Word of the day: "kenosis" (My favourite excuse for appalling behaviour)

Gabriel: How many Swedish-made penis enlarger pumps did you confiscate? Also, Athlon STOCK fans are noisy - that's why I suggested getting alternative cooling systems. And, finally, alt.sex.passwords was and is a very good way to get free passwords. They generally mail off to you within a few days, completely gratis, and they even have an irc channel in AsylumNet where they take requests in real-time to crack passwords for commercial sex sites. Why do they bother? I have no idea - but since a free service exists why not utilise it? Do a deja search on the threads there if you don't believe me.

DVDs are not going to take off for gaming for a while, I agree - but movies are where it's all at. For one thing, pirated DVDs are almost always clearer than VCDs - particularly if you don't mind waiting until they've had time to rip off a proper DVD build. And for another, it's only a matter of time before more games go DVD. Although the last time I played a major DVD PC game was Tex Murphy: Overseer, but that turned out to be a bit of a gaffe on their part as the extra DVD features - graphics, cutscenes, etc were virtually unnoticeable and useless.

Going into Nanyang Primary may have been bad, but do you really think Rosyth, Maris Stella, Henry Park, et. al. would have provided an appreciably less dysfunctional environment? It's the system man! Down with the system!

How did you get the Asianprince URLs in the end? Professional curiosity.

50 years is still very young for a country. Most European countries have been in existence for centuries, albeit in radically different forms. China has been around for a lot longer.

Andrew(sic): "asian student stupidity ??! My ocf friends hang out a lot at Boba pearl!" - thank you for proving my point. Get the Babylon 5 DVD for yourself - The Gathering and In The Beginning are the best tele-movies in the whole Babylon 5 spectrum (the others like Thirdspace and River of Souls are CGI-fests but ring oddly hollow compared to the tv series' episodes).

"Shoujo Kakumei Utena" translates very roughly into "Revolutionary Girl Utena". Before you go, I've only watched one episode, and "ritualistic high school action flick with lesbians" sums it up almost perfectly. Add transsexualism, swordfights, and floral motifs, and there you go. Classic anime:)

Hi-Chew sweets in green tea flavour were my favourite "keep-awake" during university.

My phone line is down, much chagrin and rage involved. Thankfully, two wrongs make a right - because on this beautiful Sunday morning, I am ensconced at my workplace updating blog entries, and doing all the stuff I should have been doing last week instead of frenetically blogging. The fact that I'm still writing this blog clearly shows I haven't learnt my lesson. That notwithstanding however, the utter silence and the chance to get away from home for a while is actually quite refreshing.

Friday night I was out for the first time in months - mostly driving around listening to some weird progressive-rock music, The Pixies, and Mansun. These CDs were "kindly provided" by a friend of mine who'd cruised down from Singapore for a weekend after some R&R on Tioman. I use the term "kindly provided" because, as my friend was flipping through the CDs in my car's CD collection, I could read the lines of pain forming on his face as he listened to what I had to offer. After several Chris Isaak and Belinda Carlisle tracks(this was part of my euphemistically named, "Retro" collection aka "Cheesy songs that defined my adolescence" aka "Stuff that 95FM plays because it was what 98.7FM was belting out in my adolescence." aka "Stuff that will hit 90.5FM in a few years' time"), he said, "I can see why you have bipolar mood disorder.". Finally, when we hit my Roxette collection, he intoned, "Any lingering respect I have had for you has just passed through my anus and is now soaking into your car seat." He flatly refused to go through my classical and anime track compilations.

Okay, so my musical collection revolves around sappy retro rock ballads, mainstream-alternative(Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, et. al), Top 40s stuff, classic rock, mainstream gangsta rap and golden oldies. So? Were you expecting Slipknot, Rammstein, Rage Against the Machine, or even, god forbid, Tori Amos just because I read Poppy Z. Brite?

Generally, I don't get many visitors even from my uni mates - much less visitors from my distant high school life - so it was quite a treat to play tour guide, show off our nightlife, make acerbic comparisons between Singaporean and Malaysian culture, and have some really good Japanese food. My friend noted that the slut motif still seemed the order of the night as far as female clubbing/pubbing crowds here were concerned - even if the general choice of apparel differed from Singapore (for instance; we had more camisoles here at night. To which I had to ask, "What the hell is a camisole?").

