MSN Messengar: Quickening@live.com

Friday, February 29, 2008

My Previous 24 Hours

Unlike a few lucky PC-hogs, I don’t often have the chance to hang around in cyberspace as often as I wanted to. Not only would sitting in the LCD-illuminated corner of the bedroom enables me to grow mushrooms in my ear (fungus infection actually, had it before), my ability to communicate with flesh-and-blood people without the aid of a spellchecker or C-programming stipulations would rust and shrivel to awkwardness.

I still want to be a PC-hog though.

But I have a second great love that must be appeased so with the aid of a Kenari car, dual parental units, a Down-Syndrome aunt and a midget under 3 years of age, I was in Ikano Power Centre yesterday for its book fair.

Mak only dragged me along because given the choice, she would rather just take my Popular Discount Card and be done with it. Well you can’t have your 500 tarts and pastries recipes and Popular card too (and I’m not leaving until I get my own paperback).

Popular store book fair will be going on until 9th March, me thinks. I didn’t ask anybody, I just read the big schedule board of events.

After that, the rest of the day was pretty okay. I don’t want to go into wordy detail about my yesterday (as I strayed to do) mainly because today’s February 29 is more than a specially once-in-four-years day.

It’s also my homework deadline (eeep!).

So I’m just going to throw out the photos I’ve taken with my Sony Ericsson about the last 24 hours in sequential order.


7.11am: In the shoplots area next to some big ol’ apartment complex.


I was shaken awake from a very nice dream about me falling asleep and dreaming about me falling asleep and dreaming about falling asleep ... well, you get the idea. But I had to wake up and take the car to the new 7Eleven store because someBABY abhor brown-grain bread and demands white bread.

Anyway, took the opportunity to snap a pretty interesting reverse perspective photo. The mirror reflects what’s behind me but the line of perception looks as if the side view mirror is just a frame instead of a mirror. Lucky shot, me thinks.


9am: At home...


Along the way back from the shoplots area, I’ve learned something today. When you park next to a 24-hour mamak restaurant that always serves yesterday’s rice to a flock of too-heavy-to-fly-anywhere-else fat pigeons, always, ALWAYS make sure that you’re not parking under a freaking tree.

And I already have enough trouble with crows at school. *gerrrrrrram-nya!*


11:30am: An Ikano trip.


From the back, you can tell that they’re both related. This is the 1st-generation male parental unit with the 3rd-generation infantile unit. The minor can’t be told to stand still and the elder can’t scream too loud to command the minor.

But surprisingly enough (actually, it’s not a really big surprise), minor kid did stop to check the girls in front of him (he stood still long enough for the whole escalator trip; Wow, new record!).


2pm: At home...


No major picture here. Mak just brought home a book of making 500 types of pie recipes, of which 99.9999% will never be made according to exactly instructed by the book. Currently, she’s contemplating a radical approach to apple pies. This will be the last time this forbidden fruit shall be witnessed in its natural state before it condemns under extreme pastry mutations.

Actually, it turned out pretty good. Pie was gone before there was any chance to share photo evidence (burp!).


6pm: At Kelana Jaya. Click photo for 800 by 600 pixel image.


Okay, I said I didn’t go to school yesterday. Well, not completely. I didn’t enter the workstation compound, just needed to drop a package of nicely printed paper about the merits of virtual reality into the IT faculty pigeon box. I had parked in the residential area and it was a pain trying to get back to it, mostly because the damn cars kept making U-turns where they aren’t supposed to be making U-turns and I couldn’t cross to the other side.

In irritation, I photographed a row of organized disobedience. Some of them were kind enough to signal their U-turn before they break the law. Click the photo for a bigger picture.


7pm: At home... Again


Previously I’ve mentioned that there’s a shiny new faculty that had opened at school with their shiny new kitchenware. To complete this illusion of grandeur, there’s also a shiny new café, complete with indoor plants and wooden furniture.

