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.

Remember, remember

Another thing that pisses me off about the American ways is their date format. Their date is written backwards.

It's never really been a problem to me because all the Americans I've met used the date format verbally so where I would say fifth of April, they would say April fifth, which doesn't cause confusion.

The problem arises in writing, specifically with the numerical format. Everywhere else, 5/4/1988 would be fifth of April. In America, that would be fourth of May. That makes no sense. Granted, sense is relative, so what makes sense to you doesn't necessarily have to make sense to me blah blah blah. But common sense is actually very objective, and it dictates that we have to arrange things in a certain ascending/descending order to make life simpler. Days accumulate into a month and months accumulate into a year, so on and so forth. Thus, it is absolutely logical for the date format to be dd/mm/yyyy, now isn't it? In descending order, that would be yyyy/mm/dd, which would look strange, but still acceptable. But mm/dd/yyyy is just bizarre.

Why am I ranting about this all of a sudden?

Well, I was applying for an intern position at this American company, and the deadline for the application was 8/11/2012, meaning I still have a week and a half to submit it. After tweaking my resume (tweaking here doesn't mean embellishing it, it just means modifying it in a way that highlights the skills sought after by the company) and writing an eloquent cover letter, it hit me that I might have read the deadline date wrongly. Which, of course, I did. The deadline was actually on the 11th of August, a month and a half ago, so I'm way overdue.

Since I had gone through the trouble of modifying my resume and writing a cover letter, I decided to just submit my application anyway. I bet all the current applicants suck, so the position is still vacant and when they see my application they'll suddenly realize that their saviour is here, their knight in shining armour.

I've been sending out a lot of resumes to North American aerospace companies recently, and I don't really know why. I can't really afford to fly there, and I don't have a single clue about the accommodation. I'm not even sure if those are paid internships I applied for.

I just figured that I needed to change air. Europe has been fun, but America, that would be something new and exciting. I guess I'm becoming an adrenaline junkie. I always feel the need to be under pressure, because challenge makes everything so much more meaningful. I'll have to double my effort to get to where I want to go and to experience new, exciting stuff.

So I decided to just send my resume to hundreds of companies in the US and Canada because I believe in the laws of probability. The more you put out there, the higher the chance of something good getting back to you, whatever it may be.



But still, their date format sucks balls. Imagine how flat and lifeless the famous quote would be if Guy Fawkes were American: "Remember, remember, November the fifth."

Asian soup

Saying that the Germans eat a lot of pork would be an understatement. Germans are obsessed with pork. Pork is their drug. At the supermarket you'd have a small section for poultry, a tiny section for seafood, and like 3 whole aisles for all kinds of pork. Okay I might be exaggerating, but not by that much.

The Germans are so smart that even if pork didn't exist, they would have invented it anyway. That is how much they love this meat.

In our cafeteria, we have a salad bar and 6 dishes you can choose from. You can be pretty sure to have at least 3 pork dishes, 1 soup dish, and 1 vegetarian dish. If I'm lucky, the last dish would be fish. On my unluckiest day, the last dish is also pork, so I'd have to go for the veggie dish or worse, the salad bar. The only good thing about the salad bar is that it's self-service, so to make my money's worth, I'd pile up all kinds of greens and tuna and corn and red beans in my bowl until it looks like I'm about to hibernate for the winter, and I don't even like red beans.

So the other day I went to the cafeteria and saw "Asian soup" on the menu. I was intrigued. One soup that represents 60% of the human population, encompassing thousands of lands and cultures, from the Mongolians to the Persians, from Vanuatu to Kuwait, from Kamchatka to Uttar Pradesh. One soup to rule them all. The Asian soup.

"This must be a very good soup," I whispered to myself. So I decided to take it.

The soup was murky, so I couldn't really see what was in it. All I knew was that there was no meat in it, so it certainly didn't contain any pork.

Then came the moment of truth: the taste test. I closed my eyes, took a spoonful of it and sipped, expecting to embark upon a gastronomic journey across a multitude of exotic cultures with layovers in the desert of Jordan, on the high mountains of Bhutan, under a papaya tree in front of Angkor Wat, deep into the rainforest of the Borneo, in the wilderness of Fiji, and in front of a mosque in Turkmenistan.

Well, I was utterly disappointed.

The spoonful of shit I just put in my mouth was so called the Asian soup because it had rice in it. Yeah, they put some rice in a soup, and decided to name it "Asian soup". The Germans could have engineered a coconut tree into a space shuttle, but they seem not to be able to grasp the simple fact that Asia is so motherfking ginormous that it's impossible to blend and strain all of us into one soup. The funniest thing is, I'm pretty certain that the "Asian soup" I have eaten cannot even be found anywhere in Asia, try as you may.


If the tables were turned and I were to make a "European soup", I wouldn't even know where to start, because the name itself would make zero sense. What do you put in a European soup? Maybe three teaspoons of economic crisis, an ounce of unreliable currency, and a dollop of dwindling younger population to sustain the workforce?

Yeah, now if only there were a supermarket where I can buy those ingredients for my soup.

At the risk of sounding like a spoilt brat...

I hate money.

Judging by the way I spend money, one wouldn't have the impression that I hate it. But I actually do. I hate money. Or rather, I hate it that I need so much of it to live, that my happiness actually depends on it. I've always seen myself as a prudent spender, but this year I came to a sudden realisation that I am actually a terrible spender.

I'm happiest when I'm travelling, and that needs money. A lot of it. I also like good food, and good food is usually not the cheapest. I hate making early decisions because I change my mind like I change clothes. If there's one thing I've learnt about myself, it's that I can never be set in stone about anything, because even my mind has a mind of its own. So I always wait for the last minute to decide on something, which is a very expensive habit. A last minute flight ticket or hotel reservation cost a fortune. A last minute change of plans almost always involves money.

I've always told myself I should be more careful with my spending, but like all expert procrastinators, I'd end up saying, "Yeah, maybe later" and swipe that damn card anyway.

Now I'm living in a place surrounded by nature, with fruit farms as far as the eye can see, and it's virtually impossible to spend more than 5 euros a day. But somehow I'm still always broke.

I guess I'm set in my ways. I am and will always be a big spender, and I have to stop being in denial about it. I need money to be happy.

Which is why I hate it. I hate it that I love it.

Stupid capitalism. (When all else fails, blame capitalism.)

There she goes

I ordered a java chip and the cashier asked for my name so she can write it on the cup. I hate it when people screw up my real name by throwing in an 'a' or an 'n' too many so I decided to go for a dubiously generic English name: "It's John."

She looked at me with a slight frown and a twisted smile. "Going for something simpler for me to write down, are you? Well, John is easier to write than, say, Yoaojukulonyihua," she retorted.

"Wait.... How do you know my real name?" I said, trying to be cheeky. And all the baristas burst out laughing.

I usually love making strangers laugh. But not today. Somehow their collective laughing was muted by my own thoughts. The sunny city of Hamburg was full of people, but none of whom actually mattered to me. It might as well have been empty and gloomy, it might as well have been the apocalypse.


During the journey back home, I let Bill Withers mock me on repeat on my iPod.


"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone..."