Nihilistic observation of the day:

"The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature - all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal behaviour puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes extinct. Similarly, some people don't see that times have changed, and that their beliefs don't work. And they're going to be extinct."

"Maybe there is a higher truth than merely staying alive."

"There isn't."

I seem to have developed a morbid addiction to kacang putih (boiled chickpeas). This mendicant snack salesman named Vincent pops into the office at 5:30 everyday with a swag of goodies. Usually, by the time he reaches our floor the kacang putih packets are almost sold out. This results in a few of us manically passing around one or two packets - everyone seems to like them. Purchasing these rare commodities is accompanied by exhortations for Vincent to "book" a few more packets for our floor, as well as many bad financier gibes about kacang putih futures and forward contracts. It must be worth nothing that Vincent is somewhat akin to the Garbage Man in Dilbert comics; as he sells his keropok and curry puffs to us, he often makes pithy political commentary or erudite financial market analyses.

Today, he had a whopping seven packets for sale, all of which were gleefully purchased by my department (we have a standing order to underwrite any supply of kacang putih in his stock). I even bought an extra packet to stash away for future consumption. But as I devoured my first packet greedily, the need to consume more and more grew in me like a ravenous beast. In the end, I could not stand it and I ripped open my (intended) emergency stash and .. well. About three hours later (ie. now), I'm currently in the throes of dyspeptic indigestion, and was ony to eat a bare minimum for dinner. Somehow, I have a feeling that this isn't going to stop me from haranguing Vincent for another packet tomorrow, should he have any supply left. A disturbing indictment of my addictive personality.

And, final observation of the day - when driving home, in a traffic jam, Malaysian pedestrians often happily jaywalk in between the sluggishly moving cars along congested roads, particularly in downtown KL. This most often occurs when one has stopped at a red light behind another car, and the pedestrian takes the opportunity to sprightly finagle his weaselly way in between your bumper and the car in front. When they're *just* in between me and the car in front though, it's fun to squeeze lightly on the accelerator or lift my foot off the brake and roll *slightly* forward. It makes for very stress-relieving after-work entertainment to bask in the look of terror in their eyes as the possibility of being squished in between two slabs of metal (or hard polymers; which is what car bumpers are made of) flashes into their primitive limbic systems.

Ah, it's the little things in life that keep me (barely) sane.