6:30pm on a friday nite. it's raining oh so heavily outside and i cant even leave the office yet. Not because i have tons of work to do but because some stupid GIGANTICass jam crippled basically the entire traffic flow in this area. It's either being stuck in ur car listening to stupid DJs talking way too much on air, or being stuck in the office surfing irritatingly familiar websites again and again. I chose the latter obviously.
i called up a fren who's on her way back home twice just to get a feel of how bad the jam was. 40 minutes after the first call she'd barely moved 20 meters. OMFG!!!

pharmacist in lab coat: yes how can i help you?
me: i need something for my gastric pain.
pharmacist in lab coat: how severe is it? me: severe enough for me to leave a fairly important meeting, drive 20 minutes here to get the meds from you because the chewable tablets that the company nurse gives me, they dont cut it anymore.
pharmacist in lab coat: sorry?
me: yes...erm..pretty severe. i'm in a lot of pain. i can hardly stand.
pharmacist in lab coat: oh.... take........this (hands me a packet of pills). it's only 10 ringgit.
me: there's 7 tiny pills....each would be.....a dollar 40. they better do the job
pharmacist in lab coat: (grin)
and boy did it work. i swallowed one with a glass of water i begged from the mamak restaurant next door (i tried to give him rm50 but he had no change!). by the time i was back at intel the pain had subsided so much i felt like jumping in the street like mary freakin poppins.
but of course....the side effect...i burped the entire afternoon like a freakin toad in copulation.
p/s: get Omeprazole 20mg! they do the job!

thanks to everyone who took the time to send me cards and birthday messages and stuff. i had a wonderful 25th ;)
and to everyone who celebrated with me on saturday, i had fun ;) i did. the hotel room was amazing. top floor with sea view. couldn't have asked for a better place to be slightly drunk and puke half-digested birthday cake into overflowing rubbish bin. the massage was...pleasant, albeit a little painful! i gritted my teeth throughout the entire ordeal session. now who was that who gave me the idea that massages were supposed to be relaxing, i'd love to get my hands on his/her neck! :pthe dinner was, well..deluxcious :) couldn't have asked for better company.and i had fun at the club too, wet...but fun nonetheless :p
cant believe i'm already 25. geez...i'm ancient.
;)

the one about the supid writers
the war in the mideast is getting out of hand. but what worries me the most is the role of mainstream media in malaysia and western countries alike. In malaysia of course the media is heavily biased against israel. And in the west, the media is very unforgiving in reporting about the few deaths caused by hezbollah's rockets when the hundreds of lebanese lives who have died from israeli attacks went unreported and sidelined. People need to know that not all israelis are evil. There are loyal israeli troops who have refused to serve in military operations in lebanon which they consider as immoral. and there have been condemnation by orthodox rabbis in israel and US alike on Israel's actions. People need to realise that not all israelis are zionists as much as they need to realize that not all moslems are terrorists, and oh..not all americans are fucktards like bush is one.
reporters/journalists wield unimaginable power over unsuspecting readers. they can shape the way ppl think and fashion it to their own liking. readers have to be wise and remove themselves from the hate-laden layers of hipocrisy. reporters after all are merely humans, and they too have emotions, bursting emotions that some channel thru their writings all too greedily.
how on earth is the israel-palestinian conflict gonna end if the media on both sides keep playing the I-can-bitch-better-than-you game, feuling anti-israeli and anti-islam sentiments alike in the process of doing so.
stupid fucknuts. it angers me alot when ppl encourage hate.
if u cant write a just report from a neutral point of view. Dont.
Readers are not fucktards they CAN decide and interprete on their own. you dont have to include ur heavily biased 5-cents opinion into ur reporting.go home and suck on ur plastic titties.
wipe the snot off ur nose and learn to grow.and write only when u have world peace in mind.
fuckwits.

this short trip had been an eye opening one. it was a short period of time that i'd used to reflect on many many things.
all in all, after the whole backpacking stint, the thing i find most haunting about cambodia is not its ruins, not the magnificient temples of Angkor, not the glorious silhouette of the monuments when dusk encroaches, not the eerie killing fields or museums, but the faces of the people. the children. The bright light in their eyes, but the seemingly bleak future awaiting them, certain as the first light of day is to shine upon the stony faces of Bayon for another hundred years to come.

