beautiful objects of art

If you are into art and zany animations check this link out. Has Microsoft finally got something right?

No, this is NOT a sponsored post.

vitamins for the soul

"The building doesn't matter. However modern and futuristic it may look, its only sand and bricks. The people working within its walls is what makes it special."

Heard the above from an unexpected quarter this morning. Have a sneaky suspicion that it may not be entirely original but its still a noble concept and should be applauded. Kudos to leaders who are passionately committed to their cause.

i hate music

Two days in a row, now that's weird. As i was turning a particular corner while driving home from work, the same song came on the radio. This was at the exact spot and almost at the same time. "Who Says You Can't Go Home" by Bon Jovi. Boy, how i hate Bon Jovi. I swear my brain is turning to goo with the rubbish top 40 hits that they play on the local station. Anything to beat the silence in my car.

damien jurado - sad-sack folk rock

Ang Lee made a mistake with the otherwise flawless 'Brokeback Mountain'. He neglected to commission Damien Jurado to score the soundtrack. In his latest release 'And Now That I Am in Your Shadow' Jurado has created the spiritual equivalent of doomed relationships between individuals born at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

If the breathtaking sceneries in the movie can sing they will sound like this collection of songs, sparse and possessed of a stillness that is overwhelming in its scope.

She has a dad she doesn't know
Who sends her letters with no return address...
"I don't know his name..."
"He don't know my face..."
"I am better off this way..."

You never ever listen to Jurado on speakers. His music is painfully personal and should be listened to only on head phones preferably with the lights turned way down low. Recently Jurado declared himself officially a band by adding 2 permanent members ostensibly to augment his musical vision. Ironically he sounds even more alone than ever.

The melodies are skeletal but speaks of wide open spaces where strangers meet up accidentally and just as suddenly break up and move on. Memories of painful separations permeate the words which say more by saying less. Love goes unrequited giving rise to painful longing which feels so bad that it feels good. Looking for a good hurtin'? Look no further. File under 'very special indeed'.

excess baggage

During a short lull in activities around the workplace, I was shooting the climate-controlled breeze with a few colleagues.

"So-and-so decided not to pursue his career further because of his aging parents. He has to take care of them at home," said my lady friend who has 3 children of her own, one of them pre-school. She goes home on weekends but stays in a rented apartment during working days.

Baggage; that's all we have to show in life. Being humans we all, understandably, need contact and love. In fact that's what make us humans in the first place. As a consequence we are indelibly linked to others. Some more so than others. Things get messed up when the latter prevents you from realizing your full potential. Inadvertently they drag you into their vortex of crippling neediness and dependence. Like a junkie jonesing for their next fix they will whine and snivel till they get your undivided attention. Against your better judgment you succumb, to the detriment of self. They chip away at your given time of existence and before you know it, an old used-up self stares back at your from the mirror.

"Where did I go?" you ask, desperately trying to rub out the crow's feet around your eyes.

There is an urgent hammering on the door. "Can you drive me to the drug store? My arthritis is acting up again," an all-too-familiar voice says.

blame mother earth

Well the dateline has come and gone and we are still struggling in snail-paced internet limbo. A day after the Taiwan quake happened we were informed that several ships were on the way to repair the damaged underwater cables which linked major parts of Asia to the rest of the world. A few days later news started appearing that one of the ships broke down and needed repairs itself. Then we were given a deadline of January 23rd for all services to resume. Many eagerly awaited the date only to be disappointed including myself when coming home after work on the 23rd I found that my connection was even worse than what it was a few days prior. A new date has been announced - 29th of January. Dare we dream?

For a long time now my local internet provider has been throttling p2p and torrent traffic. Maybe this time they have found the perfect excuse to completely eradicate high bandwidth usage by customers who pay a premium for broadband. After all broadband should just be used for emails and web surfing, right? Heavens forbid you should use it for anything else.

