can never give enough. So there'll always be those condescending voices doubting our intentions. Sincerity is nice, but action speaks louder than words. If my selfishness makes one less African kid go to sleep hungry tonight, then my selfishness has contributed to a better world.

What has your selfishness done?

About Jalan Pintas, Hassan Mutalib and existentialism

So a couple of weeks ago I went to The Actors Studio at Lot 10 to see Jalan Pintas, a film by Nam Ron. It was the opening night so we had the chance to have Hassan Mutalib, a renowned Malaysian film critic, in the audience.

The film was... okay. It's a very Aronofsky-esque film with some Memento feeling to it, and visibly low budgeted. The leitmotiv of the film is choice and the ever-popular quandary of "what if?", only with a slight twist: sometimes no matter which path you choose to take, life decides to be funny and fucks you up anyway.

Like every indie Malay film these days, it's ridden with other subplots such as the unemployment of fresh graduates in Malaysia, nepotism, xenophobia and of course, gangsterism. And since it's an indie movie without a FINAS license, expletives are in order, so much so that sometimes the actors just yell out a big fat 'babi!' for absolutely nothing which makes it seem forced and out of place. I know that Scarface is a thousand times more ribald, but Al Pacino expresses vulgarity in a way that is believable and even necessary while in Jalan Pintas, sometimes it just seems like the raison d'être of some of the swear words is merely to give a big 'fuck you' to the Malaysian censorship board.

Seriously, whatever happened to simplicity? I found that so-called 'smart' Malay directors today try too hard to educate, and forget all about entertaining. I'm all for ingraining smart subtexts in movies but please, not at the expense of the storyline and entertainment. Jalan Pintas seems to have one subplot too many, so sometimes it seems out of focus. I however applaud its efficient use of nonlinear narrative because very few Malay films have succeeded in doing this and most of the time it's just a big incoherent mess (Hati Malaya by Shuhaimi Baba, anyone?). I'd also like to praise the use of Snorricam, the kind of camera you mount on an actor's body during physical scenes (usually when the actor is running from/after something) which makes the actor look stationary while the world around him tumbles around. For some reason this technique gives more intensity to the scene.

After the movie, Hassan Mutalib gave a piece of his mind about the independent film industry in Malaysia, how it is changing the game, and how mainstream film directors could learn a thing or two from young filmmakers. One of the things he said bothered me deeply though. A student filmmaker (or was it a journalist) told Nam Ron that he could have replaced those swear words with something else because it was too much, prompting Hassan Mutalib to add: "Yes, when you make a film, you also have to think about the religious consequences. Remember, you have to explain yourself to God one day. How would you explain the use of these swear words in your film? A lot of people don't think about God when they do something, and these people are called existentialists. Freethinkers. They just don't believe in God."

Well excuse me, Mr. I-Failed-7-Papers-in-my-SPM, but the earliest existentialists were mainly Christian. Just because Sartre and Nietzsche are atheists doesn't make existentialism anti-God. That would be too simplistic a logic.

Existentialism and religion are not incompatible, in fact, they just don't have anything to do with one another. For me, being an existentialist means doing things for yourself and not letting other people tell you what you should do and who you should be, all the while being responsible towards your surroundings. It's about creating your own path in life and not being condemned to what you're born into. In fact, the Quran said, "Surely Allah changes not the condition of a people until they change themselves", and that's exactly what existentialism is all about: you, and no one else, are responsible of your own destiny. If an Indian untouchable wants to have a better life, he'll have to work hard and be the nicest person so he'll be reborn as a Brahmin in the next life. If a Indonesian trishaw peddler thinks he'll be better off working without a legal permit in Malaysia, he must have the courage to take one of those dodgy boats in the middle of the night and battle mother nature just to arrive safely at the Malaysian shore. If someone is born into a family of drug lords and prostitutes, that doesn't mean he cannot crawl his way out of it. If he wants it bad enough, he will succeed. Your existence should not be defined by the world you're born into.

