EBD

excessive blogging disorder.



everyone and everything in thise video just looks bloody cool. Albert Hammond Jr looks hot.

I've a question for anyone who plays guitar(read:aman and shao, since you guys are the only people i know who play guitar who may read this question,heh), is this song hard to play?if you didn't watch the video, i'm talking about 'Reptilia' by The Strokes. I'm not really one to pay extra attention to the arrangment and details played specifically by each instrument in a song, but for the past couple days i've been scrutinizing 'Reptilia', and i've just really noticed the..watchamacallit...(riff?melody?) played by Albert Hammond Jr(the one with the white guitar), especially heard/seen during parts between 2:07 to 1:51 in the video. usually i'm just focused on the trademark riff that plays at the beginning of the song, after that i'm off mumbling along with Julian, but as of late i've been concentrating on the guitars and the solos in it. i know nuts about guitars, but it sounds awesome and complicated. is it?

people to meet during the holidays. i have this vague feeling of dread that if i don't meet a few of these people during this holiday, i might not meet them again after(i'm not saying that anyone will DIE, i'm just saying that we'll drift apart from one another).
1.make plans to meet sal,ina,asiah.
2.make plans to meet dee,
3.make plans to see syefik.
4.make plans to see kak dila.
5.nani, miss salmi, kak farhana.

2 subjects down, 2 more to go!

i keep forgetting what coutry Hugo Chavez is president of. Cuba? no, cuba is fidel castro, if i'm not mistaken. Venezuela? My general knowledge is in the dumps. must check on wiki kejap lagi.

oh, you know what? my college's Triple A night is coming up soon, about a week after exams. In others words, prom night(sounds so much more social-butterfly-ish, yea?). Hmm. nak pakai ape ah? Let's aim for OUTRAGEOUS! with glitter make-up, sequinned dress, the works. yeah, right. if past proms/social events are anyhing to account for, i'll probably show up looking like a wallflower. Must learn to incorporate some va va voom into dressing and style.

OMG!i just found a video of the strokes featuring regina spektor. hell yeah.

i am rambling on incoherently, i'm aware.

must.stop.blogging.must.go.STUDY.(but for some reason, i feel like won't).

the signs said stop; we went on whole-hearted, it ended bad, but i loved what we started

are my posts too goody2?

i always thought i was the cynical, pessimistic link in my family, but as i read my old posts yesterday, i thought 'wow. i can be quite the fluffy duracell bunny when not writing the sombre, moody posts'.

um,i may have complained of this before, but at that moment it just felt again like i'm not really quite that certain of my own personality.

If ie ever won this special contest that allowed me to run through a good record store, grabbing whatever CDs i could reach for free, i'd snatch up:
1.Greg Laswell- 'Through Toledo'
2.Fiona Apple - 'Extraodinary Machine'
3.The Kooks - Inside in/inside out'. *i actually bought this cd for luis, but when i came back again to the same store to get one for myself, it was sold out. shoot.
4.Snow Patrol -'Eyes Open'
5.Ray Charles - a greatest hits album or whatever
6.Billie Holiday - have always wanted to listen to her
7.Pete Yorn- 'musicforthemorningafter'
8.Louis XIV 'The best Little Secrets are Kept'
9.Arctic Monkeys - both albums
10.By this time my time would probably almost be up, so i'll just grab armloads of whatever cds that's nearest.

kakak,come home quick. it may not be obvious sometimes, but we do miss you, you know.

During tea just now, my parents were talking about figures and yearly estimations and stuff that i couldn't understand. my mom caught sight of my puzzled looked and explained they were talking about retirement funds, and launches into a lecture about how i should start saving early in order to have an adequate retirement fund when i'm 55.

'That's why a lot of people prefer to work for the government, so that they'll have a pension. like daddy ni, once he retires, he won't get a pension(just a lump sum given straight off)'. If you earn around RM3000 a month, by the time you're 55 you should have around RM700k in order to survive on a daily expense of around RM3500 a month'.

While i'm trying to juggle the process of taking in the information and at the same time thinking 'woh, mom's really got this down', dad chimes in that once he retires he'll turn really stingy and he and mom, in typical fashion starts jesting about how they'll cut back on electricity, save up rain water, and only flush when they do number 2,heh.

Then dad continues, 'when people retire, they have to depend on their children for income.' On cue, they both looked at me silmutaneously, and we laughed about it. but i've just realized something.