Irate customer : "Hello, I am calling to lodge a complaint about my slow connection when I am using bittorrent"

Call center : "So sorry the earthquake did it and we are not responsible. Good-bye and have a nice day."

hands free

When the inventors of hands free earphones came up with the idea, did they give any thought as to how a person would look talking into them while they are all alone? Sitting in front of his dinner plate, a man in long sleeves and a tie suddenly started talking seemingly to himself. Another man who was walking pass did a double take when he saw him, just to make sure the former is not off his head.

Things get even weirder when they start gesticulating and decide to have a heated debate with the party on the other end of the telephone conversation. Its hilarious when a group of them stand in close proximity, each holding a different conversation. some are laughing while others scowl into thin air. i think the scene would not be any different in an asylum for the clinically insane.

the life of pi

Ever wondered how the mysterious value 3.142 or better known as 'pi' is derived? Click here for an animation and explanation. Why should you care? For the same reason you should care that at the exact moment when we die we weigh 21 grams less than when we were alive. Some say that's how much life weighs.

slow internet - an alternate explanation

My sister has a theory worth blogging about. She was cursing a few moments ago about how slow the internet is. Her reasoning is that it is the middle of the month and a lot of people are broke for the month having spent all their salary during the first 2 weeks. Since going out entails spending, everyone must be sitting in front of their PCs now and surfing the web seeing how the internet is the cheapest form of entertainment. Thus net congestion. The Taiwan quake be damned.

bloggers unite!

Malaysian bloggers are under attack. Unite to repel the evil that is censorship. Never be muzzled.

5 minutes to midnight

Came home to news that mankind is just 5 minutes away from doomsday. The doomsday clock which has been in existence since the mid 40's was pushed 2 minutes forward and now stands at 5 minutes before midnight. The clock is a symbol of how close we are to total meltdown and annihilation as a species.

More interestingly (as if total destruction is any less interesting) browsing the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there is a timeline of events that propelled the minute hand closer to 12 and those that reversed the progress. Reading between the lines there are certain notable examples of nations who have repeatedly lied to the global community about disarmament only to scale up their nuclear aspirations a few years later. There is an obvious trend and I will leave it to the readers to discern for themselves.

As matters stand, we are all going to hell in a bus with no brakes. Don't sweat the small stuff. Stop and look at the big picture. Time is running out.

shot of the day

^-HooRaY-^
Originally uploaded by archivista.

My photo of the day.

the story of a pair of leather shoes

I am a pair of leather shoes. The type designed for those male humans. After being taken off the back of a cow I was put through the indignity of having various yucky types of chemicals poured all over me, stretched every which way and molded to take my present form. I have to admit that the end result is rather impressive and I quickly forgave my creators. The day that the humans actually put me on display in the shoe store I was so proud that i was sure I would burst.

I was eventually bought by a person and put to work. And did this man put me to work. Day in and day out I pounded the ground protecting his precious stinking feet. I swear these so called humans have the most delicate disposition. Its a real wonder that someone actually made them the masters of the world.

Last night after a particularly grueling day I finally was given the chance to rest on my shoe rack. The night air was a pleasant change from the malodorous feet. I breathed a sigh of relief and settled down for the day.

Imagine my surprise when I was picked up roughly by a pair of unfamiliar hands and spirited away at the ungodly hour. After a while I was put onto another pair of feet and I have to tell you that these were even more smelly than my previous master's! Is there no end to my long suffering? Please God make my suffering end. Reduce me to useless scraps so that i do not have to endure any more. Incinerate me and make me into ashes. I am at the end of my tether. Do it now!

Epilogue : just my roundabout way of saying that my leather shoes were stolen right off the rack in front of my door.

the fall of man

deep dark wells for eyes, full of painful secrets and regret. a backward glance pregnant with longing. looking back at what? a time of innocence and freedom now long gone.

once occupying the top echelon of a local political think-tank, the man you see above is now treated like a common criminal with other undesirables. how the mighty have fallen. read all about it here.

snow

I have only seen and felt snow once in my entire life. This was in India at the foothills of the Himalayas more than 10 years ago. I still remember some of my fellow travelers scooping the stuff up and putting them into cardboard canisters. Later in the bus a snow ball fight broke out.

