falling man

Yeargh.

i just finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. and it made me think. which is good, rasenye, because reading Bridget Jones Diary (which i just managed to get around to some days ago) didn't make me think at all, except wonder whether 130 pounds is considered fat.

Anyway, read on wiki that reaction towards the book was extremely diverse, with praises on one side, and harsh criticism on the other. well, i actually like it. a lot. It's about 9-year-old Oskar Schell dealing with the death of his dad, who died because of the 9/11 attacks. and Jonathan Safran Foer uses a lot of unconventional writing techninques, but i think that's half the reason i like it so much. and another thing, this book manages to get to me. i mean, where was i on 9/11? i was 12 going on 13, and i remember distinctly i was back home from school, because i recall i was chatting online with a guy i used to have a crush on, and he was telling me 'US baru kene bom!'. i think it was maybe a few hours after it happend, and i didn't know anything about it. and you know what frustrates me? the fact that i didn't take interest in it. 'yeah, a plane crashed into the towers, that's horrible', but that was it, and i was already forgetting it, considering it as the latest bad thing to happen in the world. i wasn't aware. i didn't appreciate the scale of the whole thing. i didn't get it. i guess was still too immature at that point(i always am too immature for my age, up until now). now, as i think about it, i wish i had paid more attention. felt more empathy. kept up with its developments. yeah. and while i'm at it, i wish i understood what happened in the Bosnian war. because, just like Bridget Jones, i have no clue who fought who, and which side were the muslims, and so on. must look it up.

sheesh. my aircond isn't cold anymore. it's like i don't even have it on. needs servicing, i guess.

and, for my viewing pleasure(though you are perfectly welcome to watch as well :p), i'm putting up this GAP ad featuring Willie Nelson and Ryan Adams. for some reason it appeals to me. needless to say, my favourite part is all the parts with Ryan Adams in it.

Godspeed

i woke up this morning to see a mosquito flying around my head, even though i sprayed the room with ridsect the night before. death-defying.

the end of the rainy season, to be replaced with the hot-all-day one.

theodore the rabbit wilts when it's hot.

i'll see you in the new year, ladies and gents. Godspeed.

deck the halls with boughs of holly, falalalalalalalala

merry christmas y'all, to those who celebrate, as well as to those who think it's blasphemous to wish people on days our own religion doesn't celebrate. a nice thing about this time of year is when you go to shopping malls, they're all playing caroles. great for sing-a-longs as you follow your mom browse around the household section of a departmental store. but a few places got a boo from me because they kept playing those modern ones, yang jenis dance music punye christmas songs. how la. stick to bing crosby.

in the grand scheme of things, my presence in family gatherings is really not necessary. i woke up this morning to find that my dad had invited relatives over for a sleepover. fast forward half and hour later, we're all cleaning the house like crazy in preparation for our guests. you'd think it was raya or something. you'd think we were having the agong coming.

yesterday i went to feed the fish only to find one tempayan of them dead. all bloated, floating. dead. what a massacre. what a tragedy. it seemed like the cause of death was some oil that somehow got in(there was that shiny film over the water), but mom said i may have contributed in terms of dirtying their water because i sprinkled too much fish food in. i'm a fish killer. i'm a fish death contributor. i'm a fish water dirtier. shitcakes.

kak nikki went back home for a break, so in terms of chores, one of my tetap ones is folding and ironing the laundry. worst thing to iron? collared shirts. best thing to iron? square cotton hankerchiefs.

i banged my head into the bird-cage one too many times.

there's a fly trapped in my room, buzzing around my head.

phone call

remix of Jon Brion's 'Phone Call' by preachermanmaximum. sublime.


In some place deep in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.
-The Memory Keeper's Daughter[Kim Edwards]

Speaking of which, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is just ok. i found it a bit draggy at parts.

hmm. my shorts have got a hole in the pocket. i tucked my ipod into it only to feel it slither to the floor.

thank God for housework

would you like to go out on new year's eve with me?

i'd wear the new blue top i bought, the one with polka dots all over it. mom didn't say anything about it, so i suspect she doesn't like it, but i do. and i'd wear my blue dangly earrings, and carry my new blue handbag, and i'd feel happy, because i like that outfit. well, i like the top. and i'd compliment you on whatever you're wearing, of course.

would you like to go out on new year's eve with me?

because i can't remember the last time i ever had plans for new year's eve. except that one time back in 1999, when the whole extended family, the whole kit and caboodle, came over to our place to eat, be merry, and unsher the new millenium in together. besides that, i think i've spent all my new year's eves at home watching tv. it's high time i actually tried doing something.

would you like to go out on new year's eve with me?

you'd have to drive, because i don't want to deal with the hassle of manouvring through congested roads all packed with other new year's eve celebrators. not to mention that it'll be night time, and i'm a bit wary of driving at night. no. you'd have to drive, and i'd be a considerate passenger, honest. i'd talk to you and entertain you while you drive, so long as you keep your eyes on the road.

would you like to go out on new year's eve with me?

i honestly have no idea where we'd go, because i have no experience in celebrating new year's eve. or celebrating anything else, for that matter. what exactly are the hotspots for celebrations? i heard there'll be a new year's eve bash at The Boulevard though, maybe we could go there. but i think we'd have to pay. it's ok. i think i'd be willing to spend some moolah on this. it's not everyday we begin a new year, right?

would you like to go out on new year's eve with me?

i'd be all self-concious, of course, even if i try my damndest not to be. but i'd be overly-enthusiastic and chatty to make up for any awkward moments(which will be plenty, i'm sure), and talk about any random thing that comes into my head, and i'd probably make a fool of myself, like i usually do, but whatever. i'd probably talk to you about 'KAMI'. i've been watching it a lot the past couple days. i think by the time new year's eve rolls around, i'd still be thinking about it, so topic conversation, it is.

as a matter of fact, you'd probably have to suffer through my annual rant against resolutions. new year's resolutions, that is. i'd tell you that i don't believe in making them. maybe you'd agree. or maybe you should fight back and tell me i'm dumb for not making them, that i should make them. i'd probably agree with you then. i'm a pushover in that sense.

so? would you? go out and celebrate with me?

because this may be the last new year's i spend here before going off somewhere, so i want to make it extra special. ok fine, i may be exaggerating here, nothing has been confirmed in the least. ok...how bout, this coming year will mark the end of my teendom? that's gotta be something worth going out for new year's eve for? well, it is for me. it may not be for you though. unless you're 19 as well. which you may very well be. or you could be 29, if you want, so we'd usher in your big three-oh.

so how bout it? new year's eve?

the highlight, of course, will be the fireworks. we'd scream(i'm assuming you're a screamer) along with the host as he or she counts down the seconds and then we'd shriek out 'HAPPY NEW YEAR!' as the fireworks display start, and we'd hoot and shout for the first few seconds. and then we'd watch the fireworks, and i'd probably get bored after a while, but i'd pretend to enjoy it. and, on the drive back home, i'd probably fall asleep, but you'd have full rights to wake me up and force me to conciously keep you company as you drive.

would you like to go out with me on new year's eve?

i'd like it very much if you could.

I turn my camera on

i found myself whistling Fergie's Glamorous the other day, when i noticed 2 things:
1. it's not a good song to whistle to.
2. i was dumb enough to be whistling the part where she spells out glamorous. i was mid-whistling when it struck me to listen to myself doing so without singing along in my head. it sounded so silly, just the same note over and over again. anybody who listened would have thought i was hopelessly tone-deaf.

i have, for the past 5 minutes, been contemplating. about what, i don't know, because it's a jumble of things. i can't seem to be able to grip one topic firmly and think it out properly without jumping on the next train of thought.

i just wrote this really long paragraph that paraphrased all the usual moanings i moan about, but i deleted it. really, what's the point? and i don't think i mean this cynically. i suppose i could opt for the defensive stance and say i deleted it all because 'no one gives a shit anyway', but that's not it. it's not that no one gives a shit, at least, i don't think so. there just really is no point.

But i will say this. i took turns between typing this post and browsing through other sites, and i came across Aijud's latest post, which is wonderfully random, in a way, and quite delightful. After reading it, i quickly scanned over the latest paragraph in my own post-in-the-making and came to the conclusion that it's crap compared to his. Aijud, whatever fears you have about not being a good writer and stuff? toss them out the window, mate. i thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and weeped(metaphorically) over the lack of my own writing skills.

I know i've been over-doing the stuff-song-into-blog activity, but i can't refrain myself. sorry. this song is I Turn My Camera On by spoon. i find it deliciously catchy, even if the song is sung in falsetto. terrific. i secretly jiggy around in my room to this one. well. not so secretly now, i suppose.