And that has nothing to do with renouncing God. You can be a pious Muslim and an existentialist at the same time. As long as you don't succumb to the hedonist idea of philosophy, then you and your faith should be just fine.

"Worked a lifetime to pay off a house and finally own it.. There's nobody to live in it."

- Willy Loman, Death Of A Salesman

I Am A Member of the Food Court Gym

One sign that your country is going towards becoming a high income nation is the increase in gym memberships. Gym memberships here, gym memberships there, gym memberships everywhere.

When I was still in high school I saw this Fitness First towel at home and I found it weird, because the body weight per capita in my household didn't suggest that any of us ever worked out, let alone had a gym membership. Then I found out my dad was actually a member of Fitness First, and that he was paying a ridiculous annual gym fee. Did it work? Well, let me put it this way: that was a very expensive towel.

So I just came back from Malaysia. It was a great week and a half, and was worth every cent. The moment I landed, I called a friend to pick me up at the airport and he was there almost immediately. I asked him if he was actually going somewhere else, he said, "Yeah, I was actually going to the gym."

And ever since, almost every person I met in KL had a gym membership. Once I was waiting for someone in front of a gym (by the way, what is it with gyms and glass walls? It's like a transparent frontier between the big biceps and the big bellies. And needless to say, I was extremely self-conscious the whole time I was waiting there) and I overheard two guys talking behind me. "Oh, this is my gym by the way," said one. "Oh really? Mine is in (I forgot where it was)," said the other. Both were the office type, with love handles showing above the waist of their perfectly creased pants in the shape of muffin tops. That's when I knew that 'having a gym membership' and 'going to the gym' are two very different things. It's like owning an iPad. A lot of people own an iPad. But only a few actually put it to good use. Others just use the iPad as a show-off piece of technology that they bought just because they could afford it.

And that's exactly what's happening in Malaysia. Gym membership is the new 'sport rim'.

This shows that our economy is improving as people hardly get out of the office, thus they are more and more productive. This in turn makes them burn zero fat as a result of a sedentary lifestyle, thus they have to steal time to go work out. Hence the spike in gym membership number. But the sad thing is, our obesity rate just keeps rising in spite of this, meaning that most people don't actually go to the gym.

Exhibit A: Me. I have a gym membership, but ever since my skiing accident 3 months ago, I was "forced" to stop any physical activities for a while and I stopped going to the gym.

And I never returned.

This!

This is like sex on speakers. At the first listen I was perplexed, at second listen I was quite pleased, and at third listen I was sold hook, line and sinker.

Everybody keeps saying it sounds like Anggun's Snow on the Sahara (which, by the way, is no longer absurd since it did snow on the Sahara a few weeks back). I, for one, keep having visions of Björk when listening to this gem.

This will stay on repeat until Nicki Minaj comes out with a better song. Which means never.

Jack of all languages, master of none

I received an e-mail from a friend who wanted to know about job opportunities in Malaysia. A native English speaker, he heard about Malaysia's urgent need for skilled English teachers and thought he should apply, but didn't know how and to whom.

I find it great that English native speakers can easily find jobs all across the globe thanks to their mother tongue. I've met a lot of western expatriates living in Asian countries and a lot of them are either English teachers, writers, photographers or retirees who live in Asia in the hope of stretching out their last dollars.

So back to my English friend. He asked me all kinds of questions about Malaysia and I tried to answer as objectively as I could. The problem is I've been living abroad for so long I feel like I am out of touch with the real Malaysian lifestyle. A lot of my answers were based on my memories living in Malaysia (and by living I don't mean going there for month-long summer holidays doing absolutely nothing) and the last time I did that was 7 years ago. I had trouble giving him ballpark figures of prices of everyday stuff. If I remember correctly, the last time I bought a 1-litre carton of fresh milk in Malaysia it cost me around RM4.50, and a giant loaf of Gardenia bread was in the RM2.10 area. I don't know if it is still the case (I'm sure it isn't), but I don't think I'm that far off either even with the infamous Malaysian inflation rate factored in.