the one about dark past
phnom penh. there's basically 2 ways of getting to phnom penh from siem reap. by bus..which costs like USD 4, or...by boat via the Tonle Sap Lake which costs USD 25.
for wanting to save money....again...i opted for the bus ride. departed from siem reap to phnom penh at 7am sharp. took a tuk-tuk from the guesthouse to the bus station with this young mexican couple. totally awesome ppl. The guy had visited malaysia and claimed he liked KL alot..haha..i couldnt help it and laughed to his face when he said that..jesus...KL!!??...i quickly apologised and explained my love-hate relatioinship with the malaysian capital.
He was very understanding haha. on the bus i sat pretty close to them so the wife offered me some of the baguette she bought from one of the many sellers outside with trays of various foodstuff balanced on their heads. the bus took around 6 hours to reach the capital. pretty uneventful journey i'd say. i even had the time to finish a few chapters of my gabriel marquez's 'Love in the time of cholera' on the bus. The road was pretty straight and blissfully..... tarred.
reached the capital around 1pm. phnom penh is probably the most unimpressive capital in the whole of south east asia. it's kinda like alor setar...with more vehicles on the road (lots of bikes!), more crowded streets, and without any skycrapers whatsoever. the bus station was located right next to the ziggurat-like marketplace. awesome building. the entire area was very crowded indeed.
Unlike Khao Sarn Rd. in Bangkok, Phnom Penh doesnt have it's own backpakers' haven. i randomly picked a guesthouse from the guidebook and looking for it wasnt all that easy. i had to walk with my heavy backpack for bout 40 minutes under the scorching sun before i managed to find the guesthouse. Capitol Inn was the name. It was located at the intersection of 2 pretty crowded streets.
The place looked horrible, of course. haha even looked a little bit too suspiciously like the filming location of many a hong kong horror movie. haha...dirty and old, but at least they had clean sheets. definitely not the worst i've seen...and i wasnt too keen on walking for another 40 minutes under the sun to find another place. They charged USD4 for my room.. a tad too expensive if u ask me, but i got my own toilet and thats always a luxury when u're backpacking.
still a little bit weary from all the walking in angkor, i decided to head down to the little restuarant downstairs and just do a little bit more reading. it did me good. by 5pm i felt like i've gotten enough rest and off i went, hired a moto driver to send me to Sisowoth Quay for a little bit of sunset photography. Scary as it was riding pillion on a motorbike on Phnom Penh streets, it was cheap, and fast. cost me just 20Baths to get to Sisowoth.
The riverbank seemed to have a life of its own when nite encroaches. it's where most of the bars and cute cafes were located. the crowd's a great mix of foreigners and locals alike. the former sit in air conditioned cafes sipping cold beers and chain smoking, the latter take strolls along the riverbank with family members and frens, where young girls gossip, old ladies sell trinkets and foodstuff, and adults converge to pray at the nearby shrine of Vishnu. it was a pleasent evening. Calm, yet still foreboding in a peculiar way.
next day:
got up at 9am. grabbed some breakfast from one of the food stalls downstairs and hired a moto driver to take me to the Cheung Ek killing fields, bout 30 minutes away.
I've read alot about the killing fields of cambodia prior to this but nothing would've prepared me for the visit today. it was a forlorn place, so full of sadness. rows of skulls stacked up upon skulls made up a 10 storey pagoda. walking around the shallow trenches in which the khmer soldiers used to bury murdered victims, you could still see articles of clothing partially potruding from the ground. Broken bones....and even a tooth or two.
The sturdy tree whose trunk khmer soldiers used to smash babies on was still there. Reading about it is one thing. Seeing it with my own eyes is another different thing altogether. after walking for bout half and hour i sat on a bench under a shady tree in one of the quiet corners on the field. since i bring my rosary with me on my travels i took it out and quietly prayed the Holy Rosary.
Got back to the guesthouse bout half an hour later. showered and headed out again. This time it's the Tuol Sleng museum.
Formerly a high school it was turned into a torture center by the khmer rouge during the dark period of 1975 to 1978. Khmer Rouge ruled from 1975 to 1979 but during this short period of time, 2 out of 8 million cambodians were massacred.
it's beyond my simple mind. How drastically the communistic khmer rouge wanted to achieve a fully funcitonal and obidient agragian society that they chose to kill ministers, engineers, professionals, foreigners, intelectuals, ppl of religion, artists, and resistant cambodians alike. Killing is probably an understatement to the atrocities committed by the khmer rouge soldiers on the cambodian public. women and children were also turtored at detention centers like Tuol Sleong (called S-21) before they were sent to the killing fields for extermination.
Every prisoner who was sent to Tuol Sleng was photographed before they were locked up and tortured. And today those black and white faces line the walls of the museum, looking out at visitors with doleful eyes. dead pairs of eyes with no trace of life whatsoever in them even before they were murdered, pleading to tell their unfinished stories to the world.
there's a dark overcast, as if the skies hadnt stopped it's seemingly perpetual mourning of the cambodian genocide.
not many visitors were there today. snapping away with my camera, many a time i found myself alone by the rows of dark cells hastily built in the classrooms with bricks and wood. it was eerie, and very very sad. a very very sad place indeed. if you close your eyes and listen really carefully, you could almost hear the walls replaying sounds from the past, as if they were the ambassadors and advocates to those who were robbed of their lives so unjustly.
it's indescribable. it's a depressing but urgent place nonetheless. It has stories that need to be told within the calm of today's peace, but the authority of death is still ever present there. in every window, along every corridoor, within every black and white potrait, every row of barbed wire, and every scrawling on the weathered walls.
i found a quiet spot under one of the many frangipani trees that lined the museum's courtyard, prayed the rosary and wrote my journal.
like many other war criminals who committed despicable atrocities in the form of genodice, the ones responsible for the extermination of nearly 2 million cambodians are still untried. PolPot, the ruler of the khmer rouge died peacefully in his sleep after he fled into the jungle in 1998 (there's many versions of how he died). Ta Mok, khmer rouge military chief died in a hospital just a few weeks back from this entry. i was surprised to read about his death in TheStar that day, because he had a fairly respectable funeral, attended by many family members and members of the public.
now...27 years after the fall of the khmer rouge, the government has yet to put anyone on trial for the genocide. However with help from the UN, things are slowly changing with persecutors launching into investigations that would help put the first defendants in court by 2007. personally i think it's already too late. most senior officials have already died or made peace with the current government.
But Cambodia needs to heal, it's a country that has lost it's soul. everyone needs a closure.... hopefully this is it for them.

