Anyway, after work I headed down to KL. I didn't get to hitch a ride with Hanna, so I walked from Bangsar LRT to Midvalley, to meet Davina and share a cab to Mont Kiara for the Sunrise Carlsberg Jazz Fest. I met up Syefri at the World Cyber Games (and bumped into Nael and Justine). There, I got a subscription for GameAxis for 12 issues at RM66 (RM5.50 X 12) and hauled back a free Sonic Gear SP221x 2.1 speaker set. Or, as Syefri says, a subwoofer set with free magazine subscription. This was more than the previous RM52 bundle though. :(

Davina and I failed to get a cab, so we got on the Triton which was now RM1. (Twice its old price! Buggers.) At that exact moment Hanna called and asked how to get there, as she was lost in KL after picking Carolyn up. I told her to head over to Bangsar LRT, as the bus was headed there anyway. Neat.

After much twisting and turning, we got parking in Desa Sri Hartamas, where we met up Vignesh for dinner at Devi's Corner. Today's cheese naan was a different affair! It was excellently cheese-laden. (Cheesy would not sound right, yes?) Syefri messaged me saying that Julian Mokhtar was ending his set with Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child. Argh! Missed the blues shredder. We then walked over to Sunrise Mont Kiara, and the picture-taking began.

You know what? I'm gonna screw my tradition of putting small fonts on centered image captions.

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Ayunami does not look like Linda Onn when she's looking spastic. I must say she pulls it off better than Rocket.
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If Az was here, he'd say Hanna was in the hood.
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Zal and uh, Cosmic Funk Express
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Soft Touch, from afar (so you can see the stage)
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Shelley and Alda
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That's right - Az on an electric hollowbody guitar!
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When Davina met Vignesh - a tale of two photographers
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Jose Thomas rips it out on a nylon-string electric Godin. Sweeet. Rozhan plays bass in the background, for Grooveunction.
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He is then featured with a brand-less Stratocaster; very interesting indeed as the humbucker is on the neck position (not bridge!), with the other positions filled by two hotrails.
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A very sweet looking Yamaha (though the headstock reminds me of Samick/Greg Benett instead.)
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Mia Palencia of Double Take joins to add vocals to all that jazz.
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I noticed that the grain of the wood was different here; it looked like it once hosted a Floyd Rose, but now used a Wilkinson floating bridge.
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Rozhan does wah-ed metal effects ala Metalasia.
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The party hipped and hopped with Phlowtron on stage.
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Priya and I agree that Phil looks like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (plus Flea played saxophone too!)
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The ending was a funky one, with funky drunks on stage. (Geddit? Er, you know funky monks? RHCP?) I took a cab home, midnight charge and all and it was only RM7! Neato!
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Left: My 2.1's in the box; right: I tried to use it as a guitar amp but failed.
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My Sonic Gear 2.1 speakers in action.
Addendum: I also bumped into Sarah and friends there, without the distraught friend though. Where art thou?

Monday

I went to work, then to Bintang Walk, to Bentley. I saw the Ibanez GSA 370-QM I so longed for since before I first failed subjects in college. I extolled the priceworthy features of the yummilicious butterscotch guitar to MW, going "lookatit! It's got double-locking floating bridge, H/S/H pickup configuration, super fast action, jumbo frets and 24 frets... eh waitaminute. (Counts dot inlays) 15, 17, 19, 21... 22... 22! 22? 22 frets?"

Disappointed that my dream (affordable) guitar had 22 and not 24 frets, I shook MW hard. At the shoulders. In a way, her reverbrating scream said all I wanted to say.

Tuesday
I surprisingly still remembered how to drive around the driving school circuit. I bummed around with the Uptown Girl at, you guessed it, Uptown. Disappointed that SLC the big corner guitar store was emptied out, I bought picks from Harmony Music.

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The 0.96 pick was not only thick, it was huge! (As you can see it's wider than the nut.) The finger pick was too soft for my liking.

I got on the bus, and it took me to One Utama, where I saw something that old buddy Patrick Soo had been telling me was a rarity:
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This would be the first Transformer I'd ever bought with my own money. I later hopped to Davina's office, while I toyed with Arcee. (What's wrong with toying with a toy huh?) It felt like I was half my age, she was twice her age, and I was waiting for my mommy (who just bought me a new toy) to finish work.