My parents have always seemed larger-than-life to me.i've just realized that they are growing old, and it's inevitable that as people grow old, they grow frail.i'm growing up, and soon they're going to rely on me to support them, financially, emotionally, physically. i know it's a natural part of life, and is bound to happen. but i look at myself and think 'i'm not ready to grow up and be responsible'. it bloody scares me that as i grow up i'm going to have to stop leaning on my parents for support, and instead, have them lean on me and trust me with taking care of them. i'm not ready. i'm 19, but at this moment, i still see myself as a kid. i don't want to think about my parents getting old. not yet.

so for now, i'll just join mom and laugh about how my dad is psyched over his new tv and satellite dish. it looks like a kuali sitting out there on the lawn, but it's cool,yo. we can watch channels from france, taiwan, singapore, etc. never mind the fact we can't speak any of their languages. it's the visuals that count.

Blu Skies

i can't cook. like, seriously.

i've yet to read Sophie Kinsella's 'The Undomestic Goddess', but that seems like an apt nickname. i really am a dud when it comes to house-keeping. i hardly help my mom with the cooking, except during raye, when she need the extra (wo)manpower to chop up bawang and daging and stuff. i have, at regular intervals, asked myself, 'what makes the kuah gulai/masak lemak yellow in colour?' and 'what makes kari into kari, besides santan?'. I cannot verify any type of fish at the supermarket except maybe bawal and ikan pari, and catfish. Whenever mom asks me to go ambik some daun kunyit from its plant we have outside, i have to ask 'daun kunyit yang mane satu ah?'.

yikes. i never planned on being a career woman who depends on her maid to cook food for the family, but at the rate that i'm going, i'm going to end up one of those people who sets the stove on fire whenever she attempts to cook. note to self: must learn the workings of the kitchen pronto.

music. As recent as 2 years ago, i don't think i really appreciated the aesthetics of music back then. i don't know how people like my sister or Kye source out their music, but at least i'm related to one of them, because if not my knowledge of music would have been limited to fallout boy and nsync. Kye, kalau anda baca ini, terima kasih banyak2 for recommending to kakak Greg Laswell, i looked him up and went on a downloading frenzy after. Thank you. if you come over for a sleepover again i'll let you have the good piece of chicken. Good music works like a drug for me. I don't know if this is dangerous, but i can literally drown in a song. You know when you find a song that just fits your mood perfectly, and the lyrics uncannily reflect what you're feeling?Aah. Sometimes you get the feeling you just want to float away with the tune. You play it over and over again with hopes that every time you hear the song, your problems(however trivial they are) just chip off and away. Sometimes i'd choose music over company.

I have a one week break before my next paper, and another week of break after that before i sit for my remaining papers. The Cambridge Board people are either very generous, giving us a lot of last-minute cramming time, or they're vey diabolical and want to prolong the agony of exam season.

note to self: don't analyse the papers i've sat for already. dum-dee-dum. think happy thoughts. SMILEY FACES GALORE. yeah. happy.happy.joy.joy.


Saw this on this week's batch of PostSecret cards, and i echo the comment that was sent in respond to it:i wish more desperately than anything, that this postcard was for me.

krispy kreme

Once again i pay tribute to what may be my most favourite song(or at least one of my favourites):


Ooh, check out Snow Patrol's new song 'Signal Fire', which is part of Spiderman 3's soundtrack. wicked. video is very cute as well. i've yet to see spiderman 3, is it any good? i'm much more looking forward to shrek 3 and pirates of the caribbean.

i've had a few bad incidents happen lately, but good music is an awesome way to just drown everything out. and, pardon the pessimism, but now i know i have a valid reason and example for not telling other people about things i think are problems. it just doesn't make a difference, yeah?

Listen to Snow Patrol's 'open your eyes' as well.

I watched the video that lim kit siang posted up, that showed the incident where the Kinabatangan and Jasin MPs gave those stupid bocor remarks. i have come to two conclusions:

1. our parliament debates are like having chickens and ducks squabbling in a reban. i remember someone telling me there's a reson why we never air parliament sessions on tv, except for clips shown during the news. now i can see why.

2. The kinabatangan MP thought he was just oh-so-witty when he hollered the remark. and watching him, you're left thinking: these are the people who are representing the rakyat? bloody hell.

I wish i was doing this:


here's something random. you know how we(not, everybody, but a lot) eat with our hand? but when we go to a fancy restaurant, or a hotel, we usually eat with fork/spoon/knife. if you go somewhere really classy, there's no way we'd use our hand to eat. use untensils, and God help you if your chicken flies off your plate as you try to hold it with your fork and use your spoon to tear pieces of it off.even at school dulu, remember how whenever we had like makan beradab ke ape, for a really important occasion, the wardens would remind us to bring our own fork and spoon? why ah like that? it's as if using your hands to eat is a common thing, a manner not to be displayed at fancy dinners. i think it should be the other way round. we should upgrade the general perception and make eating with our hands part of high-class dining etiquette. All restaurants, no matter how expensive, should provide those teko things yang selalu nampak kat kenduri tu to provide diners with water to wash their hands with. kalau fancy restaurants yang snobbish tu, use teko made out of silver or platinum or whatnot. i mean, eating with our hand is part of our culture. there's no need to think it's inferior to western perceptions of proper dining, right?

i would like to try krispy kreme doughnuts. sedap sangat ke?

