boom explodey pow

Anyone who has ever seen a tank will know that it has as its main weapon a rather large gun that is mounted on an armored platform, called a turret, which is capable of turning a full 360 degrees. When I say large, I mean that the gun has a caliber ranging from 105 to 150mm. If you think that's small, understand that the shells the gun fires are between 10.5 and 15 centimeters across. For some perspective, a 12.7mm round to the shoulder would take your entire arm off, so imagine what would happen if something that big hit you. Most tank guns have barrels that are smooth, though there are slightly better ones, usually British, that are rifled. What this means is that the canon has internal grooves, not unlike those you'd find on a candy cane, that vastly improves its accuracy so it doesn't just 'hit something over there'.

These magic wands of death typically fire two different kinds of rounds (a fancy military term for a big, exploding bullet): armor piercing and high explosive. Now the people who design tanks would very much rather not have them exploded by other tanks, so obviously they try their very best to make them as least likely to get blasted apart as possible by covering them in armor specifically designed not to get penetrated by rounds fired from their enemies. This is why armor piercing rounds, as its name suggests, are specifically designed to try and pierce such armor. High explosive shells, on the other hand, are meant for blasting apart specially strengthened buildings you might have the misfortune of attempting to hide in on the battlefield.

Now there is no point having all of this if you can't aim your nice, big gun properly, so the tank people have used and developed fancy ways of making sure the tank round hits whatever the gunner (or tank commander, depending on who's boss) wanted to hit instead of some poor sod's house. In the good old days of World War II, this was accomplished, albeit not with complete success, by actually looking at the target with your eyes via either a periscope, which was the safest way at that time, or by opening a hatch on top of the tank and peeking out at the surrounding environment, though doing this would expose your precious noggin to sniper fire. Today's tanks have all sorts of fancy technological wizardry that use different types of sensors, computers and of course physics to make sure the the gun's shells hit the correct target.

Tanks sometimes have to fire their canons while moving, and because canons are very big and heavy things, they tend to flop about when the tank is rolling. This would obviously make aiming and firing rather difficult, so they have to be stabilized by a gyroscope, which is basically a much more expensive and complicated version of that spinning, top-like thing you had as a toddler. Tank guns also tend to be fitted with muzzle brakes, which are specially designed caps put on their ends to prevent the canons from jerking back excessively when they fire their big, heavy rounds.

If you have ever played with fireworks, you will know that gunpowder emits a lot of nasty, putrid smoke, and gunpowder is still used to fire tank rounds today, which is why a fume extractor, usually attached to the gun somewhere in the middle, is needed to stop fumes from entering the crew compartment. This is very important because there's no point having a tank when its crew is dead from breathing in too much of that toxic smoke. Also, something called an insulating thermal jacket is sometimes wrapped around the entire barrel (the long, protruding part of a gun) to prevent it from getting bent when used for extended periods of time. This rather unpleasant side effect happens when the extreme heat released during the firing of rounds isn't distributed evenly, causing the hotter bits of the gun to expand more quickly than the relatively cooler bits.

Bear in mind that there will be very unhappy people trying to knock out your precious tank with rockets and bazookas, and you will have to shoot them to make sure that they don't, but using your tank's main canon to fire at people is quite pointless for two reasons - one: that big gun can't be fired fast enough (normal firing rates are a few rounds a minute) to kill every single bazooka-toting Afghan running at you, and two: you DO NOT need a fifteen centimeter bullet to kill a reasonably sized human being. This is why all tanks have smaller normal machine guns, usually with a caliber of 7-8mm, mounted right next their main guns. Also, if your enemy is smart, he might try to drop bombs on your tank with a helicopter, or if he's both rich and smart, a jet, so bigger 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine guns are usually mounted on the roof to turn any aircraft the Iraqis throw at you into flaming piles of very expensive scrap metal. Oh yes, war sounds like fun now doesn't it?

Gods of Naughtiness

I know that there are certain people who will want to have me lynched for saying this, but I shall be brutally honest and tell you right now that I don't believe in God. This doesn't mean that I don't respect the opinions of people who have such beliefs, because I do. No, really. However, unless you're one of those hateful unreasonably staunch fanatics, you will agree with me that the only sensible argument you could possibly have going for the existence of such an entity is faith, and nothing more, which is why I would have to strongly disagree with a certain article that has been handed to me for inspection.

Now I will be frank and say that whoever wrote this hasn't been very clear about what he or she's on to, but from what I can make of it he or she is trying to brainwash us into thinking that the reason things exist as they are is due to an highly superior unseen presence, or a God, if you will. I can actually end this whole thing by saying that you simply cannot use something that hasn't been proven to exist as a valid argument for anything, but because I have to write a 400 word essay on this I shall be forced to elaborate.

In his opening sentence, the writer assumes that almost everyone knows that the Earth spins around its axis at speeds of thousands of miles an hour, which, as a certain someone pointed out, is a rather ambitious assumption because as far as I'm concerned it moves quite slowly, or at least it seems this way from here. He or she then proceeds to mumble something about big tortoises standing on the the top of huge elephants, which I couldn't see the relevance of initially but after considerable ponderation I suspect this is supposed to refer to a time when humans existed as huge, hairy gorillas.

The writer then proceeds to spit out some apparent facts about the Earth and our existence in general, and while I must admit that said facts are logical and make rather alarming amounts of sense, I feel inclined to point out that he or she should have at least included some credible references after the text to prove that the aforementioned facts are in fact true. All of this was supposed to be proof of the existence of some sort of higher being, because as he says: 'Such a well-organised structure cannot exist and be created incidentally, can it?'

If this ignoramus ever bothered taking secondary school physics, he or she would know that the reason everything in this part of the universe is so well balanced is because of something called equilibrium, which occurs when the forces acting on something balance each other out. Now if whatever magical forces acting on our world weren't in equilibrium, just like most other objects in the universe, we wouldn't even exist. The writer mentions that the reason we are alive and well right now is because the conditions here are just right, but what he or she neglected to consider was the fact that most of the universe isn't as fortunate as the part that we are miraculously lucky enough to live in, which is why the rest of it seems so lifeless until you take into consideration the significant possibility of something else living and breathing in a region of outer space even the most ridiculously expensive equipment can't explore.

Our beloved writer does not seem to have a reasonable understanding of the English language, a fact proven when he describes Darwin's theory of evolution as notorious, because it most certainly is not, reason being the word notorious lends whatever it's being used to describe a rather negative connotation. Famous yes, but definitely not notorious. The philistine then even goes as far as to say that the fact that no one still seems to know how we came about to exist, even after tedious amounts of researching and hypothesizing, is proof of the existence of an almighty being. I find this rather ridiculous because you simply can't attribute everything we're dumb enough not to know to this entity called God.

As a last-ditch attempt to justify his/her argument, the author starts quoting statements from famous scientists who favor the existence of a higher being, and while these were people who made huge contributions to all things scientific, they are merely opinions, and opinions do not guarantee fact. Whoever wrote this does not seem to be very bright because 'All believers of a religion cannot be wrong; at least the grain of truth must exist.' This is something called herd mentality, and I'm sure you've heard of it. There was a dark time when everyone was marrying their sisters, but I'm quite sure this wasn't right at all, unless of course you had some sort of weird, creepy fetish for incest.

The article finishes with 'Anyway, it is appealing to believe in something as pleasant as the reservation of the tiny hostel somewhere in paradise, which you might deserve after passing away, instead of something so horribly and terribly named as nothingness, isn't it?' Basic logic tells me that when we die, we cease to exist, so there's nothing for us to suffer or enjoy. Now of course I can't be completely sure of this, but when I do get out of here and if I find out that there really is an afterlife, I'll be sure to try my best to let you know what it's like.

