Mrs. Trunchbull

DBKL is back! Ever since they completed the road-widening works on Jalan Sri Semantan 1 to accommodate more parking spaces, the hungry men in blue has returned. This time, they brought Mrs. Trunchbull along to tow the cars away.

Ariff jokingly (I hope!) told the makcik to tow my car away, but got told off and asked to shut-up instead. Way to go ma’am!!! :P

Jokes aside, a car did get towed away. In fact, I was the one who sent a mass email to the whole office. Thinking that I will be doing the owner a favour by letting him/her know about the bad news, rather than having thought their car was stolen, I felt good… until the “read reply” messages started bouncing back furiously into my mailbox… I forgot to turn off the “Request Read receipt” mode!!! Not a pretty sight considering the number of staff in the group… Argh!!!

Alchohology

A colleague forwarded this to me. I reckon, either it was written by a beer drinkin’ female journalist who hates Irish men, or, the fifty bartenders interviewed for this survey were bias barmaids… read on!

A recent magazine survey, interviewed fifty bartenders and they were asked if they could identify a customer's personality on what drinks they ordered? Although interviewed separately, they concurred on almost all counts. The results:

If Women Drink…

1. Beer
Personality: Casual, low maintenance; down to earth.
Approach: Challenge her to a game of pool.

2. Cocktails or Blender drinks with umbrella
Personality: Flaky, annoying, dizzy, and a pain in the ass.
Approach: Avoid her, unless you want to be her cabin boy.

3. Mixed drinks - no umbrellas e.g. Scotch and soda
Personality: Mature, has picky taste; knows what she wants
Approach: If she wants you, she'll send YOU a drink.

4. Water
Personality: Pretentious and is looking for a serious relationship.
Approach: Don't.

5. Wine - (bottled, not 4-litre cask)
Personality: Conservative and classy, sophisticated.
Approach: Try and weave Paris and clothing into the conversation.

6. Bacardi Breezer, Red Square, Archers Cooler, Smirnoff Ice, etc.
Personality: Easy; thinks she is trendy and sophisticated actually has no clue.
Approach: Make her feel smarter than she is... and you're in.

7. Cape Velvet
Personality: Annoying voice; bit of a tart.
Approach: Stand close and mention the alley next to the pub.

8. Shots and Slammers (Tequila, Vodka, Aftershock etc.)
Personality: Hangs around with male work pals or looking to get drunk... and naked.
Approach: Easiest hit in the pub; Nothing to do but wait…

If Men Drink…

1. Cider
He's probably under-aged and wants to get laid.

2. Cheap Domestic Beer
He's poor / a student and wants to get laid.

3. Castle Lager Beer
He likes good beer and wants to get laid.

4. Imported Beer
He's old; likes good beer and wants to get laid.

5. Guinness
The man is a rapist and will get laid one way or another.

6. Water
He just threw up and is trying to wash the taste out of his mouth so that he can still get laid.

7. Wine
He's hoping that the wine thing will give him a sophisticated image and help him get laid.

8. Vodka or Brandy
Extremely horny hound, would shag a warm scarf. Desperate to get laid.

9. Port
Thinks he's sophisticated, secretly likes men and wants to get laid.

10. Whisky
He doesn't give two fucks about anything and will hit anyone who will get in his way of getting laid.

11. Jack Daniels
Not as masculine as the whisky drinker, knows all about feminine activities (knitting, crochet etc.) to weasel himself into getting laid.

12. Rum or Tequila
Likes fighting almost as much as getting laid.

13. Bacardi Breezer, Red Square, Archers Cooler, Smirnoff Ice, etc.
He's gay (blatantly) - don't turn your back or pick up any dropped change.

Someone asked about a girl who drinks champagne and he got:

“High Maintenance Upper-class Socialite”…

or so I thought.

Cheap thrills and Brickfields...

The car bearing no: BGW 1937 please take note that your car screen has been smashed. Kindly attend to it immediately.

Thank you.

Zaida Ya’cob

Not again?!!!

Great. Another visit to not just one police station, but two – one to lodge a report, and the other to repeat the whole story again to an IO in order to initiate an investigation (What investigation?). The only difference was this time, it rained.