Then came the hardest question to answer: "Should I learn Malay? Is it one of the requirements to be employed in Malaysia?"

This was my reply:

"Almost everybody in Malaysia speaks English with varying degrees of proficiency, so you can easily get by not knowing a word of Malay, especially if you're planning on living in the capital city where even the Malays speak English among themselves as a sign of superior educational background and/or affluence. Unlike our neighbours the Thais or even the Indonesians, us Malaysians don't have the same pride when it comes to our national language. Malaysians always pride themselves for being able to speak English or other languages fluently, and look down on other Malaysians who don't. The funny thing is, it's almost always these same people who butcher the Malay language to within an inch of its life with their excessive anglicisms, improper grammar and questionable spelling skills. This lackadaisical attitude towards the Malay language is also boosted by the government's laughable effort at upholding the status of Malay as the national language.

Malay has a rich vocabulary, a very logical and organized grammar, and a great reserve of literary gems. However, looking at advertisements and building names and street signs around Kuala Lumpur, one would be under the false impression that the Malay language is only good for talking about petty issues like food, the weather or football, as it seems to have a limited vocabulary and almost non-existent proper grammatical structure. And the rise of unnecessary English loanwords doesn't help.

In other words, you DON'T NEED to learn Malay to be able to live and work in Malaysia, and it is not an essential requirement when applying for a job. If proficiency in Malay were one of the job requirements, half of born and bred Malaysians would be jobless.

This being said, I think you SHOULD learn Malay. If you plan on living in Malaysia for an extended period of time, having at least basic Malay skills is a must, if only for the fun of seeing the bewildered expression on people's faces when they see a white guy speaking Malay. Malaysians love white people who speak Malay more than they love the language itself. If you record yourself speaking Malay and put it on Youtube, that video will go viral in Malaysia in no time and more often than not, girls will compliment you on how cute you are no matter how plain you look, just because you're a white guy. So be prepared to be worshiped. On a more serious note, you should also learn Malay for its beauty and uniqueness. Can you tell me any other language in the world that doesn't possess the verb 'to be' and is still able to function perfectly?

I hope I've answered your question objectively."

Polyglossia

I just read an article about bilingual people and how they are supposed to have better cognitive functioning because they have to constantly code switch without much effort, resulting in the brain being used to multitasking and resolving internal problems on its own.

The article also said something about bilinguals' ability to 'suppress' one language altogether when speaking in an environment where another language is needed. This is true, because I imagine my mind being separated into different boxes, and there is a special box for each specific language. This means that whenever I'm within an exclusively French-speaking group of friends, only the French language box is activated and all the other boxes are suppressed, meaning even my subconscious (the voices in my head) is in French and somehow I'd magically adopt French gestures and facial expressions that I would never use when speaking any other language.

I never thought of this phenomenon as some kind of 'suppression', but now I reckon that it actually is. Sometimes after a long, long day at school, I'd go home and see my roommate but we wouldn't speak Malay straight away. We would exchange niceties in French and continue speaking in French for a little bit, then proceeding to Malay with French words scattered all over, before gradually switching into full Malay mode for the rest of the evening. I think this is the result of Malay being 'suppressed' for the whole day (for us both) so even though it's our mother tongue, it still needs warming up in order to converse efficiently.

It might seem extremely pretentious to see two fully Malay guys speaking French to each other for no reason, but I find it completely natural. We have friends hanging out at our place all the time and out of politeness, we make it a point not to speak Malay in their presence in order to make everybody comfortable. You know that feeling when you're wedged between two assholes who speak in a foreign language and you have completely no idea what they're talking about which makes you feel like they are talking shit about you? Yeah, we don't want to be those assholes, so we 'suppress' Malay when we have French guests. After a while, we ended up feeling very comfortable speaking French to each other even when there is no French person present.

