A first

Saw this at a store in SS2. It's the very first emergency entrance I've seen. (It's a cyber cafe btw)

When it comes to a game or death situation, this spot has got it covered. You'd probably shave off 3 minutes walking through the 'regular' entrance.

Attendant: Sir I noticed you came in through our "emergency" entrance. Please provide us proof of your gaming desperation.
Gamer: Ggggahh. Gibbah gibbah killah nowah! *twitch twitch twitch*
Attendant: I'm sorry sir, you just didn't salivate enough. You'll have to queue up for your pc.
Gamer: Nyaaaaaaaaaaaargh. *fingers dissolve*

Wee Woo Wee Woo

Why are emergency sirens placed on top of vehicles? It's like a universal standard to have sirens on top. I'm sure there's a practical reason for that, but wouldn't it be cooler if they had them ringing the sides of the car or something?

Silly ponder

Earlier today I thought about this, but unfortunately right now I can't seem to remember how it started.

I was wondering if there were any types of food where if you did not eat it in sequence, it would spoil the entire experience? Ignoring multiple course meals, this would mean any dish that has multiple components that require eating it in sequence. I can't think of any!

When it clicks

My mom was saying that she needed a watch a few days ago, so I thought I might as well get an early birthday gift for her (since it's the sale season). Since I was getting mom one, I thought what the heck, I might as well get one for dad too.

The watch shop had way too many choices, but this pair kinda jumped out at me. It's funny how there are times when something 'speaks' to you. I could almost hear the mechanical squeaks of "Buy me! Buy me!". It's like that for a lot of things in life. Whether it's a shirt, a pair of shoes, or a person, it's nice when something clicks. Call it intuition; it's a great feeling to have when something feels so right.

Malcom Gladwell talks about something similar in his book 'Blink', though I'd recommend you skip that one and just read his classic 'The Tipping Point'. ;)

Delayed dreaming

From what I know, some people remember their dreams vividly. Others clear their dream cache as soon as they wake up. Only the more vivid ones are remembered. I tend to remember most of my dreams and what I'm curious about is the sometimes seemingly random insertion of people.

To me, it's normal to have entirely weird dream settings like spacecrafts, Vietnamese rice fields, and/or medieval castles. Got to have an imagination eh? =) However, what intrigues me is the appearance of people in dreams. Specifically, people that you might have met once a long time ago, or individuals whom you've never thought about (consciously) in ages.

My dream yesterday had a person whom I saw once. A cute receptionist at an event I attended. I didn't pick up any guts to chat her up then, but I never thought of her since that night. Lo and behold, she pops up in my dream yesterday! (I won't go into details, but it was 'fun') Lust? Random selection? What does this mean?????

*shrug*

What happened to 1901?

Before I write further, I confess to never having eaten at this place, but I've definitely seen it around. =)

Recognise the number? Yep. It's the very same 1901 hot-dog stand that you've probably seen in shopping malls around town. I did a double-take when I saw this in The Curve the other day. After verifying that it's indeed 'the' 1901, the first thing that went through my mind was "WTF" followed by "Why?".

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the original 'brand', but I think this new look is really generic and lacks character. Also, this is a departure from their original strategy of simply having a hot-dog cart. We'll see if this works out for them in a few months.

Names pt.2

On the way to work today, I heard another piece of awful advertising. If you own an ATM card with MEPS capability, apparently you shouldn't call it an ATM card. It's called a Bankcard (or however you spell the damn thing)

At least that's what the ad's trying to tell me. It was a godawful 20-30s jingle that went along the lines of:

"... That's not an ATM card. It's a Bankcard! Call it by it's proper name, bla bla bla. Convenient payment, benefits bla bla bla that's the Bankcard. So call it by the correct name!"
(the tune to which this was sung is similar to how your 2 year old nephew belts out a random tune from reading a line in your morning paper)

What are these idiots trying to achieve? It's like an ad for handphones going "bla bla bla, it's a MOBILE PHONE not a handphone! So call it by the right name!"

I almost barfed up my breakfast laughing.

Names are important!

Ang Moh - The Hokkien term for 'white man'

I'm sure you've stumbled on your fair share of silly business names. I stumbled upon this one yesterday during lunch. (the banner was nowhere near the restaurant, nor were there any directions to it)

From the food pics, it could be Vietnamese. If Ang More means 'uber tasty' in Vietnamese then I guess their target market are people that understand Vietnamese. I don't know my migration statistics, but methinks that's a small amount of people.

If they're trying to attract Malaysians with a thing for western food, they've got their pictures wrong. It's like having a banner for a restaurant called Denny's and placing asian dishes on the front.

The only market left is if you're a Malaysian that hasn't heard of the term Ang Moh, and think it's a cute name. *shrug*

Despite my rant, it's not all that bad. The worse I've seen to date was a Vietnamese place (no I do not have anything against them) called Num Phuc. It's shut down now.

