This entry wasn't in rhyme format before this. Laugh like you would when you read lame forwarded rhymes.

On Friday Chez picked me up from the office
To Bintang Walk for God forbid we miss
Our distraught friend reading poetry
Using the word 'distraught' in glee

I was made unpivotal to the recital! Someone else was the title.

Of Seven Collar T-shirt there was Duan
He and his guitar, headcount was one
Cool jazz riffs, neat inversions galore
For once their melancholia was not a snore

Saturday I went down to KL Plaza again
For Hoobastank's Battle Of The Bands
The band with the best playing
Would get to open in the grandstands

I was made a judge quickly
Beside Saiful of Y2K and a Universal lady
Between bands I itched to pick up an electric guitar
And jam with the great masked punk rocker from afar

Alas, to test guitars, we were timid
Much like one church band who hid
In them, the ability to rock out
Like how Linkin-Park-in-Malaysia regulations said "no jumping about"

We were then seen in Coffee Bean, me treated to a White Chocolate Dream.

Lunch was nasi lemak, dinner a chicken burger
Both at the same place at 3:30pm or later
I ran to Low Yat Plaza as the clouds fell
To collect price lists to use as scrap paper as well

Thanks to Jin for this!

Would you marry for money?
Well this job had better pay. ;)

Have you had braces?
Nope. I have nice teeth; only defect being the lower front baby teeth. They've never grown out.

Do you pluck your eyebrows?
Er gee, let me ask my fashion consultant if that will suit my face shape. J.J.M. is such a darling. He says NO.

Do you hurt/cut urself by accident?
Rarely; if so it's just hangnails.

Could you live without a computer?
I guess I could live without ONE of my computers. :P

If you could live in any past time period, which would it be?
The early 70's, where sex, drugs and rock and roll were still booming and quite legal.

Do you drink enough water?
I think so... I have 2 1-liter-bottles on my computer table, and they go through refilling cycles every hour or so.

Do you wear shoes in the house or take them off?
I don't even wear shoes in the office. Go figure.

What is your favorite fruit?
Guava!

What is your favorite place to visit?
Bintang Walk, or any area with loads of connected places that get people lost initially.

Are you photogenic?
Yes, and narcissistic, too!

Do you dream in color or black and white?
Color!

Are you wearing fingernail polish?
Nah they just make your fingernails brittle, and they stain nostrils and guitar strings.

Why do you take surveys?
I feel the urge to reply differently.

Do you drink alcohol?
No, and I'm genetically predisposed against it.

What is the most beautiful language?
English! Eat that, all you European-language romantics!

When you are asleep do you like being kissed awake?
Sure! Except by J.J.M. of course. He's too sloppy.

Do you like sunrises or sunsets the most?
Sunsets. You know the day won't get any hotter.

Do you want to live to be 100?
Yeah. The psychics say that sex, drugs and rock and roll will be booming and quite legal AGAIN in the 2080's.

Is a flat stomach important to you?
Nope, but protuberance is a disturbance.

Are you tolerant of other people's beliefs?
If their belief is intolerance, no. Heh.

When you watch movies at home, do you like the lights on or off?
On. In fact, I will not step into a cinema until they install floodlights. :/

Do you believe in magic?
No, but I believe in a thing called love!

Do you think you can draw well?
I don't like pencils so I draw with ballpoint pens. I can draw still life and scenes in a meeting room or classroom, but I often mess up porportion because I tend to concentrate on small parts.

Do you like to watch cartoons?
Yep. Count The Simpsons and more adult humor.

At what age did you find out that Santa Claus wasn't real?
When I was 18, and I heard this rapper sing, "Santa Claus ain't real, he's a faker yo. Aight!"

Do you write poetry?
You could call my cryptic, always-rhyming attempts poems.

Do you snore?
My colleagues don't complain.

Do you sleep more on your back, front, or sides?
I sleep on my back. (I have to take precautions against J.J.M.)

Would you rather have a poodle or a rottweiler?
Rottweiler. What good is a poodle?