Of course, Malay is a Godsend when you need to bitch about someone right in front of their face without them even knowing. That's really the coolest thing about multilingualism.




The drawback of being multilingual is you can lose your languages very easily, and it really doesn't take long to lose a language. A few months of non-practice are enough to loosen up language reflexes and automatism, after a year you'd lose a lot of vocabulary, and after a few years of non-practice your language skills get as good as bare metals in salt water. It gets rusty. I remember being a very fluent speaker of Sarawakian Malay when I was living there, and I was so good that none of my friends knew I was a Semenanjung kid until they came to my house and heard me speak with my parents. After moving away, it only took me a year to lose most of my Sarawakian vocabulary. Now I can't even understand half the things they say.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I guess I just got inspired by the word 'suppress' in the article because I hated the way it sounded, but finally realized there were no better words to describe it.

Dentist = good money

"Hello, I would like to make an appointment for a teeth scaling."

"Of course. Let me check, I'm pretty sure we have an opening somewhere in May....."


Drawback of universal healthcare? All dentists in my town are booked solid before the summer months. I even tried using the "it's urgent" card but that only got me an appointment at an ungodly hour on an April weekday.

That's it. You want good money? Be a dentist.

My Teeth and I

After all these years living in France, I just found out something I would love to have found out a long time ago: teeth scaling fees are covered by social security. In fact, a lot of non-esthetic dental treatment fees are covered.

I have never done teeth scaling before because I didn't think it was necessary since I take really good care of my teeth. From what I read, good teeth brushing and flossing are enough to prevent plaque formations, caries, gingivitis and periodontitis, and God knows how I am a big fan of flossing. One of my guilty pleasures are flossing in front of the TV before breathing, or more precisely seeping air, through the clean gaps between my teeth until I hear the high-pitched whistling that is music to my ear.

It's not just that I want my mouth to be squeaky clean. It's also because one of the things I hate the most in the world is bad breath. You can put me at a fish market for hours I wouldn't bat an eyelid, you can make me lie on a sleeping bag on the street next to a pile of dog shit I'll sleep like a baby, but if you make me talk within striking distance to a guy who has the breath of a jackal, I'll pray that you be crushed by a Russian tank, skinned to the bone by a sushi chef, shot point blank by a seasoned sniper and burned in hell for three thousand years. And I'll throw in the foul-breathed guy in there with you.

Anyways, now that I know I can go for a teeth scaling FOC, I'm just going to go look around for the best looking dental clinic in my town. Might as well go for the best since I'm not paying for anything, right?

Free dental treatments - another thing I'm going to miss when I leave France for good.

Sudirman

I remember hearing Claude François' Comme d'habitude, one of France's all-time favourite songs and the song that had inspired Frank Sinatra's My Way, for the first time in high school during Hari Bahasa Perancis SBP. A few days after my arrival on France's soil six years ago, I heard the song again on the radio.

You can't live in France without hearing Claude François' name mentioned almost every day. He has one of the most recognisable voices in the French music industry, most of his songs have achieved great success, his fan base was (and still is) massive and his iconic status has passed the test of time, even long after his death. Now they are making a film on him (wonder what took them so long). It has not been released yet but people have been talking about it a lot. It is definitely going to slay at the box-office, I can safely bet my left leg on it.

That got me thinking: if I were to make a movie on a Malaysian (dead) iconic celebrity who is to us what Claude François is to the French, who would it be? The answer came to me literally within a split second - Sudirman. And somehow that got me mad. Why hasn't there been a film about the great Sudir? His voice is one of a kind (he'd only need to sneeze and you'd know it's him), almost all of his songs are well-known, he was among the few Malaysian singers whose charisma was able to transcend the race boundaries in Malaysia, and he has the stage presence comparable to that of Freddie Mercury. No, seriously.