the one about making frens in foreign places
Wednesday. Came back from Angkor probably around 7. took a bath and walked around Siem Reap town. Siem Reap town isnt really big so it's doable by foot. Sat in this nice restaurant along the rows of fancy (by SiemReap standards) restaurants somewhere near Bar St. Reflected on the things that i'd seen in Angkor for the past 2 days.
Where did the ppl go..the ppl of Angkor..why did they leave the monuments just like that...to be consumed by the jungle only to be rediscovered hundreds of years later...U'd think of how they might have dressed during their glory days..how magnificent the temples must've looked at nite illuminated by candle lights...how the apsaras would've danced for the kings in their great halls...it's just truly amazing because you get to see part of it...the remnants of the temples and the monuments...and leave the rest to the power of ur imagination.
also went to this restaurant to watch the traditional cambodian dance. it was really mesmerising...u can see part of it on my profile..on one of em youtube players.
chatted with mel again in the cafe that nite. I had bought a bus ticket to phnom penh departing on thursday AM so initially i thought i'd never see her again because she wasnt back yet when i was getting ready for bed. But she knocked on my door just when i was about to switch off the lights haha. So we headed to the cafe for some beer. We talked and talked until pretty late into the nite. She's an amzing traveller..It's sooo inspiring to hear her stories. she's been to peru, bolivia, morrocco, and even lived for a year in el salvador! We talked about our lives and the ppl we left behind at home, about work and about the future. It's amazing how much u see pieces of urself in strangers once u open up to them and they u.
she gave me her email add and her cellphone number in case i'm ever again in california. haha i wish! anyways. gotta stop now, will continue about phnom penh sometime later

the one about angkor what?
-ok allow me to backtrack a little.
4:30pm monday. hired a moto driver to drive me to bakheng hill for USD1. moto drivers are the taxis of cambodia, and they're everywhere, usually identifiable by the baseball caps they wear. Since it's illegal to rent a bike in siem reap and it's a little bit too far a distance for a bicycle ride, i opted to try it out.
Most of the bikes in cambodia have larger seat for pillion riders because the ladies here sit sideways on bikes (and bicycles too!)...unlike in malaysia where everyone sits terkangkang-kangkang :p
reached a little before 5pm. climbed up this steep Bakheng hill ready for the sunset view of angkor wat. dozens and dozens of tourists were also climbing up huffing and puffing from steep climb. it's a mass exodus to the hill because it offers a splendid view of angkor wat and it's surrounding area. Thére's an ancient monument on top of the hill, and god was the stairs steep or what. I had to climb sideways like a crab up the narrow flight of stairs. pretty scary if u ask me. exciting...but scary nonetheless.
it''s windy and nice up there. and u get a really pleasent view of the whole angkor area too. I was walking around happily snapping pictures of this and that when i spotted Thong, one of my colleagues back in PG! It was nice seeing him there, and he introduced me to his gf too. they were leaving for phnom penh the next day. chatted a little before they decided to leave. Told me to meet them at this bar in Bar St. later that nite and i said i would.
It started to drizzle just after they left. Rain clouds hung low in the sky. The sun hadn't even completely gone down yet. i quickly took a few more pictures and left, thinking that navigating my way down the steep flight of stairs in the rain would be quite a mission in itself. It's only the beginning of my trip and i wasnt too keen on breaking my neck just yet.
it started to rain on the way back to the guesthouse. by the time we reached i was already soaking wet. Took a quick shower and headed down to the cafe. Chatted with hitomi and mel there. It was really nice talking to them, listening to their own adventures and stuff. Hitomi was to leave for Phnom Penh the very next day so she gave both of us her card and asked us to call her when we're in Pnom Penh, said she'd bring us to watch some traditional cambodian dance. A japanese Cambodian dance intructor!...can you imagine that...totally cool in my book.
It rained throughout the nite so i stayed and chatted with the ppl in the cafe instead. Trading stories, criticising each other's country :p , etc etc.
tuesday.
Since i bought a 3-day-pass (for USD40) to angkor, this was only my first day (the sunset at bakheng doesnt count because i bought the ticket after 4:30pm, the ticket starts the next day! :) (deliberate)
woke up at 5am hoping to catch angkor wat in all it's sunrise glory. A little dissapointed when i found out that the sky was already bright when i stepped outside. Nevertheless, the early start was a good one, because not too many ppl were there and i had a spendid time at angkor wat. The carvings on the walls and the bas-reliefs were amazing! U'd have to experience it urself to believe it.
the walk on the terrace towards the temple itself was a humbling experience. Seeing the towering magnificence right in front of u in all it's awe. it was truly breathtaking.
wandered through the many walkways and corridors of angkor wat that morning. when i got tired i just find a quiet spot somewhere, sit down and read. The history of cambodia, and angkor in particular. it's truly fascinating what this country has gone throught the past milleneum or so.
There's many other ancient ruins and temples scattered all around the angkor area. THe more famous ones would be Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and the Bayon with its stony faces of past kings carved onto the four facets of the monuments.
I did all the temples in the main angkor area in 2 days. tuesday and wednesday. Totally awesome experience. Spoke to many ppl and learnt lots of stuff too! ;)
There's a lot of children in the angkor area, selling trinkets and handicrafts and souveniers. It's heartbreaking to see them rushing to every tourist trying VERY hard to sell their stuff."please sir...madam...only one dolla...""cold drinks sir?...please..."
when met with a "no", they'd go
"maybe later u want?..u come to me ok?"
in the blistering sun or in rain, they'd rush all the same. while most of the tourists politely said so and leave, I've seen foreigners making fun of them as well..
"u want bee--ahh sir?? only one DOLLA"
it's heartbreaking. As LonelyPlanet puts it, most westerners wouldnt understand the level of deperation these children face. I agree.. they can be REALLY annoying at times because they're really persistent. But all you have to do is say no thank you again and again smile and leave. you dont have to make fun of them. if they beg from you, give them food or candies instead of money, because u'd never know where the money actually goes. They're everywhere in Siem Reap, u'll get used to them after awhile.
buy some of the stuff from them..it'd wouldnt hurt at all since they're really cheap. But before that chat them up first. make jokes with them and see them smile. see the real cambodians in them. it really was a rewarding experience!
gotta continue some other day.