The food, however, is better left to the imagination. This is a lasagne set that costs about RM$4.50. It’s a bargain but then again, you stomach what you paid for. It’s nice but it needs Ajinomoto. I’m not going to completely diss my school’s first attempt at the canteen business however. I’m going to try the cheeseburger next, maybe that’ll go down better (with a litre of Coca-Cola maybe).


8pm: At Santai Restaurant in Muatira Damansara...


Hehehe, okay, taking photos of a pregnant lady due in May would probabaly not be under the merits of sisterly love but I just wants to show the person who’s been eating most of the mushroom steak MySis ordered. Just confirmed the gender; a little brother for BabyNabil. No name yet but it’ll probably start with the letter ‘N’.

The family tried the Santai Restaurant yesterday, taking all the western stuff. The portions are big, we’re practically stuffed and our bellies were round. But the next time, I’ll go with the black pepper (mushroom was too tame, me thinks).

So some 15 hours after the last photo was taken, here I am, back at school. My next 24 hours (though with or without pictures is yet uncertain) would be
-finishing up that homework report,
-giving Host Café’s cheeseburger a try,
-checking car for anymore essence of avian menace,
-going back to Ikano to sneak-buy that paperback (Ayah hates me reading storybooks; they’re the bane of my CGPA)
-gather every available coins in all the couches in the house.

Now I really, reeeeeeeaally wish I’m a PC-hog.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

What’s Your Favourite Death Wish?

I was listening to Pop Shuvit’s Mara Bahaya mp3 while tip-tapping away at the keyboards when it dawned to me how the music really makes me want to get up and going, do something that gets the adrenaline pumping.

Hardly a blog entry would achieve that.

It was either I stop listening to our local music bands (hehehe, not really...) else I get out of my chair and play chicken on the LDP freeway. Luckily there is a third option because the former would upset the local music industry and the latter would upset the MBPJ (chicken lady on LDP, news at eight).

My substitute was to look for a few good death wishes online (heaven praise to Google).

A death wish usually mean a person who is contemplating a last-act, final-resort action before succumbing to death. This term usually applied to depressed, nothing-left-to-lose folks.

However, in the confidence of a better outcome, to describe a death wish associated with an adrenaline junkie is just to say, “He’s plain crazy”. Hooked on the natural body’s response to a fight-or-flight situation; these things really get the juices pumping and is a healthy thing to do.

Of course, if in doing the said death wish don’t get you killed.



Mmm-mmmm, fast cars. A key to a girl’s heart is a key to a silver Mercedes Benz SLK (well, at least it works with this girl). Brutally honest fact, I love to drive. I take every opportunity to get into any of my parents’, siblings’, relatives’ friends’ car and be in charge of the steering wheel. Ask me to buy sugar in 7-Eleven at 3 in the morning? No problem! Let me get the car keys...

I suppose it’s one thing I inherited from my grandfather. He owned cars during the British era, when cars are so scarce, the roads are practically empty. His last car was a Kancil, since it’s so light and speedy.

Speedy is what I do best in a car. My death wish is to drive a real Mercedes Benz SLK and take it on the longest, straightest, emptiest highway in Germany (they got no speed limit!).



Aaaah yes. The gloves, the ropes, the carribena, the tight-strapped hip harness men won’t wear without a really good reason... I took a youth camp course when I was 14 and my favourite activity was definitely the rock climbing. Though it was a damn huge rock I was tasked to conquer, in retrospect, it was probably pretty tame.

In reality, I’m so scared of heights, I get nauseous just trying to walk on a pedestrian bridge. I’ve once got so nervous on a flying-fox at one course in (Outward Bound, Lumut), that I practically cried like a baby (the instructors let me down by ladder *shame-shame*).

Even so, given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (or rather the last-thing-I-might-do-in-a lifetime opportunity) and with a rock this big and precarious looking, I shake out my tracksuits.



Haha, the piece-de-resistance. Yes, I might be tempted to jump through the open door of an airplane with an oversized umbrella. Still, it’ll definitely be my ultimate death wish, suspended only by clouds. On a whimsical note, I often wonder if what skydivers felt is what birds feel on their first belly-flop before flight.