With all the crap they've been putting out in the Malaysian film industry, how is it possible that no one has thought of actually making a film about Sudirman? I don't think anyone needs convincing, but if I have to break it down to you fools, here are 5 reasons why a film on Sudirman is such a brilliant idea:

1) This movie would obviously be a financial goldmine. Sudirman's fan base is huge. He was given the Asian No. 1 Performer award in London, he reigned on the Malaysian music charts for God knows how long, and he had the charm of an angel. His songs have themes encompassing a plethora of subjects, most of them dealing with Malaysians' everyday lives. It's no wonder why his songs are very close to people's hearts. How can you not like someone who sings songs with titles like Anak Gembala, Basikal Tua, Aku Penganggur, Horee Horee, Toyol, Chow Kit Road, and of course, Balik Kampung. 

2) A good film needs drama and Sudirman's life has enough drama to create a big enough story arc. His mom was a politician and she died when he was 5, then his father died when he was 24. He passed the bar and became a bona fide practising lawyer but he quit to become a performer. He was hated by the Muslim authorities who wanted to ban every concert he intended to do. His free open air concert in Chow Kit Road gathered a crowd of 100 000 people and created controversy when some fans who turned up fainted and suffocated. He had to fight gay rumours his whole career. He knew he was sick quite sometime before his death but he put on a brave front so his fans would not see his illness. He even asked Habsah Hassan to write a farewell song, Salam Terakhir some time before his death, as if he knew his time was coming. Listening to that song still gives me goosebumps even after all these years because it's hauntingly beautiful and because of these two lines

                 "Usah bertanya mengapa aku mengucap salam terakhir kepadamu
                  Kerna waktu berputaran, bimbang tak berkesempatan..."

3) You want a good example for the kids? This is a good example. Sudirman was not only an excellent entertainer, he was also a smart student at school. So smart that he got a scholarship to do medicine overseas but he refused. And did I tell you he became a lawyer afterwards? Kids today quit school at the age of 15 to pursue their dreams of "nak jadi penyanyi" after being inspired by Akademi Fantasia and Mentor and whatnot. There's nothing wrong with chasing after your dreams, but remember, a country only needs so many singers. We have more celebrities per capita than we do doctors, and to me that is unhealthy. Sudirman finished his studies before becoming a superstar. He was lucky he made it big, but if he hadn't, at least he had his degree to fall back on.


4) Kids today need a lot of education on the prosperous Malay music industry of the olden days. They need to realize that today's local album sales are poor not just because of illegal Internet downloading, an excuse widely used and rehashed by musicians to justify their failures, but mainly because a lot of local musicians are coming up with stinkier shit than ever before. Seriously, I'm all for supporting the local music industry, but I wouldn't be caught dead even illegally downloading some of the shit that's on today's local radio, let alone buy the song. In his heyday, Sudirman could sell more cassettes per day than today's average singer can for their whole career because Sudirman's songs were actually worth buying and listening to on repeat. Malaysians are not stupid. Believe it or not, we are a tough crowd. We know quality when we see it, and we are not afraid to call shit shit. We are honest people, so if you don't deliver, we don't buy. Simple as that. 

5) People love motivational movies. What's more motivational than a movie about a small man who came from a small village, with a stature of merely 147cm tall, who went and conquered a whole nation with his charisma and his voice? This is a truly Malaysian from-rags-to-riches story, and such a beautiful one at that. It's potential is a no-brainer.

There are of course other reasons, but even with these 5 people can see why a Sudirman film needs to be made. Did you know that not long before his death, he was flown to London to record songs for his English album that was supposed to jumpstart his international career? And it was not just at any London studio: it was on Abbey Road. Yes, the one used by The Beatles. That could be the ending of the movie. A tragic death that cuts him short on his path towards international superstardom, as if he knew that us Malaysians preferred to have him as our national treasure and didn't want to share.

So, are you convinced yet?

To Lenina Huxley with Love

I just spent an hour watching Sandra Bullock interviews. Haha.