Wednesday
I hauled my 19" monitor to a computer shop a few blocks away from home, gaining stretch marks on my right arm, hence my MSN nickname "nineteen inches and my right arm hurts".

And now, for more food updates:

In a little quaint residential area of Taman Sri Sinar, Segambut, lies a recent discovery. Along the row that had the only KFC, was a 7 Eleven that was not open... and a mamak next to it, to my pleasant surprise, serving cheese naan!

What is with my fixation with cheese naan? Perhaps I have been slow to catch the trend, but I only knew of it last year. It would quickly gain commercial appeal among even hardened fast food junkies like me, as it wasn't oily like the roti canai variants, instead having a crusty, plain texture, with cheese melted upon it. Much like pizza.

This one was nice; it came with fish curry, dhall curry and some unidentifiable, funky-tasting sauce. I asked for condensed milk, and asked my brother (who ordered cheese naan after me) to dip his cheese naan in condensed milk, and then in the fish curry. (I thought condensed milk and fish curry made a heavenly marriage.) He said it tasted like santan.

Santan! Ah, it all made sense now. Santan would be curry with milk, and this was a cool accidental discovery. Plus, you could control your curry-to-milk ratio.

Other good news:

The STAR LRT now is fully Touch N Go compliant. One less stored-value ticket to carry. :)

The Midvalley KTM Komuter station is now open, but KL Sentral's ticket booths have stickers with the old map, without Midvalley on it. It does however cost RM1. Taking the Triton bus from there would cost 50 sen.

Why don't you shave? Your beard is not getting dense
You look like a pervert! Now I have no pretense
I'm not buying you teddybears and giving geography lessons
I'm tired of looking cute and pandering to your innocence
Alas curse my restlessness it was something I couldn't evade
I found a cure for the itch by taking out a blade

On Saturday, I headed to KLCC to er, run some errands. During the awkward distance between post-errand and rock-on-at-Taylor's-Battle-of-the-Bands, I called a friend. I found an auspicious, less crowded place to chat - the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra entrance, near the RHB Bank. Not only was the air-conditioning auspicious, the flow, was, too! All I had to do was stand in one place, by a pillar too big to hug, and I'd bump into Stephanie, she-robot-trekkie and a mat motor girl who carried an extra helmet in case her friends wanted a ride to the Battle Of The Bands. Unfortunately, mat motor girl hitched a ride on her friend's now full car, so I had to find my own way again. I found another way to whittle time away, registering to take my driving exam again. From Asia Jaya, I took a bus to Sunway Pyramid. I called Hannna to ask, "Eh which way to walk out to Taylor's?" How nicely my timing was, and she sent me as she was passing by there, driving rather neurotically.

There itself I met an ultimate lean mean drinking machine and her friend, Ali G, Ian (I didn't know he read my blog), Frus, Isabella, and undie we-are-rockers-too Shelley and Az.

Oh, and Debbie was one of the emcees! I'd say she did a better job than the female emcees of last year's. She wasn't booed badly. Hehe. The sound was worse at the beginning though, and did not do justice to John's Mistress. Limestone's vocals sang (and meant) "sorry I can't be... perfect." Mad Fish was cool, with a guitarist singing A Perfect Circle with proper Maynard James Keenan growl (and later a female vocalist who for some reason reminded me of Dee, singing The Darkness - I Believe In A Thing Called Love, which was the point where the crowd started jumping properly.) Versatile was cool too, doing interestingly modified versions of Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls and Fuel, though they either couldn't find a distortion pedal and used a fuzz pedal, or they had to use the amp's effects.

The sound system was worse than an average small-time gig... last year's was better. Funky Dogs was cool, playing Jamiroquai - Canned Heat, while Trash Dogs did Deeper Underground. Beat The System looked the part for their P.O.D. sound. Virtuoso and Larva Eve II did tributes to Guns 'N Roses (with the latter doing a cool 7-string guitar, 6-string bass solo.) Dragon Red (featuring C. Loco) and Disagree ended the show.

The crowd, despite having a considerable balance of the sexes, was far less considerate than Hoobastank's, to my delight. I retired to the backstage (security didn't care already) and met someone who had been randomly thrown into a MSN chatroom with me by a nefarious dentist-by-day self-promoting rock star. What a small world.

Thankfully, my neck didn't hurt the next day.