Are you basically a happy person?
Yes, but when people go "are you happy?" I doubt myself, hesitant to answer.

Are you tired?
Laconic, too.

Did you drink anything with caffeine in it today?
WHY DO YOU ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS?!?!? WHY MUST YOU? ALL THESE SURVEYS DO IS GIVE YOU QUESTIONS? WHAT ABOUT ANSWERS??? HUH?
Oh, I've had my Teh Tarik already.

Have you ever met anyone off the internet?
Yes, I have met people who don't have Internet access. Oh you mean, have I met people in real life that I met online first?

How many phones do you have in your house?
2 phones to one landline, and 3 mobile phones.

Do you get along with your parents?
I still live with them. :)

No, the title is not a reference to the loveable Az. Here are more pictures and a little commentary.

I headed down to Bintang Walk on Wednesday night to see Shelley's album launch. On the way there, I stopped by Lot 10 to find:

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Speedy Video! Who goes to Lot 10 for this anyway?

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Wha...
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I didn't believe it either. The unheard-of Tower Records in Lot 10! (KL Plaza was so near!)

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So this is L'Opera.

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I love taking bulb-lighted pictures and overexposing the highlights.

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Ditto.

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Cosmic Funk Express. Alda was on bass, and they racked major coolness with a Super Mario cover song.

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On the journey to the toilet, you'd pass by a picturesque construction site window.

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Oh, and let's not forget picturesque Shelley.
Thursday: Went to an Xfresh gathering. Apologies to the people who saw me stoned there. I discovered that even uncaffeinated frappucinos gave me headaches. It didn't help that I considered two people at the pseudo-dinner table irritating. Escaped I did, for college I had to attend. I got on the bus from Midvalley to the Universiti PUTRA LRT station, comtemplating just going home. I was saved by a friend who was my sister's classmate (and I discovered that his older sister was my classmate before!)

I was headacheless as I rushed uncertainly to a class that may or may have not been cancelled. Thank goodness it was there, and that I passed my progress test, with double the marks I expected. Yes I am still sounding stoned.

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Ahameedia


Click on the picture to enlarge. I waited for the bus, contemplating eating dinner there or eating dinner near my house. I gambled the bus for cheese naan, but I would not regret it. It was the works! (Plus it wasn't Naan Special or Naan Pizza!) It had onions, carrots, and heck, raisins! Its foundation was mozzarella, for the stretchy gooey cheesy appeal. How do you get there? Find the shortest open-air walking path between Masjid Jamek and Pasar Seni PUTRA LRT stations. It lies somewhere along that stretch.

My house phone line's been dead since Friday now, and Streamyx is supposed to work despite that, but it doesn't.

Friday: Celebrated Shaz's birthday at Burger King Midvalley. I think we were happy. KJ came before Shaz! I didn't get him a dirty blonde (should've just introduced Davina's surprisingly black hair to mustard) but he was happy.

Saturday: Went to the office, then home, to cower like a chicken.

Sunday: Went to Midvalley, to the KLue, Starbucks presents HSBC Chillout Sessions, to bid farewell to Irma. I helped the usually distraught friend to take pictures of say:



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This latte will evaporate in one hour

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From the filename and picture, I wonder why I bother hiding her identity by calling her the distraught friend

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Shelley and Az, waiting for their turn to perform (see, even when they're not performing, they look artistic!)

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I love Shelley. She had to run and leave me this chocolate cinnamon roll leftover

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Pete Teo doing a soundcheck. Nice tuning pegs!

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Thank you everybody! Come to my album launch!

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Zahid of Disagree must be going, "bestnya acoustic set! Can sit down!" (The solo on Crumbs was hummed, coolness!)

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Pete is joined by Zahid and Hamka of Disagree (Disagree with Pete! Or rather, Pete with Disagree!)

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I like this picture.

Gone.

How I enjoy such melodrama. It is what makes the world less of a perfect sphere.

If that deceiver can gain an audience with you, why not me?

Alas, I am reluctant. I am timid. Shy. Afraid to know.