It's My Birthday!

The day was flooded with phone calls. And one in particular was an invitation to a family dinner at Sheraton Subang. Luckily, time flew in my favour due to the workload I was handling. Great! Time to meet the family!

As usual, I was fashionably late. But then again, so was everyone… it’s the family norm. Funny, but somehow it works for us ‘coz we always turn up at the same time even if, we’re not on time.

I love family gatherings. It makes me feel so important; being the youngest uncle and all. Not just that, but also the fact that our family is huge! Every time we go out, we always have to split the table… the kids and their au pairs, and the adults… us. Both our parents come from families that value the principles of togetherness and respect – “Big equates Power”. So naturally, our upbringing too was nurtured with these principles we have managed to preserve, and hopefully carry on.

Besides, how often do we get free dinners, eh? :P

Birthday Eve

Nothing much happened today apart from getting mad at Jon for being so insensitive. As a result, I turned into a self-righteous bitch that barked at everyone the whole afternoon, just because tomorrow is my birthday.

We played Taboo! again that night. It was a wonderful night. Ariff, Timoer, Nadia, Lyn and Adrinna were around to wish me Happy Birthday when the clock ticked past. We toasted to the occasion with a bottle of Burgundy and chatted the night away.

P/S: Congratulations Timoer & Lyn :P

Baked Beans & Japanese

Thanks to one of Rina’s silly emails, I started the day talking about baked beans and English breakfast, of which the former I have grown to hate.

I managed to catch Nik’s attention and reminisce the days when we woke up to a freezing winter; him in Edinburgh and me in a boarding school in Brighton. The typical breakfast menu would consist of hash browns, bacon, pork and/or chicken sausages, scrambled eggs, French toasts, sautéed mushrooms and onions, some other usual stuff du jour, and last but not least, the baked beans. If I could recall, Nik’s favourite was cooked with a dollop of HP Brown sauce, diced onions, oregano and pepper to taste and a dollop of melted butter, on top of a sunny side up egg laid over 2 pieces of cheese toasties, grated cheddar, garlic butter and 2 thick pieces of wholemeal bread… phew!

It all sounds so yummy doesn’t it? Not for me though. Too much of the same had turned me into a ‘baked-beans-o-phobic’. I can no longer stand the sight, the texture and most importantly, the smell… Buehhhk!!!

Beans aside, I decided to have lunch with Timoer and the girls at Sugimoto. For some work-related reason that day, I was in a foul but polite mood. This odd calamity was even more threatened by the waitress who conveniently, started to misbehave. Let’s just not go there.

The food came and went. Surprisingly, they didn’t taste cheap. For dessert, we had ‘tarot’ and ‘divorce’ served on the table. Come to think of it, we still haven’t finished debating our thoughts on the latter. But at least now I know why Timoer wanted to sit ‘there’. :P

To: The Happy Couple...

It’s now 3 days before my 25th birthday, and I still haven’t made plans to celebrate yet.

Last night, I loaded a big corrugated box into the car. It’s a long-overdue wedding present for the newly weds; a sweet and darling couple I got to know not long ago. I must say, the distinctive ‘senyum kambing’ is merely a façade to… a fiery and aspiring investment banker-cum-strategist extraordinaire.

So, that night he dropped me at my car that’s usually parked in front of Sara’s house, and transferred the goods to his boot as quickly as we could - I swear it might have looked like some illegal activity taking place! :P

Dear Shahrir and Mardiana,

Congratulations! I hope the gift has proven useful in your newly established household. All the best in the years ahead and may God bless you both with everything beautiful…

Kind regards,
Shukor

What is left after smoking 10 joints a day for 30 years...

Claim ONE: "Critical skills related to attention, memory and learning are impaired among heavy users of marijuana . . ."

Most people think of marijuana users as dreamers with the attention span of a gnat and no memory worth the name. Wrong. The picture emerging from psychology labs is that there is at most a kernel of truth in this stereotype, while some studies find no evidence of even subtle mental impairment in heavy users. And even those that do are open to a range of interpretations -- not necessarily worrying to marijuana users.

