Bottled in Extreme Clarity

Its nice to be blur once in while. Just not all the time, yah?

But life goes on…

Had gotten some nice wrapping paper to wrap up some sealed microwaveable food. Gave up trying to wrap the damn thing and stuffed everything into a paper bag… i guess it will be easier this way for friend to pack into suitcase…. had to leave out the roti canai though.

House seems half empty now… and well it prob should cos housemate has shifted out… the bulk of junk in the apartment belongs to me and sis anyway….. there IS a whole lotta junk.
Im contemplating if i should not follow sis but get my own place…. I make a godawful housemate/roomate but think it beats having sis and having to live all the way in Puchong……. transport will be horrendous nightmare…. i wont have access to wherever i want to go anymore, which is even more shitty than the expensive fares….Puchong aint central.

Bleedin’ sis even got a Toyota Avanza which baffled me no end…its a tank! And the last car she got, she left with z parents in Melaka… her driving experience is next to nil and she really expects to drive that thing everyday thru heavy traffic and at nights after she finishes work at godforsaken hours?

Had a stinging dadda lecture too:
dadda: oi
dadda: not too skinny
dadda: shes perfect
cat: skinny winny
cat:
dadda: your too skinny
cat: skinny si
cat: lookit her eyes
cat: big big big
cat: cos too skinny!!!
dadda: you want to fall out??
cat: no

….. after some moments….

cat: u watched da vinci code yet?
dadda: dont change the subject till u apologise
cat: why?
cat: shes only two and lost all her chubby wubby!

…. how time flies… soon it will June and we’ll only have six more months to go till another new year.

And Things are definitely picking up…. June and July are set to be jam-packed, even the previous week already was…. with a movie marathon of sorts - Over the hedge, da Vinci Code and X-Men3.

In a way maybe it was to prepare for the upcoming move. Housemate has already packed up her 14-inch television… about my only other source of entertainment besides the puter……. there goes my couch potato, McD-filled weekends in front of the idiot box…

In an ironic twist of events, visited friend who had the brilliant idea to cook dinner….so off we went grocery shopping ( i also had to get wedding gifts for Swedish friends who were hungry for Malaysian food) got home and cooked - fried chicken liver with chilli, kai lan with oyster sauce, clams with chinese wine, Codfo luncheon meat… and i had to resist opening a can of chili tuna.
After that we settled down to watch Formula One on TV….. what luck that this week’s circuit was Monaco… one of the more famouser racing tracks for F1…. and i did not regret watching it for one second. About 6-7 race cars were out due to engine overheating mostly… one of the more prominent drivers were Raikonnen and Webber who had been in front of the race pack at 2nd and 3rd position respectively… what a loss for them!!!

Bleeding Schuey, who had cheated the day before at the qualifiers started from behind and was even one lap down at one point till about the 60 plus laps then he overtook Alonso to race and catch up to 5th or 6th placing, just behind his former teammate Barrichello… even heard a story of how before Barrichello had braked before the finish line to let Michael overtake him and get first placing… after all Micheal was first driver mar…UNBELIEVABLE!

And Renault’s Alonso showed impeccable form leading all the way from start to finish, twas just unbelievable.. Our very own Petronas’ Heidfeld even managed to overtake Honda’s Button to get 8th placing… no mean feat at all! What an awesome race on one of the racing world’s most notorious circuits.
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Last Friday had gone for a work event and had a stupendous sort of rewarding time. In honour of World Cup 2006 a Quiz Trivia involving 12 teams was held.. with some awfully good luck (and frantic calls for answers) we managed to scrape through to the semi-finals. There we were pitted against 2nd placed team for a spot in the finals. The challenge involved a computer game of trying to make goals out of 5 tries, as well as saving goals made by the opponent team…. u can imagine there was a lot of guesswork and mind games to be done.

We made all five goals …BUT. could not manage to save any as well.. so it being a draw meant they went into the finals for a shot at a 26-inch LCD TV..SOB!

Pretty glad we managed a draw however… though i suspect if opponents had been peeps who knew me, they would have been able to guess direction of my goal kicks… cos they’d know how my “warped” and “twisted” mind works… *sNiCkEr*

At least for our joint third placing, we were rewarded with two goody bags and i opted for the electronic shaver (DUH!) and FIFA endorsed football ;D
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X-Men 3 ….what can i say?