Being from a tropical country, snow is foreign and a mystery. I am told that if you look at it under a microscope the crystals have a perfectly symmetrical design and no two snowflake are the same. The creativity of nature is limitless.

I can only imagine what life would be covered in snow. Would my legs sink when i walk on it? How cold would it be if i walk barefoot? Will i be able to get it off my hair? What will it taste of on my tongue? What would it feel like to be surrounded by the stuff?

Lori Twiggs have tried to answer my questions through his oil paintings. Scattered amongst his galleries of oil paintings are numerous ones of desolate snowscapes. One of my favorites can be found at this link. It is devoid of human presence and is more powerful because of it. The silence is palpable, accentuated by the predominantly white backdrop. a breathtaking depiction of beautiful isolation.

For more head over to Oil Paintings by Lori Twiggs

gastronomical adventure

disclaimer: this is not for the squeamish. children under 12 must get the permission of their parents before proceeding further.

Ok this is just sad. I am sitting in my car in front of a public park in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia and typing this. At 12.50 in the afternoon on a overcast Saturday. I am waiting for my sister to finish her presentation at a nearby local bank. Off the top of my head I can think of any number of places that I would rather be in. Anyways family comes first and all that shit and its not like I have to save the world today back in Kuala Lumpur.

Almost shat my pants an hour ago and I am not dealing in metaphors here. Started off with a twinge of discomfort way down at my center of gravity. As the seconds ticked off the pressure built up and it felt as if all my insides were shifting downwards. This must what it feels like for a woman in the throes of child labor. At that point in time you could not have distracted me even if you placed a million dollars right in front of me. My senses had shut everything down to divert all available resources to my lower abdomen. All i needed was to expel. The noodles i had last night growled menacingly in the nether regions of my bowels.

i caught sight of a nearby mall and drove into the multi-story carpark. being a weekend the crowd was out in force and i had to circle for a good 15 minutes before i found an empty slot. by this time my senses had gone into overdrive and a thin film of sweat clung to my forehead and upper lip. walking as quickly as i could without bringing attention to the fact that my insides were about to burst, i accosted the first guard on duty at the mall and inquired as to the whereabouts of the nearest loo.

securing an empty stall, my muscles gave way. sweet relief.

the man on the sidewalk

What is the story behind a man who sleeps on the sidewalk with no roof over his head? How did he end up with just a piece of cardboard to separate his body from the cold hard ground? In this shiny age of the internet what twisted circumstances brought about the abject poverty of this man who wraps a dirty cotton cloth around his head to keep the bright neon lights out?

How did the distribution of wealth become so uneven that Tom Cruise gets paid USD25 million each time he pretends to be somebody he is not in fictional situations and the man on the sidewalk can't even afford a pillow to rest his weary head? The system must be wrong! So is there a real alternative out there? One which will not leave people behind to wallow in the poisonous exhaust of the car called progress?

In 2006 the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize to one Muhammed Yunus and the bank he founded, Grameen Bank. The latter is one of the few banks around the globe that specializes in microcredit in which small loans are made out to people who are viewed as poor credit risk by the traditional banking world. With this small amount of money, the recipients are expected to make a head start in small cottage industries to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. It brings to the mind the old adage of giving someone a rod to fish rather than giving him just free fish which has finite value.

As with all schemes, this one has its problems. The most obvious one would be people not repaying their loans and thus depriving the bank of its source of revenue to continue helping others. The world is full of shady people who will abuse any system but they are not good enough reason to stop helping others who will honor the loan and improve their lot in life. This aim is too important to be waylaid by those who will forever be crooks.