the one about little children
so it's raining outside right now. 11:05pmi'm somwhere along sivatha road. one of the cyber cafes. safe and warm.away from the rain.
i was hurrying over to the Cyber Cafe just now when it started to rain all of a sudden, along one dimly lit part of the street i saw a a lump of dark object by the pavement. i thought it was a pile of rags...until the light from a passing vehicle revealed what it was.....two small kids in rags huddled up together in the dark...one was fast asleep.
today i visited angkor wat and a number of other ancient ruins. they were magnificent. but i'll write about them some other day...i dont have the mood to write anything happy now.

visions of angkor

the whole of sunday was spent travelling between bangkok and siem reap. good god!
left khaosarn at 8:30am. The bus was a huge one..so it was pretty comfortable. and it cost only 300 baths. Reached the border town of aranyaphrathet at 3pm. Got down...took another bus to the border and did the whole immigration thing. The Cambodian part of the immigration office was a short walk away from the Thai's. The moment u stepped unto cambodian soil, you can feel the stark difference between the standard of living in Thailand and Cambodia. Poverty is rampant. It looked like a country just fresh out of war! ok a little exaggerated...but not much.
a statue of Vishnu stood guard in the center of the roundabout right beside the immigration offce. The sky was already dark when i had my passport stamped. it's the rainy season. In no time at all, the heavy afternoon downpour started. mother of god! children playing around in the middle of the flooded street...kicking empty bottles and splashing each other silly haha.. they looked really cute!.
A few other backpackers were also stranded outside the humble immigration office. We waited for probably an hour before the bus which were to take us to the bus station arrived. We were already soaking wet by then haha. i scambled to put all the electronic stuff and important documents into the huge plastic bag i brought with me. we hade to wade through this flooded street to get to the bus...brown colored water with shit Unidentified Floating Objects bobbing around. haha. i have a small cut on my right foot so i quickly applied some antiseptic cream for not wanting the whole leg to rot and fall off :p u just have to be extra careful when u're backpacking.
bus took 5 minutes to reach the main bus station. The driver wittily announced that we've reached the 'boat' station when we pulled into this totally flooded humble bus station. Waited for another hour there before the bus for Siem Reap arrived. The border town of PoiPet was...hmm...poor. unfinished buildings everwhere...run down wooden stalls, flooded streets, and most of the ppl were poorly dressed...they looked weary and dirty. Life is undeniably difficult for them.
Soaked to the bones despite having brought my windbraker i prayed that i wont fall sick or anything. It's too darn early for that. it's ony the 3rd day!.
The humble bus for Siem Reap was well....a really humble one. dirty and dusty and old. The rain has already stopped when we left the bus station. So it was fresh air coming in through the window. The scenes were heartbraking. poverty is the only word i can find to describe everything.
The road to siem reap must be the bumpiest road in the whole wide world and i'm not even exaggerating. And the driver told us that it was already a whole lot better compared to a couple of years ago! It was sooo bumpy i couldnt even imagine how the beat-up bus could have made it all the way to Siem Reap. At the end of it i felt like all my internal organs had been reorganized, with my kidney somwhere near where my heart should be, and my heart ..hmpp..somwhere else! the distance between PoiPet and SiemReap is only 120km but the journey took more than 5 hours. When nite falls, you can't see a darn thing on each side of the road. only reflections of flooded paddy fields and flooded street. The wooden huts along the road looked dark and abandoned. Electricity is ovbiously scarce. Only a few houses have it and they're far between.
Muddied, dirty and smelly, we stopped for dinner at this one restaurant along the road. Obviously built to cater for passing busses. A plate of rice cost 6000Riel (bout rm6) ! Freaking expensive in this part of the country! Chatted with a backpacker from Japan and another from San Francisco. Totally interesteing individuals. The Japanese lady was a cambodian dance instructor who studied traditional cambodian dance in Pnom Penh. She can bend her fingers backwards until they touch her wrist!, one of the requirements for cambodian dance apparently.
The San Franciscan was a summer tutor at Stanford. Interesting in the fact that her idol was Noam Chomsky, the hardcore anti american policy advocate. She has travelled extensively and it's interesting to hear her stories.
Reached Siem Reap at about 10pm. tired and extremely jaded i just settled for the guesthouse the bus dropped us at (yeah...i fell for the khaosarn scam after all!) . It's USD 4 a nite. which is still expensive in this town. But the rooms are clean, with a tv, and hot shower!! Who on earth can resist all that after that horrifying (but fun) bus ride from PP to SR, not me oh no sir.
Chatted a little bit more outside with the backpackers before going to bed at about 1am.
Monday today. Rented a bike (bicycle) for USD 1 for the day (renting motorbikes to foreigners is illegal in SR) and i'm off exploring SR town. It's a pretty small town but the streets are crazy packed with bicycles and motorbikes and cars and red dust :p
it's a mission trying to stay alive on a bicycle on the streets of SR. Road rules are almost non-existant. Ppl just zoom past u from the left and right like nobody's business. After a few turns however, yours sincerely have blended in quite well :) the bicyle they gave me had this bell (horn?) and i wasted no time ringing away like crazy along the busy road haha. obviously i stuck out like a sore thumb because of my superb bicycle-riding skills, scaring away little kids and old ppl alike ;p . Judging from the way i handled the turns I'm sure at least more than 5 members of the public would have thought that i'm on a crazy bike suicide mission. oh..The stupid chain came off once and i had to squat in the blistering sun to fix the darn thing. but it's all fun! haha part of the experience and i gladly took everything in.
The roads are awfully dusty. After only a few hours on the streets i'm already feeling like i have put on a thick reddish foundation on my face haha. And my poor poor lungs....all the dust and ciggies ...haha ..hang on there...just dont give up yet k!
visited a few modern Wats in SR (modern as compared to angkor wat of course). But they're incredibly low-profile and humble. Nothing exaggerating or grand like Thai Wats. they just exude humility and simplicity in the best sense.
Cambodian ppl are beautiful. dark skinned and rough features, and they're extremely resilient. You can just see it in them. and they're easy to smile too which is really awesome.
i gotta go explore more. Going to angkor wat today at 4:30pm. u get a free sunset after 4:30pm because the ticket's valid for the next day.
can't wait!