Emission omission

I've just noticed a rather significant (or insignificant, depending on how seriously you take the art of engine-making) blunder in my previous post. I mentioned that a certain French automotive manufacturer has given birth to a tiny engine capable of producing as much power as an engine twice its size with only a fraction of its emissions. As it turns out, the aforementioned car giant was Italian, not French. Yes, it was Fiat that came up with the 1.2-liter two-cylinder 85bhp TWIN-AIR engine, not Renault. I sincerely apologize for providing you with the wrong information, a consequence of my unrelenting tendency to be lazy.

This engine is one of the fundamental reasons why I would reject the very concept of a hybrid. You see, I'm an insufferable petrol head (and a pyromaniac, if there's even the slightest relation) and any self-respecting petrol head would only want to be seen in something that's powered purely by some form of crude oil. The reason for this is simple, really: Petrol powered automobiles provide us with the widest grins upon flooring of the throttle. There are plenty of imbeciles who will tell you the a car's one and only purpose is to get you from one point to another, and it is these imbeciles who will be willingly seen bumbling about in one of those god-awful hybrids. In case you didn't know, a Prius is one of the worst cars to drive around in. Yes, it probably will save you a few quid on gas, but it's one of the dullest things available to mankind. The handling is rubbish, it takes roughly an hour to get from 0 to 60, and only people like Leonardo DiCaprio are to be seen in one. If you actually take the time to think about it, running out of petrol has absolutely no negative environmental effects. In fact, we're actually doing our planet a favor because no fossil fuel = no pollution. I therefore urge every single one of you to climb into the nearest V8 and make merry with the accelerator. If we're going to run out of fossil fuel we might as well enjoy every last bit of it as best we can, and that's exactly what the TWIN-AIR is for. I have previously mentioned that this revolutionary little thing will make hybrids the automotive equivalent of Betamax, and I still stand by it.

Why would you buy a Prius with its dirty internal combustion engine and its toxic batteries when you can get cars that spit out nothing but water? No, you aren't dream-reading, there really are cars with drinkable emissions. Such cars run on hydrogen, one of the most abundant elements in the UNIVERSE, and therefore if you're genuinely interested in saving Mother Earth you should get one of these instead. Do yourself a favor and give it a nice long thought: a car that runs on something available in plentiful amounts not just here but in places further than the Hubble telescope can see, and when you're feeling a bit thirsty you could simply place a mug at your vehicle's tailpipe.

Now I shall tell you that I'm not pulling you leg on this one because there already are hydrogen powered cars running around in exclusively selected places. I am of course talking about the Honda FCX Clarity, a car so very sexy that if it should appear right in front of you right now you'll find your unmentionables having emissions of their own. This of course sounds too good to be true, and sadly it is, at least for the moment because the process of extracting hydrogen itself consumes a rather alarming amount of energy, but then if they can send people to the moon I'll bet my bollocks that they'll figure out a much better way to do it soon enough.

Boom

Internal combustion fuelled transport has always been a problem (at least for environmentalists) since pollution started coming into the picture. This of course presented an almighty business opportunity to the world's leading automotive manufacturers, who decided that the world needs something that sips as little fuel as possible. Naturally, everyone decided that the best way to go about this business would be to come up with a vehicle that runs mainly on fuel but is assisted via electrical means wherever possible so as to reduce emissions while increasing mileage (we're looking at you, Toyota). And so, the hybrid was born.

For the ignoramuses among you who still don't know what a hybrid is, let me explain: A hybrid is a vehicle that is propelled by two or more different sources of power, and in most cases it would be a combination of petrol/diesel and electricity. The whole point of this is to save on fuel and more importantly, cut down on those nasty, nasty things that come out of a car's tail pipe as the electricity is supposed to assist the car in moving so that less petrol would be needed.

Now I shall attempt to explain to you how exactly a hybrid works, and this might get a bit technical depending on whether or not you finished your primary school education so bear with me. A hybrid essentially consists of an internal combustion engine, a very big lithium-ion battery (the same kind you'd find behind your cell phone) and electric motors, usually one at each wheel. The batteries power the electric motors which are used to assist the car when accelerating, and because a car uses more power as it goes faster, this is supposed to help save on fuel. Most hybrids also have the option of only running on batteries at low speeds, usually up to 40km/h, which eliminates fuel use altogether and of course emissions. Each motor also acts as a generator which charges the batteries when the car is coasting down or whenever the brakes are applied. This is the reason why so many Hollywood celebrities have chosen the unholy Prius as their runabout of choice in their miserable attempts to gain green credentials.

As green as all this sounds, there is, however, one little niggle: The process involved in making a hybrid vehicle like a Prius actually does more damage to the environment than said Prius would be able to redeem in its entire petrol-and-emission saving life. This is because the bits needed to make the battery like lead and magnesium are actually rather toxic and need to be mined and then shipped from various parts of the world to the place where the batteries are made, and any idiot can tell you that mining releases the sort of things that would make Mother Nature flinch. Then of course the raw material is shipped by means of huge barges that release the wrath of their engines into the unsuspecting atmosphere.

So there you go, the Prius isn't actually as green as it seems. Hybrids are also rather expensive, so it would be better to just get a small car with a small engine because that would use about the same amount of petrol as a Prius. Then there was the time Top Gear put a Prius on a track, told it to go as fast as it could and had a BMW M3 follow it, and surprise, surprise, the Prius actually drank more petrol than the M5. Now this makes the Prius look quite bad when you consider that an M3 has a big-bore V8, which just proves that a hybrid wouldn't be all that good if you were to drive it on the Autobahn at high speeds.

Renault recently came up with a tiny two cylinder engine that put out as much power as a four cylinder engine twice its size with just a fraction of its emissions. Now there is a very real possibility that cars having engines like this would make hybrids obsolete and unnecessary since the process of making one is exactly the same as that of other conventional cars.

This brings us to the question of whether or not hybrids are still relevant, and the answer would depend on whether or not engineers can figure out a nicer way to make their batteries, otherwise it will be much better if we just stick to small engines like the one mentioned above.

Magic Toothpaste

I've always looked forward to the day I would go out and buy the latest issue of TopGear, after which I would read it on the way home and then read it some more until my mother told me it was time for dinner. The reason for this is that I have been, and still am, a huge fan of things on four or more wheels since I first knew what a car looked like. However, the reason I've chosen the aforementioned motoring magazine over the countless others available is because I've developed a taste for that exclusively English blend of witty writing containing plenty of dry humour, properties that provide genuine reading pleasure, if I may.

Unfortunately, the BBC decided that each significant portion of the world would have its very own version of the magazine, and so TopGear Malaysia was born. This had the nasty side effect of having our local motoring journalists writing for the magazine, which wouldn't be a problem at all if they actually knew how to write. I experienced some very nasty palpitations the first few times I read the articles written by these amateurs and have since then tried my very best to avoid their reviews.

I shall justify my stand by using a review about the new and very sexy BMW 640i coupe as an example. Now you should bear in mind that all this was written by the editor of TopGear Malaysia, a position that makes his literary blunders all the more intolerable.

One of the things that makes the articles by the original UK journalists so appealing is that there is a certain flair to their writing that is glaringly absent in those written by their Malaysian counterparts. The proper way to write something like this is to make sure everything comes together nicely, but in this article it's like as though our editor decided to make a list of the things he'd want in the review and went 'All right I shall write this first, and then this and then that', which really isn't the way to go about as a journalist for TopGear. This had the unintended effect of making some of his sentences seem rather mechanical. The only way you'd properly understand what I'm saying would be to read the whole thing yourself.

Of course, this being an English magazine, the writer tried to be as English as possible in his style of writing. However, this didn't quite work and his failure is especially evident in the first two paragraphs of the article. The thing with this sort of writing is that you either do it properly or you don't do it at all, and you can see how his miserable attempts would detract from the joy of reading such an article.