Dinner was at Ki San Kichi; excellent fare at a reasonable price. It's also the only (affordable) place I know that serves Yebisu beer retail, and their unagi is superb. As we were eating, we were approached by a woman who was flogging charitable contributions from the (sic): "True Love Family Charity Foundation". As she began to unload her spiel, my friend replied, "But we have no love." The poor woman, clearly unused to any reaction that wasn't grudging acceptance or brusque rejection, seemed rather taken aback, and tried to ignore this remark and go on touting the therapeutic values of her 10RM Korean ginseng tea pack.

I then asked, "If this is for families in need of material and/or emotional charity, how come I don't get any of it? I'm probably more in need of both than most of the people on your list." She laughed nervously and tried to relate how the proceeds would go towards educating needy children from broken families - to which my friend interjected, "That's us! That's us! I failed my As!". To which I added: "I have a dysfunctional family situation as well."

It went on in that vein for a while, and I finally said, "Look, altruism is not our thing" - (I don't think she knew what altruism was) - "Why don't you just tell me how much you need, instead of me giving money I don't want to, for shit I don't need, to help people I don't care about." I have to admire her patience and restraint - all that Buddhist meditation must have helped build her tolerance to the vagaries of Mara; a quality similar to some of the more irritating door-knocking evangelists we get around Christmas - for at this point she simply said, "Why don't you make a token donation then?"

I pulled out twenty dollars and handed it over, and said, "I hope they(the needy) learn more from this than we have." She took the money and tried to foist off the ginseng packs on me, to which my friend said, "You got money for nothing and he doesn't want the tea - I suggest you siam while the siam-ing's good." As she left, she had a final parting shot, which went along the lines of, "Family is very important and I hope you learn how to develop good hearts and inner peace." - but at this point I had shut her out to finish up my miso soup.

Now I know it's not very nice by contemporary standards to go about abusing charity workers, but the fact of the matter is, immorality is only an issue if you aren't already in Hell. I might add in my defense that I *did* fork out some charitable gelt in the end, although that was more as payment for entertainment rather than any genuine desire to aid the needy. Still, in a utilitarian sense, everyone's happy - me and my friend were entertained, the charity worker got a decent pay-off for the needy, and I didn't have to humiliate her further by ostenatiously discarding the ginseng tea packs into a nearby drain. So all's good under God's heaven.

After dinner, we proceeded to the aforementioned night drive. KL, being far more spread out, offered us a lot of drives through diverse areas: squatter colonies; verdant secondary rain-forest; dingy suburbs in addition to the glittering cityscapes and the happening pub areas. We drove for about 2 hours, stopped at a quiet bar for margaritas, drove for another 2 hours, stopped at another quiet bar for Hoegaarden light beer, drove for yet another 3 hours, and finally adjourned at a mamak stall for supper. This haj was punctuated by a lot of good conversational catching up as I hadn't seen this guy for almost two years, constant stops for smoke breaks at roadsides, housing estates, or mosques, and a torrent of nihilistic verbal abuse at society, culture, government, politics, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Koreans, Hongkies, Taiwanese, Australians, British, working life, poverty, rich bastards, poor assholes, clubbing lians, clubbing bengs, nerds, scholars, toilet cleaners, writers, poets, the gifted, the retarded, businessmen, family, dogs, sluts, himbos, angsty webpages, happy webpages, ICQ, irc, education, schools, the weather, Shakespeare, commercialised mainstream music, wannabe alternative music, racial slurs, racial harmony, self-help books, financial planning, and losers with no lives who drive around in cars whining (roughly in that order; there's some limited scansion in the way we moved from topic to topic).

As he put it, "Making snap judgements about people and things we know absolutely nothing about is the basis for all conversation."

His parting gift to me was a plastic mineral water bottle filled with Absolut Citron vodka. He had bought it at duty-free but didn't want to give all of it to me because he claimed I had a budding alcoholism problem he didn't want to exacerbate. I was oddly touched. Have been using it to mix screwdrivers with those orange-flavoured Redoxon Vitamin C supplements that dissolve in water. He's heading off to London in a month to work in some PR or media job - he was obscure about the details - but I wished him all the best and joked that he should sponsor a working visa for me to get there. He grimaced and said, not entirely unfairly, "I don't think we should ever reside in the same country."