I went to Zoo Negara on Sunday. Apparently the company my dad works for is funding a Race Against Time campaign to save malayan tigers, so we attended the campaign launch. There were some celebrities there, supposedly ambassadors for the campaign, and they all had a few things in common, namely:
1.Pan-asian looks
2.nice hair
3.wore shades even though the sun wasn't out. maybe celebrities face some sort of 24 hour glare kot.

ok i'm off to watch tv. and maybe get a midnight snack. mashed potatoes sounds good.

i'm siiiinging in the rain...

i HATE people who are unfriendly over the phone.

like the man as well as the lady at MACEE i was talking to just now.

geramnyeeee. you are supposed to be aswering my bloody enquiries, idiot. so stop sounding like you're annoyed at every question i ask. KEBODOHAN!

this makes me twice as reluctant to apply, damnit.

when the lady sounded as if she was annoyed, i of course in turn got annoyed as well, and then we both sounded annoyed. how la.

well, negative vibes aside, my cousin's over for a week, so it's been fun. and i just bought some Jco donuts, so i'll get to see if it's any good. and mom's baking apple crumble, so that's excellent because almost anything baked with apples in it is good. tambahan pula, mom got me a straightening iron, so Syefik's been straightening my hair, which is a new experience. and i bought Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, which i've just started reading, but it seems intruiguing, so hurrah.

it's amazing how one bloody incident can make you feel so unsure of youself.

anyway, i've been out with Syefik past couple days, and whenever we come across IT stores, he'll drag me inside because he wants to browse and see all the technological gizmos. so he'll just wander into any shop that catches his eye, and when he's harrassed by the overly enthusiastic salesman he'll just ask the price of something and then wander back out of the shop. and i'll be the bimbo who waits outside the shop uncomfortably because i really don't know much when it comes to gadgets and i feel like a fraud when the overly enthusiastic salesman asks me what i want. "just looking".

ni tak boleh jadi ni.

RAWR.

Bliss

Bliss comes in these songs:
Ulrich Schnauss, '...Passing By'

Death Cab for Cutie, 'Brothers on a Hotel Bed'.


i watched Saving Private Ryan again yesterday, or at least half of it. and it hit me again the variety of cast members involved in the movie. there's tom hanks and matt damon of course, but there's also Vin Diesel, and Paul Giamatti(sp?), there's even Ted Danson, and the actor who also played the guy Cameron Diaz's character in The Holiday broke up with at the beginning, and there's the guy who played Scarlett Johanssen's boyfriend in Lost in Translation(no idea who his name is, sorry), and the guy who plays the father in Malcolm in the Middle, and the guy who played Maggie Gyllenhall's(sp?) boyfriend in The Secretary(u can tell by this point i don't remember names very well), and of course, there's Barry Pepper! yeah.

I think my favourite scene in the movie is the part where they were going to wait for a while in the ruins of a house, when Paul Giamatti's character leans against a piece of wood or something which falls against a wall and crashes it down, thus revealing a group of enemy soldiers by accident. both sides of troops immediately aim their ammunition at each other, screaming at the opposite side to surrender and put their guns down (with the germans screaming in german, of course). complete chaos. fantastic.

I watched The Green Mile the other day, and i was pleasantly surprised to see Barry Pepper playing one of the prison wardens! I've watched it before, but i didn't remember he was in it. maybe it's because i didn't have an unhealthy celebrity crush on him back then. sheesh.

i watched Meet Joe Black some time ago too, and needless to say, i cried buckets. again. i am positive i have an emotional defect somewhere. i really am against this whole crying-at-sad-movies thing, but i can't stop! God knows i've tried. i reckon if i could bottle up all the tears i've leaked watching films, especially this one, along with Armageddon and Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, i could probably aid a portion of dehydrated children in Africa.

coincidentally, i'm listening to Radiohead again i type this. 'High and Dry' is awesome. Radiohead is awesome.

i am a terribly immature person. i am perfectly aware of that. but maybe, and this is just a hypothesis; maybe i've changed a bit. of course i haven't grown up in the sense that i'm acting like how a 19-year-old should, but i'd like to think that there's a little less immaturity. hahahahaha. that sounded wrong even as i typed it. but no worries.

a little self-centred psycho-analysis makes a post complete, i always say.

Finished Poirot In the Orient. among the three stories in the book, my favourite is Death on the Nile. i love it! still haven't been able to find a proper copy for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, though. will keep on looking.

'i thought i saw a puddy cat!'

bangau oh bangau, kenapa engkau kurus?

LANGKAWI TRIP

Enthusiam & Energy Chart Representation

Additional footnotes:

1. Shao min is one hell of a jet-skier. after i fell into the water, i was screaming at her frantically to come pick me up because i had a warped idea something would bite me. and, note to everyone: climbing back onto a jet-ski from the middle of the sea is hard. my butt was sticking right up into the air at one point, and it's hard to climb back on when you're laughing so hard. i held on to shao so tightly after that i was practically doing the heimlich manouvre on her.

2. langkawi's new geopark was cool!swimming monkeys, swooping eagles, sleeping bats, stubborn oysters. i got to touch a sting ray, which was fantastic. they're so gentle.

3. birthday cake on the beach. lovely. thank you, guys. stars were out, too. and diyana gave me a teddy-bear! my first since i was five. i've named it Barnaby.

4. shao's post is more complete and excellently details the trip. BACE!

It suffices to say that the trip was absolutely first rate for me, and i wouldn't have wanted to spend it with anyone other than the 6 girls and 1 guy who did. thank you for making this a fantastically memorable experience. and kudos of course to jaja, who was the hostess with the mostest.

spot the sole guy

batman t-shirt!and whit ni! :)

a visibly pink jia yee, due to her first sing sling.

**2nd and 3rd pics grabbed from shao.

This is the divider between trip reporting and random mutterings.

Benda merapu-rapu starts....NOW.

Nyatakan 3 sebab anda menyukai tas tangan baru anda:

1. Kerana saya telah mendapatinya dengan diskaun sebanyak 40 peratus. (jualan hebat! musim membeli-belah!)

2. Kerana tas tangan tersebut bewarna biru dan akan clash dengan hampir semua pakaian saya, tetapi tidak mengapa.

3. Saya mampu menyumbat headphones (telefon kepala) saya kedalamnya.

i have to go back to kampung this weekend for a wedding, and i am honestly not looking forward to it. but it's ok. i can look at my new blue handbag whenever i need a boost.

i bought radiohead's OK Computer after exam. if i ever go overseas, 'Subtarranean homesick alien' will be my theme song when i'm homesick. simply because it has the word homesick in it, and because i love the song and would play it over and over while i write tear-stained emails to mom and dad.

joking bout last bit.

in fact, radiohead is exactly what i need right now.

you know, i was in kedah for a wedding the other day, and caught a glimpse of the hantaran. it was the usual stuff:baju, shoes, sejadah, fruits, cake. i was wondering, could i have cds as a hantaran instead, if i wanted? 5 cds, arranged on the dulang. fruits and baju are all lovely, but wouldn't it be great if it was something we actually wanted? one dulang books, one dulang cds. one dulang new headphones. then the rest can be all the usual stuff; telekung, shoes and whatnot.

je sais, je sais. mais je suis une petite triste. je pense c'est triste que beaucoup mes amies oublier. mon anniversaire, ce n'est pas important, oui? oui.

my french sucks. didn't conjugate oublier, i know, i know, just in case any francophones are reading. there shouldn't be, anyway. except for jia yee! hahaha, jia yee, don't translate ah.

i need to get more dangly earrings.

little miss pipedream

me feet are killing me.

who needs gyms when you can just walk the entire length and floors of shopping malls? in all honestly, trawling through the malls has been the most workout i've had in ages.

a couple days ago i was having a bitch fit and wanted to post about how there wasn't any decent cd shop in the whole of klang valley and in fact maybe malaysia and how i was going to get revenge by obtaining a credit card somway somehow and go amok on amazon, all because i wasn't able to find Spoon's 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga' nor Rilo kiley's 'Under the Blacklight'. well, today, i went to one utama's Rock Corner half-heartedly when suddenly, suddenly...!!

no, i didn't find spoon or rilo kiley. But!but!my eyes fell on THIS!!!

THE WOMBATS!