There are also quite a number other miscellaneous stylistic errors that make this article less than a joy to read, one of which being the somewhat cliché manner the editor writes certain things. For example: 'The rear seats are great as long as you are not taller than DC (DC being the editor's initials). An interesting point to note: If in the future you happen to purchase a red 640i coupé, and you find a little indent on the ceiling/roof,then...”DC was here”.' Nobody writes like this any more! There was also a sentence where he put words probably meant as sarcasm in inverted comas: 'We only got to test the “humble” 640i with “puny” numbers like 450Nm from 1300 – 4500rpm.' Really? Then there are the instances when he tries to fit too many things in a single sentence, resulting in a difficulty understanding said sentence without having to read it over and over again.

However, the worst sin committed in the writing of this review would be the appalling grammatical errors that so obviously show themselves even when one is merely skimming through the pages. Even then, this article isn't the worst I've seen as just last month another review written by the same person contained a rather alarming number of such errors. Of course these mistakes could merely be typos, but then this just shows that the lazy bastards never bothered proof-reading their work but then again, typos are mainly spelling blunders and not the screwing up of an entire sentence. This, I would say, is the main reason why I don't read the things written by our local reviewers any more.

Pixie Poop

The people in charge of this university, it seems, aren't really that smart after all. Yes, our university may now stand higher than any of its lesser counterparts in Asia (at least according to some sources), but I have a rather nasty feeling that this ranking was based merely on all things academic. You see, I don't think the higher-ups here have nearly as much know-how on the way students work. It's really as though they've long forgotten the times when they were staying up all night to finish whatever needed handing in the next day.

I am of course referring to the way they cater to our rather demanding food requirements. Yes, there may be five places to eat from, but four of them close at 9pm, while the last one opens at six in the evening and closes at two in the morning. Now anyone will know that as people whose main responsibility is cramming facts (whether or not we actually understand the aforementioned facts is another issue) into our catastrophically overworked brains, our needs for stomach-filling extends to way beyond two in the morning. Therefore, it remains a great mystery as to why the campus authorities have yet to let us have an eating facility that is open throughout the night. Now because we haven't anywhere to go on campus when our collective tummies start rumbling in the wee hours of the morning, we're forced to stock up on instant noodles, and in case you happen to be an ignorant imbecile I shall tell you that these have the surprising side effect of being bad for you. If you haven't got any food you will find that you have no choice but to waste precious study time to walk to the nearby convenience store, which also only has instant food.

There was a time in the middle of the previous semester when a significantly large area around McDonald's was cordoned off for some sort of mysterious construction and upgrading work. At that exact same time LG7 conveniently decided that it too would like an upgrade. Unsurprisingly, everything went terribly wrong when there wasn't enough room for everyone to eat. When LG7 reopened, LG5 moved down and as it turns out there still isn't nearly enough space for everyone to eat during lunch hour. As a result we spend, on average, fifteen minutes trying to find a place and another fifteen minutes lining up to get our food. Now you can see how this would be a problem for someone, such as yours truly, who only has a half-hour lunch break on certain days.

Everyone was trying to guess what it was that was being installed behind the scaffolds surrounding the fast food joint. Was a Subway finally coming here? Alas, we were cruelly disappointed when we found out that besides adding a McCafe, they just made McDonald's bigger.

It is because of these things that I have come to the conclusion that the bigwigs don't quite care for our physical well-being, at least in terms of food intake. Now if you're reading this and you're one of the aforementioned bigwigs and you strongly disagree with me, I highly recommend you prove me wrong by letting us have some food that's actually healthy, and you can start by having a Subway here. Next, and more importantly, open a canteen that we can eat from all night. I'm really surprised that someone hasn't already done that since it's a huge money-making opportunity, plus we shall then possess the ability to somewhat pacify our insatiable night-time appetites. Win-win!

Oh sweet fish balls

I suppose it's time I resurrect this thing considering that the last time it has seen action was almost a year ago. I, unfortunately, am not here because I finally decided to share the contents of my brain cells online but because I haven't got a choice since the compulsory language course I'm taking, Styles of English for Engineers II requires that we write a blog entry at least once a week, which I guess is a good thing since my rusty writing skills need to be brought back to working order. So we're given a list of very vague things we're allowed to write about, though we've been told to be nice about whatever it is we're putting down which would be rather hard for me since I've chosen to write a complaint, reason being the time-honored tradition of complaining is one of the things we as human beings do best. I've chosen to complain about the food situation on campus, simply because I can't stand it much longer.

I'll be frank and say that I've gotten sick of the food here. No, really, it's so bad that even when my stomach's completely empty, I don't feel like eating. At all. Now I know some of you may have some strange, weird friends who don't eat much or/and don't feel like eating even though they haven't had anything all day, but I shall tell you know that I'm the sort of person capable of eating four Big Macs in a row with room to spare for a Double Cheeseburger, and I can't go for more than four hours before I feel the need to replenish my tummy, so you can see how this situation feels quite wrong for someone as metabolically endowed as myself, very wrong indeed.

I know that there are 4 main eateries on campus, 3 of which have very generous menus and the depressing fact that I've gotten tired of eating from all of them pretty much speaks for the degree of my predicament. Now the canteen that I have elected to have most of my meals is called LG5, because apparently it's five floors underground. This particular eating facility has a menu that occupies half the wall it's mounted on, and that has made me take twenty minutes to decide what to have for the first and half of the second semester (to the exasperation of my roommate), after which I never wanted to look at it anymore. I also found out the hard way that they have a horrible misinterpretation of the term 'Thai food'. The same applied for the LG7 below, though I only eat there about once or twice a week because it smelled funny. There's a coffee shop/cafe upstairs but I don't like eating there because it's mostly expensive western food. As for LG 1, which is where I have breakfast, if I was up early enough that is, I was getting sick of having lunch there too. This was simply because one of the best things there was the barbecued pork rice, aka charsiewfan, and there was a point of time where I had it every time I was there for lunch because I was sick of the mixed rice where what was supposedly sweet and sour pork was merely sauce-covered flour. The thing that I find completely intolerable, at least by Malaysian standards, is the fact that they use WHITE rice instead of the oily rice without which charsiewfan isn't charsiewfan. Really, white rice?

Now the main reason I can't stand eating here any more even though the food quality is actually quite decent is because as a Malaysian I've come to expect and observe a certain standard of eating, and as such I desire a certain quota of Malaysian grub every now and then. Also, try eating around the same menus every day for four months. I shall now tell you that I'm used to having either fishball noodle soup, proper Malaysian charsiewfan and wantanmee, or, if I'm feeling particularly spicy, curry mee or nasi lemak, every day, for breakfast and/or lunch. Now imagine not being able to have any of that for four bloody months, and you might just get a hint of where I'm coming from. Really, it's one of the most tormenting things I've had to withstand living here.

However, the single most unforgivable atrocity in UST's catering services is that the three main cafeterias close at nine, or sometimes even earlier if their feeling lazy, and McDonald's only opens until ten. There's another canteen near the halls that only opens at night until two in the morning, but that's rubbish so we're going to leave it out here. The people who run this university should know better than anyone else is that most students have a habit of staying up till the wee hours in the morning, either to study or to other non-academic (and usually unmentionable) things. So I think, and surely you would have to agree with me, that it's preposterous for them not to have an eating facility that's not open twenty four hours a day.

It is because of this that I've actually gotten sick of McDonald's, and I never thought a day would ever come where I would get sick of indulging myself in America's pride and joy. The reason for this is simple, really. McDonald's is the only main restaurant that's fully functional till ten, and because everything else closes at nine, I usually end up eating junk food a few times a week. Worst of all, there was a really low point in my life here when I almost got sick of instant noodles, the wonderful things that I've cherished since my mother lost the ability to keep me away from them. Since it's only normal to get hungry at the most inappropriate times in the morning, I've been regularly having them, sometimes everyday, and besides the horrifying possibility of my not wanting to ever have them again, this situation also has a funny side effect of being bad for my health. Now I know why so many of the locals my age are suffering from acute hair loss.