Sandra Bullock is the epitome of wit and femininity. And a real ball buster which is good if you're a woman wanting to survive in today's world because according to statistics (and today it's all about the statistics concerning women's plight, you know, today being the International Women's Day and all), women have been discriminated against by men for centuries and it's not about to stop. I don't think that is entirely true because women's true enemies are other women and they actually bring each other down, but that's a story for a different day. For now let's focus on Sandra Bullock.

I've been a fan of hers since her Speed days because she was this hot chick who drove a bus. The only thing hotter than a pretty girl driving a bus at full speed is a pretty girl driving a bus at full speed in a golden bikini. But well, you can't have it all. And I don't think that would have fit into the storyline. They should have let Michael Bay direct it. He always finds a way to make hot girls in barely-there clothing somehow look pivotal to a movie's plot.

Then there's Demolition Man, in which Sandra plays a (hot) cop, partnering with Sylvester Stallone. Their mission is to track down a criminal coming from the 90's, who somehow managed to escape cryogenic prison. It's my all-time favourite film. I'm pretty sure I wrote about this already. I've watched it so many times I've lost count. I've been known as someone who romanticizes a lot when it comes to things I like, but I seriously think Demolition Man is the perfect combination of action, comedy and romance.

It's set way into the future but there's no flying cars, talking robots or any of that hologram people bullshit. I hate futuristic movies that have flying personal cars just swooping around, as though flying private vehicles are the hallmark of the future. In our times, we already can have flying cars if we wanted to. But just because we can, doesn't mean we should. People already have more than enough trouble driving bi-dimensionally on the street, can you imagine the massacre if people start driving in the air where they need to also take altitude into account? If two cars have a head-on collision mid-air, they won't just remain stationary mid-air until the pediatrics arrive. They will fall on the ground, endangering the lives of the people below. The reason why we don't have flying cars is not lack of technological advances. It's just common sense.

Anyway, since Demolition Man, I've fallen in love with Sandra Bullock. I didn't like her acting in Crash or The Blind Side, two films for which she was highly acclaimed. She nabbed an Oscar for her performance in the latter. In my opinion, her best performances are in While You Were Sleeping, The Proposal and of course, Demolition Man, for which she got a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress. Well, Hollywood is a crazy place. I mean, they gave an Oscar to Natalie Portman for Black Swan. As much as I like her, I think her Oscar nod was a big pile of steaming bullshit. So if Sandra got nominated for a Razzie, I'd say at least her acting has got people's attention. That goes to show that even during her debut as an actress, she didn't go unnoticed. After all, no press is bad press, right?

So yeah, I watched her interviews. She's a home girl who takes motherhood very seriously. She's very funny, but very grounded at the same time. And she speaks fluent German. Ooh.

Sandra, if you're reading this (and I know you do), please know that I'm your biggest fan and if I had the money, I would literally fly there and kick that cheating asshole Jesse James' ass. And I'll help you raise your kids and be your partner when you need to practice your lines. Or even kissing scenes if I have to.

Aha.

You're a hair hooker and you don't know it

I met a Norwegian friend in Paris a few weeks ago. She came with a girlfriend whom I didn't know so I introduced myself.

"Oh you're Malaysian?" she asked, eyes twinkling. "My hair is Malaysian too!"

I was puzzled. How is.. umm... well... what? I looked at her very straight, shiny hair. She was black.

"You see, black people don't get to have straight hair. So I had hair extensions put on my head, and the hair is Malaysian. You guys have the best hair, so it's the most expensive on the market. The most expensive hairs in the market today are Brazilian and Malaysian. Google it if you don't believe me."

Inneresting.

"How much did your hair cost?" I asked, not just out of politeness because I was really interested to know. You know, if anything happens to me and I can no longer work, at least I know there's something on my body that people would pay good money for that doesn't require me to do hard work. Wait, isn't that the definition of prostitution?

"I paid around 800 euros for my whole head, and it lasts 6 months. You can get Indian hair for a lot less, but it is not as moisturized as Malaysian hair so it doesn't last as long. And Malaysian hair is a lot shinier."