**i couldn't find a pic on the net so i took a picture but lepas ambik and masuk computer baru sedar i had't taken off all those pesky stickers(i.e. price tag, kementerian 'ori' sticker, sticker proclaiming it's imported,etc),but malas nak ambik again,and maybe you don't care anyway, so bear with me.

yaaaaay. i'm so happyyyyyy. i was sure i wouldn't be able to get it here. it's great, i'm listening to it at the moment, and it's great! so Rock Corner at OU gets thumbs up. also, they get brownie points because they even had The National! far out. it was a couple of their earliest albums i think, it wasn't Alligator or Boxer. but it was too expensive. so i just stuck with the Wombats.

time for empty-minded rambling of the day.

i really like shopping. i've just realized i really like shopping. i went to pyramid with Dee the other yesterday, and we trawled through practically every shop for 5 hours more or less. and we didn't eat lunch!!i was walking out of a shop, and i remember thinking, 'this must really mean something to me kalau boleh skip lunch'.

ok. time for momento jotting/milestone recording. i've finished with a-levels. my last paper ended the previous wednesday morning. so the college chapter of life is over. how do i feel about it? i'm not exactly sure. at the moment, i'm just basking in the free time we have now. a part of me thinks 'crap,college is over. then it's uni, then it's work then it's marriage then it's children then it's death'.(i know, that part of me likes to jump ahead a lot). i was climbing the stairs couple days ago(or was it yesterday?), and i was struck with the thought maybe if i had the choice, i'd just want to freeze at this phase for a while. forever 19. with the parents still alive and healthy, no responsibilities to pay bills or work or take care of anyone except maybe my brother, and that's fine because i can still go to my room and lock myself in for privacy and some solitude.

ok,ok,too morbid. moving on.

i will, hands down, without a doubt, miss the people i've met throughout time spent at sunway. in particular my classmates. i mean, would they actually understand what i mean when i say i miss them? hmm. how do i convey this.

i can't say that we're all like one big lovey-dovey family, it's not as if i'm close with every single one of my classmates and can engage in a group hug with them anytime anywhere. that's overstating it la. but still. we can click, despite different races, different backgrounds, different preferences. they've changed me, and my perceptions, for the better. so, believe me when i say i will miss you, because i don't take these sorta things for granted.

blurry, but what the hell. featuring mrs thiru,woot!

and, of course, i'll miss LIKE CRAZY the econs tuition gang. the last time i laughed till i cried was in the back seat of diyana's car, on our way to tuition.
Jaja: why don't we go out and save stray cats??
Shao Min: *dumbfounded*. Where?
Jaja: anywhere!

I personally like this one. we were supposed to be doing 'HOT'. but shao min burst out laughing, and i look like a constipated fish. diyana and jaja pull it off flawlessly though. jaja looks casually bored while diyana is diva glam. saya sayang awak semua!thank you for sticking out for me even when i was totally psycho and stuff.

ok,ok. enough jiwang2 and sentimentality.

which leads me to the next agenda of yelping about excitedly, i'm going to langkawi!!yaaaay. with my classmates!yaaaay. i can already picture us there.

and of course i worry whether we'll lose touch and never see each other again after this, but i know for now, i can hold off thinking about it. langkawi first. worry and trepidation later.

flight of the conchords

you can tell by the increasing frequency of my posts that the reluctance to study is growing. lepas habis exam nanti, it'll be a post a day. then every hour. then in the end i'll be posting evey 10 minutes. every time you refresh the page something new will be there.

tell me, kawan-kawanku, are you hungry? you are? splendid. listen to me very carefully. go down to the kitchen and get out your bread. wait, read this all the way down then go get out the bread. take out your chocolate spread or nutella, or if you are unfortunate enough not to have any, take a medium sized bar of cadbury's milk chocolate and melt it over the stove for about 10 minutes.

i'm kidding about melting the chocolate. don't melt it! go out and get chocolate spread.

got it? ok. spread two slices of bread with the chocolate. go on, lather it on, put as much you like. done?baik. then, go to the place where you keep all your fruits and select a wonderful, bruiseless, fantastically yellow banana, and peel it. then, proceed to cut slices of banana and place it on the bread on top of the chocolate. put the two slices together, and voila. chocolate-spread-and-banana sandwich. sedapnye tak tahan. i do believe it precedes over my former favourite peanut butter and banana sandwich.

you know, elvis liked peanut butter and banana sandwiches. random fact.

bananas must be the friendliest fruit of all. it goes great with chocolate spread, peanut butter, ice-cream, cereal. it makes the most kickass minum petang snack, goreng pisang. can make into cake. kuih kodok. can dry it and make into kerepek. what would we do without pisang?
oh,yes.

the green one? one day my brother was playing on the patio, when he screams, thinking he saw a lizard. rupanye he saw this bird, sitting on the patio macam rumah die. wasn't flapping about, didn't try to fly away, it just sat there. long story short,(the story includes us keeping it in cleo's old cage from which it escaped but then our next door neighbour's maid saw it and caught it and handed him over to us), we now have birds. the other one, the pretty blue one, my parents bought from the store, because "he needs a mate!".

for now, unofficially, their names are diego and jolie. diego because mom said the green bird is so blur like diego the sheriff from the zorro series. jolie, not as in angelina, but as in french for pretty. for the record, i wanted to name the green one pedro.

i know, so mat salleh kan?why cannot just name abu and aminah. sigh, western influences win when it comes to naming pets. but if we get another cat i'll call it si tompok.

and, just for fun, a pic of my ever obliging favourite male model:


LCD soundsystem, 'someone great'.


oh!oh!ok. i HAVE to spread the word and love for Flight of the Conchords. they're my latest obsession. Kakak, tgk ni!semue orang tgk!


i adore them to the extent i am willing to overstuff this post with two videos. they are WORTH it.

ok. takpe.

my dad brought home a box of fancy chocolates yesterday, so after tea, me and my brother were jostling over who got to open it and get first pick. i teased my brother, telling him to take the mango truffle choclate coated one, and we were jestering as we usually do, when he suddenly said to me, 'eff you,man.'

he didn't say fuck, he just said eff, and he didn't mean it properly, and immediately after he said sorry, but there you have it. and what's worse, he said it in front of mom, who got royally mad. as much as my sister and i (or i guess me mostly) curse, we restrain from saying it in front of my brother, and we don't curse at people, much less to each other.

swearing. what's in a swear word?my behaviour towards swear words became heck of a lot more liberal once school finished. if before, the worst word i'd dare to blog was darn, now you'd occasionally come across a fuck here and there. i say it when i'm mad, and i try not to say it in front of people, but i slip up sometimes.

to be honest, i don't feel discomforted by it. i'm fine. is that bad? of course, i don't understand why some people go about saying it in every sentence they make, but it's not as if i feel a rush of displeasure or annoyance when i hear it. it's just a word. i don't think that just because i succumb to saying fuck it means that i or anyone else who says it is any less of a person. but i know some people do.

my mom scolded my brother, saying 'what value do you get out of saying it?'. and she's right. there IS no value. none more than the third finger has over the other fingers.

and another thing is, my brother said he learnt to say that in school. which makes perfect sense, because i learnt all the swear words i know in school too. for God's sake, it was my classmates, my girl classmates, mind you, who taught me pukimak, bhuto, pantat. and i said them as well, not because i liked the words or honestly understood it's usage, i just said them because my friends said them so casually, so i figured i had to too. peer pressure yo, pure and simple. and that's what my brother's going through. we know it's wrong, but our friends do it, so it's ok.

how do i do this? how do i protect my brother from everything bad that i know, without a doubt, he'll come across in school? there's no escaping it you know. hantarlah gi mane pon, be it an asrama, daily school, private school, it won't make a difference. there will always be the bad influence.

but ok, enough serious pondering. i have to go mandi. oh, and watch this! i love this. german weatherwoman tak tahan gelak after seeing her colleague come on screen instead of the weather map at first. infectious!

how many bimbos does it take to deal with a cockroach?

I am a vain cow. and you'll see why in a few minutes.

But first up, how many bimbos DOES it take to deal with a cockroach? just in case you want any proof that i'm a spineless girl, here goes.