Hong Bong Smong Dong Kong

Hello hello, I believe it's been quite a while and that's because I've been feeling rather lazy of late. Yes, it really is as simple as that. Now of course there were times when I did feel like putting something down here but then when I got to the computer the laziness sets in, and there really isn't any point in me blogging when I don't feel like it because then you won't to read whatever it is I've written either. No, really, I did come here about a month ago but because I wasn't in the mood it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to be and so I stopped there and then.

If you don't already know I am currently in Hong Kong, not for holiday, unfortunately, but rather for more mundane purposes. Education, if I remember correctly. Now I get a lot of people asking me why I chose this place out of the more conventional choices, and the reason is quite simply, really. Money, or rather, the lack of. My first choice was the UK but since I failed to get a scholarship, probably because I wasn't brown enough, Hong Kong was the second best choice. It even beats ALL the Australian unis as far as Engineering is concerned.

Since I got here you lot have been asking me what it's like, and I shall now proceed to describe this place as best as I possibly can. Hong Kong, you see, is a lot like Malaysia in many ways. It's hot, it's humid and it rains quite often, just like in KL. At least that's how it is in the fall season anyway, they say temperatures can drop to as low as ten degrees during winter. Malaysia is an Asian country, and so is Hong Kong, therefore everywhere you go you will see Chinese and sometimes Indian people, just like in KL. A big difference, however, is that you don't see rubbish and brownies strewn all over the place, which for me is the best bit.

When I tell people that I shall be studying in Hong Kong, the first thing I hear would be mutterings about how the cost of living here is exorbitantly high, and how if you're not rich you will die because you will soon run out of money and therefore won't be able to buy food, and if you have no food you will die. While this is indeed true, because I'm a student living on campus my accommodation and food costs are greatly reduced. On campus food prices average from 20 to 30HKD, while outside you will see yourself spending around 30 to 60HKD for a meal. While this may seem a lot to fork out for lunch, the helpings they give you are HUGE, so I pretty much end up paying the same as I would in KL anyway. I know this makes no sense to you now, but I shall make you see how it does make a lot of sense. You see, anyone who knows me well will know that your typical plate of chicken rice will NEVER be enough for me, and so I will keep on ordering multiple dishes until I am full. Here, however, the food portions here are so big that just one is enough to satisfy my venerable stomach. Shum-sized portions, if I may.

They say that Hong Kong is a shopper's paradise, and it is. The reason for this, in my opinion, is because everything here apart from the food is really ridiculously cheap. Things like clothes, shoes, gadgets and everything in between can be found for boner-inducing prices. I am, of course, talking about this in relation to KL prices. For example, your standard black-and-white Chuck Taylors will be about RM115 in that Converse store in 1u. Here, however, they can be found for less than RM70 if you know where to look. The best part though would be the Cotton On stores. Back home, a miserable t-shirt will demand that you pay over RM60 if you wish to be its wearer, but here, you can get TWO for less than RM70. Then you have the gadgets and other things with wires and buzzing bits in them. I paid HKD1090 for a pair of rather big and heavy Shure headphones, which really is quite a bargain because that very same pair would come with a price tag twice as heavy in KL, and I know you will think I'm mad for paying that much for something as seemingly unimportant as that, but for me it's money well spent because every time I put them on I get the most wonderful eargasms. And at least I don't spend 500 quid on a pair of bloody shoes.

Movie prices here are preposterously high though, the cheapest being HKD60 for a single ticket, no popcorn, no drinks, no hot dogs. Based on the current exchange rate, 1 Ringgit is approximately 2.4HKD, so you do the math. If you're a KL dweller and you feel like having a good time with your mates, you'd go to 1u or The Curve for lunch/dinner, bowling, pool and a movie. Here, however, the people don't go for dinner and to the movies after that, oh no, here they go clubbing. The most famous clubbing district here is Lan Kwai Fong, or LKF as it is so fondly known as, with clubs and bars at every nook and cranny, and the crowd really is something to behold. Just imagine Petaling Street, but at 2 a.m. in the morning and you pretty much have the picture.

Anyway during my first week here, my new found mates were talking about going to LKF the coming Saturday night. While we were on that topic a few of the girls kept saying things like 'I haven't danced for such a long timeee!' and 'Oh I wanna dance soooo badly!'. Now when the word 'dance' is put that way what I picture is proper dancing, not ballroom dancing obviously, but more like salsa or contemporary social dancing like you would see at an urban dance competition. Yes I know that I probably sound like a naive imbecile, especially if you're a clubber yourself, but what you must understand is that I was a clubbing virgin at that point of time. So when I stepped into a club for the first time in my whole bloody life, what I expected to see was people dancing in the aforementioned manner, not shaking about like a scarecrow being shagged by a cow. For the first half an hour or so I just stood at the bar ordering and consuming my share of 'free drinks' (typical entry fees are HKD200 and above, what you get with that varies depending on the club of your choice). Usually when my mates have big parties with the DJs and the dance floor I would always be with the same bunch of people sitting down at a table and stoning while everyone else danced and grinded the night away. I intended to do the same there, but then after some time I got rather tipsy and when you're tipsy you're shaky and when there's music you start shaking to the music. Makes sense now why clubs are filled to the brim with all sorts of alcohol. Halfway through the night things started to get interesting: an obviously drunk girl tried to make out with me not once but TWICE. Being the gentleman I was though I just wriggled out of her arms and let her friend take care of her. And then towards the end another mounted me from behind when I bent down to tie a shoelace. Very interesting indeed. A real pity though because those two girls were rather good looking.

My mid-terms are next week and it is because of this I shall be forced to start my feeble attempts at this activity known as 'studying'. I will try to include pictures next time and until then, happy boning.

It's a bit like sex, really

Yes, I am very aware of the fact that my exams have ended over a week ago and yes, I do know that I've promised some of you lot that I would update once I had the darned things over and done with, but I do have a very good reason for not blogging as soon as promised. You see, I was completely obsessed with something. It was a hopeless addiction, this. No, I'm not talking about sex because I'm still very much a virgin. If, however, you're a very hot female of the species chestus maximus, you're very much welcome to change that. What I'm talking about here is a computer game, a game that I'm so addicted to that I can be at it for up to seven hours in a row, right into the wee hours of the morning when the cats start shagging (they make these really annoying mewing noises when they do that, see). I'm virtually at it any time I'm awake, other than the times I'm out with my mates or at dodge ball practice.

This electronic addiction is so strong that I haven't even touched my beloved basses since my exams were over. Now I'll have you know that fingering my basses gives me great satisfaction, a musical and aural pleasure that cannot be achieved with any computer game currently in existence, and sometimes I even get high when I'm sitting in my room with my Fender Strat, so high that I can sit there thinking 'awww I'm just going to be another five minutes' but when I'm done playing, an hour has mysteriously disappeared. I know that this makes no sense to you, dear reader, because you're probably thinking 'If you get so much pleasure out of fingering a piece of metal, why not do it all day instead of having your face glued to a computer screen?'

I shall now make you see sense, for it is like comparing smoking with sex. Anyone with a bit of nous will know that sex gives a person possibly a hundred times more pleasure than a cigarette ever will. The thing is, though, a smoker can't go for a couple of hours without having a fag, while even a playboy will be able to survive for a few days if he can't get a shag. This is simply because smoking an addiction, the smoker starts getting sweaty and jiggly if he can't get those nasty little black bits of chemicals into his lungs. So it is the same with me: Company of Heroes (that's the game I'm talking about btw) is analogous to smoking, and my bass is analogous to sex. Show me a guy capable of shagging for seven hours without stopping and I'll show you a Chinaman with a twelve inch wang.

