Less than a week to go!!

In a week's time, I should be gasping for air trying to reacclimatize myself to the pollution and humidity of Malaysia. Fun! But on the bright side, I have all these distractions to look forward to!

1. Choosing, writing and sending off postcards for the Postcard/Link Exchange of 2010 (registration is technically closed, but I'll gladly accept anyone who signs up before I get the address labels printed out this weekend!)
2. Figuring out what Malaysia-themed gift to get for Steve.
3. Showing TK-217 around KL.
   
4. Participating in a proposed photo scavenger hunt, another kapgar brainchild!
5. Food!!!! Nasi lemak BRJ. Nasi lemak Sri Steven's. Milo ice blended Sri Stevens. Teh tarik. Roti canai. Roti chanai Raju. Roti bakar. Kaya. ... and plenty more. I believe a friend of mine is treating me to beef ribs too, yummy!
   
6. My school reunion!! There almost 100 attendees (excluding spouses/kids!!) to date, about 35 from my year alone. This is going to be waaaaay too big to be comfortable for me, but what the heck.
7. Going to DFP with DZE to see Rachel perform!
8. Tennis with my tennis mates! It keeps getting pushed further and further back, hopefully we manage to get a least ~one~ session in before I leave!
   
9. Maybe even a torture session or two! I mentioned it a few times here and here, but today I dug out my one and only poor picture of how I looked after my first-ever session. In black and white you can kinda see the bruising better, I think. That's my huge-ass arm, btw - the bruised part is the triceps area. Ouch. Yes, I am a sadist. Or was it a masochist?
10. Checking out and, if it seems like a gadget I'd be happy with, purchasing a dual-sim quad-band Malaysian-made Blackberry-wannabe.

... and a few others that I'll not share with ya, teeheehee, I gotta keep *some* things to myself, right?

Have a great weekend y'all!

TK-217: an introduction

Hi, I'm TK-217, also known as Trooper Tripp, newly assigned by TK-421 to the Naranek household in Springfield (IL), USA, Earth*.

Did the Naraneks include me in the Census?

* NOTE: ... I suppose I should be thankful to be assigned to this version of Earth.

You see, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I used to hold the rank of Captain, on an Earth just like this one. I was in charge of security of the Empire's experimental biological warfare laboratory in the Mojave Desert: the scientists called it Project Blue; my superiors called it A-Prime.

Then something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong, and we got the flock out of there.

I certainly wasn't responsible for the leak, but when the few surviving locals started calling the supervirus Captain Trips, General Starkey decided the coincidence to be too great, and that I had smuggled the virus out into the population, how else would my name get associated with it otherwise? Typical CYA behavior! But I suppose when you're staring down the black muzzle of Lord Vader's helmet, you might have a tendency to pass the blame on down instead of owning up to your own faults.

What happened after, I'd rather not dwell upon. Let's just say it's been a long road, getting from there to here; It's been a long time, but my time is finally near. Mine has been an arduous journey of starships, enterprising engineers, and treks through the stars.

My primary objective right now is to impress my handler lynne naranek Her Meanness the Minion of Death and Destruction with my prowess and intelligence and whatever other skills she expects of me in my capacity of bodyguard and travel companion. My fate, and future in the Empire and Clone Army, rests in her hands.

It's not been going so well, though. During the recent St Patrick's Day celebrations I guarded her as well as I could from a sea of green-clad drunken boors. Wasn't my fault I tripped over that necklace of beads!!

I was still reeling from the swill they call Bud Light.

I didn't fare much better the next time around, either: something about Bloody Mary Mafia?! They say I tripped and fell, and could barely walk straight. I don't remember any such thing, but whaddaya know, they took pictures.

Good thing I had my helmet on, because my cheeks were burning in shame.

I'm not making excuses for myself, but I have to say that my poor performance might have something to do with the weird out-of-scale size of things on this version of Earth. For example, I swear I caught sight of an R2 unit that might have been 100x my height -- didn't they come up to my waist before? So any alcoholic fumes might also be 100x more potent than what I'm used to, right?

Uh-oh. Her Meanness wants to play Bejeweled Blitz again. I've gotta go.

TK-217 signing off!

No Switzerland for me this year :(

... and it's totally my bad: remember about 2 months ago I said I was reeling in shock at what I was going to have to pay for my planned trip to Malaysia & Switzerland (with a tentative addition of Italy)? Well, I kinda sat on it until last week, and to my horror discovered that while the price for the US->Malaysia and Malaysia->Switzerland flights had risen as feared, the cost for the Switzerland->US leg had shot up to over double -- almost triple! -- what I'd seen two months ago.

As a result, I made the decision to forgo the Swiss leg this time around. This means I won't be seeing my niece until perhaps a year from now. What a bummer. From the pix and vids my bro & sil have made available (see right!), she is growing up FAST: when I first/last saw her about a year ago, she wasn't even crawling yet, and her gums were threatening to start teething. Now she's blabbering in five languages, skips up the stairs, and has her molars coming in. What will she be up to in a year's time??! :(

This also means that I'll be in Malaysia for a little under 3 weeks, in time to catch Rachel perform at the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (if my mother managed to get me tickets!) on April 27th, and to attend a huge St Mary's school reunion that's being held on May 2nd. There will be time for some meet-ups with former work colleagues, schoolmates, drinking buddies, etc, but they need to book me! :D I'll then hop over the causeway to visit for a few days with my fellow St Marian who recently moved to Singapore, before making the long journey back to Springfield in mid-May.

The cost: about USD 2K*.... ~so~ much more reasonable than the 4-6K I was looking at 2 months ago... just ignore the missing European plans, waaaaaaaaah! :( On the bright side: I have TK-217 and PLX2010 to play with / plan for (I'll explain soon!) ... But there's also another cost to consider in relation to all these plane trips... I'll discuss this in my next post: stay tuned!

*NOTE* I'm waiting for the catch, but have yet to find it... one reason it's so cheap (and yes, I cringe at the fact that 2K is "cheap") is that priceline.com found me a one-way that costs less than USD 1100 (the other sites I tried started at over USD 2K!). It was valid for just that one particular day of travel - searches for surrounding dates returned USD 2K prices too. It's a Wednesday departure, dunno if that factors in somehow. But I won't complain! (Until I find out I get no luggage allocation or something, who knows?!)

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