Would things have been any different for our man on the sidewalk if he knew of microcredit? I will never know. A day after i saw him, the man is no longer there. He has slipped through the cracks again, forever to be hidden in the dark recesses of human existence.

Half-Baked

Top 10 Reasons why i have not updated my blog for the past the past 48 hours:

1. Could not get into blogger.com 2 nights ago most likely due to the quake in taiwan
2. I am physically and mentally drained at the end of the day
3. Felt it was not fair for my few readers to endure half-baked entries
4. Abducted by aliens
5. Time-traveled back to an age without internet
6. Had a lobotomy
7. Took part in the American Idol audition and was kicked out unceremoniously
8. Decided to commit internet suicide
9. Amnesia
10. A little voice in the head told me not to

Tarzan Boy

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Jungle life
I'm far away from nowhere
On my own like Tarzan Boy

Hide and seek
I play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon

Tarzan Boy
Baltimora


The above is an excerpt of the song that was playing on the car radio on my way home. I do not know how many of you remember it and even if you do, i do not expect you to own up to it. The cheesiness of the words are only equaled by the cheesy synthesized-music that accompanies it. Despite myself it brought a smile to my lips. I also thank the maker that i was alone in the car.

The stupid meaningless piece of fluff actually dredged up a lot of memories. It is inherently tied up with the adolescent rush of seeing and buying the latest issue of the many teen-pop/fashion magazines at the news stand. The joy of hiding in your own room and scouring the glossy pages for bits of inconsequential facts regarding the latest pop sensation with their bizarre hairdos and clothing sense. The pathetic attempts at imitating said fashion just before the annual school ball and never getting it quite right. The sense of exquisite danger dancing for the first time with members of the opposite sex. Discotheques with deafening music and multi colored strobe lights. The first taste of alcohol.

A fact that might not have appeared in the pop magazines though : the singer and songwriter of this song, Baltimora, died of AIDS soon after the huge success of 'Tarzan Boy'.

the rookie and the veteran

not to complain about work. this is the latest edition to my new year resolutions for 2007. what is the point? nobody will lessen your workload just because you whine about it. in fact it might even play against you should your colleagues and superiors get wind of it.

"i came back from work at 8 pm!" i exclaimed to my sister 2 days ago. she shrugged her shoulders and gave me a bored look. "so?"

it is now 9.11pm and she is still at work. i guess she has made her point.

the truth serum

Many readers would have doubtless known about the sensational mass murder case currently under investigation in New Delhi, India. A wealthy business man and his man-servant are accused of luring street children into their house and killing them after sexual abuse. The thing that piqued my interest in the media frenzy around this case is the use of truth serum in an attempt to extract confessions from the suspects.

The first thing that came to mind was a drug which miraculously makes one tell the truth. This sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood B-grade movie. However this could not be further from the ........er.......truth (pun intended). The so-called truth serum is nothing more than thiopental sodium (from a group of chemicals called barbiturates) which is a common drug employed by anesthetist to put their patients 'under' before a surgical procedure. To make it even less exotic is the fact that its main function in an interrogation is to make the subject lose his or her inhibition so that he/she may be more forthcoming. This however does not make him or her lose self control. The subject will still be able to chose what they want to tell the interrogator. In the end they may only be very truthful about their lies!

family guy

never realized my potential for disruption. it started out as a simple statement of me not having breakfast yet. my friend and his wife decided that we must partake in the most important meal of the day together. the shit storm started that very instant. they had to put on the diapers for their new born and 2 year old boy. the latter decided to throw a temper tantrum right there and the father had to spend a good 15 minutes tussling with him. diapers were on and then yanked off just as quickly by naughty little fingers. eyes became red and inflamed. whining and sobbing filled the house. fingers and thighs were rapped which led to more mewling. after a while the small one decided to join in. the whole crying and screaming mass was bundled into the car and off we went.