Brianstorm(no it's not brain, it's brian)

it's been the first time in a while that i haven't blogged 3 days from the last post. what a difference college makes!

so yeah, classes have started, and my AS is in less than two weeks, but my brain is still recovering from the mush it had become during the break. gotta get into gear, man.

i snooped around the collection of cds in my parents room, plucked the greatest hits albums from The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Fleetwood Mac from the rack. Why oh why didn't i listen to them before?

Rain is getting more scarce these days. Recently, on a few days the weather has been glorious!(minus the heat factor). I'm talking CLEAR blue skies, the kind with practically no clouds, and makes you walk around with your head tilted up because you're dazzled by all the blueness.

My grandparents anniversary is coming up. 58 years, i think. So we're having this family gathering on sunday. To be honest, i'm not a big fan of family gatherings. not because i don't like my extended family ke ape, i should be so thankful to have them. But it gets tiring to explain to your uncles for the umpteenth time that you're doing a-levels, and yes, you'll probably major in accountancy for your degree nanti, and no, you're not interested in science, and smiling sheepishly when they admonish you for wasting your SPM grades and not going into medicine. I'm not close with most of my cousins, so there'll be the struggle of thinking up stuff to talk about after the general 'hi'. as a matter of fact, the most standard question after the greetings is 'kakak camne?', which refers to my sister who's studying in London. and of course, the pre-requisite after that is 'bile die nak balik?'. yeah. got in down with a pat. aisy. note to self: must learn to stop being so awkward around family. their FAMILY for God's sake.

it will be nice to see nenek though. nenek is the only one who finds my jokes funny :p

The alarm hasn't been effective in waking me up the past few days. i use my phone, so whenever it goes off in the morning, i snooze it a couple times, then switch it off while lazing around for a while before finding enough conciousness to lug myself off the bed. however, on wednesday, i snoozed it, switched it off, and failed to regain conciousness after that. woke up when mom called me over the intercom at 7.45am. 7.45! i'm usually out of the house by 7.30! cripes. And then this morning, jangan cakap about snooze, i slept through the alarm itself. the alarm tone couldn't get through la-la land to wake me up. i find this worrying. i'm going to be one of those people who has to set 5 different alarm clocks to ensure that i'll get up early.

Refer to video:

Brian, top marks for not trying,
so kind of you to bless us with your effortlessness
we're grateful and so strangely comforted.
and I wonder,
Are you putting us under,
Cause we can't take our eyes off the t-shirt and ties combination,
Well see ya later, innovator.

sentimental contemplation

Today we had the parent-teachers meeting at sunway. so mom and i loped off to college tadi, got most of my results.

i'm thankful for my results, but let me just say this here and now. if the General Paper was a person, i'd wrap my hands around his(i assume it's a he) neck, and squeeze as hard as i can. May he asphyxiate. Wargh.

Anyways, yesterday i couldn't sleep, so started thinking about some stuff. soundtrack of that moment of contemplation:


I love this song so much, i've played it 81 times. in a row.

So anyway, i remembered something yesterday. I used to have this classmate during form 2, very peculiar person. He once asked another classmate of mine, this cute girl, to go steady with him. she said no, so that was that. A couple weeks later, he asks a different girl(another classmate, mind you) to be his girlfriend, and she also declines. Yet a few weeks later he asks a different girl(STILL in the same class) to be his. Third time's a charm? nope. she said no too.

Well then, he was heartbroken about the whole ordeal for a while, having scored a hattrick in rejections. But did he learn from it? nope. a couple months later rumors were flying around that he was pursuing this girl from another class. wah. very perseverant ah? Yeah. at least she wasn't from the same class.

There was quite a few people like that in school. rather than liking a certain person whole-heartedly and therefore pursuing them, it's as if they only like the idea of having someone they can call their boyfriend/girlfriend. it doesn't matter who it is, as long as that person is partially attractive and isn't anti-social. as long as ade someone, sudahla.

i wonder if that's something you outgrow or are those people still the same?

i've said before in a previous post that i've never had a boyfriend, and i'm not looking for one. proud of it, babe :p anyway, i also mentioned some of the characteristics i hoped my partner would have, if i ever found him. but yesterday, i thought about it, and asked myself, am i expecting too much? am i subconciously hoping and expecting, in a way, a Mr. Perfect to show up at my doorstep someday?