Couple nights ago, i was getting ready for bed, and i was brushing my teeth, when i looked into the bathtub, and saw a cockroach. gah. i don't like cockroaches, and i haven't seen one in this close of a proximity for quite a while. so i started looking for rid-sect, but apparently or house is so bug-free sampaikan takde ridsect di mana2. everyone was asleep so i couldn't ask the parents where it was. what was i to do? i thought maybe i should just leave it, maybe it would be gone in the morning. but of course that seemed like a bad idea because what if it crawled out of the bathroom and onto my bed in the middle of the night? and i didn't want to actually bash it with something, that seemed a bit crude, and besides, it would most likely be unsuccessful, as it would run in a different direction everytime i tried to bash it. so what did i do?

i decided to drown it. poor bugger. poor bug.

i took the hose and sprayed directly on it. i was merciless, i tell you. i followed it with the hose wherever it tried to run, so there was no escape. and all the while i was screaming(albeit in my head) 'well i'm SORRY but who asked you to be here in the first place?!!'.

and in the end, after a good 5 minutes of hosing, i let up, and the cockroach was flat on his back, twitching. After a while, it stopped twitching, and i pronounced it dead. but i didn't want to pick it up and throw it away, because i was too chicken, so i figured 'ok, i'll leave it be, and throw it away tomorrow morning. confem mati by then'.

so i went to sleep, woke up the next morning, went to the bathroom, and it was BLOODY GONE!

i must say, that pretty much got me on the hop. it was a cockroach resurrected. what if it went back to its family and notified the colony and they'd all come back to the bathroom? then, on closer inspection, the bug was still in the tub, and it was alive and kicking. ape ni? who gave it CPR?

but then again, i guess cockroaches can't drown. they don't have lungs, do they? hmm. do they?

WARNING:THIS MAY BE A LONG, POINTLESS POST.

I did my econs paper just now, and have mixed feelings about it, but whatever. this is not the time or place to analyse exams. only one more paper left, wheeee!

oh,yes. i am a vain cow. you know why?

no sound!or very little of it.

I was determined not to study today. so i dug out the webcam my dad used to use. and uh..ta-da. just wanted to test it. you can't hear what i'm saying, because the mike for some reason can't pick up sound very well. but i think it's better that way, since now you can intepret whatever i'm saying to be anything you want. for the smart people, i'm talking about the state of the nation, the UMNO assembly, corporate governance, stuff like that. for fellow bimbos, i'm talking about clive owen's hotness and how i MUST get that prada clutch lepas habis exam. for my friends, i'm just saying hi :) a really long hi. and mumbling some rude stuff about the econs exam.

speaking of which, i am not equipped with the knowledge to comment on the the Bersih rally, but:

1.i wish i had been there to see it.

2.i thought a lot of the comments given by politicians in response to the rally were pretty idiotic.

3.yup, the paper's pretty biased.(its taken me long enough to notice)

4. some of the parliament debates related to it were absurd.

and i'm glad a lot of the blogs i read, mostly comprising of blogs whose authors are around my age, blogged and spread the word about it. we're not an ignorant generation.

ok, some mainstream madness. the other day, i was talking to jaja and shao an diyana about Rihanna's new video, have you seen it?the one that features Neyo. first 5 times i saw the video on mtv, i couldn't actually pay attention to the song because i was fuming over the fact that she was in her underwear for three quarters of the video. it confirmed my nagging suspicion that Rihanna is stupid, because she thinks the only way to obtain a solid fan base is by being slutty.

Also, have you heard the solo effort by Nicole Scherzinger? i heard her first 2 singles, and it confirmed my nagging suspicion that there should have never been PCD. she should have taken THAT album as her own, while the rest of the girls became her backup dancers.

Oh!i watched the movie version of The Mistress of Spices. it's one of my favourite books, and i didn't know what to expect with the adaptation. hmm. it was ok at first, but then it just went all wrong. WRONG! i won't bore you with my rantings on what was wrong, but get this. you know tilo's counterpart, Raven? well, first of all, they got Dylan Mcdermott to play the role. good-looking, but tak bolehlah. didn't do the role justice. and you know what? instead of Raven, in the movie they named him doug. doug? aiyaaaa. why la DOUG? i kept thinking of this doug:

ok. enough merapu for the day. i'm going to claim vengeance on the tv tonight.

E.T. menelefon rumah

Saya tahu saya sepatutnya sedang meneliti pelajaran sebagai persediaan untuk double terror yang bakal dihadapi pada minggu hadapan, iaitu peperiksaan Perakaunan kertas 3 and peperiksaan Ekonomi(prinsip ekonomi?) kertas 4. Walaupun kertas Perakaunan hanyalah terdiri daripada soalan aneka pilihan, tetapi memandangkan saya telah megebom(membomkan?meletupkan?) kertas 4, saya perlu mendapat markah penuh untuk kertas 3. Prinsip ekonomi tidak perlulah diperkatakan, memang horror teramat sangat.

Ketika saya megulangkaji pelajaran, saya sering terfikir tentang segala aktiviti yang bakal dilakukan selepas tamat peperiksaan. Saya akan pergi bercuti bersama rakan-rakan kesayangan saya! Selain itu, saya akan menonton televisyen sepuas-puasnya, kerana ketika ini, tatkala adik saya seronok menonton rancangan-rancangan menarik sambil menjamu selera dengan sandwis (sandwich) dan teh, saya terpaksa berhadapan dengan nota Ekonomi saya yang tunggang-terbalik dan berselerak di merata tempat. Saya telah berjaya menjadikan ruang tamu dan ruang makan rumah saya berkeadaan seperti warzone yang dipenuhi kertas-kertas, alatan menulis, beg, bantal dan cawan-cawan kosong. Di samping itu, saya juga akan pergi membeli-belah. Malah, saya telah menyediakan senarai barang-barang yang hendak dibeli:

• Sepasang kasut baru
• Buku-buku cerita, terutamanya sebuah buku nukilan Agatha Christie yang bertajuk The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Pembunuhan Roger Ackroyd)
• Majalah musik
• cakera padat(saya tidak pasti artis yang mahu say beli cakera padatnya, tetapi saya bakal memilihnya nanti)
• pengikat rambut(scrunchie?)
• Kemeja-T yang mempunyai logo Batman(Jejaka kelawar)

Walaupun saya tidak pasti jikalau saya mempunyai wang yang mencukupi untuk membeli semua barang yang dinyatakan di atas, saya tetap berazam untuk memiliki kesemuanya. Saya boleh!Malaysia Boleh! Angkasawan! Sheikh Muszaphar!

Selamat Hari Deepavali! Saya berpendapat Cambridge A-level Examination Board (Lembaga Peperiksaan Tahap A Cambridge) sangat tidak berperikemanusiaan kerana telah mengadakan peperiksaan Statistik dan juga Fizik bagi pelajar-pelajar aliran sains pada hari ini walaupun terdapat segelintir daripada calon-calon peperiksaan yang menyambut Deepavali. Mari kita cuba memaksa mereka untuk bekerja ketika Hari Natal(Krismas?) supaya mereka merasa keperitan yang dihadapi oleh pelajar-pelajar beragama Hindu pada hari ini.

Maafkan saya jikalau percubaan saya untuk memblog dalam bahasa ibunda telah memalukan kaum melayu secara keseluruhan. Saya sedar, penggunaan bahasa malaysia saya telah menjadi agak kucar-kacir. saya berpendapat jikalau saya mengambil semula peperiksaan SPM saya, saya tidak mampu mendapat keputusan yang serupa ketika Tingkatan 5. saya bakal menjadi seperti kakak saya yang cakap bahasa melayu seperti orang putih. Tetapi, mungkin juga tidak. Kakak saya berupaya untuk converse dalah Bahasa melayu secara formal, manakala agak kekok untuk bertutur dalam bahasa melayu pasar(pasa?pasah?) Saya pula agak hebat menyampaikan mesej dan pendapat dalam bahasa melayu pasar(pasa?pasah?), tetapi penggunaan Bahasa Melayu secara formal perlu diperbaiki.

Teruskan dengan ulangkaji! Tetapi saya mempunyai perasaan(feeling?) saya akan lena sebentar lagi.