Believe it or not, there’s a sky-diving centre in Malaysia. Located in Segamat, Fras Skydiving Centre offers beginners’ static-line course (whatever that means). Read a first-hand report from someone who was probably forced to do it, here: http://allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2005/2/12/interests/10119705&sec=mi_interests_outdoor

Racing cars, rock-climbing and sky-diving would be my favourite death wishes, the thing that I might do before I’ll die happy (Dear Big-Guy-Above, please don’t play ominous music, that was not a literal prayer).

So I’m going to throw this question out to all readers. What’s your favourite death wish? Do you think you can achieve it? How old would you think you’ll get around to it?

Games Review: King’s Quest 2 (VGA Remake) by AGD Interactive

After I’ve updated my anti-virus yesterday, I decided to clean up my old-old-old folders. You wouldn’t believe all the junk I’ve collected and backed-up throughout all the 3 PCs in my lifetime (Mak was a pioneer systems analyst before she retired so our family was computer oriented since the early 1980s).

I was checking through a file that’s almost 5 years old when I came across this pretty piece of a gem. Dusty gem, faded colours with rusty fittings but still a gem.


King’ Quest 2: Romancing The Stones



Your humble, loyal, utterly devoted servant. He’s a bit... strange.


A long, long time ago before there was Playstation 2 (yes, there was life before Playstation), there was the PC and the games that depended on them. I’m practically old enough to remember original Sierra Entertainment Games (before it became Sierra On-Line).

However, this game is not it.


Look, a house! Maybe if you ask politely for directions, the mysterious inhabitants won’t try to eat you.



R-E-S-P-E-C-T spells ‘pumpkin pie’, lady!


Actually, it’s only half-and-half. You see, the graphics here are from a remake of the second of one of the first games ever built for the PC, King’s Quest series. You can tell by its generic title. Before there was Everquest, there was King’s Quest 2: Romancing the Throne, a 12-bit graphic and text-based gameplay.

Oh, please don’t make me explain what is 12-bit graphics or text-based gameplay. You’ll make me sound old.


The game utilizes every animal known in the monster book.



Just because he’s the only river-taxi guy doesn’t mean he could charge a freaking $$$&%*...


Riding on Sierra’s success, AGD Interactive is a small-profit development team that is remaking some of Sierra’s old games. For fun. So this means that this game can be downloaded for free.

I don’t mind classic as long as the gameplay (and visual) are pleasing so I took a nostalgic trip last night. Following the continuation of King’s Quest 1, your hero is Sir Graham, now the king of the nation, albeit a very lonely one.


Oooo, spooky church. What a welcoming façade.



Stop for a moment to enjoy that nice woody digitised scenery.


You need a pretty girl to occupy the big red chair next to your throne so in the impulse of a dream, you set off to a land far away on an adventure of point-and-click proportions to save baby ducklings, fetch a basket of flowers, trick a half-blind witch (no difficulty there; really...), deal with grumpy librarians and get in the middle of the clichéd vampires vs. werewolves war.

Oh yeah, you have to remember to rescue a damsel in distress somewhere at some point.


Ol’ King Neptune wants something for you just as you wants something from him.



Welcome to Surrealism Isle. Please follow the completely safe route to the tower.


Although this is a games review, I’m not going to be totally serious on the aspects of the Four Commandments of a Good Game as I always do, mainly because this was a classic of elderly proportions. I liked it, it’s nostalgic to me and mostly, you still can download this game for free (took me a while to find a working download link; haven’t I mentioned that this game is almost 5 YEARS old?).

The download includes both the game, the speech package and its music package as well. Beforewared though, it’s over 100MB... (hehehe!).