Am i a Marvel comics fan? Id honestly say no, though i have to admit when i heard of plans to make the first X-Man movie, my heart sank. It hit rock bottom when i heard Halle Berry was to be Storm.. cos I saw her in a James Bond movie and SwordFish and was thoroughly unimpressed (what a hottie though!!!)…just not Ororo aka Storm material.
I was going frantic with the thought that a screen adaption of me beloved superheroes would never EVER hit the nail on the head…. leaving true-blue fans like me sorely overwhelmingly disappointed with a void of dissatisfaction that would never ever be sated.. how is the silver screen ever expected to capture the essence, atmoshpere that is so lovingly pencilled, inked, coloured and speech bubbled by artists and creators?
Wow, am i overdramatising here? YES, I AM.

More bitching later.

At last got to watch the movie and see for myself what the hyped up controversy is about. Never read the book after all.
Felt a tad disappointed that while he had a few original ideas.. the main one about the Priory of Sion or that Jesus is really a mortal and has a female descendant bla bla bla …were premises already suggested by another movie “DOGMA”.

That black comedy posed even more outragoeus theories ie. Jesus is a black dude, God is a “She”, there were 13 Apostles and not 12 and so on and so forth.
If Dan Brown wanted to rock the Catholic community.. i think he most definitely did, whilst upsetting a lot of uptight ones as well. I liked near the ending of the movie where Robert tells Sophie, his definition of faith - the only thing that matters is…what you believe.

If anything, the book was probably one of life’s ultimate test of faith. But then again, sometimes people are never satisfied that they themselves know what they know and believe what they believe - the rest of the world has to believe it too?

So, go ahead gawk and blink or get piously self-righteous and inflamed about what Danny boy suggests in his book…. but I enjoyed the movie immensely….though there were a few scenes which did not make sense.

ie. how did Silas escape his bondage in London? Did Remy help him? But why? Was Remy hoping to make a profit? Or did he last minute decide to turn traitor and side Silas when the monk was holding Sophie at knifepoint? Or was that simply his way of sort of placating the monk so that he could cart his master away to safety? But how could he be sure that Silas would fall for it? OR was wat really that happened was that it WAS a ruse to save his boss (or not) and when Silas assumed he was The Teacher, Remy guessed it cud have been his boss and decided to keep him alive to blackmail him (hence the handing over of cash, remember? and his promise to keep his secret to his grave). But waht reason did Remy have to even think his boss was the Teacher adn why ever should Teabing have admitted it? Cos Teabing was going to poison him anyway?
Could Teabing have orchestrated Silas’ escape? Naw… tat would defeat his objective. Did Remy look a little surprised when he walked into the Church? Or had HE been behind it all along? Why? And if not, then it STILL doesnt explain how Silas escaped?
Ah questions… questions…

See what you can do when you basically write a story involving an intricate hunt for “treasure”, but also throw into the mix a bunch of interesting characters, clever clever riddles and codes, and the all-important controversy that is guaranteed to catch the attention of the majority of the globe’s population in allllll manner of ways…

…at an Intel event at Kulim, where Intel CEO Paul Otellini graced the occasion…. products from competitor A had wandered into the hall…..

The little rapscallion even had the gall to sit on the place of honour reserved for Otellini…!!!

Maybe… maybe not.

This has been a pretty eventful month….. was expecting to be acquainted with the Blackberry, but some non-readiness with the SIM card has thwarted plans…*sigh*

The past week was also pretty happening, and expect the same will be so the following week… drinking bud is expected back after some fun in the sun which is Barcelona… tsk tsk tsk.

Too many things are vying for attention now…. im just glad the weekend is here, there are many things to sort out.

Next week, MOVIES GALORE!

I look forward to Da Vinci Code (never read the book and keen to see what the fuss is about), but at same time am expecting X-Men with a little less anticipation.