How I wish I could turn dejavu-ishly violent.

Maybe I was happy knowing that I hated you, but I was just getting used to it. Better that than say talking and then turning the situation into another possible downer. Better than not hating you, blaming myself and getting myself down in the dumps despite having the grandest company in the world.

Besides, you helped inspire me to write angsty, happy-chord songs.

Nobody helped me. Of course I'm the bad guy. She says she listens, but hell that's all she does. Like God, she knows all, but she does not meddle. Well boohoo, go on, cry me a red river.

I see where it's going. Being in childish denial does help with self-preservation. Escape is not only easy, it's the only way out, because fighting will lead to impending doom.

How I wish you were here, so I could just look at you and mouth off without saying anything. By just thinking it. As if that works. My friend preferred it that way.

I came out, done with the philosopher's position, and I didn't get to recite my little speech I devised to ease my conscience while easing myself.

You'd never know, but I know you'd never care.

For once, I want to get into an empty elevator and SCREAM, not to be rudely embarrassed by the dude on the next floor asking, "did you scream justnow?"

Maybe I'll visit college again. It has 11 floors.

Flashback to yesterday, with a real sincere friend:

"I just need somebody to talk to. I won't actually talk to you; I'll just... say it in my head. It's like somehow you're listening."
"But... I can't! Sure, you can transmit on your psychic channel, but I can't receive it."
"It doesn't matter. I just need someone that I feel comfortable with for this mental osmosis."
"Does it repeat? I mean, do you say the same things to someone each time you tell him in your head?"
"I... don't know."

Some part of me wishes to understand. Some part of me doesn't. Perhaps it's like how you just wanna bawl your eyes out in a hug and not tell why.

And no, I haven't heard any Britrock today. :)

...because the left ear was next to a Hard Rock Cafe speaker. Weird how I couldn't hear myself when I talked after The Rasmus hit us. The speaker was so loud, the vocals distorted! (Or it hit my loudness threshold, causing natural fuzz in my ear.)

P.S. The Rasmus rock. They have proper solos, and enough 80's rock for the soul. (First single In The Shadows didn't catch my attention because it sounded too modern hard rock.) Pity then, in some songs they have a Metallica or Skid Row intro, and go into the softer, simpler verse part, a bit anti-climatic. The vocalist is too modern; he's a less neurotic Brian Molko. However, take away the gothic image and nobody would call them gothic. Heck, they may become pretty boys, but I think Lauri has potential to look like Ozzy Osbourne. (Lift your hands up with your Fleetwood-Mac jackets and wave them to the intro of Snowblind!)

Pardon the laziness; hope pictures will suffice.

Got on the train to the Mines Exhibition Center for the PALA sound thingymajiggy. It was a total geekout session for audio/video techie people, but I came to drool at guitars.

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I got this while registering with my business card.

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Audio engineer pr0n (the salesman/digital-mixer-pimp got Syefri's attention for quite a bit)

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LASER fields. I'm blind!

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Sham of Kamikaze jams with Andy Timmons. I'd never seen or heard either guitarist before, but I thought Sham looked pretty Dr. Evil-like on stage (he's the one in white). This was Andy Timmons' session; I spotted Amil of Dragon Red doing his usual Jimi Hendrix expressions when Andy covered Little Wing. Haha!


Click to enlarge; from left: Vax 7-string guitar for RM980 at Do Re Mi, Gibson SG Angus Young model for RM6,622 *drool* (check out the super narrow neck; makes up for the C shape) and Ibanez Gio SA 370QM, butterscotch color for a closer-to-home RM1,150, the one I always wanted to get.


As we headed to Syefri's bike, Elena called. We then met up with her (and Phoebe and Aznin) at KL Sentral to get to the leaving-on-a-jetplane Ed's barbeque.

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Why, that's a Nokia box in a rubbish bin.

We waited for the bus again when Stephanie was too late for the first one.

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Ed makes a cameo in The Matrix.

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Dad of Ed is cool he has twelve string to drool

Shaz, William and I went around town. Details will not follow as William intends to keep the idea to ourselves.