So I asked her how in hell's name these companies got hold of so much real Malaysian hair, and here comes the crucial bit of information I wish I didn't know.

"It's easy. When Malaysian girls go to the hairdressers, where do you think all the cut hair goes? They don't just sweep it off the floor and throw it away. They sell it. That's why they have to cut your hair properly in order to preserve the length."

Badam bam... pishhhh!

Yeah. If you girls are reading this, please imagine your hair being on another girl's head at the opposite end of the globe. At least a part of your anatomy has travelled the world.

Haha.

Pompeii

"So how did you like Pompeii?" I asked this girl at my hostel in Naples. She was studying arts in Rome, so I assumed she had spent the whole day in Pompeii just admiring the ancient architecture amidst the ruins.

"Well, I'm not gonna lie to you. It was boring," she said. "I know it's kinda amazing that you can still see the remains of a city, like, this used to be a temple, this used to be a school, that used to be a court, and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, you're just walking around looking at rocks."

By that logic, we could look at the paintings at the Louvre and say, "Oh these are just paints mixed together to create the illusion of people." Obviously, I was quite taken aback by her comment, because I had a totally different opinion on Pompeii. You don't go to Pompeii expecting to see Starbucks and big yellow taxis and Chinese take-aways. You go there to see rocks.

"That is the whole point," I said. 'People don't go there to see a city. They go there to mentally put the pieces of rock together and use their imagination to rebuild the city. And it's not just rocks scattered around. You can see pillars with carvings, amphitheatres, houses, bathhouses, and even when it's just rocks, you can still see the solid foundations where the rocks used to be part of great buildings."

"Yeah, they used to be buildings. Now they are merely rocks, very old rocks nonetheless, but still rocks. We were there for 2 hours and after a while we got really bored."

I shrugged. Just because I liked it, doesn't mean everybody has to. It's just a matter of taste, I guess. Besides, it's not that I liked Pompeii. People don't like ruins, the way they don't like paintings. It's more of a fascination. I know I'm fascinated by something when my head is full of unanswered questions about it and when I feel like touching everything. In Pompeii, whenever I touched a wall or a cobblestone, subconsciously there was this voice saying, "You're touching something that is almost two millennia old."

So I could see why the girl was bored, because if you don't have this fascination, you would indeed only see rocks lying around.

Adele

Almost a year ago I got hold of Adele's new album and wrote about how good it was. I'm not a sucker for overly melodramatic, sappy songs but somehow her voice and her unorthodox music caught me. Yes, I said unorthodox, because while sappy love songs were once the bread and butter of the music industry, for the past decade it has been considered somewhat passé. Chart-toppers of the new millennium are upbeat, catchy tunes full of sexual euphemisms repeated over and over again during the course of the songs. The lyrical poverty and lack of vocabulary are generally compensated with overbearing bass sounds and synthesized electronic noises hinged on well-known riffs stolen from oldies. They call it sampling, I call it easy money. Why bother coming up with new melodies if you can rehash old ones and distort them to make them sound fresh again? Yes, Will-I-Am, I'm talking to you.

So when Adele came in, she caught people off-guard. Not a size zero, no cheap publicity stunts and quirky fashion sense à la Lady Gaga, no sexual innuendos in her lyrics and no overblown marketing. Just simple love songs written from a broken heart and her powerhouse voice that made everybody stop and say, "I missed this music. It has soul."

21 is a gorgeous record. Flawless execution of every song. A normal album would have 3 good singles and 7 filler songs to make it a whole. 21 has 17 perfectly good songs, all potential chart toppers. One and Only has the same top-notch production quality as Someone Like You, and Turning Tables is just as good as Set Fire To The Rain. These days, not many albums have that quality.