Click here to Download this Game: http://download.chip.eu/en/King_s-Quest-2-VGA-Romancing-the-Stones-2.0_159915.html
Click here for complete walkthrough: http://www.agdinteractive.com/KQ2-walk.php

Click here to Download the Previous Game (Quest For the Crown): http://download.chip.eu/en/King_s-Quest-1-VGA-Quest-for-the-Crown-3.0_159895.html
Click here for Quest For the Crown’s complete walkthrough: http://www.agdinteractive.com/KQ1-walk.php

You’ll Never See These In Any Bookstore

I’m supposed to be having my semester break starting last Monday. I’m using the term ‘supposed to’ in purely rhetorical terms because come hell or high water, I’m still going to battle NKVE morning traffic to secure my place in the PC workstation for the internet.

Cyber café? Naaaah...
I’m saving money to buy a new book. Witness my totally serious stance to literature.


I know what you’re thinking. Damn, my thighs are huge...*sigh*


I’ve read every book you see here at least once and it’s still not as much as I would like. I haven’t read enough books to declare which one would make an interesting review. I’m practically starved for fiction at the moment and my Nuffnang pay doesn’t come up this month. Checking around for second hand books though.

Granted, the book I planned to buy is something I’ve already sneak-read in The Curve’s Borders bookstore (if anybody found a RM$1 bookmark - that's literally is one ringgit - please, please return to this absent-minded beggar *boo-hoo*).

And the real book I would love to buy is still in hardcover and really, reeeeeeeeally wanted book... is no longer in publication (see my Wishlist). Most of the books I’m targeting are either in the romance or fantasy or mystery section. Preferably something with a third of each.

But you know what I really like to see? Not necessarily to read but something definitely interesting to browse through. Bookstores stocked with these titles. I swear you’ll never see books like these unless probably in a shady cult store.

*****


Santa Claus’s Travel Guide: Includes nice places, not-so-nice places, nice-to-be-naughty places and regions hostile to unidentified flying sleds.

War and Peace; written in SMS language.

Pop-out Children’s Book: Teach them the Birds and the Bees Caution: illustrations in the pop-outs may or may not have been exaggerated.

Oxymoronic Dictionary: Where everything means the opposite of what it is.

Do-It-Yourself Acupuncture: A step-by-step instructional guide from ‘pincushion’ to ‘pufferfish’ to ‘Stick It Like How Julius Caesar Popped’.

Guide to Profanities and Obscene Hand Gestures: Get ready to spit the ***king crap out of your grandmother and her favourite lesbian stripper.

Must Watch Movies as divided into New Rating Scheme:
G-ratings (nobody gets the girl)
PG-ratings (good guy gets the girl)
R-ratings (bad guy gets the girl)
X-ratings (everybody gets the girl!)
XXX-ratings (everybody gets the girl, her mother-in-law and their Chihuahua)


Chicken Overkill Recipes: The best ways to prepare ayam kampung (free-range chicken) after you’ve ran it over with your car. Try the ‘Chicken Die Standing’.

Complete Illustrated Works of Karma Sutra: *no really, where the hell can you find a thorough and explicit comprehension anywhere nowadays?*

Fun Ways to Nearly Kill Yourself While Travelling: North Korean Edition (note: 1100 pages thick).

Malaysian Judicial System: Step One; cellphone etiquette. Step two; pretend ignorance of any video. Step three; escape to remote locations in Southern Hemisphere...

1001 Excuses You Can Use for Not Doing Your Homework: “...I’m currently going through déjà vu and amnesia at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”

PS: On a more useful tip, I recommend Sams Teach Yourself Programming with Java by Rogers Cadenhead if you want to advance on Java programming. Either the author was high on a caffeine-beer mixture when he wrote this, or he really did have a candy-apple red thong underwear with embroidered text “My dog can beat up Paris Hilton’s dog.”

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Gave The TwoSuperHeroes Their Own Award

Hahaha, really I liked the tagged blog awards. As it turns out from yesterday, the twosuperheroes had been passing a tag award of bloggy-ness to some folks who in their estimates.