upon arrival at the eatery, the 2 year old couldn't wait to explore his surroundings and the young parents had to take turns running after him. finishing breakfast as quickly as possible, the children were again put into the car and transported back pronto. more screaming ensued. as i drove away i saw the family in my rear view mirror standing in a huddle around the gate struggling with the lock. i rejoiced in the boxed-in silence of my car.

greetings to old friends

suddenly found some old friends appearing on the comments section of this blog. glad to hear from you guys and thanks for all the encouraging words. life is all of a sudden very different and i am still reeling from all the new experiences. some are sweet but they are the exceptions. change is always painful and i am in the thick of it right now. still a long way to go but i might just hang in there. i expected it when i made the move down but no amount of mental preparation can overcome the steep learning curve. i may slide down this curve occasionally but i will just have to pick myself up and start the uphill climb again. this is my lot in life and these are the choices i have made.

#4

disclaimer : for all those who are in the habit of shooting down show-offs and arrogant bastards blowing their own trumpets, proceed with extra caution. really. don't say i did not warn you.

i am putting this up purely for the novelty of it. i am and never will be under the illusion that i have a popular blog that millions around the world flock to daily for pearls of wisdom. this was never the intention of this blog and never will be. it is done purely in the spirit of experimentation and mostly fun. for people who measure the worth of a blog by how much moolah it garners, as of today my total earnings from google adsense is a resounding zilch . i signed up for it under the influence but thats another story.

all these makes it even more implausible when i keyed in the words 'days of our life' in yahoo search and the blog that you are reading came out 4th from a total number of 344, 000, 000 sites that has a reference to the phrase. i do not know how these search engines work but there you have it. the little cogwheels of the universe never fail to amaze me.

the new guy

'how was your first day at work?' i hope that there is someone out there who care enough to ask that of me. well you know me well enough to know that i will tell you any ways.

hungry and tired. work was especially heavy today most likely due to the backlog over the long holidays. worked right through lunch with no food or water. finished everything at 5 pm and made a beeline for the cafeteria for a very belated lunch of buns and soda. good way to shed some weight. all day people were giving me sideway glances usually reserved for the 'new guy'. guess they were all 'new guy's in the past and are exacting their revenge. no matter. like water off the back of a duck.

tomorrow's another day and i hope to live through it. wish me luck!

the year of the pig

just wondering how the retailers in town will decorate their outlets this year for the upcoming lunar new year. when even the use of the word 'jesus' is censored on tv, how in hell's name are they going to put up a giant cutout of a pig in their window displays? for those who do not know the pig is considered 'haraam' in Islam.

while driving around Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago i happened to be in a well known residential area. when i turned into a narrow road i saw a makeshift tent jutting out from a house with total disregard for traffic. as my car pulled up in front of the house i saw the carcass of a headless pig roasting over a pit fire. a thick pall of smoke wafted skywards. no prizes for guessing the ethnicity of the guilty party. i have to wonder what the Muslims in the neighborhood were thinking about at that point.

so how to skirt the sensitivities of the local censorship board? would dressing the pigs up in cartoonish and cutesy costumes appease the powers that be?

i hereby throw down the gauntlet and challenge the retailers' ingenuity. oink oink!

in the city

i am in like flint! just got into kuala lumpur. decided to come a day earlier so that i have one extra day to explore before reporting for official duty on wednesday. you cannot dream of the amount of cables and wires that come with a desktop pc and all its peripheries (eg. modem, wifi router, speakers etc). anyways got everything setup now and ready to go. the drive was surprisingly stress free without the usual post-holiday mad rush back into the city. i pity all the suckers who have decided to make the pilgrimage back tomorrow.

my current situation reminds me of the childhood story of the town mouse and the country mouse. the country mouse decides one day to visit his cousin who lives in a big city full of bright lights and fancy things. during his stay he is accosted by big ferocious dogs, frightening lawn mowers and other modern monstrosities. at the end of the day he has had enough and runs back to his idyllic life in the sedate but peaceful countryside. in my case i don't have a choice and will have to stick it out here as long as it takes, lawn mowers and all.