I shall have to take your leave now because I'm in dire need of my electronic fix. A word of caution first, however: if any of you lads are aspiring musicians or in fact have talents of the non-academic, non-electronic sort that you want to persue in desperate hope of using said talent as an alternative to sitting in an office cubicle, please, for the love of Jimi Hendrix's afro, don't start playing computer games, at least not if you have addiction issues similiar to mine. Now I will tell you that the one thing I made clear to myself before I got hooked was that irrelevant of the circumstances, my social life shall always get first dibs over my gaming life, and it is this that has saved me from becoming a complete spannar. No, really, I am that addicted to this pile of pixels. Goodnight and very wet dreams I bid you lot.

Four guys, one bedroom

I've managed to get my room back. No, really, I have, and I know that some of you lot are really wondering how I achieved something that can be described as quite impossible. Well I decided on Friday night last week that I was going to sleep in my own bloody room since it was a Friday night and therefore not much harm could come from me sleeping a little late. So when bedtime came, I locked the doors and put on my noise-canceling headphones so I wouldn't be able to hear anyone knocking on my door. Unfortunately, my mom miraculously managed to get my attention and made me open the door to surrender my phone since it was recognized as a potential threat to my sleep. Thankfully, after handing it over I was allowed to sleep in my room once again.

The next day, however, my dad came up with the very creative idea that I might sneak down in the middle of the night when everyone else was having wet dreams to use the computer. This, to a certain extent I shall be forced to agree, is true, but I knew I wasn't going to do that anymore with doomsday just over two weeks to go. With the phone threat eliminated (my mom had since taken away my SIM card when she caught me texting while studying), my dad identified the computer as the only thing left that could compromise my sleep. Now obviously I wasn't going to give up my room without a fight now, was I? So what I did then was go downstairs, pull all the cables out of the damn thing, lug it upstairs and plonk it down in front of the entrance to the master bedroom. Now there was no excuse for them to not let me sleep in my own room. Heh.

On a much lighter note, three of the lads came over to spend the night at my house after trials were over. The aforementioned three were Ganesh, Gabriel and Laveen. I got my dad to bring home the projector since what I wanted to do was watch movies cinema-style, but the other three, it seems, had other ideas. Being the hardcore DoTA freaks they were, all they wanted to do was play that silly game. And the fact that my house had two computers and a laptop made the idea even more appealing. With Gabby's laptop factored in we had four rigs, perfect for a 2v2. But then we had a problem. I had forgotten that the laptop didn't have a mouse, and without one it would be quite impossible to properly control your oh-so-magical hero so as to be able to turn Laveen's character into a chicken.

Given that it was apparently my fault for not remembering the fact that I didn't have enough mice, I was given the task of looking for one of those electronic rodents. So obviously the first thing I would do is go to the neighbours, but the problem was that I didn't know my neighbours very well (I should be ashamed, I know), and the chaps to the right of my house weren't in at the moment, while the house on the left didn't have a doorbell. It was at that point that I remembered that a friend of a friend lived down the road, and therefore there was a chance that she might so kindly lend us a mouse. This is going to be very weird indeed, I thought, and rightly so because I didn't know her very well. Nevertheless, desperate times required desperate measures, so I called up Lynette and requested that she contact her friend who lived down my street, Nicole, to ask her if she could spare us a mouse. After a few suspense-filled moments of waiting, Lynette texted me a positive reply, so Gabby and I went out and walked down the street to retreive the wired rodent. With that, the two ladies become our saviours for the night. The lads extend their thanks, by the way.

With all four rigs up and running, my living room and dining room started to look like a mini-cybercafe. So, let the games begin! It was an MCA-MIC matchup, with Gabby and I on the two main computers in the living room, while Laveen and Ganesh had the ball-burners in the dining room. We played two rounds and were about to play some more when my mom woke up and told us to go to bed. Anyway, I am proud to announce that MCA won 2-nil. Noobs =P

Now you know what Ganesh's hair looks like when it isn't waxed.

After the gaming session I had to figure out how to fit three and a half men into my bedroom. It was then that I decided to do a little improvising my taking out the two sofa cushions (the ones that you sit on) from the huge sofa in my living room and chuck them on the floor to the left of my bed, while the other side got the cushion from a much smaller one upstairs. Oh and there were lots of pillows. Unfortunately, a pillow fight wouldn't have been a good idea at the time. Before going to bed though, we played Chor Tai Ti till about four a.m. in the morning, after which we decided it would be a good idea to get some shut-eye.

We really have a problem with card addiction here. This was taken at 4am in the morning.

Ganesh and I got the bed and since there was only one blanket we had to share it, and I didn't think blanket-sharing was possible until then. Gabby got the floor on my right while Laveen was on Ganesh's left. Now it is worth noting that Gabby here was sleeping directly under the air-conditioner while Laveen would be snoozing at the end of the room where the cold air was least likely to go. And this is why I was completely dumbfounded by the fact that Laveen had snagged the second blanket while all Gabby had to cover the end of his feet was a shirt. The poor sod was so cold that at one time when I woke up in the middle of the night he had himself covered in what looked like ten pillows, while Laveen on the other end complained that he was feeling quite hot throughout the night. Idiots, both of them. I shall now leave you with a rather disturbing picture of Gabby getting sexually assaulted by Ganesh.

You have to wonder why they still bother trying to justify the mythical fact that they're not gay. Just look at the orgasmic smile on Ganesh's face.

I'm on the bloody throne, what the hell do you want?!

My mom thinks that I'm either overconfident or that I just don't really care about how my exams turn out. I, however, beg to differ. Because it's not that I don't care about my academic well being, I do, I really do, it's just that I'm sometimes (or rather most of the time) just too lazy to do anything about it. The mood isn't right most of the time, partly because of the unbearable heat on weekend afternoons, and mostly because of my insatiable addiction to 'carbon hydroxide' (those of you who know me well will know very well what I'm talking about). I have a mild suspicion that it is because of all this that my trial results were rather catastrophic. I got an A for Chemistry (kiasu bastard, I know what you're thinking, but please, wait for me to list down the remaining grades), a C for Pure Math which is completely unacceptable and a C for Physics, and I blame this on the fact that I had the urgent need to empty my bowels halfway through the exam. I'm telling you, this pooping problem of mine is going to cost me dearly. Oh and I failed Further Math, plainly because I didn't study for it. At all.

Now I shall tell you that I've never gotten results this bad before, and the most atrocious grade I've ever been awarded for any exam (I'm not referring to small class/topical tests here, mind you) was a B, and this, I reckon, is partly the reason for my dad's reaction when my mom gave him a description of what my report card looked like. I won't know how he reacted for sure because I wasn't there, but me mom said that he couldn't believe his ears. So obviously something had to be done to ensure that my trial results don't decide to make a surprise reappearance on my REAL exam certificate which Cambridge will so kindly send me all the way from England. I accept this fact, yes, but what I can't accept is that my dad wants me to sleep in HIS room with my mom until my exams are over in June. His reason? My room's got too many distractions, and he reckons that the reason I never get enough sleep is because I keep fiddling with this and mucking about with that until the wee hours in the morning. That, I shall be forced to agree, is true, but I think I won't be doing that any more with my A-Level finals less than a month away. Frankly, though, I think that this is a bit much. I've been sleeping in the master bedroom for two nights now and I miss my bed and my room dearly. Now obviously I won't be able to withstand my mom's hard bed and the inability to toss and turn and jump on my own bed as I please for much longer, so I will have to try very hard to convince my dad to let me sleep in my own bloody room. In any case, I won't be able to sleep as soundly in a bed that isn't my own, and that defeats the his whole purpose of wanting me to sleep in his room doesn't it?