Actually, which by standards of their estimates, I was at first, dunno either to be grateful or suspicious. Baaaaah, having a blog of only 3 months old and coming from an established twosome of infamous recognition, I suppose gratefulness should come first (I’ll be suspicious later).

Unfortunately, how am I to answer to such is totally no clue. With examples from the recent Oscar thank-you-thank-you-thank-all-of-you speeches. Just goes to show that I’m going through a bloggers’ block phase. You could probably tell as I’m blogging about this instead of usually diverse, purposeful and intelligent entries.

Okay, my posts are at least best two out of three.






These are the awards they so nicely had passed around to not only myself but to Yozoranitesky, L'abeille and X-T, Dreckker and their statistical rival Andrew Ooi.

I’ve been to all these fellas’ blogs and I’m glad to having another thing in common with them. Unfortunately, they are also some of the folks I would have had wanted to pass the awards too.

Aww, damn...

Well, time for another blog hunt. I’ve yet to fix up the other 8-Facts-About-Me Tag by ImamKhalid (shucks!). Hmm, looks like my bloggers’ block is slowly being... er, unblocked.

In the meantime, I’ve thought to placate them superheroes with a midget GIF picture and hopefully this will satisfy them until I find some real links.


A tinnie animated pic for their sidebar. Mine would had already been on display at the header ages ago (hahaha!).

William Blake's Auguries of Innocence

I bet that not a lot of Malaysian can say that they had ever been enamoured of historical poetry. Nowdays, words that rhyme are either from a primary school class learning nursery English or something out of the music billboard charts. Then again, in retrospect, lax in the rules of rhyming is forgivable in the former and yet doesn’t necessary apply to the latter.

Screw me, at times my English is too good, me thinks.

I often surf to other blogs - and I sincerely won’t name them - and at times felt a bit smirky or mixed emotions at the state of the written English amongst Malaysian bloggers. Words like mixed Manglish-ness and the -larr at end quote.

That’s not enough, at times bloggers even colourize their words with fancy italics, bold font and multi-rainbow text in sections to the over-pimped extend that brings attention to the subject matter, but sort of flops in the overall concept of being an intelligible and professional entry.

Blame it on the SMS generation, were we all speak in so many abbreviations *sigh*.

I’m no English genius. Hell, I don’t want to lecturer English (of course, I confess I sometimes intentionally slip into street language myself; sorrie-lee...). But it’s kind of getting hard, to find a nice, interestingly written piece that’s isn’t wordy-pimped, graphic-overused and is not some online thesis instructional guide.

Blog entries and the language used for blogging, I think, should be more like Wikipedia entries. Clear-cut, precise, understandable to read and with relevant content.

Granted, not a lot of us got A1 in their SPM scores and consistent A+ grades in their university English papers (being a female Malay, I’ve been bullied of being a cheater amongst the rich Chinese girls at Puberty Institution, aka Secondary School), but when it comes to having an international target in mind, maybe it helps with a little grammar discretion.

Bah, I don’t know how you put up this far. I’ve intended to post one of my favourite historical poems (yes, I love old-fashioned Romantic-era poetry. That’s not odd, is it?) and here I’ve strayed to lack of high-quality local English blogs (though, they do pay some damn good attention when they open emotionally-charged discussions).

This poem is the very first long poem I had found myself being drawn into without some sort of educational requirement. In simple terms, I didn’t find it because I had to write a report of something poetry.

Maybe it’s because I was 13 when I read it for the first time. Suddenly I realized, I shouldn’t have been so quick to wish wanting to quickly grow up and face adult life. To me, William Blake had reminded us not to take the importance of having a childhood phase for granted. Who he wrote Auguries of Innocence was as if through the dreams of a child...

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

More Weeds...

Add to Technorati Favorites Blogroll.net Bloggapedia, Blog Directory - Find It! Blog Flux Directory blog directory Blog Directory & Search engine Show off your blog Blogarama - The Blog Directory BlogGod Webloogle Blog Directory Blogging Fusion Blog Directory All Malaysian Bloggers Project