haadyain bangkok woohooo!!
god i had missed this place so much!boarded a van from penang at 12:30pm on friday. stuffy old dusty van which took us from PG to haadyai for rm25. instead of going through padang besar the van took us to haadyai through BKH instead. the neighbouring Thai town of Sadao is pretty scary if u ask me. I dont want to generalize or stereotype, but there were lots of moslem thais around and lots of mosques along the way. With all the bombings and senseless murders of thais in the moslem-majority south by extremist-separatist groups, u can't help but wonder what would happen if the van get hijacked or something :p.
needless to say, the worry was baseless. reached the bustling town of haadyai around 4pm thai time. The van which took us from PG stopped in front Lee Garden hotel to drop off some passengers who opted to spend the nite there. Mom has talked about this hotel quite abit in the past...cheap buffet cheap rooms nice enviro bla bla bla but since i've never travelled with her before it was quite surreal to see the place alone. To me the hotel looked just a little better than Sunshine Square in Bayan Lepas.
walked around abit before hopping onto the 5:30pm bus to bangkok.

For being a stingy bastard wanting to save, i bought the cheaper bus ticket to bangkok. So my bus didnt come with the stewardass, free drinks and snacks...it's a normal bus with 2 rows on each side of the isle. Thats not the worst part. The worst part was...my seat. I had the backrow seat. Right in the middle of the 5 seats lined at the very back of the bus. These seats were elevated and stand (sit??) a tad higher than the rest of the seats in the bus because u're sitting right under the engine. so..sitting in the middle seat i looked like the King of Thailand..or at least felt like it. The freaking conductor didnt let me change seats although the 2 other seats on each side were empty!. bleh!!
i changed to the window seat when the bus started to move anyway! hah!
the journey was long and miserable :p departed from haadyai at 5:30pm friday, arrived at Sai Tai Mai Station at 7:30am satruday. brrrh. Bangkok was already well alive and kicking when we reached. crossed the highway to the other side, walked for a bit and waited for only 10 minutes at the bus stop before local bus #511 to Banglamphu arrived.
i got down somewhere near phra athit road. thank god i've been here before so i roughly know the places and stuff. Walked along soi chanasongkram to Khao Sarn Rd and looked for a place to stay for the nite. Guess wat?? i ended up at good ol Sweety Guesthouse! 2 years ago they charged me 80Baths for anite..today it was 140baths!! and its not even peak season yet. blehh!! haha

quickly bathed because the van and bus ride made me smell like a barn and headed rite out. splurged alil for breakfast...well ok..alot!! i'm not talling what i ate but it cost rm200 baths but it was fucking good!! haha
a treat for me because i'm working now and i dont have to spend like a miserable beggar like i did before. ;)
Went to a few Wats after that. Not really because i'm feeling particularly religious or anything, but i promised seow ling to donate some money to the Wats on her behalf. Wat ChanaSongkram, Wat Pho, and last but not least, one of the most revered shrine in south-east asia, the shrine of Maha Tao at Erawan Hotel. Haha legend has it that it's where most wishes are granted...so needless to say i prayed like a good little buddhist boy! hahaha buying flowers and candles and josssticks and stuff and going round the shrine praying like i never did before haha. For the health of family and frens. Mom and Dad, both grandmas. seow ling and family particularly her little ones, and of course..i asked for him to take care of my grandpa in heaven as well ;)
Siam Paragorn!! woohoo the spanking new shopping complex nxt to siam square was happening as hell. it's a good place to shop..seriously. prices may be a lil steep but u can almost guaranteed to find whatever u want i swear!! i have troubles in the many shopping complexes in malaysia to look for clothes that suit me.

chao phraya river...the boat ride...getting lost in the thai crowd...drinking coconut water by the roadside, quitely laughing at the faranga' behaviour, the quaint and lively soi chanasongkram.. wow...i've never felt so alive! :)
it's getting dark. khao sarn is already bustling with live..so full of it!
departing for siem reap first thing tmr morning. but for now...gonna go back to my pathethic little windowless clautrophobia-inducing room, get a shower, get dressed the best i can with watever sad wear-items i brought with me and head out to some bars for a good drink
;)
all is well...oh yes.
i'm not oging back..i'm not going back....I"M SO NOT GOING BACK!!!!

alright. i'm all set.
i'm all packed and ready to go. finally. i'll leave everything behind. i dont wanna think about work anymore. i dont wanna think about anything but what bus to hop on to next.
after all.....this is my moment of freedom.
i'll update my blog from the road.

i feel like an ashtray. no seriously. a fuc*&^g ashtray.
i've been smoking like a fuc&^%g chimney lately it has got to stop. it just has to. i cant afford to have my lungs boycott me this early in life. dooh. ok from this moment on...i vow...to...stop...smoking..
hmm wait...didnt u tell yourself just that yesterday?
hmm..ok yesterday doesnt count. it starts today.
haha ya right..u said that day before yesterday remember?
fuck..i did huh.
ok ok..that doesnt count too...IT STARTS TODAY...THIS VERY SECOND!..NO SMOKING! TAK NAK!!!!! TAK NAKKKKKKKK!!!! huhuhu~~ :(
yeah ..right.. i heard that before too...
shuduppp!!!!!
mannn...this has got to stop! The high from smoking is so momentary it just doesnt worth feeling like a fu&^%&g ashtray the next couple of hours or so.
ok ok..from this moment on....anyone who catches me with a freaking ciggarate between my lips..please..PLEASE...ask RM1 from me. serious. On-The-Spot Summon!
god i'm gonna be so broke.