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life

Ya know.

i was looking for an empty notebook just now, when i came across my high school yearbook. flicked through it, and then proceeded to sit down properly and go through the pages.

it's funny. it's only been what, 2 years since we finished? and yet i've already forgotten. i studied my class picture, and i had completely forgotten i was in the same class as some people. if you were to ask me now, about some of my former classmates, i would have gone, 'ah?was she/he my classmate ke? oh, a'ah!!lupe'.

where exactly am i going here. ok. i was flicking through some friendster profiles the other day, and in several of them, in the 'who i want to meet' section, there'd be 'ex-semashur0105'. and i raised my eyebrow then, thinking 'well, i wouldn't put that in my profile'. and then i stopped for a second to think, why WOULDN'T i?

because half the people in semashur, no, make that three quarters, have become strangers to me. and the fact that i've forgotten who half my classmates even were reinforces that! why ah? i just wonder WHY. because i find it spectacularly, awfully sad to think that i spent 5 years in a place, and yet here i am already letting go of most of the memories. i found friends, yes, awesome ones, but once we finished high school, for most of them, we stopped having common ground and we just. don't. clique. anymore.

is it my fault? i honestly wonder(i know i've filled up my quota of asking pathetic, self-pitying sounding questions, but yeah). the last batch gathering i went to, i felt insanely uncomfortable, thinking 'maybe this was a bad idea'. i know it sounds horrible, but i feel seperate, like i'm not part of them. maybe i never was actually, but now it actually starting to believe that. and i don't mean this in a degrading, i-am-superior-and-therefore-cannot-get-along way. we're just different.

or this could all be extremely stupid over-analysis of everything and i'm just kidding myself. yeah, that's more likely.

we were going to call the school magazine something, a latin name. but i can't remember what it was. hmm.

quickie

i've always thought justin timberlake's video for 'sexyback' was pretty stupid. it didn't make sense.

i thought his video for 'My love' was pretty stupid too. especially the part where things would fly out when he sang a line, i.e:'if i wrote you love note..', pieces of paper(representing love notes, i suppose) came flying out around him.

i think blogger is pretty idiotic at the moment. whenever i sign in it keeps redirecting me to the sign in page.

i ate too much kuay teow goreng just now. i'm going to explode, i can feel it.

my parents are going to watch the federer vs sampras exhibition match nanti. the company gave them box-seats or something. lucky. it's a pity they can't bring me. dad told me to "get tickets la. then me and mom will wave at you from the box".

Ya Allah kenyangnye tak tahan. i should restrain myself next time. just because you have one whole styrofoam container of kuay teow goreng doesn't necessarily mean you have to finish all of it, or attempt to.

my chemical romance?here?in malaysia?i didn't see that one coming. though i can easily imagine it now that i know.

Quentin Tarantino likes 'teenagers' by said My Chemical Romance. random fact of the day.

rah, rah, rah!!

All hell's about to break loose.

"this is no Bridget Jones, this is no-KILL THE DIRECTOR!!!!".

My favourite line from The Wombat's 'kill the director'.

this post will be over-stuffed with songs and a video.

ever think that exams are just one big fraud?

SPM was supposed to be the life-altering exam. the exam all the teachers urged you to 'study betul2 kali ni je, untuk last exam ni'. last exam my foot. they portray it like some kind of final walkway, the ultimate gunung of cabaran. so you work your ass off, climbing the stupid gunung, and when you finally reach the top and yelp with delight at your success, what happens then? you find out that there's nothing else to do except climb back down. anti-climax.

here's the problem with exams:you put too much faith in thinking that you'll be gratified if you do well. well, that's my bloody problem anyway.

now here i am again. this time i don't have any teacher/penceramah motivasi telling me how important this exam is, but i figured, 'this is going to determine what university i get in, so that's gotta be somewhat important, yea?'

and when i'm actually in a university, taking my finals, i'll be thinking, 'well, this is going determine whether i get first-class honours or not, so i guess it's important,kan?'. it never ends.

i have no idea whether i'm prepared for the interview tomorrow. if 'prepared' means having read the last 10 issues of The Economist, then no, i am not ready. what IS ready, anyway? tell me what, i'll just try to be honest, and not bull around pretending to be someone i'm not. fair enough? i knew for the start this was going to a long-shot, so why fret over it?

rilo kiley.hmm. now there's a thought. should look up their stuff.

i LOVE this song by Meet Uncle Hussain. and how do i know i love it? the first time i heard it on the radio, i tried to find everything wrong with it. the vocals were too screechy, and i found the way the singer does that thing where malay artistes sing in malay with a slang macam orang mat salleh cakap supremely annoying. but, after a few listens, i had to concede that i just adore this song. jiwang lyrics and all.


so here i face that awful question i usually try to avoid by promising to study hard enough in order to be prepared for exams on time: what if i don't do well? what if i can't do my accounting and get a B, or worse yet,a C?

shitcakes. and it's funny, considering the fact that i HAVE gotten Bs and Cs before, you'd think i'd have gotten it in my head to stop being so kabut about studies.

whatever. i'll just do my best, and let God do the rest.

but wait, HAVE i done my best?

shitcakes.

ok, ok, enough paranoid worrying. here's something to end things nice and sprightly. for those of you who skipped all the songs(and i know most of you have,haha), at least watch this trailer for 'The Nanny Diaries', ok? looks pretty promising.

sugar we're going down swinging

My favourite cousin Syefik(yes syefik, u ARE my favourite, jangan terharu sangat :P) took this pic, and i must say, it sums up PERFECTLY how i've been spending the last few days. Observe:

1. Positioned at the computer. i've been constantly checking my emails obsessively and reading blogs. spending more time at the computer than needed.
2. Mug of cofee on the table. Two cups a day, one for breakfast, another one at night.
3. Pencilbox and papers. props used so i can keep up the illusion that i'm studying.
4. Slumped posture. the mark of a bona-fide procrastinator and budak malas.
5. fingers toying with hair. hmm. i myself have no idea what's up with that.
6. new pajama shorts. woot!

I have a feeling i'm not worrying about my exams as much as i should be. nor am I getting ready for the interview. i know i SHOULD be, and by right be busy with the preperations and all, but all of a sudden i'm thinkng 'feck it'. there's no use trying to pretend i know everything there is to know about sub-prime loans if i don't, right? i will be myself, and in this short space of time i will do what i can to improve my knowledge, but if they don't like me, then it just wasn't meant to be.

ceh, confidentnye. tak tahan.

Happy thoughts. you know what i'd like to be doing?. going crazy listening to kick-ass music on a beach or under trees somewhere. or going on a dancing rampage with Bo Eui and the rest of my awesome classmates. and i'd like to be getting the batman t-shirt i plan to buy as a follow-up to the superman one. and i want to go up to the person(s) i may or may not be having a crush on, and say 'hey, i think you're swell, but i'm seriously tired of waiting for you to notice me and think i'm awesome, so here's to me getting all this off my chest and just not wondering for a change. cheers!'. and i want to be laughing, belly-hurting-tear-inducing laughing.

all of a sudden i'm 19 and have so much to live for, even in this quiet room in the dead of the night in front of a computer.

and then i'm back to looking at the econs notes in front of me and remembering i have a lot of studying to do. shit. ah well. magic never lasts, and isn't even real to begin with.

i know, i know. i sound like i'm on weed or something.

Mengantok with a capital M

i was flipping through the channels this morning, when i came across a segment showing the making of 'V for Vendetta'(which i've yet to see), and for some reason i myself can't fathom, while they were interviewing Hugo Weaving, the thought 'fuh, he's hot' simply popped in my head.

it was exactly like the time i was watching 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Enemy of the State', when Barry Pepper came on screen.

and what about when i watched Suede's video for 'Attitude' for the first time, during the part where the lights pan on the audience seats and you see Brett Anderson?


what's the point of all this, you may ask? hmm. can i please meet somone who looks like the equivalent of hugo weaving, barry pepper or brett anderson? or maybe all three at once? i don't mind.

and ever since i watched it, i can't seem to be able to get on of those travellators at the airport (or the flat elevators as i used to call them before i saw the term 'travellator' on the thing itself) without thinking of Feist's video for 'My Moon My Man'.

raya was raya. kuih. salam. makan. duit raya. the usual.

i REALLY need to get into gear for exam(i say this everytime exams are near). chop,chop!

i think by now you would have realized this post has no aim or purpose. i'm real sleepy at the moment.

watch the video(if you haven't yet), so that i won't be the only one wanting to skip and dance when i get on a travellator.



g'night people.

berlalulah sudah ramadhan...

i was going to command whoever who read this to click play, but i just figured, 'why not set it on AUTOPLAY?HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!'. dengarkan suara anuar zain ketika muda!

but seriously, selmat hari raya everyone, maaf zahir dan batin. in other words, i'm sorry for anything bad, hurtful, mischievious or naughty(kalau ade :P) i've ever inflicted you with.

p/s:i'll switch off the autoplay once raya spirit has died down, or i go crazy whenever i hear the starting of the song when i look at the page.

p/p/s:i remembered how to do the ketupat!i guess it's because i was so looking forward to weaving ketupat rather than studying, that my brain somehow assisted my relctance to study by digging up the anyam-ketupat memory.