Pardon the French(man Shaz) or rather, pardon the Malaysian English.

Shaz: Eh William. Why you always wear white pants one? If I put chocolate there, won't it be very obvious?
William: It's not white lah... it's beige.
Albert: Well better a chocolate stain on white pants than a white stain on black pants.

(This was in direct reference to the condensed milk that Shaz dripped onto his black pants earlier.)

Written message from mom: left computer froze - words mutilated so i shut off switches

I was surprised that she didn't capitalize the i. I beamed proudly in her slow but sure online-savviness.

I have in custody two computers. The left one acted funny. I turned it on and it beeped non-stop after logging into my account. The Num/Caps/Scroll Lock keys didn't work. I flipped the AT/XT switch underneath (anybody remember those old keyboards?) and rebooted.

This time, the keyboard played dead, but it could still load Windows.

I flipped the keyboard back to AT mode and rebooted again. This time, it didn't beep, but MSN 4.7 came up! Bloody irritating program. I saw the MSN 6.2 icon show me as disconnected, but I appeared online to my brother (who was on the computer to the right.) MSN 4.7's icon wasn't in the system tray, but it was invisibly making me online.

What was weirder was that I was the only one who had administrative power to install MSN 4.7 (I thought I removed it after installing MSN 6.2...) I remember having MSN 6.2, when a "new version of MSN is out, do you want to install?" popped up. When I clicked Install and rebooted, MSN 4.7 came back up.

After removing MSN 4.7 again with this very useful guide, I rebooted. This time, it was only MSN 6.2. However, it automatically scrolled to the bottom of the list! I scrolled back up, and it went down again!

There were two possibilities - the Page Down or End key was jammed. I opened Notepad, typed some nonsensical lines, copied and pasted it so it would fill more than one page, and put the cursor at the beginning of the file. It jumped to the end of the first line (and not one page down).

I then checked Hotmail, and it hung like my mom told me. This wasn't Hotmail though; there was obvious video corruption at the bottom.

There could be just three things wrong now:
1) 3dfx Voodoo 3 on Windows XP and bad driver support
2) 512MB 400Mhz DDR Kingston Value RAM that never really got fixed after warranty
3) my classic solid, resounding keyboard has come to its End *sniff*

My once distraught friend sobbed.

"I gained 1 kilogram after eating a lychee!"

Perhaps, then, we should be thankful that McDonalds is taking a step towards awareness; they call it the Quarter Pounder. People like me, trying to gain weight, know damn well that we will gain at least a quarter of a pound eating it. We don't have any guarantee how much we'd gain with a Big Mac (heck, they could change the weight of a Big Mac anytime!)

Soon, with enough people filing lawsuits ("caution: contents may be hot") we will have food items named not to promise the tongue but to tell you what you can expect. Big Triple-bypass Heart Attack Mac.

Now don't take me seriously, I love McDonalds and fast food in general.

You woke up groggily, hobbled down the stairs for a drink, looked at the time and went, "Whoa. 2 AM! That's late..."

Happy I was to realize that.

On Sunday, I slept at 10 PM, like in my school days. :O I usually sleep between 2-4 AM.

Wednesday

I got on an colorful minibus from Subang Parade to Sunway Pyramid. Sweeet! The ride costed 80 sen and took 15 minutes. Very neat. Spiderman 2 was the agenda, with Douglas, Nabila, Chez and I. I enjoyed it, and I could still take the mush (this wasn't Pearl Harbor man.) A promising sequel was ready, with The Lizard, Doctor Octopus and Hobgoblin in tow, yes?

Thursday

Went to work then to college.

Friday

Met up with Seng Yip to Hartamas for the In The Front Row With Popcorn gig. Bumped into Mellissa there! Took quite a while to register a familiar face.

I didn't stay till the end so I could catch a taxi without the midnight charge. The taxi driver introduced me to the different parts of Segambut. I never knew anything besides Segambut Dalam and Luar! After what seemed like an eternity of geographical revelation through the bumpy village road, we reached my place at a whopping... RM4.60. For once, I was proud I lived here.