Take the latest findings on which the above claim is based. Harrison Pope and his team at Harvard University compared 65 college students who smoked marijuana daily with a control group of students who smoked it most every other month. After a drug-free day, the subjects completed a range of standard mental tests. Mostly, differences between the two groups were slight. When it came to remembering lists of words, for example, the heavy users recalled about 1 in 10 fewer words than the light users.

But in one test the heavy users underperformed more noticeably. The test involved watching and mimicking the simple rules used by an experimenter to match cards with coloured shapes on them, and then adapting whenever the rule changed. Students who rarely smoked marijuana mistakenly carried on with the old sorting rule on about 5 out of 100 occasions, while heavy users made about 8 mistakes. Pope takes this seriously. "In the real world," he says, "people have to deal all the time with situations in which rules are changing..."

Fine. But over the years, much stronger claims have surfaced: heavy marijuana users do badly at work or school, are more likely to be delinquent and develop psychiatric problems, or have abnormal brain waves. Time and again, however, such studies encounter the same objection: are the problems caused by smoking marijuana, or is it just that people with problems are more likely to end up using marijuana heavily?

In the case of delinquency, schizophrenia and mental illnesses, the balance of the evidence points to the second explanation. Marijuana doesn't cause the problems, although it may make them worse. Some schizophrenics, for example, are drawn to the drug because it eases their sense of alienation. And most researchers now accept that the evidence linking marijuana to abnormal brain waves vanishes when people with psychiatric problems, illnesses or a history of general drug abuse are excluded from studies.

But what about subtler problems like the card sorting deficiencies? After all, it might just be that smart college students tend to smoke lightly while others smoke heavily. In which case the card sorting results may have little to do with marijuana.

Here opinions diverge. Pope believes the deficiency does have something to with marijuana because his team controlled for such obvious things as IQ differences, psychiatric histories and heavy use of other drugs. But others are not convinced. What worries some critics is that in this study, as in others, the women drug users did so much better than the men in most tests.

Deviant Males, John Morgan, Pharmacologist

"I know of no reason why there should be a gender difference in cognitive response to cannabis," says John Morgan, a pharmacologist at the City University of New York Medical School and co-author of a controversial new book advocating decriminalisation, Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts. Morgan believes the reason the males underperform in such studies is that they are "deviant" in subtle ways that escape the researchers' notice.

And what if the poor test results do turn out to be linked to marijuana? It doesn't automatically follow that heavy marijuana use is causing long-lasting brain damage. One possibility is that, deprived of their favourite drug for a day, heavy users suffer withdrawal symptoms or become so grumpy and distracted that they do badly in tests. Another is that a single drug-free day is not long enough for the effect of their last smoke to have disappeared. The Harvard team's follow-on experiments, in which marijuana users are being tested over a 28-day "dry" period, should provide answers.

Other research suggests that evidence of dramatic mental decline is unlikely to be found, even as a result of long-term heavy use. Over the past 25 years, Jack Fletcher at the University of Texas in Houston and his colleagues have been visiting Costa Rica to test the mental skills of very heavy users. Although some of them have smoked 10 joints a day for more than 30 years, their ability to learn and remember lists of words is only mildly impaired. And even when struggling with more demanding tasks, such as recalling information while pressing a tapper as fast as possible, their scores fall well within the normal range.

Spot the difference: What cannabis does to memory skills

"The effects are subtle and subclinical," says Brian Page, an anthropologist from the University of Miami, who was involved in the study. "Although they could be bad for somebody who's trying to be an arbitrage trader or Wall Street lawyer." And, Page adds: "People who sell bicycles had better not ride while under the influence."

Or at any rate common sense suggests they should not. The verdict from research into the impact of marijuana on road safety skills is less clear. In Britain as many as 1 in 10 motorists involved in serious accidents test positive for cannabis. And figures as high as 37 per cent have emerged from studies in urban areas of the US. However, many of these drivers also test positive for alcohol, and even the cases involving just cannabis cannot be equated with people driving under the influence because the drug lingers so long in the body.

In driving simulators, marijuana does impair visual skills and mental dexterity. But studies of actual driving show that even high doses of marijuana have less impact than alcohol, perhaps because smoking it doesn't usually make people so reckless. In one study, low doses of marijuana made drivers more cautious.