Yes, I have spared you readers the pictures; my el cheapo digicam doesn't have optical zoom or a proper autofocus system. There was one picture I wish I did take though, during the prize-giving ceremony - it would've featured Debbie patting Loco's bald head as he squatted on stage. The caption would've been "Debbie shares a tender moment with Loco on stage."

Wednesday

I FFKed William for his pre-birthday cheese naan.

My colleague restrung a friend's beautiful Ibanez GIO RG (as it had rusty strings) but didn't take into account the complications of a Floyd Rose-style floating bridge. My colleague's friend apparently stopped going nuts over it after getting an anime-loving girlfriend. They sent the guitar to One Utama and I followed. I did try to call William, but realized that he lost his mobile phone, and was not in the office.

We walked into The Guitar Collection and I described the problem to them. A friendly dude popped a 9 volt battery under the bridge (the bridge now was in a position where the pitch would go down, instead of up as before, when it was not balanced.) Another dude who was jamming on an electric guitar helped him tune it, and when it was done, the dude played squealing harmonic solos ala Pantera. After all that, my colleague thanked the guy and took out his wallet. The dude said it was free. I guess having the oppurtunity to wing the whammy was good enough a reward. (I suppose he didn't dare try it on the ESP LTD's lying around.)

Thursday

There was a sense of elated "I'm FREEE!!!" and a sense of impending doom after my final Networking And The Internet exam.

I won a double-pass to the Alien Versus Predator screening in TGV KLCC; although it said 21st August, I tried to claim it right after the exam. As I lined up by myself in the queue, two hot urbanite chicks came up to me:

Chick 1: Hey we have an extra pass for The Sisters. Would you like to buy it?
Me: Er... I haven't heard of the movie.
Chick 2: We'll sell it to you cheaper of course.
Me: (looks over a pillar and sees a poster of the movie, thinking "oh it's a horror movie") Nah, I have a free tickets to collect.

They then moved on to the next person in queue. At that exact moment I felt immense regret! Dumb idiot!

I should've said, "So... which one of you lovely ladies wouldn't be able to watch the movie?" Argh argh argh. While me going would not guarantee that they'd stay around after to chat, it should still be interesting, since it was a horror movie with a female stranger. Or two female strangers. Ah hell, if one couldn't make it, the other one was still hot. Dammit. Dammit.

I called my friend that I was supposed to meet for lunch and told her the story. "You see? I sacrificed a movie with strangers for you!" She said she would've understood. Grrr.

I then headed over to Do Re Mi in Chow Kit via Monorail, to drool over guitars.


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This is the place; it's as wide as Bentley Music!
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Two of the inner rows of guitars, of which loads are Samicks.
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B.C.Rich is rare, what more 7-string versions. Sadly neither have floating bridges.
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Three VAX 7-string guitars! Shiny and lickable.
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The cheapest VAX there.
Yes, I did meet my friend and her taufufa-smashing bunch for lunch after all. Taufufa should not be smashed; it defeats the purpose of these sugar-water-drenched large white clumps!

Oh and I finally uploaded this article:
Hoobastank Live In Malaysia

Friday was with William and I headed to Fathima's Bangsar for cheese naan. Of course, due credit is to Ledwina for telling me about it. With the right salty bits sprinkled on a creatively-cut naan, this would be another place to sing praises of.

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We then walked over to Starbucks, Telawi area, Bangsar for the second-last KLue Chillout Series.

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Kevin Tan or Broken Scar, singer/songwriter/newest-addition-to-John's-Mistress, doing some interesting instrumental jazz stuff in between hearty acoustic songs.
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Jerome Kugan sings soul so damn well, it's scary... and this, over electronica.
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Hardesh and Az make up the Dalcha Duo. I finally got to see Az with a worthy match; they took turns to do acoustic maestro fills, climaxing at an Arabic/neoclassical song which had all the WHOAOHMYGIDDYGUITARPPLAYINGNESS of The Eagles, when they both played the same solo to perfect rhythm.
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Er, Nabila reads.
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Peter Hassan Brown and Markiza Brown end the gig on a happy note.
On Saturday, I walked from Sunway Pyramid to Sunway College for Isabella's gig. I met some KLue people there, and on the drink-getting detour, I bumped into huggable Britney Fan #1 Zahra and partner-in-crime Priya. Aiyeee nonstop hugs. :)