Saturday

Slept whole day. A first for a Saturday, really. Woke up at 10pm and headed out for a Ramli burger and teh tarik dinner. Went home, checked bank balance. Was happy.

Sunday

Played Far Cry to start the day. At midnight. I intend to sleep at the time of writing, but teh tarik, it seems, works now and not in the morning. Oh and I changed the skin to Trained (it was Keyboard from like 20th August 2003!)

Soft
You like being comfortable, no matter what you are doing. You'd rather be in old sweat pants than butt-baring miniskirts. You associate well with people and you have a little bit of what everyone likes. Try and mix it up a bit. Remember, the most unpredictable people are the predictable ones.

Saturday
Went for the AXN thing first thing in the morning; bummed around till the end and won an umbrella, mug and army knife. Picture is not of me solving it gloriously and looking to the left, seeing my competitors haplessly catching pieces falling all over.

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Sunday
Went to Sunway Pyramid and joined elitist digicam-owners, parading and comparing our digicams. Except poor Dustyhawk and Leech, of course. Went down to Starbucks to add to the Caffe Citron? Yucks movement. Got on the last PUTRA LRT, and they messed up. The train went as far as Taman Bahagia before asking us to get off and get on the next train (this repeated in KL Sentral, but I took a cab straight home from there so it didn't matter). Apparently only one track was in operation.

Monday
What, since when did I blog about weekdays? Irma kidnapped me right on time, when I was drowning my sorrows in Metallica - One's video. (Okay so Ruzy the sorely missed professional masseuse/colleague also popped in for a visit...) Chez, her accomplice, drove us to Midvalley. On the way up the escalator:

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Well at least they're honest about it...
As we were chilling down in Starbucks (no Caffe Citron this time) the office called. Timely indeed that we'd have a wonky FTP server.

Thank goodness for the short trip; it broke me away from the source of depression that would cause programmer's block. I stayed till 11:30pm to finish a webpromo like the old days.

Tuesday
Yeah I finally overslept to the point of being so zonked that my mom gave up trying to wake me up. Distraught friend called at 11am, waking me up. Distraught colleague called at 5pm, waking me up.

I had Caffe Citron at Starbucks today. It tasted like a frappucino with orange seeds crushed and blended in.

Yuck.

"You're gonna get a tree growing in your stomach!"
"Well if it gives me good posture, why not?"
"Then you'd have roots in your butt!"
"I'd imagine it coming out my feet, but yeah I can say I got my roots man."

More stories will follow I promise when I do not get my descriptive-event-blogging-and-testimonial-writing mood dashed by parental intervention.

Damn the free coffee; it kept me up till 6am Monday. Damn the airconditioner in the office; it gave me a flu.

I bought Alex's 17" monitor on Tuesday. Realizing that my keyboard was of the big-sized-connector variety, I headed over to a computer shop nearby and bought a Logitech NewTouch Keyboard. Damn it too; the Samsung one was even sissier, but the shop hadn't much choice. I like my keyboards with tactile, resounding TAK TAK TAK when I type. At least it was cheap; otherwise, I'd never have bought a Logitech.

When typing fast, some letters would just disappear. At least it had an armrest.

A Voodoo 3 graphics card never went well with Windows XP; thus limiting what I could play:


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Picture featured: Serious Sam. Without my brother to frag with, I placed both players facing each other in a standoff. Click on the picture, and you'd see from top: GLQuake and Tenebrae Quake (using Doom 3-like engine); Quake 2 and Quake 2 Evolved; Quake 3 CTF and Unreal Tournament. The left one was Alex's monitor, on a Voodoo 3; the right my Samsung 750s and Radeon 9600Pro. The keyboard on the left was a lovable retro classic keyboard without the Start key; the right, the Logitech.

Alex's unknown-brand monitor was way brighter and more vibrant compared to my pride and joy Samsung. I didn't bother to match the color.

I have yet another blog narration style to try for my story of the lost Johorean! Wait for it then.