STRENGTH.VISION.FLIGHT.SPEED.

i bought a t-shirt with a superman logo on it today. a FIERY one. yeah,baby. and on the banners surrounding it it says :'STRENGTH. VISION. FLIGHT. SPEED'. i've never been up-to-date with my Marvel comics, so i have no idea whether that's Superman's motto or whatnot, but whatever goes. who am i to question the words of he-of-the-red-underpants?

i've been having somewhat of a...rough patch, i guess you could call it. and i'm no stranger to rough patches, my friends and my blog could pretty much confirm that (*rolls eyes rolls eyes rolls eyes*), but i think this time the shit just hit the fan. it was like some inner demon was realeased.(bad inner-demon, BAD BOY..)

i think i rippled some waves this time around, and for that, i'm sorry. i can't undo the things i felt, and i can't take back my moodiness and loss-of-enthusiasm during those few days, so the best i can do is say i'm sorry, and that i won't let it happen again. and i can say thanks for sticking around for me even through my shitty behaviour. thanks, yo.

i can't make promises, but i'll settle with saying that i will try my damndest not to subject my friends through these kind of rough patches again. and i will try my hardest to make sure the inner-demon won't overcome me no more. while wearing a blazing superman logo across my heart...woot!

is this how exam stress feels like? waking up with your teeth clenched every morning and dreading the thought of doing anything related to studies? ntah, i don't think so. is there even such a thing as exam stress? half the time i think i'm just kidding myself. surely stress is brought on by more serious things, like the death of a loved one or if you get fired or something? i'm a 19 year-old girl living in the pampered world of the 21st century. i'm not supposed to be experienced or knowledgeable enough to even know what stress is.

yeah, well. i haven't been studying for nuts throughout this weekend, and it feels super! i'm going to make kuih raya tomorrow, too. i know study time is running out, and i should get cracking, but i think i needed the break. everyone needs a break. you need a break, i need a break, we all need a break. so break la. plus, my friend Tai was telling me 'you can study without being stressed, you know', and those words have been echoing in my head. why not? i have this idea of balancing out the tension-inducing hormones with happy ones. generate happy spasms to counter-react the tense clenching.

at the moment, some of the things that get my cheer on:
1. my fiery superman logo t-shirt(obviously)
2. the fact that there are still people in the world nice enough to anonymously pay for my grandparents while they were out eating at a kedai.
3. there was a good movie on just now
4. i got new pajama shorts(the ones i have now are DISINTEGRATING, honest)
5. got shelves and the painting AND pictures finally put up, so my room looks cheery. no more blank walls.

Jamie Scott and The Town, 'When will I See Your Face Again'.

ring-a-ring-o'-posies

Firdaus a.k.a The Game tagged me (thanks,mate), so i'm glad to be able to have an excuse to gush about myself randomly :p

The Rules:
1. Each blogger must post these rules first.
2. Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. Bloggers that are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’ve tagged, and to read your blog.

*flexes fingers*.hmm.

1.I DESPISE it when i'm about to go to sleep, and have just switched off my bedside table lamp, but suddenly i see that i've left my bathroom light on, or the hallway light outside my room hasn't been switched off. gah. my laziness makes me shut my eyes and think 'biar jelah' and try to go to sleep, but 2 seconds later i keep thinking about all the money i'm forcing my parents to waste for the electricity bill. so with a grunt, i'll get up and switch the offending light off.

2.i'm afraid of small children. whenever i'm around the presence of a child, more so a baby or a toddler, i feel like i'm obliged to try and make them smile or laugh or something. but my social retardity impedes my attempts to do so, and normally the child will just look at me questionably(unless it's a really friendly and cheerful baby we're talking about here).

3. i wouldn't mind if fish and beef were taken away from my meals. but if you try and restrain my right from having chicken, i swear, i will kick your ass.

4. Every year, we'll weave ketupat to make nasi impit. and every year so far, without fail, mom has to re-teach me how to anyam the thing. it's like i have seasonal memory loss. i only remember how to make ketupat during raya. we haven't started making the ketupat this year yet, so we'll see how it goes. maybe i'll remember this time.

5. I used to have this paranoid fear that we are all just self-absorbed creatures, and our friendships and relationships are based on our level of tolerance for other people's egoes, and their tolerance for ours. that's just sad, isn't it? but nah, i've learnt that real friendships wouldn't work that way.

6. i am supremely reluctant to listen or watch or read anything that's in french (though kakak is always reprimanding me for that by screeching 'why noooooot???'), simply because it's a reminder of how i dropped my french lessons once high school habis and despite the fact i spent four years learning the language, i still am not more that beginner's level and cannot translate anything except words like I, you, he/she, chicken, pig, and ever famous phrases such asI don't understand and where is the toilet?.

7. i can't think of any other points beside these 6 at the moment, though i know once i've posted this thing and am doing other activities, all kinds of points will pop in my head and i'll think 'laaaa, apesal i didn't think to include this in just now?'. yeah. the classic 'I-shoulda-said-this' syndrome. i have a bad case of it.

8. just included here to adhere to protocol.

so i'm tagging aijud, nani, anna, kakak, shao, kye, aman, aki. HOWEVER, and please take note, if you guys malas nak buat ni (i know some people dislike doing these tag thingies), then feel free to skip. trust me, i won't be offended in any way :p

je ne sais pas

what do i want to say?

in one of my Agatha Christie books, i think it was 'Death in the Clouds', Poirot says the very thing that will give the murderer away is his own words. because humans, inevitably, just love to talk about themselves. something along those lines (i'm sure it was a lot less dramatic than how i put it).

it's a thursday night, and it's one of those times where there are a whole lot of stuff i want to type down here, but it's all a blur of ideas, and when i focus on one topic, it loses its intrigue and i don't see where i'm going with it.

like how when i heard the imam reciting the surah lailatul-qadr as i was leaving the masjid just now, it just seemed to sum up everything that's beautiful about ramadhan.

and how i'm starting to worry all over again whether i'm talking too much about myself in my blog. am i supposed to stick to general stuff like music and books? is it too emo or cliched of me to rant out again and again about things that i feel down about? would that be hypocritical? am i having this warped perception that a blog can act as an emotional crutch?

and that at the moment, i'm feeling a certain amount of content. i remind myself not to sweat the small stuff, and it works. it actually works.

and i'm thinking over my choice of accountancy for my degree major. despite everything, the B in AS and the horrendous marks i got for my mock exams, i'm sticking with it.i like accounting, no matter how bad i am at it. i take comfort in the precision of accounts, and despite all my grumblings, i enjoy it. so i'm sticking with the plan. degree in accounting, chartered, masters in economics. i did a reality check, and i still get that tingly feeling that says i'm happy with what i'm learning. so all systems go.

and the fact that i finally found a good music widget to put in the sidebar of my blog after going through countless of useless ones. the one from lastfm actually scrobbles efficiently, tracking all recently played songs and providing snippets you can listen to if they got the song in their database. and i want to put up a big announcement on the blog saying 'hey everyone click the play buttons on the widget!!', but then 2 seconds later i remember that other people might not actually give a damn. nevermind. i enjoy clicking them all the time, so i'll do it.

and how kakak's going back in a couple of days and part of me thinks 'oh no. i can't remember how i did it without her here'.

at the end of the day(and this post), the blur will just remain a blur until it fades away or is replaced by new things. in between i'll just settle for re-reading the silence of the lambs until i fall asleep and then wake for sahur.

signs

I adore BBC's remake of The Taming of the Shrew. They were showing a rerun of it on Hallmark the other day, and i must say, i just find it immensely enjoyable.

i left a bunch of accounting papers on the dining room table. i, being the lazy ninny that i am, left it there for the past few days. funny thing is, whenever i needed a certain paper from that stack i left on the table, i'd come down from my room, get the paper, and yet leave the rest of the stack lying there. i'm that kind of lazy. anyway, this morning, i came downstairs with my stuff to do some work at the dining table, when i saw that the stack was gone. we're having guests over tonight, so i figured our maid must have cleared the table and kept the papers aside or wherever. so i tried looking at all the usual places, but takde. so i asked kak nikki where'd she put it? she gives me this kind of stricken look, and said she'd put it in our storeroom. the same storeroom where we keep all our old newspapers. the same storeroom where today, of all days, the orang surat khabar lame had come into to collect all those all newspapers. in other words, my stack of accouting past year exam papers were sitting in a truck destined for a recycling plant. wonderful way to start the morning.

oddly enough, and it IS odd because i wasn't pms-ing or anything, i started bawling. well, not bawling, but crying the same way i cried when i watched Armageddon for the first time. must have been some inner nerd in me mourning the loss of undone past year exam papers. tragic. i called up my mom and she confirmed that Kenny, the surat khabar guy, had taken the newspapers, and that he'd probably taken my papers too. but mom was onto damage-control in a flash. she called up Kenny and then rang me back to say that Kenny was on his way back and that i'd have to dig through the papers in his truck.