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Back there, Flatline was on. Look at their pretty, shiny glossy guitars! (I missed Sgt. Weener's Arms when I went for lunch.)
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This Body Broken came on, but their set was broken by:
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Rain. We all ran to the tents. I wonder what that says about their singing. And I was just thinking, "dammit it's a hot day and I'm thirsty."
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Hey... this dude looks familiar. Implications galore.
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You may be able to make out his face. More implications galore!
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Furniture, the post-rock band formerly known as RUSH.
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That, my friend, is a post-rock setup.
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That, my friend, is how you play in a post-rock band.
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Zoltan!
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Note the bandage on the left-handed Fender Mustang.
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I won prizes! The mousepad leaves a funky smell on your wrist though.
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I finally got to see Duan with his band after hearing his intimate session with the guitar. There was one particular song I liked more on the acoustic, because of the interesting guitar chords... though I can't say whether he is better solo.
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Ham fiddles with effects.
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Syarul of Love Me Butch looks like he just swam off an island.
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KLPHQ, or Kuala Lumpur Post-Harmonic Quartet; we anticipated a very post sound and were not disappointed. I pronounced them as kelepak.
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This is what made his vocals sound haunting - I don't know what it is, but it sounded like reverb/delay drawn out till everything was one long howl. For all you know post-rock bands probably have a stompbox simply called Post.
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It could not get any cooler than this.
Oh, and I shook hands with the inverted-right-mouse-hand of the Quake God, and the picture-taking Just.

Sunday was just about Hoobastank. I bumped into Jamie, Caryna (who's got some nice shots on her blog) and Mystery Wolf. The crowd was dare I say comfortably less. Less elitist rockers and all round sweaty shirtless rockers. More nubile international school chicks for me!

I'll link the review when it's up. Yeah, that's the end of the pictures... I didn't bring the digicam, as it was too much hassle. That explains why I gave the media pass to Sara so she could take pictures with her camera with optical zoom. Oh, and despite the complimentary tickets that Syefri and I got (we love you Shaz and Universal Music) that had the complimentary drinks cancelled out, we got 2 cans of Coca Cola anyway. :)

Heck, we tried to enter the VIP area without any fancy tags, and security let us in without any fuss (one said to the other "ini dah cukup umur niii...")

It ended prematurely, at 9:50pm. Bummer. Sara's parents were so kind as to give me a lift to Hartamas, where I found out what a small world it could be on one table. The cab home costed less than RM5. Joy! Oh, and the About Me! page has been updated with more links.

I installed Catalyst 4.9 drivers for my Radeon 9600Pro, overwriting the 4.4's. Or so I thought. Error. "Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup." I uninstalled the drivers and rebooted, reinstalling... this time, it could not find the file specified. That was merely the start of a descent into driver hell.

Reboot. My video card driver was dead, and it was replaced by a VGASave driver. After much research on a very slow Streamyx connection (downloading drivers at below 10kbps) and a night of rebooting, going into Safe Mode, using Driver Cleaner, disabling the conflicting NVIDIA nForce2 AGP Host to PCI Bridge, and not having anything aforementioned work, I found the solution, to my problem, at least.

The driver installer extracted installation files into a folder first. I peeked inside and installed CPanel/Setup.exe. That worked! Thus, the next step would be Driver/Setup.exe - while it did scare me a bit with a "Zero Display Service" error, it did ask to reboot, as customary after a successful driver installation.

Catalyst 4.7 was installed! I then installed 4.9, again, with the "Zero Display Service" error, but at least it worked! (Yes my driver hell could've been because I jumped from 4.4 to 4.9...)

Now before Nvidia groupies bash my head over, this problem happens with Nvidia cards as well, on nForce2 and VIA chipsets. And yes, I never did figure out the damn GeForce4 TI4200 128MB 4x AGP card that insisted on being in PCI mode. Hurrah for a 3dfx Voodoo3 16MB PCI card too, running incompatibly in Windows XP.

In a way, that escapade was hell on my computer. I went through all this trouble for a smooth walk in hell on Mars. Yes, the pretty Doom 3. Prettier than Far Cry in some parts, but geeking out there will be saved for a proper article.

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Beware Azira Aziz, she Erases All Frames on your 100MB-worth-of-pictures-stored digicam. Her identity has been hidden enough by my strangling hands.

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And this is my little Stratocaster. I love the Zara who hails gifts from Bali. Fortunately, I already took precaution, preventing her grubby klutziness from my precious nylon-stringed guitar. Anyone knows where to get polish for it?

