One finger

I'm pissed. That expression 'seeing red' is pretty damn real when it hits. With all the crime happening in this country and no end in sight, it makes you wonder when exactly the tipping point will come?

X children raped?
X houses burgled?
X knife-point muggings?
X cars jacked?

Today, my friend H was nearly abducted. She lives 5 minutes away from me at an area I used to cycle to for tuition when I was 15. Fast forward 10 years later, at bright-enough 7am in the morning, a full grown 25 year old seems to make a suitable target. Thank god for her friend that turned hero, but WHAT THE FUCK?

It's sad. It's infuriating. It's frustrating. I've lost faith that this country will ever feel 'safe' again.

To the drivers of the brown Proton Perdana WHH 5500, the countless other desperate fuckers, and the authorities who can't seem to buck up, this finger's for you.

The God of marketing?

I spoke about Luck in my previous post, and with the onslaught of the Halo 3 marketing campaign, I was/am sufficiently awed to write about the God of marketing. (GOM)

First of, unlike Luck, which is omnipresent, GOM would only need to be present in specific situations. Ie; Luck would need to be around me at all times because there IS a micron of a chance that I'd hit my keyboard keys wrong, resulting in it snapping off the panel, rebounding off the screen and into my eye, causing extreme pain *gasp* and possibly blindness.

GOM on the other hand, has jurisdiction over any situation that requires negotiation and/or persuasion.

I know, I know, you could call him (him or her?) the God of persuasion, but let me be!

So yeah, when GOM's on your side, you shall have the power to sell whatever wares you have, including yourself. At the bar trying to impress someone? He's on the job if you score major points, or perhaps he'll send his lesser self 'The God of Don't let me say something stupid', or 'God of Stop staring at her boobs' if he wants to watch you navigate tougher terrain.

Right now I'm just wondering if he's by my side. If my rambling resulted in any form of positive facial muscle moving, thanks GOM. You're the best!

Lady luck

Warning: Some ranting ahead.

I've recently had a spate of bad luck. It really does seem to happen in spurts. Amongst the things that've happened include my Xbox dying; the repairs of which will cost me RM250, realizing that my sense of humour could've possibly given me the title 'weirdo' amongst some new colleagues, and a routine back exercise gone wrong, resulting in me sitting here typing in pain. All this in one week!

Sweet frikkin as.

After all that, I paused and wondered about luck itself. Itself? Herself? Himself? It's often that you hear the westerners call her Lady luck. So my guess is that if she's hanging around you, you're lucky. If she's gone away, you've gotta watch your back extra close (literally in my case).

So where would luck go? I mean, there ARE 6.7 billion people on the planet and a whole bunch of them can be lucky at the same time. That, coupled with my belief that she's pretty much omnipresent, tells me it's not an issue of lack of woman-power. So the 'her' that's usually with me is simply unavailable at the moment.

Maybe I did something to run afoul of her favour - Can't recall any misdeeds in the past month..

Maybe she's on a vacation - It's springtime in New Zealand after all. Great time to visit the botanical gardens in Christchurch.

Perhaps she's on a date - She's probably having a wonderful meal with... who would she date?

Wherever she is, whatever she's doing, I hope she comes back soon. *crosses fingers*

Truth well told..

..lies well sold. That's what I was told by a colleague on my first day on the job. This Dilbert piece reminds me of what I do for a living. How do I sleep at night you ask? Of late, very well thank you. =)

(borrowed from dilbert.com)

Annoy someone today!

(DIY chef)






















Last week we went to Food Foundry for lunch. Hats off to Kimberly, with a little assistance of Marjorie, whom both managed to annoy the hell out of our waiter.

It starts with Kim whining to the poor dude about her favourite tea variant missing from the menu. He gives her the eye. (no not 'that' eye) Then Marj goes on to ask which pasta is better? The beef or the chicken one? I could've sworn I heard his knuckles crack (while holding his paper notebook)

Later on. Marj innocently asks for some chilli flakes. He fetches it, only to return and have Kim ask him for some salt and pepper.

Finaly, he gets back and goes:
"Salt. *plonk* Pepper. *plonk* Chilli sauce. *plonk* Anything else?"

The tabasco was already on the table. Lucky for Kim or he might've splashed some into her colour-contact-lensed eyes.

Tasered

Some of you might have heard of that college kid being tasered in the States. You can see it through this youtube vid; essentially he asks ex-presidential candidate John Kerry some scathing questions, and got his ass handed to him by the cops.

Police brutality issues aside, I thought it was an interesting situation for John Kerry. I'm unaware of his future political plans, but I think this incident might've just sunk whatever ship of hope he has.

My opinion is this; he had 3 possible routes of action:

1) Allow the kid to get his questions off, and answer them (acknowledge or deny, it doesn't matter)
2) Asked the authorities to stop man handling the kid
3) Do nothing

He chose route 3, which I think was a mistake. By taking action, it would at least show he had a spine. I really believe that not doing anything lost him any shred of respect he had left, at least from this particular demographic.

Smile damnit!

Sony has just launched this new model called the T200. The interesting thing is that it has a new tech feature built in called the 'smile shutter' or something like that. Essentially, it auto-snaps the photo as soon as it detects your subjects smiling.

'Huh' you say? Ditto.

Sony's making a few assumptions with this one:

1) You're a dumbass that can't snap photos quick enough if your friends are smiling.
2) No one loves you enough to smile for a shot.
3) Your friends are possibly clinically depressed.