About the time when most of me industry peers were being introduced to computers, technology and whatnot, I was immersed in the world of comic books; X-Men to be exact, that team of so-called superheroes who were shunned by society for being genetically superior - homo superiors or mutants to be exact.
Gawking at fantastical artwork by artists whose names I forget… and yet it was Xavier’s junior team which I was relating more to - Im not sure why.

Uniformed in yellow and black outfits, the New Mutants always seemed to have more interesting stuff happening to them - peer pressure, schoolwork, training sessions in the simulation room, escapages when the seniors or Prof. X was away, they even got to travel to far off places and had a sort of “pet” superhero “Warlock” whom I thought was practically invincible… their young lives were even marred by deaths of team-mates.

My fave heroine was Illyana Rasputin, or Magik sister to Piotr Rasputin; she was a witch and teleporter though i always found it frustrating whenever she teleported to the wrong places than originally intended. She was a witch which also meant she could conjure up almost anything, but they were always marred by the half of her which was evil.

The only one who was deemed pretty useless would have to be Doug or Cypher…but when teamed up with Warlock, was a mean machine. After Cypher was killed off however, my supply of comics sort of dwindled.. I think it was cos new members were being added… I didnt enjoy so much thereafter. When X-Factor came out, it became worse.

It wasnt just X-Factor ( a team of mutants masquerading as humans who pledged to sort of protect humans from mutants), a bunch of new teams also came up and it at last became too confusing to keep up… a Classic X-Men series also started…meant to remniscense about the times when the X-Men were much much younger and before the New Mutants along with the teams were formed.

My fave story? There were a few - the time they went off to Cairo to rescue their once thought dead teammate, Shan. There was another issue where Bill Sienkwicz did the art - where certain members were sort of sucked into the mind of an evil villain (Issue June 28 - Soul War)…. the artwork wasnt spectacular like Rob Liefields or Chris Moore , Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane or other artists which recreated the human form as magnificently as they could, Bill’s work was ethereal, whimsical and yet I enjoyed his it the most of all the artists….. i also loved that series of issues’ script.. especially of how they described the human mind.

I also loved the series when the Beyonder appeared…The Secret Wars involved a whole load of other Marvel comics like Dazzler, Fantastic Four, Atom Man (or was it Molecule Man?) and so on.

FOr this particular issue… the whole team were swatted aside like flies.. yes, they died. The Beyonder killed them all. He was one huge phenomenon as well which I enjoyed very much (you’d have to read him up)…. you also wont believe what happened to him at last. Or maybe you would…heh.

Ah. Those were the good old days…

…..going back there again tomorrow!!!

“Fly today, fly tomorrow…. might as well stay budget one night mar”
“Singapore bajet wan not bajet enough for me….”

But wat an eye-opening experience.

With about two hours to kill before superb lunch with the honourable Naitoh-san, we found ourselves warming up to gossipping ala loyar buruk style at kopi tiam (actually Starbucks).
Topic of interest?
The stuff that we see on the computer and internet everyday.
Google, AmAss, Yahoo, browsers, tmnet streamyx etc…..

I was introduced to the wonder of Firefox’s tabbed browsing, recent news of AmAss propositioning Yahoo! (turned down fortunately) and my belief that Google is almighty was mightily reinforced.

“The problem with AmAss, all they wanna do make money…do this - make money, do that- make money…they even want to charge money for anti-virus imagine that??? when in the first place security problems are from their own products (think IE)!!!” was one frustrated and disappointed rant statement.

AmAss wants to buy Yahoo? why do i seriously doubt its for any real innovation, but more as a way to absorb the competition/gang up on the REAL competition which is Google? All their built-up resources and that waaaaay huge headstart counts for naught cos Google is now leading the pack in giving services that users really want and CAN USE. After just half a decade.

At a recent IDF event in Taiwan, Google was reported to have about 13 million billion hits at any one time, worldwide; the highest for any website needless to say.

Tech moves like quicksilver…which is what makes it fun as heck… as well as trying to figure out what tech’s next moves might be… it can be a vertitable headache at times too, but when you look at the bigger picture and see all the pieces fall into place, it can give u an infinite sense of satisfaction as well.

… back in opis Friday morniiiiiiiiinnnn’…..

*sigh*

Should be good.

…. time to go home at last.