The most ridiculous thing, however, is that he wants my mom to time me every time I pay a visit to my revered loo, simply to ensure that I don't spend more time than an average man takes to empty his bowels. Can you see how ridiculous that is?! I have now been deprived of the luxury pooping in peace. I shall have to sign off here because that's exactly what I've been doing while typing this entire post. Yes, I am currently on the throne. And I have to leave because my arse is starting to hurt.

God's an alcoholic

Greetings fellow padawans! It's been a while, quite a while indeed. I've been busy, very busy indeed. Well actually, I still am. So then why am I here, when I could be doing other things, things more important than writing out my life for all to read? I shall tell you why, oh yes I shall. The reason is simple. Today is an important day, the day I began my quest to aquire my manhood (at least that's what Gabby calls it). Yes people, today was the day I started taking the necessary procedures needed to learn how to drive.

Any self-respecting Malaysian would know that the first step to being a legal contributing factor to the infamous Malaysian traffic jam (or was it strawberry?) is the Undang class. Which is what I attended today. Yes, that dreaded five hour ordeal of boredom. Or at least that's what every single person I talked said it would be like. No, you don't have to pay attention because he's just going to drone on and on about things you wouldn't bother knowing, and yes you can do your homework, sleep or even watch a movie. I, however, beg to differ. Because you see, my lecture today was rather different in nature to the standard issue Undang seminars that most poor souls have to put up with. I shall now explain how.

Our lecturer started off the day by making sure that everyone had clocked in using their thumbs, and repeatedly stressed the importance of clocking out once we were done because if we didn't we'd have to go through the whole damn thing all over again. What's so significant about this then? If you're a proper Malaysian you will know that typical government workers are never this thorough. In fact, most of the time they're not thorough at all. It was his attitude that really impressed me. Because I thought most brownies had the same 'tidak apa' attitude. So anyway, after that was done he made us introduce ourselves to the class, one by one. The whole process took about half an hour, and during that time I felt like I was in primary school all over again. It was then that I felt really appreciative about having a Malay-sounding name. Because, well, most of them have trouble pronouncing Chinese names properly the first time. Anyway, then it was my turn to introduce myself. I went 'Nama saya Shum...' and then everyone turned and looked at me. And you can probably imagine why. Heh.

Now here's the interesting part: Mr Shukri, or Mr S as he liked to be known, started off the day by showing us some really interesting videos. Videos demonstrating the exceptional skills and stunts our venerable Mat Rempits were capable of doing. Amont the usual wheelies and whatnots, one of the more unusual (at least to us) stunts were like when this dude was bloody standing on his bike and controlling the whole thing with his feet. And another pillion rider was bending over and literally sweeping the road with his head. This was the first part of the videos. And then things got really graphic: he started showing us videos of accidents. Real ones, not those made up videos by the JPJ. The first one was of a motorcyclist who obviously wasn't very aware of what was happening behind him getting rear-ended by a prime mover. Poor sod got separated from his bike (the things don't have seat belts, see) and went UNDERNEATH the huge wheels of the truck. This wasn't so bad, and by that I mean not too graphic. The most vomit-inducing picture was the one with a rempit whose body was literally split in half, guts lying all over the road. The most disturbing one, I feel, was the one where they showed a fallen rempit, still alive, blood everywhere, with his leg bone broken and PIERCING through his thigh. I nearly puked when I saw this one. Now the reason Mr S showed us such graphic picture was simple: he wanted to send us a message, a very clear and somber one. And I imagine you would be smart enough to be able to figure out what that message is.

After the first video session he started with the more regular stuff, with bits of humour thrown in every now and then. What I liked was that he didn't try to cover everything but just explained the important stuff, the ones he knew were most likely to come out in the test. And he showed us more entertaining videos between explanations. What made this particular class so different from any run-of-the-mill seminar was that the class of over 30 burst into laughter every five minutes, and this clearly demonstrates how entertaining our lecturer was. And about two hours into the class, he could see that some of us were obviously in dire need of some standing up and walking about. So what he did was to make us stand, turn to the right and.........rub each other's backs. I'm not kidding: Look!


However, entertaining as this class was, it provided a clear demonstration of some of the nasty habits unique only to Malaysians. Example: About an hour since the start of the session, a cell phone started ringing loudly. It belonged to a fat, brown hoodie. Now what was so extraordinary about this was that instead of reaching into her hand bag and silencing the offending phone, she repeatedly kicked said bag underneath her chair, picked it up and then clutched it tightly in her hands. I haven't the foggiest why she did this and neither did everyone else. Really, I was dumbf***ed. I assume it was because she thought squeezing her bag would somehow soften her flashy ringtone. But this was slightly acceptable, but only in the tiniest degree of acceptance. Because it is sometimes natural for us to forget to tell our phone to be quiet. What was infuriating was the fact that she didn't bother silencing her phone after that incident, because it rang not once but two more times. I'm not joking. I think her hood was preventing her brain from breathing and working properly. If she had one that is. To my dismay, however, it turns out that a lot more in the class were brainless imbeciles because a few more phones rang throughout the class. It's like as though the first ringing phone wasn't enough to serve as a reminder for everyone else to tell their beloved tellies to shut up. There was even this one time when two phones rang at the exact same time! I was like 'OMGWTF MR SHUKRI DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS' but I think he was too nice to do anything about that. Pity.

I shall now take the time to explain to you why having an exceptionally high metabolic isn't always a good thing. Let's get into some biology now, shall we? When someone, say, me, has the aforementioned metabolic rate, he or she has to eat more because the normal amount of food simply isn't enough. To say that I'm a big eater is an understatement, and all my mates will verify that. I need colossal amounts of food because my body digests food very, very quickly and therefore I need to chuck more eatables into my mouth to prevent my stomach from eating itself. And when my body digests food at a faster rate than 'normal' people, more waste is produced and therefore I produce more poop per unit time, or p/t if you like. Which means that my butthole gets a good working out, sometimes up to four times a day. And this is a bad thing, which I found out the hard way today. I felt the need to empty my bowels, halfway through the class, and I just shat right before coming! I was trying desperately to wait till I got home, because who in their right mind would want to use a Malaysian public toilet?
But all was in vain, and I had to pay a visit to the cubicle of doom. Which surprised me because it wasn't so bad after all. It was relatively clean, there was not much to smell BUT someone had stolen the toilet seat cover so I had to sit my poor butt on the cold, hard ceramic toilet seat.

During lunch I paid another visit to the feared restroom, this time to use the urinal and I found this:


It was at this point that I nearly gave up hope on the salvation of our kind (but I shall tell you that I'm not your typical Malaysian). Someone actually pooped in the friggin urinal! Yet again, I was dumbf***ed by the sanitary abilities of Malaysians, but then I thought: What if the culprit was someone like me, some poor sod who desperately needed to relieve himself but was unfortunate enough to visit the restroom at a time when all the other cubicles were occupied? Maybe he hadn't a choice? He had to relieve himself someway. But then again it could just be some idiot trying to be funny.

So anyway that's how I spent my day, watching locally produced gore horror movies and analyzing the nasty little habits of Malaysians. Before I go to bed, I want to tell you that the next time someone says 'For God's sake' to me I shall assume that you're trying to tell me that God is indeed an alcoholic. Goodnight and wet dreams.

Sand, surf and sun

So here I am, in Aussieland, enjoying the awesome weather, scenery and of course the eye candy. A lot of people are asking me what it's like over here, and I shall tell you that it's very different from Bolehland. The first thing that you'd notice upon stepping out of the plane is the lack of rubbish. As a Malaysian you'd expect there to be bits of litter all over the place, but really, the place is literally spotless everywhere you go. The people here actually chuck their rubbish into the bins.