Another great thing about 21 is its congruity. The album encapsulates a tragic love story and all the songs are related to one another. It might sound trivial, but I like an album with a coherent storyline. Without it, an album is just confusing. Take Rihanna's latest album Loud for example. She sings about her love for sadomasochism in S&M, and then about a rape victim killing her rapist in Man Down before languishing about an unrequited love in California King Bed. All in the same album. While all of those are relatively good songs (the keyword here is 'relatively' because while I'm not an advocate of Rihanna's music, I have to agree her songs are pretty catchy), they don't have anything to do with one another. What gives?

I just realized that this post about Adele is starting to look like a sad excuse to hate on Will-I-Am, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and to a certain extent, all of today's music listeners whose taste in music is questionable. But seriously, there's a reason why Adele is such a huge success. She is just a simple reminder to people that there was a time when artistes were valued by their pure, unadulterated talent and that we could be entertained simply by a singer with a beautiful voice accompanied only by a piano.

Adele brings us back to that moment in time when listening to music also means appreciating the lyrics, and that sex was something people do behind closed doors and doesn't need to be advertised on top of the Billboard charts.

Feelings

I had this long debate with myself this morning, and we (we refers to me and I) started with this one umbrella topic which spawned numerous sub-topics and ended up talking about feelings. Or more precisely, emotions. I (we) saw this documentary about how people measure emotions. Most physicians use ECG responses. Emotions are consequences of hormones secreted from various parts of the brain so they would just localise the area corresponding to an emotion and observe the neuron activity in said area during stimulation.

I found that ridiculous. I mean, it's great that they have found a way into understanding how the brain functions because we know we all could benefit from a cure for Alzheimer's. But the fact that emotions are being put under the microscope makes me feel uneasy. If serious money is being channelled by big companies into research on human emotions, I would like to know why. These companies, no matter how charitable the image they try to project, surely await a greater profit from the results of this research. If they finally found the exact formula for the stimulus that triggers crying in humans, how are they going to exploit this knowledge to their benefit? And at whose expense?

Will we end up being puppets whose emotions can be controlled by global think tanks? If microwaves from mobile phones can alter your brain functions, is it possible that the human brain can actually be remote controlled? Or are they doing it already as we speak?

I can't answer any of these questions, and in a way, I don't really want answers to them. I just like to ponder on them until I move on to something more exciting and I'll forget all about them, you know, the way a cat ferociously plays with feather until he sees a moving laser light and forget the feather ever existed.

One thing I am fairly certain though: one of the best feelings in the world is when you find out the person you like likes you back.

Okay my code has finished compiling so I've got to get back to work.

Somebody Fire This Casting Director

Just saw the cast for the upcoming movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

This is what we call a miscast galore. DiCaprio as Gatsby? No. Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan? I don't know who that guy is, but since Baz Luhrmann is Australian, it's only fair that he puts one of his people in the top billings. Isla Fisher is plain annoying, but that's not the main problem with her casting. In the book, Myrtle Wilson is a plump lady. If Hollywood's idea of plump is Isla Fisher, then I reckon that America's obesity problem is just an overblown affair because the obesity threshold is Tina Fey.

After Aishwarya Rai and Freida Pinto, Hollywood realized that putting bigwig Indian actors in their films is an easy way to tap into a massive market of a billion Indian cinema-goers, which explains Anil Kapoor's lame-ass role in Mission Impossible 4. And now, they are putting Amitabh Bhachan in the role of a Jewish master gambler, because you know, Indians and Jews look so much alike they can play each other in movies if it means big bucks for the producers. Next thing you know they'll be putting Natalie Portman in the role of Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

The only good thing going on for this movie is Tobey Maguire. It's far from a spot-on casting but next to the others, the casting of Tobey as Nick Carraway looks like that of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

Gemma Ward doesn't count as an actress because she is a languid girl in real life. And she's Australian, so she most probably was personally handpicked by Luhrmann.

What Freedom of Speech Really Is

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

Which I think is stupid.

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

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

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

At Last

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

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

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

But not singing it would also be inappropriate.