have ur heart ever been broken?
mine have. not by a girl oh no. .....hmm........wait.....it was a girl.
i must've been 7 or 8, couldn't have been a day older, because in the collage of memories i have of that day, grandma's house looked huge. the wooden railing that lined the stairs up to the second floor of the thai kampung house was even taller than me.
me and my brother, we had to spend the nite at grandma's because our parents went somewhere. blehh...adults
dad dropped us off at grandma's in the evening. she smiled when she saw us and asked if we've had our dinner yet (y issit so typical of elders to first ask if u've eaten??). we said no and ran off to the kitchen.
she lifted the covers and there was very little food on the table..fried fish, some greens, a small bowl of soup. she told us she'd eaten and proceeded to scoop some rice for us.
I complained that the dishes were bland, she just smiled. we finished up everything since there wasn't much to start with.
later that nite i woke up. feeling thirsty i went down to the kitchen. obviously someone was in the kitchen because the kerosene lamp was on and the flickers sent shadows dancing restlessly on the wooden walls.
hiding in the shadows by the stairs, i saw grandma sitting on the floor by the lamp, quietly eating a plate of rice with nothing but a piece of salted fish.
that broke my heart like nothing ever did and ever will.

in retrospect
the past few days have been pretty hectic for me. i'm almost always in the lab...and the sad thing about that is..they dont have restrooms in that particular lab!!!! &^%$*&^%$#@
and the procedure to leave the lab..believe me..is such a pain in the ASS!.
first, u'd have to take off your smocks and booties (lab attire, something like what a doctor would wear, but hippier...ermm..complete with footwraps ..ermm.urgh),
second, empty all your belongings into a tray (up to the very last coin in ur pocket) and have them go thru the x-ray machine,
third and the most annoying of all: step onto a small platform, spread out your arms titanic-style and let the security person scan ur body (front and back) for any metal object. if you meet with a very stupid retarded jahat playful security guard, he would deliberately leave the metal detector beeping away like crazy at ur dick crotch area and bring everyone's attention there knowing fully well that it's where ur belt buckle is (and has been for the past 2 years u work with the company!) &^%$#%^&*
alllllllllllll that....you have to go thru alllllllllll that .....even if all u ever wanted in the whole wide world at that moment.....the one and only thing u're wishing to the high heavens for.......is a shiny white loo to shit crap berak empty your semi-solid bowel's contents in.

Another Day


coming of the dawn,
betray at the sight of dusk,
sing the demon's song,
another step, another day, another dawn,
but dusk betrayed again,
another hope,

yet hope lied to me,
faith cried with me,
sanity shied from me,


am i lost?
no... it was they who failed to seek me.





and then another day...

in retrospect.
so i went back home on saturday to visit mom. she's not doing too good. she's down with a terrible flu but still managed to cook my favourite pineapple/chicken curry...yummmmm...curry makes me salivate...slurrrps.
anyways...went down to visit grandma in the village on sunday nite. an aunt was also there...it was nice seeing grandma still healthy and perky as ever. but i noticed one of her toes was bandaged. didnt ask much tho. it didnt seem to bother her. she was making another 'mengkuang' mat. she's really good at it...she can make baskets and stuff...no sweat. sweet old traditional thai woman.
anyways..my little cousin Wood was there too and he was cheeky as ever. cute lil thing. he dissapeared for a while and reappeared again wearing this cute little spiderman outfit..hehe..complete with the mask and all...i almost kicked myself in the head for not bringing my camphone along. grrrr..a photo of him in his spiderman outfit would have made a great wallpaper... it's so him..in that outfit..hehe...cute...cheeky....and of course..annoying as hell
grandma told me that a house in the village was haunted. i was shocked. apparently it was big news in the village. the current tenants of the haunted house claimed to have seen shadows and figures standing beside their porch, sitting on wooden beams above their living room, and roaming about in their house in the nite time. the spooky figure apprently was that of a former tenant. a drug addict who had died in the house a few years back. it was definitely spooky. i've never heard grandma talk about ghost or stuff like that...i used to think that she was too practical to believe in all those shit....but nevertheless...when u're living in a small village like the one she's living in....u're bound to hear stories like that all the time i guess. old villages have histories and not all of them r told or passed down to the younger generations...some of them i guess r too dark to be rehashed.
anyways...my little cousin seemed impervious to the spooky story he had just heard...hehe..maybe he was acting tough (highly unlikely) or maybe the spiderman outfit somehow in some peculiar way managed to transport him away from the realities of the small village...into the crazy manhattan city that might have existed in his little imaginary world...swinging from one skyscraper to another...saving cute little girls sucking on lollipops...o well.
came back to penang this morning. yes monday morning. it's a state holiday today in penang. the governor's birthday or something...who cares.

blah blah blah part 2:
when i was backpacking in thailand a couple of years ago, i got mugged.

yeah..4am in the freaking morning..somewhere in bangkok. the freaking bus from chiangmai dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. believe me i'm hardly exaggerating when i'm saying it's in the middle of nowhere..it's the best in-the-middle-of-nowhere you can get in an urban setting, ever!...a lonely street, and a few street lamps...yeah thats about it.
anyway..point is. i could've died there. i could have..if things had gone wrong a little bit more than it had. in fact..i'm sure there's a few other situation in my life in which i've come into close contact with Death itself, me realizing it or not.
the same goes for everyone out there. Everyone has had at least one near-death experience i'm sure, however profound it is.
i have an acquintance who got into an accident a couple of weeks back at the infamous winding 'tunnel' near GreenLane. guy broke both his legs. The 19 year-old who rammed into his car died in the hospital a few days later.
life's like that. u never know whats gonna happen to you next. Death strikes without a warning. A concrete slab can fall off a building under-contruction onto your shining BMW and smash ur head real bad, a helicoptor rotor blade can strike u on the head and scatter ur brain matter on the ground when u're herding orphaned kids to safety after their once-in-a-lifetime charity helicopter ride, u could be in a plane plunging towards ground after being hijacked by mailto:fC@#s who think murdering innocents will earn them a place in heaven, OR....u can just drop dead all of a sudden. just like that..kadump! burst blood vessel somewhere in the brain etc etc i'm no brain surgeon i dont know.
point is..ur life could end anytime, anywhere.
so y hold back. wanna bungee jump? go for christ's sake. skydive? go already!! what are you waiting for? i have a fren who refused to go skydiving because his mom told him that it's a dangerous activity. you cant see me but i'm rolling my eyes over and over again here. like..c'mon....the possiility of you dying in a car crash on the way to skydive is higher than dying while skydiving itself.
bleh. ppl.