However, there are still a few 'Malaysians' around as you can see here

The Australian government, I'd wager, encourages safe sex because they've got machines selling condoms in the airport washrooms. They're much like the machines you buy soft drinks from, except these sell stuff like cologne, condoms and lubricant. I bought a box as a souvenir, Rough Rider studded ones to be exact XD


The toilets EVERYWHERE are clean, and I really mean this. They're either clean or very very clean. Like you know how in a typical Malaysian toilet you'd get that toilety smell, but here the washrooms have no smell. Now I know that as a Malaysian you will find this impossible and so I guess the only way to believe would be to actually come here and use the toilets here, as seeing, or in this case, smelling is believing.

Something I find very interesting about this place is the weather, because it's hot and cold at the same time. This may not make any sense to you but it does, because while the Sun's really strong like back home, so is the wind and therefore you feel the heat of the Sun and the cool breeze at the same time.

When we arrived in Gold Coast, which is in Queensland we stayed in this hotel called Sofitel (which sounds more like a cellphone service provider if you ask me), and the beds here are the best I've ever had. Seriously they're so soft, comfy and bouncy I wish I had a girl here whom with I could do naughty things on them =P


One thing I've found really annoying though (and I'm pretty sure every other Malaysian here goes through this too) is my tendency to convert everything into Malaysian Ringgit, which kinda ruins your mood to eat. If you can't see why I shall gladly explain to you: for a plate of spaghetti you'd typically have to pay around 20 Aussie, and when half of it's on its way to my stomach I'd be like 'oh shit i'm paying 60 bucks for a plate of noodles omgwtf!' See my point now?

Oh and the bananas here are HUGE, like 10 to 12 inches long, and I'm not kidding. Look!

But then again maybe it's not that surprising since white bananas have always been bigger and longer than Asian bananas. Heh.

Now anyone who knows me well will know that I hate, despise and detest anything Korean, especially entertainment, so when I was reached here I thought I'd have two weeks free of Korean dramas, songs and whatnots. Basically I assumed I wouldn't have to put up with anything Korean during my time in Australia. However, to my greatest dismay I was to be proven wrong, because while walking around a few times I saw a bunch every now and then. I know they were Korean because I hear my mom watching those terribly annoying Korean dramas every single night, and so I know Korean when I hear it. Really, those bastards are everywhere!

Right that shall be all for now, I can't concentrate on blogging any longer because they've got a Korean movie on now and all that blabbering in Korean is driving me up the wall, so goodnight and very wet dreams I bid you lot.

To F*** or not to F***

Right then I intended to post a nice, long update today but since it's now 2.44am I shall have to make it a brief one. Why? Because I was fulfilling the rather unreasonable and completely pointless whims and fancies of the brainless brown bastards (or the 3B's if you like) working at our oh so highly revered Ministry of Education, and was therefore too busy completing my part of our Moral Portfolio, due next Tuesday.

Now all A-Level Science students will know that our exams do not end until next Friday and if you're one of them you will be wondering why we have to complete this stupid thing at such an inconvenient time. I shall now proceed fulfill your curiosity: Apart from the reason given above, we have a Sammy Vellu look-alike who's hell bent on making our lives as miserable as he can because his royal darkness demands that we hand in our projects by the aforementioned date. Now, really, I think this is a bit much because how can you expect us to willingly sacrifice whatever precious study time we have left on something as insignificant and completely unimportant as this, time that should be instead spent memorizing the number of ways you can create mysterious glowing purple concoctions in the Chemistry lab. Of course we tried asking him to change the due dates to after our exams, but no amount of begging, pleading or c***sucking would get him to change his mind. All AL-109 students are aware that more than half our seniors are retaking their Advanced Subsidiary exams together with us, and this made us wonder: does Cambridge really like making all its candidates fail? We guessed it was a yes. And then we pissed our pants.

I initially assumed that the reason so many people were resitting this exam in our college was due to the difficulty of the papers themselves, but I think I have found a more relevant reason: the timing of our Moral Education sessions. Really. Think about it. I've been told that all other A-Level students had to put up with this atrocity as well, so there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to cope. And this, I figure, is the REAL reason why so many candidates are repeating this particular exam. But of course they won't tell us that now would they? So if you're a member of KDU's administrative staff, or in fact anyone with the power to do something about this, listen up: if you want to earn superior bragging rights over other colleges as far as the number of A's your students are raking in is concerned, please, please, PLEASE for the love of fried potatoes shift the timing of all future moral sessions. Really. I guarantee the A rates will soar beyond your wildest dreams.

Oh shit it's 3.15. That was supposed to be a brief post. I shall now go to bed and hopefully the wildest of wet dreams will come to me.

Transporter 4: The Porno

Something really stupid just happened that I really have to blog about: Now I was trying to download Transporter 3 simply because I haven't had the time to watch it while it was screening at cinemas. Nothing wrong with that, yes, but the thing is, I use a P2P program called Ares, and Ares users will know that there is a preview function that lets you view whatever it is that you have downloaded so far, and so when I pressed the preview button to make sure that the movie wasn't in Spanish, some really loud moaning sounds came blasting out of the speakers. I know that you think this doesn't make sense, but it does because you see, some jackass had renamed a porno Transporter 3 so when I downloaded that file I was in fact downloading a porno. Here's the really stupid part though: When I previewed the file my sister was in the same room as I was, so she heard those moaning sounds too and therefore gave me a weird look. Now my sister's going to think that I'm a porno addict, all because some insufferable fool conveniently decided to rename a porno film with the same title as the movie I was looking for.

Here's something worth contemplating though: You know how sometimes you download movies and watch them with your family? Can you imagine what would have happened if I watched that with my parents without previewing it first? I shall not though because the very thought of watching a porno with your parents is simply beyond my imagination. Moral of the story? Turn off your speakers if you intend to preview a video you have downloaded and always, ALWAYS make sure you screen through it beforehand if you do intend to watch it with any of your family members, especially your parents.

Post exam antics

Because Anton and Hannah have blogged about what we did after our trials on Friday, I therefore feel obliged to do the same. And for the very first time in a really, really long time, I shall include something in this post that has been missing for quite a while..pictures! Now don't be surprised if the pictures you see here turn out to be exactly the same as the ones on the blogs of the aforementioned people because they all have been taken by Hannah and me.

We had all planned to go and watch a movie immediately after our last paper, but to our dismay ol' George decided that we should still have one last Chemistry lesson before our holidays. After 'wasting' five hours in college we were finally able to leave, and it was decided that One Utama shall be the mall of choice. Because there were eight of us half would have to take a taxi while the remaining half would get the opportunity to sample Anton's new car. However, due to Anton's questionable sense of direction we took longer than we should have to reach the said destination, that is until Hannah and I intervened.

Final Destination 4 was the movie of the day since that's what all of us wanted to watch, and while waiting for the movie to start the guys decided to try a spot of bowling. We divided ourselves into the MCA's(Anton, Chien Wen and I) and the MIC's(Ganesh, Laveen and Ram), and it brings me great disappointment to announce that the MCA's lost by only a few miserable points. Now I shall remind you that the MIC's only won by sheer luck and that we could have easily trashed you had all of us played properly.

So what was the movie actually like? We choose this movie with great anticipation(or at least I did) seeing that the first three were so bloody awesome, but sadly, the fourth movie was RUBBISH and I really do mean RUBBISH. Why? Because everything was blatantly blown out of proportion, and the degree of effects used made everything like the explosions and the way people died completely unrealistic, and therefore the whole movie was not realistic at all, so unless you're a sadistic bastard like Laveen I strongly recommend against watching it.