I spent all of Saturday sleeping - and got up at evening to the usual barrage of questioning from my parents as to where i'd been, what i did, did i drink a lot, etc etc. On one hand it's quite touching to know your parents still care(I guess I must be entering the nascent stage of that "someday you will appreciate what we've done for you..." refrain they've been singing all my life), while on the other hand the incessant nagging is somewhat galling. Still, given my complete inability to do most normal things adequately, such as my own laundry and walking in a straight line, I suppose I do still need a certain level of mild, familial coddling - and definitely I appreciate the fact that much of my lifestyle is subsidised as long as I live under my paterfamilia's roof. But hopefully a measure of greater financial independence that comes with a rising salary(a shame my boss isn't reading this) and a slightly more developed sense of direction will pave the way for leaving the nest.

Since Gabriel has spent so much space on Singapore's NDP, I should share this: there was an amusing parade on television last night. As some of you might know, Mahathir has announced his intention to retire and has even set a definitive date for his departure. Leaving aside speculation about whether they can actually pry the reins of power from his steroid-enhanced, liverspotted claws, there was a "spontaneous" roar of love and support for our beloved leader that manifested in a hastily organised parade in his behalf entitled, "One Nation, We Care." - sponsored, bizarrely, by the National Association of Malaysian Life Insurance and Financial Planning and other insurance companies. Is there a veiled message there?

I wonder how many resources they diverted away from the actual upcoming Hari Kebangsaan parade for this. It's probably being treated as a dress rehearsal of sorts. Nonetheless, it was quite a fine show of paegantry similar to those Communist propaganda galas, sans the overt display of military force �la tanks rolling past or mobile missile launchers with their display of phallic strength. The PM was seated regally on a carved wood throne waving beneficiently at the masses, while banners with the likes of "We Love Dr Mahathir" and "Dr. Mahathir: Father of The Nation's Modernisation" fluttered serenely amongst the crowd.

The parade skills of the military were remarkably good - particularly the navy. They performed quite a lot of elaborate routines involving choreographed movements, formations, tossing rifles around, and the like, with nary a dropped M-16 and almost no mistimings. However, the overall impression was that of armed cheerleaders, particularly due to the campiness of some of their pseudo-dance routines, and their sailor suits with naval smock and all. I was whistling the tune to the Village People's "In the Navy" all the while. The army in particular seemed more manly, but their goosestepping lacked the precision I expect after repeated viewings of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will(very dramatic movie-isation of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg).

All the soldiers were Malay, of course, which led to some disturbing worst-case political speculation in my mind.

The highlight came when 14 specially picked paratroopers jumped into the stadium, each bearing one of Malaysia's state and federal territory flags and the national flag. However, one of the unfortunate paratroopers got caught in an overhanging spar jutting out from the covering that protects stadium-goers from the weather. We could see him dangling in his harness, clearly trying not to wiggle too much and dislodge himself. The camera fixated on his struggles for a few seconds, and the commentators were mute with shock - then seconds later they proceeded to focus on the rest of the stadium, all the while pretending nothing had happened! They made absolutely no mention of the poor bastard throughout the rest of the show, and no mention was made of the ostentatiously missing state flag as the paratroopers who made it to the ground brandished theirs in unison.

However, camera pans through the audience for half an hour after clearly showed many heads gazing up from time to time at the entrapped parachutist in worry, including the dignitaries and the PM himself. Some enthusiastic audience members were even gesturing at the guy to the cameras, imploring for help. Mother shook her head and commented, "The broadcasters don't know how to handle a crisis." My guess was that they were simply afraid, Cultural Revolution-style, of broadcasting or highlighting anything that could be taken as implicit criticism of this outpouring of love and devotion to a departing leader who has steered our country so well for the last two decades. Propaganda exercises always amuse me.

Half an hour later, however, the gazes seemed to stop, so I infer that that was when they hauled him down. I doubt even Malaysian broadcasters would have omitted footage of a guy plummeting to his bloody death onto a crowd of spectators. Would they? There was absolutely no mention of this incident in the english and malay newspapers this morning.

For those who want to know, the unfortunate flag was Penang's. Is it an omen of things to come? My father said, "At least it wasn't the national flag."

Okay. Back to work.