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.