i work in a pretty respectable multinational company.................... but you should see our toilets. mother of god!!
even Gollum would cringe at the sight of the toilets at my workplace. ppl taking dumps and well....leaving their shit excrements to be seen by all...dude..no one needs to know that you ate beansprout or corn last nite...how f&^%$*& hard is it to flush?!?! ... and ppl wetting the entire cubicle like they've just freaking celebrated Songkran in the tiny enclosure....toilet paper strewn all over the place...SOILED toilet paper that is.
what is wrong with these ppl huh..i mean..seriously...
jesus christ.
ok ok i can hear jack telling me not to take the lord's name in vain already.

i'll stop here for now. kelly clarkson's because of you in on air and i have an urge to cup my ears real bad ;)

Excerpts from my journal dated June 24, 2003 :

location: MMU cyberjaya campus)

of chilhood memories.. spoke to mom on the phone. she updated me on the happenings at home...and of grandma..and the small thai village she lives in. her news sent shivers down my spine. it is that time again....'chao ban' ..the pre-buddhism celebration of spirits...so rare the only other time i remember it being observed was when i was about 7 or 8.

We were still living with my grandparents at the thai village. the whole village was dark and gloomy for the entire week..buddhist altars and sacred images were covered up with white cloths..a curfew was imposed..no one was allowed to leave the house after 7pm....just after the sun sets, right before darkness begins to reign.grass was braided to form a very long rope and it was put up around the entire village..

Everyone was given yellow strings blessed by buddhist monks to tie around their wrists. children (including me!) huddled together at night and even the much wiser and mature adults would carry buddhist amulets for protection, against what...i wasn't too keen to find out. one thing i knew..whatever it was that they called upon....it wasnt good. why else would they cover up the buddhas and sacred images with white cloths..

mediums were called in..

they chanted. they beat drums. they screamed.
rituals after rituals were performed. every single one steeped in mysticism
amidts the beating drums and chants, an old lady was finally possessed by the spirit they called upon...the spirit was said to know every single thing that ever happened in the village...she looked around. eyes wide...hands trembling.
and then she whispered to the ears of a few village elders....her eyes never left the crowd.. ..as if shes telling them secrets of every single person there no mortals would had known.
it was among the darkest experience i carry with me from my chilhood.
when every moving shadows in the dark looked rudimentary human form.

it was towards the end of the week that i finally realised...............the circle of braided grass was not intended to protect the village...oo no....it was to protect outsiders from whatever was in the village.

i walked out of the faculty building...out into the blinding sun and looked around me.....modern buildings...ppl with modern names and modern bodies (as savage garden puts it)...the memory of 'chao ban' seemed rather distant then.
but it is happening....right now...right this very moment..

somewhere up north...

somewhere dark where children huddle together..

somewhere dark where things move unnoticed..

somewhere away from me.

blah blah blah
i'm freaking old. i am...in fact..i'm ancient. i should be placed in a museum.i swear. relatives are already teaching their
kiddies to call me 'uncle' instead of 'korkor' @#*($&^*&*@&#)$#@#!! :p
of course, with age comes the right to blabber incoherently dispense advice to anyone who might be interested to hear them.
there are some certain inalienable truth that will bite everyone hard in the ass, time and time again in the course their
lives:
first and foremost - most of the time sometimes things just dont work out the way you want them to. yeah they just dont. no
matter how hard you want something or how fervently you pray day and nite to achive it...sometimes you just wont get it. It's
just not meant to be. screw "where there's a will there's a way" - there ARE exceptions. Dont cry like a little girl, sulk,
pout, or wallow in self-pity for all eternity. boohoo, u had a bad day, who hasn't. toughen up and move on.
tell lies only when you absolutely need to. but of course in defense, you'd say that for every situation in which you have
needed to lie, there was an asolute need to do so. sure...whatever..just remember what goes around comes around.
Do what you wanna do with your life. it's yours. not ur parents', not ur frens'.if you wanna be a drag queen. be my guest..drown urself in mascara and kill ur ankles with high heels. if u wanna be a
gambler, go ahead. put everything on the line. ur house..ur car..ur dog..everything. whatever you do remember this one simple
thing: the decision is yours and yours alone. should you feel that you're unhappy with the decisions you've made, blame no
one. hold no one responsible but yourself. life IS about decisions. if you cant live with yours. DON'T. jump into a lake and end ur misery. seeyah.
dishonesty is disgusting, dishonest ppl are everywhere, thus disgusting ppl are everywhere. simple maths.dishonesty huh, it may sound ironic since i've just written about telling lies and stuff. but i'm talking about serious
stuff...not simple white lies. taking what is not yours, betraying ur best pals..that sorta stuff. so if u come across this
kinda ppl, run for ur life, save urself some heartache. or better...if you ARE one of them, go jump into a lake and end
everyone else's misery please.
Did the world take a f%$&*#$ crazy pill while i...well....popped one too? it has become a chore to just read the papers (or online..oh well) nowadays. i swear if i live past 40 i'll have to ban
myself from reading newspapers for fear that it might trigger some kinda heart attack. some lunatic butchered his own family, a horny grandpa raped his own grandaughter, WORSE, a grandmother got raped!, snatch
theft victims succumbed to their injuries, religious extremists beheaded innocents, blowed things up, blowed THEMSELVES
up, and the list goes on and on......if you can think of it, they've done it. the whole world is a f$#%&*^ stage for 'ripley's believe it or not'.
good Lord! everyone needs to lighten up a little. go get laid, do yoga, smoke weed whatever makes u happy (disclaimer: if you're a psychopath, 'whatever makes u happy' does not apply to you'). smile a little will ya. everyone is so tensed nowadays. It doesnt kill to be nice (in most cases). everyone has problems, you just dont have to let it get to you.
be careful family and frens...bad ppl r everywhere. The good Lord agreed to spare Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction if only Abraham could find 10 (or 5 cant remember..did he manage to bargain for 5? :p ) righteous ppl from the whole city.
..well u know how the story ends...that was well..ages ago...but evil (like james bond) never dies.
and oh..to the crazy/rude/insolent/twisted drivers in penang, please...drive faster and more recklessly will ya.......i beg of you. that way you'd die way faster and be less of a nuisance to society than you are rite now. boohoo end of story