so 20 minutes later, sure enough, the truck arrives and i go swimming in surat khabar lama.

kidding,not quite. our stack of papers were lucky enough to be right at the end, so i was able to just pluck out my papers without any hassle. fuh. Alhmamdulillah, i'm just glad to get them back. this is a sign. a 'Janganlah malas sangat nak angkat barang tu' sign.

sign taken.

i want roti john tomorrow

among the things i get to eat only when it's ramadhan:
1.ayam percik
2.tepung pelita
3.murtabak
4.roti john

a belated merdeka pondering. i don't like it when during official merdeka celebrations, they make the VIPs get up and wave flags while singing along to 'Keranamu Malaysia'. that's just bollocks la. the VIPs mostly look bored to death while half-heartedly waving the flags from side to side. what does waving small flags have to do with patriotism anyway?

am i patriotic?probably not. i wouldn't put up a flag on my car. but again, does being patriotic mean you have to flaunt your love for the jalur gemilang and sing along enthusiastically whenever they play 'Keranamu Malaysia'? Sometimes i just don't get it. In previous years, there'd be that annual merdeka concert at KLCC. the difference between the merdeka concert and a normal concert?the singers would all crowd on stage towards the end, singing patriotic songs once the clock struck 12. this year, there was a sunway lagoon beach merdeka party(beachwear only). what do freaking bikinis and frolicking in the water have to do with merdeka?

i think, at this point, merdeka has just become an excuse to throw a huge party. which bloody defeats the purpose, innit? i thought we were suppose to be remembering the fact that after having to face a lot of crap by being colonised by practically every tom,dick and harry, we'd finally regain our right to rule our country, our way. it's been 50 years, and in that 50 years, i personally think malaysia's come heck of a long way and we should celebrate that, but at the same time we have to remember that it was only 50 plus years ago our grandparents were being killed and opressed by the japanse. i mean, c'mon people, it's not all just about fireworks!

gah. dah start berleter plak. sorry. i may be being hypocritical here since whenever i myself watch merdeka fireworks i'm more concentrated on the pretty bursts of lights rather than remembering what Tunku Abdul Rahman did for the nation and all that, but yeah. merdeka should be more than just the annual public holiday.

and i don't like it when i come across people who go on about how they'd rather emigrate to Australia or Switzerland or wherever than suffer the God-forsaken conditions of Malaysia and malaysians any longer. like,wtf? ok, so there's a lot of stuff that's wrong in this country, like corruption in the government and the gross behaviours of some malaysians, and our apalling driving skills, and the really pathetic music videos we come up with, but still. i think it's just a bit sad they'd just ditch the the country they came from and move to a kononnya superior country. why not stick around and actually try and upgrade Malaysia to what you want it to be? but yeah. this may all sound incredibly naive. Maybe you can't change Malaysia. maybe that's why so many students sent overseas just stay there.

ok, enough of that. save it up for next year's merdeka. since the theme seems to be Malaysia in this post, just gonna pop in a quick mention about some local music. i must say, the local mainstream music scene has perked up la. i don't know much about malaysian bands or singers, but i recently came across these two songs which i particularly like. the first is 'Pagi Yang gelap' by this band called Hujan. an indie band, if you will. People here are dubbing them local The Strokes, but i think their music is more melodious. check that song out, kalau rajin. the second song, surprisingly, is by Kaer. remember Kaer, the finalist in season 3 of Akademi Fantasia?don't cringe!haha. i'm really not a fan of AF-born artists, their songs usually aren't great(i DESPISE any song by Adam) and their popularity tends to die out faster than a speeding bullet, but there you go. apparently, Kaer had to self-finance his debut album, which is too bad, but this song is good. As far as pop music goes, especially pop music by Malaysian artists, i think this is a good tune. dengarkan:

the weekend's over, people. time to get cracking.

we all live in a yellow submarine

the wombats.

click play already.click. CLICK DAMMIT!heh.

let's dance to Joy Divison,
and celebrate the irony,
everything is going wrong,
but we're so happy!

an excerpt from The Wombats' 'Let's dance to Joy Division'. how appropriate! i've pretty much bombed my mock exams, but things are just dandy. let's dance to Joy Division!though technically, i only know one Joy Division song, and it's not even that danceable too. oh well.

things have been a bit hectic lately. after we'd done our econs paper, as we were walking out of the exam room, diyana gestured to her head and said, 'nampak tak asap coming out of my head ni?', which describes perfectly how things have been going. on overdrive. but i'm on break for a week and a half, wheee. and happy ramadhan,y'all. i find it extremely reassuring to think satan's in chains at the moment.

have you ever gotten that feeling where you have an issue with someone, things go awry, so you try to solve it, but at some point, despite your persisting unsatisfied
feeling that things are unresolved and you still want to say something, you know that inevitably, whatever you say will just make things worse? yeah. i don't like that. but i've learnt, the hard way, that it's just better to shut up and act normal.
and there's really not much point worrying about it, so don't.

a couple pictures:

a bunch of college friends came over for a kenduri we were having, cheers for that. a lot of my aunties were commenting 'lawanya semue kawan kakyang dari sekolah', haha.

and finally, a recent and decent family picture. we all actually look normal here!

i haven't gotten any offers from the australian unis i applied to, but no matter. i'll leave that to Allah. things WILL work out, i am honestly starting to re-believe this. plus, i bought a bright yellow t-shirt with 'The Beatles-yellow submarine' emblazoned across it with a cartoonish picture of a submarine, and new headphones too. you shouldn't be worried when you're wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, listening to The Wombats on your new headphones. it just contradicts the nature of sadness.

haha, you know what?i got a couple of backdated issues of Galaxie magazine for free hari tu, and i'm flipping through them. and they have those 'get personal' pages at the back, where you can send in your address and details to which they'll publish in that section so that you can look for pen-pals!haha, i didn't think these things still existed. do they actually work? can you REALLY acquire proper friends through this channel? i'm reading the 'about myself' lines the people attach with their details. 'Sophisticated, open-minded, decent and simple Malay guy seeking friends from all over the globe. I'm into Feeder, MCR, Muse and BSB too'.
Right. 'Sweet and adorable Malay girl seeks friends from around the world'. There, we have a match already. My favourite is: 'let's just day hello and become friends'.

sigh. i'm going to have to head for the books again soon. not yet though. take a break, everyone. go singgah bazaar ramadhan.

ode to nani

Oh farah hanani
awak sudah pergi
saya rasa sunyi
di sini.

heh.

but yes, farah hanani shamsuddin has officially left the peninsular. off to canada to study and do what canadian people do. and i think juwa left today, and afiqah is leaving tomorrow. people are flying off like...flies. sigh. best of luck to all of them, if they read this.

here's a thought people:life's just waaaaay too short to worry about trivialities. this may sound like complete crap, but ever since i got the B for my paper i've adopted a somewhat cavalier, eff-it-all attitude. i mean, in a good way. at least, i think so. i've stopped sweating the small stuff, to some extent. just go for it, in whatever you're doing, and for God's sake, stop worrying about the petty stuff.

and the perfect song, at this very moment, is 'no cars go', by Arcade Fire. i love this song. so simple, but it's just perfect. you know how there are some songs that make you close your eyes and think about taking off running down the street, just running, not wanting to stop or think about where you're going?yeah.

i think it should have been made mandatory for all of us to learn mandarin in sekolah kebangsaan.

oh, and I'm currently listening to the Arctic Monkeys first album. haha, i was reading some random chick's blog, and she tends to use this expression, which may amusingly be appropriate in describing my admiration for the Monkeys:'LOVE,LOVE,LOVE GILE FOR LIFE!!!!'.

oh,oh!and i was driving back home the other day after picking up my sister from kelana jaya, past the sunway toll, and we saw rainbows!notice the plural. one bright, FULL-ARC rainbow, and another fader one to its right. we were so excited, me and kakak(well, kakak mostly) spent several minutes gesticulating to all the other drivers around us, shouting 'rainbow!tengok rainboooow!!'. tapi no one noticed, and one driver just looked at my sister somewhat suspiciously. yeah. traffic jams suck the soul out of people.

i'll quit rambling now.

one more thing. ratatouille is good. pixar has yet to fail me.

those are my parents

The pokok kelapa on pulau redang are so pretty.