Because if i am, than that's just stupid. there's no such thing as perfection. isn't it the imperfections of a person and how they deal, cope and define themselves with it, isn't THAT what differentiates one person from the other and therefore makes them attractive to us? isn't that what makes us truly love someone? Because i think to love someone, among other things, is to accept their flaws as well. right?

i think there are also some people who concentrate too much on finding that perfect someone. That's why when we meet somebody who has the potential of being that perfect someone we've been looking for, we tend to portray them or see them in a certain light, perhaps even deluding ourselves into believing they have certain characteristics or qualities. then, when you finally see that they're not perfect after all, and that they're actually different from how we expected, we just end up disappointed.

It's quite a conflicting matter, actually. on one hand, you've got the people who don't care how their partner is, as long as there IS a partner. on the other hand, you've got people who are so intent on finding that one true love(excuse the cliche), that they reject anyone who fails to live up to their standards. I mean, this is if your talking about extremities la. In reality, i guess most people are somewhere in between.

I just have to ask a question. where do you draw the line between having certain standards for your potential partner and not being too uptight or picky?

uh. right. this may have been a little too much contemplation,heh. but i really just had to get it off my chest.

i guess that in general, i think that now, at 18 going on 19 years of age, i put a lot of faith into the whole soulmate thing. this may sound corny, but i really do think there IS someone out there for each of us, and it's just a matter of time and God's permission that we'll find him/her. even with all the divorces flying around now, i still believe in this. i don't know. just optimistic, i guess. Besides, isn't our jodoh already pre-ordained by God? so yeah. no worries.

hark at me talking about jodoh and stuff. bukan main lagi, ek?

here and there

this post will be scattered all over the place, so bear with me if you're actually willing to read through it,yea? lol, i'm sorry.

i spent quite a lot of money over the span of this holiday. in all honesty, i spent my allowance surplus as if dah abis A levels terus, sedangkan belum habis second semester pon lagi. but it was so much fun! in truth, this holiday feels like one of the best i've ever had.

not to say that i did anything special or go somewhere exotic, because i didn't. in fact, i spent most of the time at home. but that's the whole beauty of it! i did all the crap i wasn't able to do before because of homework or studies or classes. i bought 2 cds and actually had the luxury of just lazing around on the bed listening to them while checking out the album cover and reading the lyrics. i went out and had BLUEBERRY PANCAKES WITH ICE-CREAM with an old friend. i stayed up all night to WATCH TV. i played a few pieces on the piano. i washed my car, giving it the full works, vacuum and all. there was time to read the papers!

I went out with me mum yesterday, and we bought this bag at 50% off, the bargain being half the reason i'm happy with it. the thing is, on the bag there's this design made out of gold bolt-head thingies, studded into the bag. i thought it was some sort of random design, looked a bit like a flower. skali tgk(mom had to point it out to me), it's actually in the shape of a tengkorak. a skeleton head.

right. i bought the bag, which is moderately large in size, to alternate as a school bag, and also to use when i go out with friends on a day trip so that i can stuff in my telekung(i've had enough of using the telekung available in places like midvalley, or klcc). now that i think of it, i'm going to be carrying my telekung around in a bag that has a tengkorak on it.

yeah well, whatever. what difference does it make,anyway? i'm not superstitious, am i? no, i'm not. pfft.

but starting from now i'm seeing it as a big smiley face on my bag. that, or it's a picture of a wrestling mask.

oh, i watched this v-log of an autralian woman on youtube, and she said that many austalians like tim tams, the way americans like oreos. betul ke aijud/anna? have you guys been aussified enough to have developed this habit too?heh. so, based on her video and the comments she got, there's this thing called a tim tam slam, where you bite off each end of the tim tam, and use it like a sort of straw to suck up the hot beverage you're drinking(coffee/tea/milo/whatever), then, with the tim tam softened, you pop it into your mouth. i was so curious about this that i bought some tim tams that day from the supermarket. they even had intructions on how to do it printed on the packaging! so i tried it out. it's quite good. a tad bit messy though, since the chocolate coating the tim tam will melt and slide around and leave smudges on your fingers/mug/lips.

i want to watch Blades of Glory. Nothing like a good Will Ferrell movie to laugh to.

I really should start remembering that my AS is coming up.

one more thing. i cry too easily when watching movies. if someone dies in a movie, i cry. if someone's cat dies in the movie, i cry. if the movie is about some ants on the sidewalk getting troden by a shoe, with proper panning and a good soundtrack, i WILL cry.

how the heck do i overcome this?