Excerpt from journal dated Saturday, 12 July 2003
a breather..
the phone line is restored. about time!
there's this chinese lecturer..who teaches us Electromagnetic Interference...boy..he almost killed me..
'Z' (zack not zee)...he pronounces it as 'jack' (many chinese mispronounce z as j..eg..zone = jone, zip = jip..etc etc) and we were studying a certain mathematical formula which has the variable 'Zs ' (Z with subscript s)
he freakin pronounced it as 'JACKASS' throughout the entire lecture...."if u want a smaller jackass..u need to change it into.." , "to get a larger jackass, take the smaller jackass and..." , interchange the jackass with..." , "what do u get when u hav jackass over jackass?..."
just when u thought u've heard it all.
oh well.
and last nite i finally solved some major..i mean like MAJOR problems in my project. i think i'm gonna sleep well tonite.

excerpt from my journal (dated august 31 2005 - Lodi, California)
WooHOOO
The skydiving was so absolutely amazing. I’d never felt so alive in my entire life. I didn’t feel nervous at all at first…in fact I was looking forward to it too much I forgot to feel nervous...till the very last seconds that is :p
And then..
Damn.13,000 ft up in the sky, perching precariously on the plane’s doorway I thought to myself…what on earth have I gotten myself into .. but it was too late of course. Before I could even remind myself to kick me hard in the ass for dragging myself into this, the instructor gave me a little nudge and that was all it took. I was freefalling with a speed of 120km/h towards the square patches of brown and green below. Honest to god I thought I was going to die,,haha, the feeling cannot be described in words. I remember excitement…I recall the feeling of fear…and I remember being in awe.
Total awe of how beautiful things look from way up there…bird’s eye view if u want. For a moment there I forgot about work. I forgot about projects, waveforms, equations, voltages, I forgot who I was. There was nothing…for a moment there the only variable in my life was the diminishing distance between me and the ground below..
6 minutes felt too short. Before long I was already grounded. But I was surprised the feeling of accomplishment lasted longer than it normally would that day. I couldn’t help smiling. I just couldn’t.
you know that song by sheryl crow …...the one where she says she’s gonna soak up the sun and tell everyone to lighten up। ॥haha yeah..thats the soundtrack for the day.

of gay elves

so one perfect tuesday morning i woke up happy (doesnt happen all that often i tell ya). got dressed. even bothered to put on some perfume and practically skipped to the carpark like a little gay elf in a f*#king enchanted forest. as you might or might not have noticed from the tone this is gonna take a pretty hedious ugly turn.

so i got into my car. got the engine started. unlocked the steering wheel. said hi to the little doggie hanging from the rearview mirror. put the gear into position. and was ready to go when this black BMW rolled over and stopped right in front of me.

"WTF...dont u dare spoil my day u mailto:!@#$%^&^&*(()(*&&^^%%$##@

the guy wound down his window and gestured something to me। i thought why in hell would this guy flap his wrist in front me like that. what on earth is he trying to say. he was pointing underneath my car with his right hand...and waving like crazy with his left. for some reason unknown even to me, i thought he was trying to tell me that there's a little doggie underneath my car and i'm gonna drive right over it ( yeah॥i know i need to enrol in street sign language class).

so i gestured back. a thumbs up. a nod. "got it got it" (i hope it meant that). got down from my car. walked over to the passenger's side of the car. and...hmmph.. needless to say. got the shock of my life..... ok thats an understatement (freaked! screamed like a little gay elf!). but whatever.

to the guy in the BMW: although you're freaky. but thank you so much! for if you had not stopped ur black shiny perfect BMW car in front of mine, i would have driven off (or attempt to drive off) and trash my car REAL bad. (note that the entire left side of the car was supported only by a few flimsy bricks.)

to the person(s) who did this: i hope ur genital(s) get kissed (bitten, munched, gobbled up) by a huge snake (preferably a uber-venomous king cobra), swell to the size of a ripe pomelo, yellowish slash purplish bratwurst if u need to imnagine, rot (with pus and all), dry off, shrivel, and wither away like a dried seasoned flower. beautiful huh :)

and my curse takes effect from the moment u (u guys(bastards)) removed those fucking nuts from my beautiful-but-now-gone rims.

so...if i catch anyone walking like ronald mcDonald these few days. i'll know for sure who the culprit(s) is/are. Unless of course. if it has advanced to the rotting stage. then..umph. the curse cannot, i repeat CANNOT be retracted anymore. thats the rules. sorry to say dude. thats just how the cookie crumbles.