A lot has been going on lately. i feel so busy, hee. i have no business blogging now, i really should be doing my backlogged homework, but what the hell.

my parents took the family off to redang for the annual kakak-back-from-overseas-so-must-take-the-opportunity-to-go-cuti-together2 holiday. we were supposed to go kuala terengganu first on thursday, since dad had a function there, then ferry off to redang, but i had completely forgotten the fact that i had my ielts writing test on saturday. so the parents and the little brother drove up first, me and kakak followed by taking a flight up on saturday.

sidenote 1:air asia stewardesses punye baju is just so...sikit kain.

went to redang on sunday morning. stayed at this really nice place called redang kalung. in terms of snorkelling la kan, i think tioman still wins. but it was still lovely. redang kalung is cosy. the amenities are perfectly adequate, and the environement is just nice, without any of the overloaded commercialisation you'd get from the bigger resorts, like berjaya or laguna. i mean, this is a place where siestas can be taken lying in the hammock outside your chalet overlooking the beach with pokok kelapa shading you from the sun. no hassle, no noise(except for the occasional boat passing by), just swaying palm fronds and gently lapping waves. yeah,man. a place where you can hear youself THINK.

sidenote 2: the beach had too many sea cucumbers. i don't like sea cucumbers. i'm aware that they are harmless but i just don't want to accidentally step on one. i couldn't go swimming/frolicking on the beach because i was too paranoid about stepping on a freaking sea cucumber.

yesterday night, after packing up my stuff, i couldn't sleep(thanx to the three hour nap and a cup of coffee i drank earlier), so i plucked my ipod and laid down outside the chalet, facing the beach. ah.AH.AAAAAH. can i convey the perfection of that moment?(that sounds cliched, i know, but just bear with me) the moon was out, and the stars!!!!God, i can't remember the last time i looked up at the big dipper and orion's belt and whatever other constellation.

i wanted to use that opportunity to think about things. you know, about God, and about my studies, and about people. bile lagi would i get the perfect setting to organize my thoughts? but the night and the music and the beach all just melded into this one pleasant experience, and this pleasant experience didn't require me to think. just go with the flow. just look out at the sea and the twinkling lights from the ferry boats.

sidenote 3:banyak tol mat salleh kat redang. while i was lepak-ing on the beach that night, there were a bunch of italians chatting and lazing in the hammocks some feet away. it was actually kind of comforting to hear them murmuring gently in italian in the background.

a ferry boat ride and 9 hours in the car later, i'm back in my room. with alarming messages about homework i missed and a test tomorrow coming in. gah.

aside from that, i am in love with this song. i can't stop singing it. listen to The National people.


and on another note, shao min invited me to go to a charity dinner last wednesday!(thanx again shao, i had a lovely time :D). siti nurhaliza was there to perform, and phua chu kang. my summary of the night? phua chu kang is damn funny la wei.

sidenote 4:siti still hasn't mastered english. which is a shame. she's still super sweet though

i won't put up the pic of siti, simply because....um...i think the pic of me and shao, who looked resplendid in her kebaya, is more worth putting up. hee :)


oh!oh!and i know this is already old news, but a couple days before the AS results came out, my class had a party. without a doubt, A-levels A1 class of July '06 intake, is the most memorable class i've ever had. our party was called the faque party, which is the derivation of [fantastic + unique=faque], get it?if it sounds rude, it's supposed to, but we don't emphasize the pronounciation that way :p

we did a lot of stuff for the party, but i think, in a nutshell, this sums it up:

had a bad day again

so...yeah.

my results came out the other day. in case you couldn't tell by the tak-tahan-sorrowfulnye post below, i wasn't happy. i got a B for accounting. i got As for the rest,(even GP!haha), so alhamdulillah for that. but ooff, i felt like i got socked hard in the stomach when i found out about the B. in accounting. ACCOUNTING?!

it's ironic. ironic in a couple ways, being that:
1.i wasn't so much worried about accounting as i was for econs or maths.
2. i'm supposed to become a kick-ass chartered accountant, and here i am starting off with a B in accounting at GCE AS level. looks very ominous.

so i found out about the B, and things pretty much went topsy-turvy after that. i skipped class and went home, and the crying jag just exploded. it came to a point where i secretly thought i was hyperventilating, and if not, i hoped i would. i WANTED to go into spasm or have a nervous breakdown. anything that would prevent me from having to be angry or sad or question 'why?bloody fucking WHY?'.

which may sound a tad bit overreacting to some. it's a B, not an F, and it's not the end of the world. yes, i am aware of that. sigh. but getting straight As this time around meant a lot to me,ok? a lot more than you'd think.

so, it's that time again(and this is a deja vu moment), where i try to cast around and see where the hikmah lies in all of this. and i realize that i sound a bit cynical and sarcastic, and i'm so sorry for that. a part of me realizes that i've become a bit weary and less inclined to be optimistic, but perhaps this is just temporary. once again there's that internal tug of war between trying to remind myself that i didn't get cancer and nobody died as well as feeling sorry for myself and just wanting to scream out 'i have the fucking right to be sad, even if it IS just because of a measly B!'.

but if there's one good thing about all of this, if there's anything that i'd want to remember, it's the hugs. after i first got my results, i literally, quite literally burst into tears, right in front of my accounts teacher and the rest of the classs. come to think of it, that's downright embarassing. some friends were awkward about it, as any normal person would be. but not others. jajar, without any hesitation at all, immediately hugged me and held on while i sobbed. which is quite amazing. i can't remember the last time i cried in front of someone(muhasabah diri sessions don't count :P), let alone have someone try and comfort me. and i remember Bo Eui giving me a hug too, telling me not to worry. it's weird. i remember leaning on diyana, with her hand around my shoulder. and i remember shao marching over to my side.

my family was awesome about the whole thing. awesome. i'm thankful to have them. and i'm thankful for my friends, too.

so...yeah. i'm ok. i'm dreading the thought of going back to class and back into homework, but i think i'll be able to pull cheerful off. sure, i have no doubt i'll run into awkward moments, be it doubting my capabilities all over again or explaining to someone my results or wondering what to with my cambridge application. but still. i'm trying to take this one step at a time.

one feeling down song. 'Bad Day'. contrary to pop culture, my favourite 'Bad Day'-titled song is the one by Fuel.


p/s:thanx again nani and anna and aijud and shao for your reassuring comments. i heart you guys, haha :D

and the saddest part is, i don't know what i'm supposed to be feeling anymore.

i wanted to be angry at God, and scream 'i've gone through this!i thought it was supposed to be MY time now!'. but i guess i deserve this.

i know i don't have the right to complain much, it's just a B after all. and i'm so sorry i'm being so self-centred and melodramatic. but i feel broken, somehow.

people are telling me to look on the bright side, and i'm trying to, but i can't stop crying. and i can't stop thinking that it was wrong to think that maybe, this time around, i was special enough to be outstanding. maybe i'm not special at all.

i was wrong to think anything.

cheers

one of those times where you want to blog, but can't really think up substantial blogging material.

homework load wasn't so bad this weekend, so i wasted it mostly doing nothing much, and it was quite delightful. though now i feel a little guilty having done nothing productive. no matter.

ok, everyone, indulge me by thinking up some current small pleasure at this very moment, no matter how nonsensical it is. for me, it's the fact that my pony-tail reaches the base of my neck(it's never been this long,see. or if it has, i can't remember). i can't stop shaking my head from side to side so as to feel it gently brushing my neck.

i've been keeping up with spinner.com's daily updates on the Lollapalooza music festival, and just seems like a lot of fun. hmm. a lot of fun. fun to a point where i'm wondering if i'd ever get the chance to go someday.

i'm an unsociable creature, and most of the time i'm perfectly fine with that, but once in a while i start to wonder about it, and think 'am i overdoing this?'. is it weird if i don't get messages from various friends everyday and use my phone mainly for functional rather than social purposes? is it wrong that i'm starting to lose contact with friends from school? should i scrabble to keep in touch and bombard them with testimonials on friendster and text messages, or can i just accept the fact that we're drifting apart?

*swishes hair around*

on another note, went fishing the other day, and caught quite a lot of fish, mostly talapia. if you're coming over for a sleepover anytime soon, i'll tell you straight off, i'll be feeding you talapia. talapia goreng. talapia masak lemak. talapia masak sambal. sweet and sour talapia. steamed talapia. talapia everything. in short, i'll stuff you with talapia until you can't quite take it anymore. i'll sumbat you with talapia until you'll be screaming 'TALAPIAAAAAAA!' in your nightmares.

i like funny commercials. but i also like the one by Sonyericsson for their walkman phones. it just makes perfect sense.


cheers, everyone, for no reason whatsoever. it's been pretty uneventful, save for a significant occurence or two, but i have a feeling things are going to spice up.