The same broad message is likely to be true for the subtler, longer-lasting effects of marijuana on the brain. Researchers like Pope and Morgan may look at the data very differently, but they agree about one thing: heavy boozing is worse for your neurons than dope.

Les Jeunes et Seulement

Ismail Zain - Un de mes neveux de favori. Le jeune homme charmant j'aurai toujours une tache molle pour. Une âme qui mérite tous choses beau. Aussi beau que tout l'amour il obtient de sa famille. Joyeux anniversaire, Mêmé. Mai tous vos souhaits viennent vrai.

Riam J. & G - A garden of blooming roses, colourful and wise - The Bold and Beautiful. The former never fails to make us laugh, with her sulky sighs of disappointment and contempt. And the latter is almost my partner in crime when it comes to partying. Remember "Stoned Mosquitos"? Haha

And then their parents. My wonderful cousins, who somehow always manages to cheer me up when life gets a bit too intricate and confusing. And they're the most young-hearted fun lovin' people to hang out with. Can't stop lovin' you guys! To, Bora-Bora! :P

And finally our nephews, Fariz, who's grown up so fast that time had trouble keeping up... and his younger brother Aiman @ Idie Jr., who (some would agree to a some extent) is an almost perfect replica of his father but with an individuality of his own, that's for sure!

The Red Lanterns @ Starhill Gallery

tête - à - tête

Friends come and go. And yesterday, I actually experienced it, first hand!

I spotted a chinese looking girl strapped in the front seat of Eddie's approaching car. I quickly stubbed my newly-lit cigarette as the car rolled to a stop next to me. I blushed away as I realized, my Chinese New Year greeting didn't catch much attention. Turns out, the girl was a Japanese.

Zul - a brilliant photographer, I was told. Poor guy just found out his adopted Jap name Zuuru, means 'cheater' in Japanese! So I guess it's Arigato gozaimasu to his Haru-juku girl for naming him that, and to Mei for the long-overdue tip to what it really meant! Haha :P

Mei - The lonely planet traveller, or backpacker, to be precise. Her benevolent smile coupled with her Japanese features somehow brought more warmth that Sunday afternoon. I take my Y-3s off to her for having to tahan our curiousity on the Japanese language. At least now we know that I am very Iketeru and Eddie is so kuru ta. Alfi however, got his tongue so twisted, nothing came out right Haha! And for Zuuru, at least now he knows :P

Alfi joined not long after we arrived Alexis in Ampang. He finally lost the cap, which made him look less poyo. :P However, I should have anticipated his affection towards Hackett! The only consolation was that his was white on white... but still! BTW, Eddie was so gay that day! :P

Nan da yo?! Leave the kawaii boy alone! :P I was completely knackered by the time we got home. Can't believe we spent almost 5 hours in Alexis alone! Nevertheless, I must say that the company this time was somewhat different from the usual crowd... a different kinda fun. Probably because Eddie for some reason wasn't as satirical that day! Haha :P By the way, where were you that night? You missed the session at Lyn's! :P

To Mei,

It was fun having you around! Such a shame that you couldn't stay on longer. You should come down again soon and see more of Malaysia! Till the next time, take care, keep in touch and safe journey home. Sayonara!

From, all of us.

Year of the Dog

This time around, the moon has decided to dedicate the whole year to the dog. So, to all my dawgs out there... here's to you!

Xin Jian Kuai Le, Gong Xi Fa Cai; Xin Nian Jin Bu, Wan Shi Ru Yi!

- Li Shu Kai (Supposedly my name, in Chinese) :P

A Consultant or a Prostitute?

Here's something I found on JeffOoi.com, left as a comment to one of his posts. Frighteningly significant, as an investment bank executive myself!!! Regardless, it's worth a giggle :P

1. You work very odd hours.
2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy.
3. You are paid well but your pimp gets most of the money.
4. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room.
5. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended.
6. You are not proud of what you do.
7. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.
8. It's difficult to have a family.
9. You have no job satisfaction.
10. If a client beats you up, the pimp just sends you to another client.
11. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.
12. People ask you, "What do you do?" and you can't explain it.
13. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.
14. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money.
15. Your pimp drives nice cars like Mercedes or Jaguars.
16. You know the pimp is charging more than you are worth but if the client is foolish enough to pay it's not your problem.
17. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM).
18. You are rated on your "performance" in an excruciating ordeal.
19. Even though you might get paid the big bucks, it's the client who walks away smiling.
20. The client always thinks your "cut" of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.
21. When you deduct your "take" from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp.

Not the Typical Sunday

This morning I woke up with a splitting headache. I guess it's got something to do with the horrible nightmare I had, which I'm not gonna share. Shucks!

I bought another Apple wireless mouse yesterday. The old one died... of a stroke! Haha! The thing is, it switches on, I can tell by the red optical light, and it could still click, but it's not moving the cursor. So, I banged it somemore, thinking that it'll somehow work again? But now it's even more dead! To be honest, I don't blame it. Lately, I kept finding it on the floor, next to my bedside table where I normally keep it together with the keyboard. I must have accidentally knocked it off, everytime while sleeping. Makes me wonder how I sleep at night. :P

After that I met up with Lop in Souled Out for drinks. First thing he said, "I heard a funny story about you!". Turns out, Nub, a mutual friend mistook my sister's wedding last month, for mine. I actually thought it was funny?! And apparently I've got Eddie to thank, for coming up with this crap - you never fail to amuse me, exaggerator!!! :P Anyway, y'all will know when this eligible bachelor decides to get married... trust me! But for now, I'd like to remain single for awhile. At least until I sort my life out! :P

Back to reality...

Jon called at around 10, asking if I wanted to hang out. Somehow we couldn't decide where to go or what to do. Funny. All of a sudden, KL has turned out to be a boring place for us. I guess we've been out and about far too much already. Enough to qualify for the "Been there, done that, got the pic", line. In the end, I settled for a bottle of 1999 VOLNAY 1er Cru Burgundy and drank myself to sleep.

Talking about marriage, today was my neighbour's wedding reception. I must say we were never close, even though we live right next to each other. A typical girl next door, everybody seemed to know her, and quite a few of her friends know me too. Alas, reluctance was still thicker than the concrete fence that separates our houses. However, it didn't keep the rest of my family from going. To save face, I decided to stand by the fact that my head was about to explode anytime soon, as an excuse.

Meanwhile, I kept popping paracetamols to control the pain. When I felt better, I drove to my grandma's to pick up my cousin and brought him to my sister's, for my niece's 4th birthday. Not long after, I went back home and slept some more but the pain kept coming back. I seriously hope this pain will ease by the time I wake up tomorrow...

Goodnight!

Cold Storage

I've never felt so uncertain about the future until today. As much as I want to deliberate on this, I just can't. It's a very sensitive issue. It's to the extent that my fears may soon be realized if I start talking openly about it.

Life is so unfair, so they say. But if it wasn't, would it make things better? Should the word, "alternative" or even "backup", exist? It may, but it could carry a different meaning. Crazy, u think? Maybe. But whatever it is, it can't possibly match the fears that I've now started to think about.

A lot of us tend to take things for granted. Lighting up a cigarette with a disposable lighter is good example. How many of us actually thought of the possibility that a lighter may explode while trying to light it? I did once, back in prep school in England when a Korean friend of mine told us that most lighters in Korea comes with a liability cover of up to a million Won if any of it were to explode during usage. So it could explode. How long did the conscience last? Not very long, I must admit. But, even a beautiful rose don't last that long. With any luck, it may, as a Pot Pourri, a Rotten Pot, that will eventually be thrown away, somehow, someday.

Ironic as it seems, this was exactly what happened to a certain someone today.

For a few months, I was kept in cold storage. But I didn't just sit quietly and freeze to death. I survived. With some protest, I made myself think that I deserved it and learn from my mistakes, which I am still clueless about. When I got out, I hoped and prayed that nobody else will have to go through the same thing.

Unfortunately, the dark side has taken control again. The predator has identified yet another prey. Only this time, it came with a frosty ultimatum, the likes of a beer mug, kept chilled in the freezer, waiting for a weary traveller, to order a pint.

But then again, not everyone drinks beer.

Snippets of Me!

1. Do you still talk to the person you had your first kiss with?
Hmm, wonder where she is now. Haven't seen her since kindergarten!

2. What would you do with 1,000 plastic spoons?
Sell 'em!

3. What kind of music did you listen to in elementary school?
New Kids on the Block, 4U2C! Muaehahehaehahehaea

4. What is the best thing about your current job?
My contribution

5. Do you wish cell phone etiquette was required?
No, mandatory!

6. Are you against same sex marriage?
Yes, I prefer different kind of sexual positions! Muaehahehaha ~ Kinda. We need to reproduce.

7. Have you been on a date in the past week?
No. Call me!

8. Where are you going on your next vacation?
Either Cambodia, or London, again...

9. Quote a song lyric...
I don't wanna be anythin' other than what I've been trynna be lately!

10. Are most of the friends in your life new or old?
Mostly new. Even the old ones are new. Go figure!

11. Do you own any furniture from Ikea?
Yup, and I have to admit they've improved alot.

12. Do you like your parents?
I'm beginning to...

13. What state/country are you from?
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.

14. Tell us about the last conversation you had?
Bitch about MAS, and how they should allocate more
budget for their R&D in order to keep up!

15. Where do you see yourself in one month?
Still here, dazed and confused.

16. What is your favorite smell?
Grass, after a rainfall.

17. Do you consider yourself bi-polar?
No, I'm metrosexy! :P

18. What is the time and the outside temperature at the moment?
Whoah! Finally I get to make use of my widgets! 31° Celsius as at 1.05pm

19. Have you ever done anything vindictive to your co-workers?
No, but to a former flatmate! We ganged up on him and wrote a nasty complaint letter to the Flat Manager. Revenge was sweet!

20. Have you ever gone to therapy?
Spa therapies got la. Shrink? No.

21. Have you ever Played Spin the Bottle?
Don't get me started on the Koreans!

22. Have you ever Toilet Papered someone's house?
How do you toilet paper someone's house?

23. Have you ever liked someone but never told them?
Definitely!

24. Have you ever gone camping?
I have, and it sucked. How I thought the Summer Camp was like the ones in the US, but I was so wrong. Never been so wrong in my life before!

25. Have you ever had a crush on your sisters friend?
They would be too old for my preference at any given time. She's older by 7 years!

26. Have you ever been to a nude beach?
Yup, nothing much to see.

27. Have you ever had sex on the beach?
Just the cocktail :P

28. Have you ever had a stalker?
Yea man!!! It really creeps me out. Don't understand how some people can find it flattering!

29. Have you ever gone skinny dipping?
Uhuhhhh!!! I think it was Pulau Perhentian, or Redang, under the moonlight!

30. Have you ever laughed so hard you cried?
Well, no cry la but it wet my eyes. Dinas cries everytime! I used to think she's spastic, but we all know she ain't now!!! Muaehaheha

31. Have you ever gone to a party where you were the only sober one?
Alcohol? Yea. But only because of another vice :P

32. Have you ever been cheated on?
Funny enough, no. Should have asked if I've cheated :P

33. Have you ever had sex with one of your myspace friends?
No. Is that legal? Muaehaehahehaea

34. Have you ever felt betrayed by your best friend?
I have and I'm sure everybody else has too.

35. Have you ever felt like you were just completely rhino raped?
I know Jim Carrey has. Muaehaheahehaha Loved that movie!

36. Have you ever lied to your parents?
Little white lies... *grins*

37. Have you ever been to the US?
Well yea, it was fun as a child, but yet to go as an adult :P

38. Have you ever thrown up from working out?
Swimming. Had to swim for my team at a team building.

39. Have you ever gotten a haircut so bad that you wore a hat for a month straight?
No. He knows I'd kill him if he did, right Joe? :P

40. Have you ever eaten 3 meals from 3 different fast food places in 1 day?
I'm sure I have! Especially back in the UK.

Friday the 13th!

Doomsday is here again (for some people, anyway)!

Some say it's an unlucky day. But to me, it's the weekend! So, do what's fun and don't tell anyone!

Till the morning sun,

Son of a Gun

Selamat Hari Raya Haji!

And all I had was roast chicken and rice. Damn the ulcers!

