audience participation required!

Got this from Dariush Shafa:

It's an unusual meme in the sense that it needs audience participation.

Here's the deal. If you comment here:

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll challenge you to try something.
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you.
4. I'll tell you something I like about you.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you.
8. I'll pick a song that reminds me of you.

And how does this propagate?

Well, u drop me a comment, I'll respond with those 8 points, and in "payment" YOU post this same deal on YOUR blog.

Kinda cool, eh?

I'm wondering how this will turn out.. so come on, get those comments in!

cheers!

Urgh's for the day

Urgh.. the haze is back... i'm lookin out the window and i see white air. no sign of the petronas twin towers or the telecom tower! smells smokey too. urgh.

Yesterday was an interesting day... woken up at 645am by my mother who could barely speak, saying my dad "wasn't doing very well", they were going to the hospital; i said i'd come along...

.. thinking we were going to the nearby hospital,, after all, that's why they bought the apartment so close to a "bad chi" location... but no... at 7am we were going to battle the morning rush hour to get to a hospital across town.. because that's where they took him 14years ago for his heart attack, and that's where his cardiologist is, and that's where his records are...

good thing at 7am, the traffic is usually already heavy, but still flowing.

we got there, he was feeling much better already... later his cardiologist came in and checked him, said it didn't sound like a heart attack, but he didn't like the dizziness symptom; ordered chest x-ray and a CT scan; results would be in later.

long story short : it had been a stroke. a relatively mild one, affecting his left side of the brain that deals with balance. very fortunate.

they'll do an MRI and whatever else they need to do to check the impact of the stroke on the brain itself, and will be keeping him in hospital for 5 days' worth of treatment.

Most of the "clan" swooped in last night once we'd announced what had happened - yep, the very Asian thing to do - the obligatory hospital visit! Silver lining - they were so occupied with him that i was spared interrogation about oh pesky things like being engaged, departure date, etc etc. heehehehe!

Speaking of departure date: i've booked a flight outta here arriving in Chicago 11am on sunday 30th july 2006.

See? end on a positive note :-)

At least he denied FedEx *one* record!

Nadal lost! :(

I actually watched the match. This is the first time I have actually watched tv since i got back to KL over 4.5 months ago! And I broke that "record" in order to root for Nadal...

Can't rationally say why I *so* wanted Federer to be denied both the "not dropping a set throughout the tournament" record (last achieved by Bjorn Borg) AND the "winning 4 Wimbledon Championships in a row" record, joining the ranks of Borg and Pete Sampah Sampras. [so what if FedEx is Swiss!]

So Nadal denied him the undropped sets record.

Yay.

Anyways - this was the first time I'd actually had a good look at him - omg he looks like a petulant kid! heehehehe!

(p/s - the match was over just about 30mins ago... and already wikipedia has the updated info at least on FedEx's page. amazing!)


**********

In other news...... Zouk this Friday, anyone? :D

Blistering Barnacles!!

Okay so I've lost momentum on that "cataloging every book" thing I had going for a while... but today I *did* finish up all of the "upstairs" stuff I wanted to take note of.

Which included the "comics" that as kids me & my brother were allowed to read.

No Beano or Topper for us, oh no, not allowed,...

We had much more "intelligent" (?) comics like
- Lucky Luke
- Asterix & Obelix
- Tintin
- Les Schtroumpfs (The Smurfs to you English-speaking folk)

Yep, not all of them in English maaah... we have some of them in French... and for Tintin, even in Malay!

Tried flipping through some Tintins but just couldn't get into any of them - wow, I remember a time when I consumed them voraciously! ... then again - what DIDN'T i consume voraciously?? I know I REALLY liked the Tintin in Tibet one when I was young(er) - maybe I related to the lonely abominable snowman?

And for those clueless to the title of this post, it's one of the common "exclamations" by Captain Haddock (pictured). Other Tintin characters include Professor Cuthbert Calculus and the Thompson & Thompson (the source/inspiration for the 80's group The Thompson Twins).

***
on a different note:
had my interview at the US Embassy last Thursday - all seemed to go well, and unless some skeleton in some closet pops out over the weekend, I should be able to pick up my passport AND VISA this Monday!

Yahooooooooooo!

And once that is in hand?

• Figure out when I can/want to leave (by the end of the month!!)
• Get plane ticket (parents have said they'll sponsor, yay!)
• Pack stuff for sea-shipping
• Organise a farewell do or three...
• ... and mayyyyyybe show my face to the relatives I've been totally avoiding since I got back?? haahahahaaaaaa....