After the movie we went and had dinner, at my recommendation, at Just Thai. Because it was Raya time almost all the tables were either fully occupied or reserved. This meant that all eight of us had to squeeze into a table meant for four as it was the only one left, and after doing so we passed the time waiting for our food to come by cam whoring. Now I know that it is not very clear, but this picture below shows just how cramped we were, especially when compared to the bench seating the couple behind us:







As you can see from the picture below, I have clearly managed to convert Hannah into becoming someone more like myself:


And Anton, upon seeing Hannah's newfound joy for the unmentionable , looked at her in this rather dandy and suggestive manner:


What the two of them did after the whole thing was over is, however, for them to know and for us to find out.

After dinner someone had the bright idea to have a karaoke session, and if you have ever seen the karaoke booths at One Utama you'll know how ridiculously small they are but yet again all eight of us managed to squeeze into a single booth, much to the amusement of other people passing by, some of which were simply too dumbfounded to do anything but just stand there and stare at us in amazement. Because I can't sing I refused to put the mike to my mouth for most of the session, and so did Chien Wen, and when they made me hold it during the last song I simply turned it off. Of course we both got called spoilsports because of that, but I can assure you that the only way to get me to sing during a karaoke session would be to get me hopelessly drunk beforehand.

Before everyone left we took one last group picture, and because there was no one there to help us do so Ganesh and Hannah decided to take turns:



Well then I shall stop right here, otherwise I will end up making this post ridiculously long. Goodnight and wet dreams.

Boo.

I found it a bit hard to start typing again after temporarily and unintentionally abandoning this blog for over two months, but thanks mainly to endless pestering from Chulan and Tiffany, I have therefore decided to fulfil my blogging obligations.

Lots have happened since my last update, the most significant of which would be the forming of Wanted Symphony, my third, or strictly speaking, second band I've been recruited in since starting college. Now I have to say that for a band that's just only a month old we've been pretty active as we've already performed at three gigs, hopefully with many more to come. One thing very different about Wanted Symphony from the other bands I've played for is that we've actually written some of our own songs...how awesome is that eh?

I have, however had my first embarrassing moment with this band, which would be at our second gig at Muzium Telekom when I fell off the stage during the sound check, resulting in the near-hysterical laughter of Daniel and Aaron...those insufferable buggers...=_= Now it is perfectly understandable how someone may fall off a stage during the performance itself, due to excessive jumping etc, but how I fell of the stage during a SOUND CHECK was very simple: I wanted to see how my amp would sound from where the audience would be, and therefore jumped down the stage, while unfortunately neglecting to observe the fact that my cable had conveniently decided to wind itself around my foot, thus causing me to fall on my face, and because the cable was plugged into my amp that toppled over too. All this happened while half the audience was there, so you can imagine the embarrassment I had to endure, but at least they were polite enough not to laugh and humiliate me even further, unlike most idiots their age would. Oh, and I broke my 50 ringgit Fender cable in the process. But at least this taught me a very valuable lesson on performing: ALWAYS, ALWAYS check that your feet are free of cables before attempting to jump off a stage.

Anyway, I've got yet another gig at One Utama tomorrow, this time with another band and I've yet to learn the three songs we're gonna play and therefore I shall stop right here.

Toilet cleaner green

I believe it has been quite a while since I last updated, and the reason for this is rather simple: I was simply too lazy. While I do remember saying in my previous post that there's no point blogging when you haven't got anything to blog about, I've now got another reason for my once-a-month posts, and that is there's also no point blogging when you don't feel like blogging, because then your posts would be written half-heartedly which would make your blog unpleasant to read, and because of this no one's going to read your posts which defeats the entire purpose of blogging. Therefore in the future if you want to know why I haven't posted in ages even though I've got a lot worth blogging about, simply refer to my second reason for not blogging.

Now I will tell you that a lot has happened since my last update as it's been two bloody months, but because I don't feel like putting all that down I shall only blog about what I feel like blogging right now. And right now I want to rant. I want to rant about timetables, specifically the timetables that we have to follow. Now if you're an A-level Science student studying in my college and you take Chemistry, you will know that our chem class has been allocated a rather inconvenient time, because of which we only get to go home at ten past seven on Fridays and half an hour earlier on Tuesdays. What's ridiculous is that on Tuesdays we've got almost six hours with nothing to do before chem and about two hours less on Fridays. Because we've got so much free time it would seem logical to have these classes during our free time so that we can leave earlier, but the thing is that ol' George is only free at that time. Fine. This was at the beginning of the term, when we thought our timetables could not possibly get any worse. How wrong we were.

When the timetables were changed in the middle of the term, we found that chem was still at the same time. Fine. Then a few weeks after that when we got more and more classes, things got even worse. Much much worse. This situation, however, only applies to those who take Further Math, and I happen to be one of those poor, unfortunate sods. You see this is because we now have seven sodding hours without a break on Thursdays. I really do feel that whoever planned this timetable is a complete and incurable idiot. No one in the right state of mind would put a student through that, simply because it won't work. Yes, the imbeciles will argue that we've got to have a specific number of hours for each lesson in a week, and therefore they have no choice but to squeeze it in, but our brains can only function effectively under continuous use for a certain period of time, after which they are rendered useless, and further use would cause symptoms of brain damage and insanity, which explains my behaving like a monkey on steroids after Further Stats on Thursdays. Why couldn't they have chucked some of it to either Tuesday or Friday, when we've got shiteloads of free time?

Somebody remind me yet again why I'm taking Further Math, or even A-level Science for that matter because I can't seem to remember. And since it's now 1.44 am I shall now go to bed. Goodnight.

Machalacamacocoa.

So then I shall admit that I've yet again been a bit too lazy to update recently, but even then there wasn't much to blog about.

Okay. No. That wasn't me. Me as in Shum. This is me. As in Tiffany, me. Yes, that was a little bit of self-advertising, but hey, you'll only make it big if you market yourself right. Anyways, by some miraculous way, Shum has allowed me to update his blog! *loud cheers ensue*

Honestly, I'm a bimbo blogger. Meaning, I say completely pointless things which do not apply to the general public and in no possible way contribute to the society or make the world a better place. Instead, I blog self-indulgently. And I'm doing it again.

Anyhow, you are all here to read about Shum's updates.. so let me update about Shum! Let's see. Basically, I'm not really sure what he's been doing. I know he has loads of homework, which he spends his nights doing. But then again, he does his homework while his computer's turned on, so I don't know how productive that can actually be. Err.. Right! Shum's birthday's coming up .. in June! June 27th to be exact. I only know that because I checked facebook. But I did remember it was in June. So yeah. Okay, so it's still about a month away, but according to Shum's blogging trackrecord, a month's usually the interval of time in which he blogs, so that should be about right.

Usually, I blog like.. two lines then I space. But for the sake of keeping the balance of this blog, I'm not doing that. Oh great, there I go again. Talking about myself. OKAY, moving on. Yes. Megan Fox is a man. DO READ the post that the link leads to first before reading the rest of this post. Because really, it'll BLOW YOUR MIND! :O

Okay, done reading?

OKAY GOOD.

Yeah, most of you would have figured out by now.. that that was a fake news report. But still.. super cool website nonetheless. According to "the world's only reliable news", Miley Cyrus has joined the Communists. Okay, back to Shum. He has long hair. Not long as in.. tie long. Long as in if you're in highschool you'd have to trim it long. Long's nice.. Mhmm.. Oh right, Shum goes to KDU College, which has loads of super cool events! Today, I read in the newspaper about a dodgeball thing held at KDU College. I always wanted to learn dodgeball because I found it cool when I saw it in Chicken Little! And like, always those nerds get attacked by dodgeballs. Actually, I'm starting to wonder.. who made it cool to be a jock and lame to be a nerd? Some could argue that nerds earn more money.. but like, that's only if you're a super nerd (ex: Bill Gates) But then again, loads of athletes earn lots and lots of money too, and that's only if they're super athletes. Oh, right! Back to dodgeball.. I wanna learn dodgeball!

OKAY FINE. I'm done. Tiffany out. (: (: (: