My soon to be new ink ...

... i wuv it.

Check it out - dance class!

For all those of you who are into Dance and want to learn more and get 'groovier' (is that term still used? LOL) check out Fiona's blog for further details! I understand she's a kickazz dancer and trainer! :)

Avril Lavigne's Concert Cancelled fiasco ...

For the umpteenth time, I am EMBARRASSED to be a Malaysian. My previous post not withstanding, because I'm still damned proud of Chong Wei, I am absolutely DISGUSTED with our Government, namely the Arts, Culture and Heritage Ministry and the PAS-youth wing. They actually had the gall and obviously they weren't in line when God was handing out brains and taste, and have cancelled Avril Lavigne's concert here.


The reason?

From our own Government: She's "Not in the spirit of our National Day".

From PAS' (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) youth wing: "She's too sexy".

My thoughts: These people live in the stone age where women should be at home, become baby factories and subjugate themselves to their manly men and be smacked around when they don't listen or when they dare open their mouths to speak. Women cause men to lose all rationale and reason and rape everything with a skirt nearby. God, these people have set back the Equal Rights Movement about 1,000 years. Christ.

Read this from the Yahoo! website.

God, I'll be so happy when I leave this stinking country. Avril, honey - it's a good thing that you aren't coming here now ... I have never been more ashamed of our country and their ignorant, stone-age mentality.

Take it from me, one of your fans, you're better off going to Singapore. I'll spend my ringgit in Singapore and make them richer - I seriously don't mind.

Truly, it is our Government and the f*%$#^& PAS Youth who are truly the blots on our National Heritage and if anything, teach us, that after 51 years of being independent, we are not better than we were 51 years ago. Our Government is infantile (right now, both the Opposition and Ruling parties), argue about the stupidest of issues and are still mud-slinging at each other. Oh My GOD when are you all going to do SOMETHING for the country? They CLAIM to be multi-racial and multi-cultural, but mention anything against a specific dominant religion and God forbid you be thrown in jail. Sheesh.

It's a wonder that women are even allowed to walk the streets here, much less even work.

Holy Moses!

Urgh.

Lee Chong Wei

I've not been one for getting all tizzy over sports.

Seriously.

But when a Malaysian makes it to the finals for the sport of Badminton, I gotta say, even the most un-nationalistic Malaysian has to feel some form of pride. I know, because I did.

And that was why, exhausted as I was, I dragged my ass over to my SIL's place to witness sporting history (at least for us Malaysians) in the making.

The possibility of a FIRST GOLD MEDAL in the Olympics.

So the match starts rather unceremoniously and Lee and Lin Dan are at it, lobbing the shuttle back and forth ... and I must say, that from the onset, the first thing SIL and I noticed (being the so-called fashionistas) that our uniform, bless the soul of the one who designed it, looked rather shitty (ahem) and downright boring. *Sponsored by Yonex no less*.

And everytime that Lee 'gave' a point to Lin Dan, I would clap my hands and say "It's ok Lee, I know you're nervous ... shake the nerves out and show him what you're capable off". I'm guessing that 'someone' out there intercepted the message because Lee was trashed by Lin Dan in 2 straight sets 21 - 12 & 21 - 8.

Admittedly, when I first saw Lin Dan (never seen him before, not being one who watches sports anyway), I was astonished ... what happened to the 'classic' badminton player look ... the thin, emaciated, druggy looking players? This guy was BUILT ... all muscle and almost no fat. *ahem* ... This dude was amazingly built and the Chinese uniforms were sponsored by Adidas *ahem*. And it looked amazing. As did the American uniforms (sponsored by Nike). The Malaysian team was decked out in some garish orange looking ensemble with some tiger stripey things ... sigh, a tribute to Maybank perhaps? :P

But in the end, I was still very proud of Lee and I was, begrudgingly so, happy for Lin Dan. Truly. :)

u n c o m f o r t a b l e . . .

There's this person ... and for fun, we're going to call this person Snake.

The reason that we're calling this person Snake, is because of the underhanded tactics used by Snake to obtain certain businesses, which are high in value, but might have ... several obstacles.

So this person, not having met the erm ... (as someone once nicknamed me) Righteous Priest before, was not prepared for the Priest to shine a light on Snake's misdeeds. However, Snake has managed, with all its charms, to close several big deals in the office pool, which translates to huge commissions for Snake. Priest however, has remained steadfastly defiant against Management and the decisions relating to Snake. However, as Major and Priest have several 'business dealings' which require Snake's services, Priest is now in a quandary.

Does Priest ignore his moral principles and massive discomfort when dealing with Snake and just go ahead to maintain a good relationship with Major or does Priest stand his ground and find someone else?

Ahh ... morality ... such a wondrous thing.

Joy and Truth

Despite the hiccups faced when preparing for the 'Corporate Social Responsible' program that a local investment bank decided to sponsor i.e. from late arriving door gifts / furniture / lack of manpower etc, I would say that my role as the Logistics Supervisor / Program Director went pretty well and the important fact is this - we helped to nourish and encourage the future wealth creation for 111 teenagers, who were mostly in the dark about financial matters prior to this.

Getting them to share was at first ... an experience similar to that of a wisdom tooth extraction, but the moment KitKats and Mentos sweets were popped out as gifts for answers (both right and wrong, the point here was to encourage thinking, sharing and courage to share, not to mention increasing the potential for diabetes :P) all 222 hands flew up and we even had a cute, miniscule little Indian teen jumping up and down in his seat, who, I was amazed and a little disturbed to learn was in the 8th Grade. Holy cow - they get smaller every year!

All in all ... it was a fantastic experience. *Unbah from previous post he he*

Charity

Have been 'volunteered' into being the Logistics Supervisor (LS) for my godfather's Charity Seminar tomorrow by my Dad. Is it still considered charity if you do it a little begrudgingly? :P It IS Saturday tomorrow and I was planning on sleeping in. :)

The Charity is part of a local bank's Corporate Responsibility towards society as such, tomorrow morning, 150 bright eyed, bushy tailed 13 & 14 year olds are going to be descending upon this bank's training centre in downtown KL. *Bah*

Wonder ...

I read this off a blog that I normally read ... and I thought that I would share it here and TAG a couple of people. I don't usually tag people and hate being tagged, because it's always some silly, child-like game. At any rate, this is a good one, it's NOT a tag originally, but I am tagging Ms. Redd, Moonie, FatBoyBakes, Nileey and whoever else who feels like doing it ok? Ok ... here it goes. Answer these 2 questions:

Three things that amazed me about adults when I was a kid:

1. They never needed to sleep.

When I was growing up, my assigned bed time was 8:45pm. I found this to be extremely unfair as all the good shows came on at 9:00pm. Needless to say, I wore out the stairs at home fairly quickly with the reluctant shuffling of my feet and occasional stomping up to my room. When I awoke the next morning, my baby-sitter and Mom would already be awake. It was as if they never needed to sleep.

Amazing.

2. Boyfriends / Girlfriends.

Coming from a broken home, my parents obviously had their share of romantic partners. Of course, my brother and I didn't quite get the concept at the time and took the 'intrusion' of these new, overly-friendly strangers who were the focus of our individual parents' attention a little too personally. Needless to say, we weren't exactly the 'best of friends' with these new strangers and some of the 'weeds' lasted a while, some withered like the dead wallflowers they were. Of course, 2 of them made it quite well, and both my parents are happily remarried now. But back then ... this concept ... of 'new parents' was something I found amazing in that 'people are replaceable'. Needless to say, I am a little 'scarred and jaded' in the 'marriage' department.

3. Cooking.

I don't think anything else will ever faze / amaze me the way cooking did when I was growing up. My mom and I would go to the market in the morning in SS2 and we'd buy all this gross looking schlops of stuff ... (I found a strange fascination for the glazed eyed fishes and wondered why the fish in my aquarium weren't all glassy-eyed ... he he. I was 7 - sue me :P) and by lunch time, there would be this .... gastronomical affair on our table. Still, in my life, no one's cooking beats my Mom's. Well, except my grandmother on occasion and even then only for a few selected Portugese / Nyonya dishes. (Yes, I'm of mixed parentage).

Three things that amaze me about kids, now that I'm an adult:

1. Love.

Kids' love you unconditionally. No questions asked. Take my little baby sister for example. She takes about 10 minutes to register your face, and then she never leaves you alone. She especially loves you if you tempt her with food. ANY kind of food. ;) My little cousins and all. When they were kids, they just adore you. Now that they're all grown up and all, they think that we're all 'too old to hang out with' because they're in college and we're all working adults. I miss the innocence of the children.

2. Color-blindedness / Religion-blindness:

Everyone is a friend (well, almost). It doesn't matter that you're black, white, yellow, brown, pink, green or purple in color. What mattered was that they have fun hanging out together and that they all enjoyed each others' company. Racism is such an alien concept to kids. They aren't taught to hate yet. That slate is as clear as driven snow. Adults obviously ruin this precept that they have with their own agendas. I hope that my sister stays innocent as driven snow for as long as possible.

3. Truth.

Everything is real to kids. From cartoons to movies. From words you use to songs that you sing. Everything is the gospel truth. When you say you hate someone, and they hear it, they really believe it. And they learn, by God, they learn. Watch what you say and do around kids. They are a rare, innocent jewel. Treasure the truth they have.

So these are the things that got me thinking. What 'bout you?

HDD Grave ...

My hard disc is certifiably buriable now. It's constantly *thuck* *thuck* -ing away ... well, the spindle is at any rate. All my data ... all of it ... gone. EVERY single photo I've ever taken ... gone. Every file ever made, ever graphic ever designed ... gone. Gone with the *thuck* *thuck* of the spindle.

I've never heard a sound that sounded so ... final.
Goodbye my HDD, good bye.

By the way ... I need to slow down when I type - apparently I was explaining to my principal, 3M, that my hard disc had died, and I spelled disc as dick ... so it kinda went ... "Dear Kidd - Sorry for getting back to you so late, but my hard dick died over the holiday that I took." ... so yeah. Check your words people ... check it out. ;)

I'm back ... !

Ahh ... it's been an amazing couple of months, I must say.

First off ...

The trip to Langkawi was amazing. Firstly - it's a very ... touristy island. And as most island cultures are ... everything is rather ... laid - back, kampung style. I've been there before, and the thing that I noticed that was new was the super - empty 3 - 4 lane on each side highway linking up Kuah town with the popular beachy, touristy areas. The beach, is amazing, depending on which beach resort you go to I guess. At Berjaya Langkawi, which is where we stayed - the beach was ... a little dissapointing. But it was a beach nonetheless. This picture here ... so NOT Berjaya's beach. But I loved the photo by Annie Hiew anyway. ;)

Being in Langkawi gave me the opportunity to er ... grow up a little bit more and to reflect on the whole train-wreck that was my life prior to Langkawi ... well mostly, I tend to over-dramatise things a little :P. But for the most part, I believe that what had happened happened for a reason and I wanted to get the lessons out of it, and for the most part, I did. And I found 'myself' there in a way I guess. In spite on the 'tom yam' incident with Jerry, I would say that I chose to stew for lunch, and chill by dinner and I think he did the same too.

The shopping was crap to say the least ... sure it's a tax-free haven for ALCOHOL (extremely amazingly cheap. A bottle of HoeGarden Beer is RM5/-. Here in KL, it's about ... er ... RM11.20? SIL found her Frangelico - never heard of it ... it looked like some ancient whisky bottle, but tasted kinda like Nutella. LOL. It IS a hazelnut liqueur after all. Mixed with some milk ... damn, you won't even know that you're actually drinking liqueur. That's what's so cool about it. Needless to say, there was inevitable purchase of Absolut Vodka (ok, I'm a sucker for vodka) and again, there was some drinking involved. :) I was a pretty happy camper that night. Seeing as how I get high on alcohol probably twice a year, it was a rare sight that to see me being ... less than proper :P. So it was apparently a treat for Fruits, SIL, BSG ... and to a 'cool-non-chalant' brother as well I guess. He was being anti-social and watching the TV. :)

I don't know when it happened, but at some point, whatever was plaguing me ... was bugging me ... lifted off my shoulders and I actually felt happy again ... like there was a light piercing through the darkness of my days. *ahem*. Well, that's what it felt like. I do have Fruits to thank for being a great room mate ... so thank you Fruits! :) And SIL for being ... SIL.

I guess my whole life has been about me trying to fit some mould or meet some expectation and yes, as timeless as it is cliche, I tried to meet them and failed miserably, with dire consequences to myself, most of the time. I just ... 'woke up'. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I stopped to smell the coffee (it has a better aroma than roses do ;) ). For the first time in my life - I am living it. So what if people don't agree with me? ... I start this journey with baby steps ... baby steps peeps. :)

I was out buying lunch today and was walking around and for the first time caught myself thinking ... if I bought this and put it in my house, what would people say. Ah hah! Baby steps towards further enlightenment :P ... I am stopping to care about that too. I will buy it because I love it and it'll look good in my home.

Ok ... will write more soon. Dear blog ... I'm so happy to be back. :) oh and if you're reading - thank you for taking the time and I truly appreciate it. ;) Love ya! :)

Love,
Ken.