Now I don't know how the tech really works, but try and imagine the situation:

a) One friend smiles first before the other's got his finger out from his nose *click*
b) You're taking photos at a party and people are smiling/laughing/moving around *clicketyclicketyclick*

LMAO

We all know that the advent of the internet/instant messaging/chatrooms have spawned a slew of words or abbreviations that you otherwise wouldn't have used. I just read about a great one from Seth Godin's blog, which is used in conversations with active bloggers/self publishers.

It's NYFB - Not for your blog; when the topic is sensitive and you don't want the world to know about it. How awesome is that?

Another interesting one I've read is POTS, which is used mainly by teens with nosy parents. Parents Over The Shoulder seems awful long to type, even when you're a teen that types at the speed of a chipmunk with severe caffeine overdose.

Any weird ones to add to this list?

Unity after all

Two days ago I went to get my passport renewed. The bastard process took 2 1/2 hours, but the collection time was 2 hours later, so I suppose there's SOME improvement over the past few years.

As I sat there waiting and reading, I noticed that the old Chinese guy in front of me started bitching about the service/delay with an Indian lady sitting on the row beside him.

While the duo was missing a Malay representative to complete a menage-a-trois, it warmed my heart to see that there is some unity in this country after all. All we need is a common enemy.

Let's give it up for the power of hate! Woo!

Gotta love jap chicks

Stumbled upon this article about the latest fad amongst Japanese teen girls. (I just needed an excuse to post up this incredibly hot picture)

The OTT eyelashes look incredible, but there's a few things I'd like to know:

1) What are the odds of them blinding themselves by accidentally blinking wrong?

2) If you're only doing it on one eye, and consistently enough, would the extra weight create some sorta 'lazy eyelid' effect?

2a) Could that really be sexy by someone's books?

3) The chick on the right looks like she's got a caterpillar on her eye. Would a passing bird make that mistake? *wince*

Hm.. making out with them would be interesting.

Tabula rasa

Ever wish you had a chance for a fresh start?

I first heard of this phrase from a colleague that tattooed it to her wrist. In a gist, it's Latin for 'clean slate', and its philosophical essence simplified infers that we're born as blank sheets to be filled.

In the past couple of months, there have been a few things happening in my life that put me in a introspective mood. Good and bad, I suppose they made me sit up and realize a few things about myself. If you've ever paused and noticed the recurring patterns (hopefully not nightmares) in your life, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Unfortunately, there's no reset button in life. Everything we do has made its mark, with consequences immediate or delayed. The best we can do is make what little adjustments we can, and hope for the best.

Au revoir

Yesterday was my last day serving at this company. It was hard leaving that front door for the last time (professionally at least). I will probably drop by there to have a look see sometime later.

This post is for the select people at Saatchi that made it seem like a home. I'll be missing you guys alot. =`)

Scented air conditioning

Yesterday was a hot night, so I decided to sleep with the air-conditioning turned on. So far, my drive to conserve energy by decreasing that use has been good. More wins than losses anyway, but perhaps it's easier to do with the rainy weather?

So I was thinking, why don't people invent a scented air conditioner unit thingy. Imagine an in built tray where you could just drop some scent in, or a purposefully built air filter strip that you just need to replace every few months or so.

Or you could buy a Glade car-scent clip on. =\

The importance of heroes

I read a good article that was talking about the importance of heroes in our lives. It's almost intuitive to aspire towards a hero-like character in your life as they represent the type of qualities/ attributes you'd wish for.

"..what goals do for us on a day-in/day-out basis, heroism accomplishes over the course of a lifetime" - Dr. Brett Steenbarger

From the consumer work that I do, Malaysians seem to aspire towards their parents more often than not. They admire their dad for the hard work he's put in to build his business and yet raise his family. Mom's the greatest simply because of the love and patience she has. This doesn't seem to change much whether they're teenagers or adults. Occasionally a few mention figures like Lim Goh Tong, Dr. Mahatir, or Bill Gates but most can't really articulate anything truly unique about them. It's like they all mesh into one single character of vague virtue.

I'm not playing judge, but perhaps it might be more effective if we really find the time to pick out one (or two) people and try our best to get to know as much as we can about them.

You don't have to be 100% like them, but I'm convinced of the importance such a figure plays especially during the many trying times of life.

Now what would Homer Simpson do?... Hm...

R.I.P rodent

I witnessed a depressing sight on the way to work today. On the Federal Highway where it was about a good 6 lanes of cars moving (at high speed) one poor rodent decided to dance with death.
It lost.

I saw it scamper across as fast as it could from the right side of the road. That little bugger was pretty good; he made it past 3 lanes. Unfortunately, it got hit somewhere on the 4th. Strangely enough, it wasn't 'run over' like you'd expect after such an encounter. After the death car passed, it was thrown to the side... and lay there motionless.. past the 4th lane.

What possessed it to attempt that crossing? It looked large enough to be an adult, so I'd assume it'd have developed some sense of awareness about the dangers of fast moving large objects.
It must have been 'some' cheese.

Oh well. R.I.P little dude. Better luck next life.

The mechanics of fate

In my post slightly more than a week ago on dreams I mentioned a cute girl I saw once at an event 3 weeks prior. Let's call her Reg-girl, my unimaginative label for her being the person at the registration counter.

On Merdeka night, I went for a gig in No Black Tie (which was fantastic!) and there she was. Reg-girl. Now there are two ways of looking at this.

1) Over analyse it and call it fate.

2) Sheer coincidence.

Sad to say, I didn't speak to her. My excuse is that she was sitting amongst a large group at a table across a room that was packed like a can of tuna.

If the words "Alah, no balls say la" crossed your mind, you'd be spot on.

So did I just reject fate? Was that event meant to tell me something? With perfect 20-20 hindsight, I think the message is "Alah, get some balls man".

Yep.