I wonder why...

Interesting times - August

After work yesterday, I did something that I've never done before. I played postman.

Getting out from my car, I noticed an envelope on the street (rolled over a few times). Upon closer inspection, turns out that it was for "Uncle Chong and family" scribbled in kid-write. The address was not my street, but it was close enough that prompted me to pick it up and go hunt. I found the place easy enough, but after delivering it, I had a few random thoughts.

1) The house I delivered it to didn't really look like an "Uncle Chong and family" place. It was more of an "Ah Chong's ah longs" house. (YES I got the address right) Did an Uncle Chong really live there?

2) If it really was the correct house, what impact did my actions have? Too many hollywood movies have made me wonder if I sparked off a chain of events that might never have happened if I left that letter alone.

Does any of it matter? Nope. Just another interesting event in my 'interesting' life.

Res-teppa

Most of us drag ourselves into the car every morning to make the long arduous journey to work. Some put on their own music, some poorer people (like myself) listen to the radio. Those that do, get bombarded with chirpy sounding people, and worse, chirpy advertising!

I must say though, I have much respect for the radio talents out there. The guy that does the pizza hut ads? He gets me all the time with his enthusiasm about sausage wrapped pizzas and cheese. I wonder how he puts himself in that 'mood' in order to communicate that the pizza itself is probably the most profound thing that's happened to him.

Then it hit me. He holds his breath! Think about it! What gets your adrenaline pumping like a little suffocation? Deprive yourself of oxygen while reading your lines and you wind up sounding like a pizza desperado whose life depends on it. (in the talents case, finishing his damn lines)

Goonandtryitandyou'lldiscoveri'mprobablyrightafterwhichyouwishyouhadn'tbecauseyou'refeelingratherfaint. *gasp*

Only cause Serena asked

My meme?..

What were you doing 10 years ago?
1997.. It was the year I read LOTR! haha. Great times in high school when you really didn't give a damn about anything other than girls and video games. Let's see.. what's changed.. hmm. ;)

What were you doing 1 year ago?
2006 was a stasis year for me. Read alot. Thought alot. Glad to say, learnt alot.

Five snacks you enjoy
Snicker bars, Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, Peanut butter and banana sandwiches (with honey), Walkers crisps (though you can't really get them here), Cadbury Nuts and Raisins bar.

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to
Dookie, Move Along, God Shuffled His Feet, You Could Be Happy, Crazy

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
Get a nice pad, spruce it up, buy a few new kennels for Paws, get mom a new car, invest the rest.

Five bad habits
Slouching at the desk (Doupe), murmuring in a conversation, lazy laundry guy, (hey i'm not gonna tell you everything!)

Five things you like doing
Movies, music, books, my Xbox 360, climbing/sports

Five things you would never wear again
Don't have that many clothes!

Five favourite toys
My N95, Xbox 360, www.netvibes.com counts?, a jobstreet.com stressball, my toaster oven (it rocks baby)

I believe i can fly

Funny picture I took at the 'Digi duck pond' in 1utama. We were wondering how the hell that tortoise got up there. Then I wondered why was it posing like that. A tortoise with a 'tude. =D

The thin line

This post is more of an early morning rant of a disgruntled sleeper.

Of late, in a bid to save electricity and do my little bit of ecological preservation, I've been sleeping without the air conditioning. Thankfully the monsoon season has brought us relatively cool nights, so by the time I hit the sack, temperatures aren't too bad and it cools down further as the night stretches on.

However, with the monsoon comes the damned mosquitoes. *rage* It was hell trying to sleep, and now I'm cranky. The situation is not without solution though.

1) Slather myself in Mopiko before bed; probably Malaysia's most popular mozzy cream. (with the possibility of rubbing it in my eye without realizing. *nyaaarrrhhh*

2) Turn on the air conditioning, which I did last night.

However, last night's sleep is lost. Sigh. *continues rage*

Hair Asia???

When I was out driving yesterday, I saw a peculiar truck. It looked like a huge Air Asia banner, but wait a second! It had 'Hair Asia' plastered on the sides instead!

From the 2 seconds as I was 'not' speeding by, it seemed like Hair Asia is some sort of portable hair salon service. (with no frills I betcha)

1) What the hell is a no frills hair-cut (assuming that it IS their sales pitch)
"Hokay sah, ere's ow it works. Your haircut is honly RM4. BHUT we honly provide the cutting. If you wanna to sit down, 'kerusi' kena rent. If you want more than one type of scissors, have to pay. If you want the plastic cover, that cost extra dollars. Hair wash all, longkang situ."