On Friday, I headed down for more cheese naan. Dipping it in condensed milk, and then fusing it with fish curry, was heavenly. On the way there, I saw this:

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The Central Market Folk Quintet
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Coolness! A pickup for a twelve-string that didn't need surgery!

On Saturday I went down to Times Square for the Hoobastank Battle Of The Bands Final Auditions. The winners?

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Edge Of Fire (3rd place)
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Reco (2nd place, a mix of two bands)
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Vespertine (1st place, will be opening alongside Disagree at Hoobastank's concert in Malaysia)

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I headed to Coffee Bean for a White Chocolate Dream but got a Dulce instead, after a dehydrating day in the sun. It was toffee-flavored. Note the name; it would be an interesting way to pick up people at coffee houses, yes? Walk over, look at the cup, and say hi.

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On Monday I headed yet again to Central Market lane; this time, there was a sad-looking mime who needed a dime.

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This time around, I converted Syefri into a fan; he ordered the garlic-topped cheese naan, while I tried the cheese naan without garlic.

Oh and there are new links in my About Me! page. Lovably neurotic Graceshu, Angelceres, Bloodlet (a 30-something whose blog does not revolve around politics) and Bernard.

It was after work, and I was headed to Ahameedia's for a cheese naan dinner. I was walking down Central Market and I noticed a quite complete band of buskers; one on the shaker, one percussionist, and three guitarists, most notably, the one in purple, mop-haired, with a Morris twelve-string guitar. They played All Along The Watchtower and Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here. Coolness.

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As I took this picture, a familiar face called out "Albert!" and I turned and who was it but the one who blogs neurotically, the (in)famous Grace Shu. She then brought me to meet her friend (who has an amusing blog) at Liquid. Yes Liquid the gay bar.

I walked in front of her, asking her to watch my back. Just in case.

I ordered ice lemon tea, and it tasted of tomato juice! In case they spiked it with guy-lovin'-hormones, I told the dude that we'd just look at Grace during whatever conversation we'd have. Just in case.

Grace went on about her sucky boyfriends. And here, had I not walked down this lane, she'd be meeting a married dude who had a kid. :O

It was 7pm, lest you worry; we left when the sun was still up. Besides, I'd been in gay bars for rock gigs like Blue Planet and Blue Boy with Syefri. The gig organizers I know are heterosexual, and they say other bars won't let them play there. Sad situation, really. (Of course, the crowd that shows up are rockers; the regular barflies come later.)

For the record, I am not homophobic, but you can read what Justin Guber has to say. Just in case.

Oh and on the bus ride home, I finally got to take a picture of this restaurant signboard, somewhere in Kepong:

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I've met Sarah at quite a few KLue Chillout Sessions and not knew it. (She was my distraught friend's friend.)

I found out why their friend was also so familiar, two days later, at the Sunday session. Turns out she was a girl we met at an excolleague's party, where I was used as a scapegoat. (Let's call him Fei, as his real name; he is shameless and this is a shameless plug!) He was asking her questions about this sweet-young-Mariah-Carey-lookalike, supposedly doing the getting-to-know-you's for me.

Today was no different; a local rockstar celebrity tried to hit on her. Well for one he didn't look too rockstar, and I fear revealing too much as these people are all online, and I know just as well as you do that we often find time to do our research.

To my relief, she said that Fei was better at er, flirting.

I found the post-flirt analysis/dissectomy amusing. The rockstar dude asked if she hung out at the mamak. She told him, "no". This, she said, as we walked to Devi's Corner where I had my tummy-disturbing cheese naan.

Hmm. She could've said, "The Mamak? Is that along Jalan Sultan Ismail (or high-class eatery lane) somewhere? Does it serve escargot? I love Italian food!"

Girls, remember this coverline! It will get you out of mamak dates. Guys, remember that escargot is French, and that the time you save after being rejected could be used by giving me the name and number of the chick who actually reads my blog and uses this coverline.

Now you must be thinking, hey why'd she give her number if she wasn't interested? She did give the rockstar her number...

Oh, and by Nabila's request, we have some nicely framed shots of Friday's gig. Yeah I didn't post them earlier because I was a 56Ker for a very long time, and I wanted to be considerate.

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Azmyl Yunor

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Duan of Seven Collar T-shirt

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Nabila Nasir the distraught poet

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Shelley featuring Az

P.S. Happy birthday to the lickable Jay! Ironically, Sarah's birthday was the day before, and she recognized Jay from my digicam.