I have a feeling these next few weeks will pass in no time at all...

And guess what song/scene keeps running through my head? Dr Frank-N-Furter singing about going home at the end of RHPS. Yep, fishnet stockings, garters and all. LMAO!

Cheers!

Yahoo!Groups

For those St Marians of 1989 - I've created a Yahoo!Group for us.

If you're not in the 43 people I sent the first invite out to, drop me an email and i'll make sure to invite ya.

cheers!

The Weekend Getaway

Picking up da gurls

I had three girls to pick up from KL Sentral.
Guess how many different locations I had to go the pick-ups? THREE!!
Yeah, that's how confusing KLSentral is. And how confusing my directions were :p

Getting there

I L.O.V.E. having the Touch&Go card - escaped the queues of the cash payers. whoohoo! Traffic was pretty okay until a few km before the lanes narrowed from 3 to 2 - bottleneck = friggin jam! But at least we didn't c.r.a.w.l. lah.

Arrival

reached there around 330pm.
Put everyone to work dusting, sweeping, mopping the place.
Sweaty!
Then we rested :)

Around 6pm went out for supplies, but ended up visiting the pasar malams in "town" and at the "beach", scarfing down pseudo kebabs while walking around, buying food for later, then had dinner. Then got the ICE and snacks.

Da night

Out came da booze. Down went da booze.
It was REALLY obvious that I *so* enjoyed NOT having the responsibility to drive everyone home the same night!
Thing is, it was all so great that I probably took a bit too many too fast, because I was the first to crawl onto the couch and surrender to sleep, despite the others going "Hey! It's way too early to be passing out!! The night is still young?!!"

Then Baby Angel hit the hay soon after.

I woke up about 2 hours later, and rejoined KS & Rail; they were still going strong with stout & white wine :-p

I stuck to water. Lots o water.

I think we all hit the hay around 6am :-)

The morning after

Everyone woke up at different times, and I ended up doing a sorta taxi service.

First, breakfast just me & Baby Angel
Then, lunch with KS & Baby Angel
Then, a second lunch with Rail & Baby Angel
All at pretty much the same gerai makan, heeheehe!

It was just too friggin hot to even hit the beach.

Packed up, left around 4pm. But not before KS went shutterbug crazy taking pix of the house, and the monkeys in the trees nearby, heeheeee!

Took forever to get back into town - there musta been 4 stretches of crawling, tho had no indication of any accidents. Again - LOVE the Touch&Go card! :-)

Dropped off Baby Angel.

Had dinner at Steven's @ Pandan Indah. Had cheese & Garlic naan (KS loved it so much she bought FOUR to takeaway, LMAO!).

Dropped off Rail.

Dropped off KS.

Didn't feel like going straight back, so hung out at the PJ Hilton Beanie till around 9pm.

Went back.

Showered.

OMG it was SO GOOD to be all clean again (not that I didn't shower while there, but, well, i'd just start sweating all over again as soon as I stepped out of the shower!). And SO GOOD to step out of the bathroom into an air-conditioned room, whoohoo! I really can't imagine how people survive without air-conditioning anymore.

All in all, was a fun time.

And no, I was never tempted to even LOOK at all those boxes of books stored there. My momentum's kinda shot anyway, so I may just leave 'em for another time. In a few years or so maybe? heehehe.

Quickie

Posting this via flickr, because blogger sucks. :p This pic isn't from this past weekend, but, well, it fits the topic at hand :-p

QUESTION:

You have a 750mL bottle of vodka (VK). You plan to mix it with tonic water (T) and slices of lime to make your new fave DIY drink of vodka tonic. You also know that you'll probably have the VK:T ratio of 1:1 (possibly 3:1 by the time you've knocked back a few, LOL!). How much tonic water do you need?

Unfortunately, I didn't pause and ask myself that question during my quest for tonic water: ended up buying like TWELVE cans of various brands.

If one can = over 300mL then 12 cans = 3600mL. If I were to use ALL that tonic with the vodka, we'd have a VK:T ratio of 750:3600 = 1:5 = yeah right!

So, guess how many cans I brought back from the boozefest?

TEN cans, LMAO! We only used like 1.25 cans.

In THIS case, VK:T = 750:375 = 2:1 = now THAT's more like it, LOL!
(of course, that's not really accurate cos the VK was mixed with some other stuff too, some had it on the rocks, etc etc... but still....)

anyways - yeah so i am back from the weekend boozefest. Will post an overview of the event tomorrow, once I've kinda caught up with some sleep.

Cheers!

(posted 2nd July 2006, 1050pm local Malaysian time)