2) Do knock offs like these really work for a hair salon?
I should've taken down their number just to see if they'll be in operation 6 months from now. In my line, I see alot of FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) products that're made by local boys, but have an almost criminal resemblance to the international brand right next to it. I've seen it. It WORKS. People blindly pick the pack up without much scrutiny. (after all, some of these brands invested a large wad of cash to gauge their consumer reactions to the packaging design)

I bet they're really proud when moms go home and pick out their new purchase and go

"Doupe"

Pride?

Any Malaysian right now that's even remotely in touch with some media is bound to be hearing the 'Merdeka' call. After all, it's the 'Big 50', and boy are we proud of it.

50 years of independence? Yeah. Great. Woo hoo. Honestly, I'm appreciative of the living conditions I have. I've been blessed with a pretty nifty job, positive income growth, relatively decent living costs (there was an economic entity that claimed we were one of the cheapest countries to live in) and many more perks, so I don't really have an issue with our national fanfare.

However, the public announcement from one radio station made me cringe. I'm willing to bet I'm not alone.

It went something along the lines of "Be proud of your nation, bla bla bla. After all, we have the 3rd tallest building in the world and the longest pencil in the world (With so much enthusiasm I nearly barfed. Hey another lost word!)

C'mon.
3rd best country to live in? 3rd lowest crime rate in the world? Sure I'd be proud. 3rd tallest building? Gee. Now I KNOW we're on the map for that one.

And do we really need to beat our chests with claims of being able to accommodate giants with an aptitude for writing?

Come the f#ck on.

Lost words

I was crossing the road earlier when I saw a car that made a 'blunder'. He was basically on a traffic light but he didn't need to be there as there was a natural turning lane for him to take. Seeing him take the turn made me go 'opocok', which brings me to my topic today of words that you haven't used in AGES.

'Opocok' (I don't know if anyone knows this) simply means 'oops'. It's more elaborate and sounds a little funnier. Unfortunately, I can't really remember the origins of the word or where/whom I learned it from. The only thing I know is that I've not used it in ages and till a few hours ago, totally forgot its existence!

Thinking about it, there are a few more words (mostly cusses haha) that I've not used in awhile. Try and remember if there are any weird words that you knew, but have stopped using! Whee!

Tastes just like chicken

I read this article a few days ago. In a nutshell, they somehow linked some proteins from Mr. Rex to birds. I'm no scientist, so I won't try to explain what's in it, but I thought it was a catchy title.

Did it really taste like chicken? I don't know, but did you ever wonder where the phrase came from? If you think about it, there are quite a few types of meat that's available in a regular western diet.
No one ever calls the other meats 'just like chicken' (your usual suspects of beef, lamb, venison, turkey). So what would they have had to try to say it tasted like chicken? How many weird things would they have had to taste to coin that phrase?

Lets look at the Chinese diet. We don't go "Hou chi kai kam yeong" at all! Mind you, we eat anything that moves (and plenty of those that don't). If there's anyone that could've logically come up with it, it's the Chinese!

An inconvenient truth

I just had the pleasure of watching this amazing piece of work. Let me start by saying if you haven't had the opportunity to watch this, please do. I implore you.

Regardless of whether or not you've seen it, I'm pretty sure you would've heard of it. From whatever you know, before i get to my point, I think that most people (myself included) have a tendency of being affected 'in the moment'. The now is usually easy to feel... easy to create a response to.. easy to adjust... but the future is a different thing altogether.

How often does it happen that we make promises to change.. to act.. but don't? It's our nature to procrastinate and forget. Often enough, we make excuses. In this context, many will go "Oh, what can I possibly do to change the world?" However, I honestly believe you can make a difference.

I once read that Einstein called the power of compounding the 8th wonder of the world. If he did, he's absolutely right. Let's say you (yes you!) switch off that dvd player after you're done. If everyone does that, the compounded effect will be tremendous! I think it's important that you start with something small (like that light bulb you like to leave on when you go to bed) The important thing is to be consistent.

After reading this, I hope for two things from you. 1) Watch 'An Inconvenient Truth' by Al Gore. 2) Take action.

We move along..

Those of you that know me personally might get the impression that I'm an eternal optimist. You'd be right to some extent. For some reason, I truly do believe that good things will come my way... eventually. Maybe it's because if I want something, I'm pretty darn persistent in getting it.

However, there are times... like today, when you've got to let go. As much as you believe in a particular dream coming true, reality still has the final say. At situations like this, you make decisions. It might not be the one that gives you the greatest happiness/satisfaction in that point in time, but I've learnt (still learning really) that it's equally important to make that call and to stick to it. Perhaps it's an illusion of control. *shrug*

If you've ever had to give up something precious, you'd understand. The only consolation is to try and think of the bigger picture. Maybe the door you just closed opened up another one.

Or maybe that door might one day open again.