We were at our fave local once more… already crowded with the salsa babes from Qba so all in all the crowd that nite was pretty rocking. More than usual in fact.

So were the Koreans.
I referred to the one who’d prob. know best - Moto

M: ‘They are koreans,… can see from their structure.
cat: Are you sure? How to be sure?
M: Say to them…”Annyeong haseyo”
cat: Ok, you ask them
M: You ask them..
cat: No, you ask..
M: No, you ask…

After ding-doing-ing abt the matter for few minutes, I went anyway…
“R u local?”
“Yes, I am…”
His friend joins in and i say the magic word…
“No, we are not Koreans!!”

Uh. Riiiiiiight.

“Are you from melbourne? Your other friend is from melbourne….”
“Ah yes he is, he is..how you know??”
“I asked last time mar. What abt you, where are you from?”
“We are Malaysians, MALAYSIAAAAANSS”

Then the one who blew out my light last time, dumped two shots of apple vodka into my beer… Im just glad I survived it. Tasted like menthol.

This here is pic was taken during a ciggy break with an O2 xda Mini.. tsk tsk tsk…. pretty crap image.
Yesterday had attended a 9 course chinese dinner. The sort where I usually stuff myself to breaking point. For the occasion, there was my “pseudo-maternity” dress… so i could chow down till i appeared 9 months preggers and ready to pop one out. Alas! during an overly enthusiatic shuffle on the dance floor, a stray ciggy ember burnt a whole in dress.

For the special ocassion there was even Holy Wine from Jerusalem during dinner…the sort that priests taking with Communion. Twas very sweet with a tinge of cinammon.

I recently got a lovely pic of Boo….. still in pink, but this time sitting in a field of grass during a sunny day. This is her first summer that she can really experience cos shes old enough and she’s WALKING, running and all sorts!
Its awesome… shes squealing with laughter and holding out her hands to be tickled by the stray long stalks of grass.

In some other news, managed to get a friend to start a blog… he’s an awesome writer whom i admire loads. There has already been two entries…. kudos! But expect that he will be too busy and caught up with life to add in anymore anytime soon………

…was witness to a salsa dancing class one day… its quite a challenge.

It all starts when your sitting down, and the music plays..and you are watching the dancers dance their crazy steps. Its hard not to be mesmerised and soon you find yourself trying to memorise the steps. The teacher even recommended recording short movie clips with his camphone!
The next challenge comes in trying NOT to improvise. After youve learnt the basics, just following them mechanically seems to suffocate you.
After that its just too difficult to NOT enjoy this strange new dance and then sweating it out.

Life is so full of “what-ifs”.
A recent episode has made me wonder more about putting what-ifs into play. No more what-ifs. Instead “Just Do It” ala Nike. This may seem ridiculous coming from someone whos had a lifetime of rash decisions made.

“What If……?” Now i totally understand what uncle meant at the time that he said it, the wicked scoundrel.

Had convo wit an old friend one day…. n basically he said some things which made me go.. ‘damn…but tat makes sense…’ He has a knack for doing that.
I was even a little/very embarassed tat i had so simply allowed myself to generalise the matter with a very narrow minded statement abt gays n tranvestites…

ok… let me try to explain d best i can….Wrap ur head around this…

1. a gay is a gay because he likes men.
2. a gay does not necessarily go for men who try to appeal to them in a feminine way.
3. a guy who is certified gay cos he likes guys, who happens to like females also, is bi-sexual.

*note tat i only state like n not SEXUALLY like, cos me is approaching fm the lifestyle point of view n not solely the sexual preference point of view.

I recommend watching Queer as Folk if one is curious to know more…tis rather insightful.
My strait laced sis had asked to loan the dvd… i had to warn her tat it was of d soft porn variety but she SAID she was ok wit it… well, we shall see…

Streamyx service is back on… dun foresee moving out anytime soon….. just so busy as heck.. esp. sis… shes been averaging 18 hours at office 4 few months already on some sort of project.
Move to puchong? Cut sleep hours effectively by 2 hours….. hah, lets see her get packing boxes FIRST.
She even has the gall to get tapes to learn how to speak cantonese…. i think theres smtg she aint telling me.