Diclofenac Overkill

I was at the doctor's today. I ran out of painkillers so I had to go out and get somemore or I'd die. The pain is so unbearable, it became a chore, just to swallow my own saliva.

Chore? Pfft...

Little did I know, the best way to cure this tonsillitis and ulcer is to get an antibiotics jab... in the ass! I mean, what's my ass got to do with my throat anyways? And, I've always despised ass jabs 'coz it's such a government hospital practice, and it sounds cheap too! Missionary style (upper/lower arm) would be more macho, I would have thought. But if need be, so be it... rather than getting a jab at the throat, right?!

Silly!

Though I wasn't supposed to go to work (doctor's order... it has always been that way) :P but I felt guilty having to leave it not for just one day, but two since tomorrow is Hari Raya Haji. So I went in to divert some emails I was expecting from overseas, and picked up some work to bring home. It was pretty quiet, I could tell even before parking the car. It's not normal to get a sweet parking spot right infront (or at the back, in my case) of the building, but I guess today wasn't the typical day as most staff would have taken the day off anyway.

So, another drugged up day... and apparently for the next 4 days. I'm just chuffed that I won't be able to eat anything at the family luncheon tomorrow.

Life's a bitch sometimes... shucks!

The Flight That Fought Back

There was this documentary about 9/11 on Discovery Channel. It was about the hijacked flight that fought back. I was overwhelmed by the fact that the passengers didn't just sit down quietly and do nothing and let the plane crash into the White House, but were rather enthusiastic about the whole idea of fighting back against the three terrorists; against terrorism.

The passengers were told by their loved ones over the phone that the news on the ground was that they were gonna use the aircraft as a makeshift missile to crash through the White House at Capitol Hill like how their comrades did with the three other planes to both World Trade Centre Towers and The Pentagon. So, they knew they had to react fast and do something about it.

Using real audio recordings and flight data from the flight recorder and the various cellphone companies used by the passengers, they re-enacted the situation with excerpts from the interviews of their family members after the disaster, in between scenes.

They fought back with galley foodcarts, hot water, fire extinguishers and anything they could get hold of despite a warning by the terrorists that there was a bomb on board, and that they would detonate if anybody tries anything. The flight recorder recorded almost everything that the pilot's two-way radio can capture, including clips that proved the passengers really fought back and that the noise confirmed the cockpit door managed to be breached by the passengers seconds before the terrorists decided to crash the plane, midway.

I was also quite amazed at how strong and calm the family members were when they were asked to describe the situation when some of them were on the phone with their now perished heroes at the time. Despite their loss, they took pride of their actions. Of course, towards the end of the documentary, all of them shed tears as the fact is, they will never see their loved ones again. Even I did.

Even though so, passengers of Flight 93 will always be regarded as heroes and remembered amongst other unsung heroes and victims of the atrocity, as they were the first group of people to have fought back against terrorism, as it was happening. Because of them, their plane crashed in an empty field in Pennsylvania, some 15 minutes flight time from the original target: The White House. Although we will never know the exact ongoings on the doomed flight, as there were no survivors (apart from the blackbox) to tell the tale, we for sure know that what ever they did, was somehow the right thing.

Who could ever imagine this happening. Let alone fighting back against the terrorists. What drove them to do that? I'm sure none of them thought that they were going to be rewarded and lived a little bit more comfier with the recognition they would get from saving the White House from an imminent attack. No, I don't think so. I think it's much smaller than that. It's their family that they were thinking about. The passengers who could make phone calls from their mobile phones and on board telephones called their husbands or wives, moms and dads... even their secretaries... to say how much they loved them and perhaps to bid farewell. And I'm pretty sure also that some of them even thought that they were gonna go home and have dinner with their family, still.

I take my hat off to these heroes for their courage and to their family members they left behind as well, for whatever reason they have made them become heroes. True heroes.

I've heard alot of other air tragedies like this, but this is probably the only few in which the family members do get to move on, solely because they know that their loved ones did not die in vain, but more like soldiers who died for their country.

Make Love, Not War...

Sunday Morning

Woke up with a bad sore throat I've been having for days now... It shows how well the meds prescribed by the doctor at the ER I visited last night works in keeping the pain away for a bit, but not curing it!