Many of us these days have an online profile. You know, those little things you put up on Friendster, Facebook or the likes, telling the world how superbly unique you are by doing exactly what a billion other people are doing.
What I wanna discuss today are the subtle and sneaky ways people have started to use online profiles. Have you ever seen a profile where the user, usually a female and a good-looking one at that, deliberately puts up a photo of herself alongside her trusty female sidekick, who happens to be unfortunate enough to be uglier than the user. And the Good Looking One captions her photo as : ‘ Me and my cute/pretty/gorgeous friend!’
My first thought upon encountering such a profile was , ‘Wow she is HOT!”. After the initial awe had died down, and I had cleaned myself up, I then began to observe The Hot One’s friend.“Wow she is UGLY”. And it’s not like I have anything personal towards the Ugly Duckling, as I myself possess the physical attractiveness and sexual magnetism of a collection of haemorrhoids, but the relative comparison of the two just makes matters worse for the poor gal. I mean, the hot one looks THAT much hotter when placed next to the her ugly companion, who looks THAT much worse. It’s like comparing body fat percentage between me and a pen, and then saying ,’Oh Jason, you are so slim!”
That is just self promotion at its sneakiest. Even Pepsi and Coca Cola wouldn’t do that. The best either company would do is just say “Here is our drink, it is the best in the world”. In all fairness, I suppose one can’t really say , “I am the best looking gal in my group of friends”, as that will produce a catfight even World War 2 veterans would fear to interfere, but still, how dare she?How dare she be so superficial and heartless?
And the caption in itself is the most devilish and cruel of all. By referring to her ugly friend as ‘gorgeous’ , and herself who is good looking as just ‘Me’, that is just rubbing salt, pepper, paprika, and industrial strength hydrochloric acid into an already festering wound. Just for the record, such a thing won’t happen to boys, as an act like that will be described as “Totally Gay’ and that message will be conveyed to the perpetrator of so heinous an act through the medium of fists to his face and knees to his testicular region. And who’s to say industrial strength hydrochloric acid won’t be involved at all?
And what about those really really self absorbed individuals who take a picture of just their face, but THEY ARE NOT LOOKING AT THE CAMERA. Instead, they are staring wistfully into space, showing thoughtful and endearing emotions. How much of a poser can you be? Can you imagine how insulted the person holding the camera is? The person being photographed isn’t even paying attention to the photographer! “What is so interesting to the left of your visual field that you aren’t even looking at me, the loser who agreed to photograph you? Shall I photograph that instead?”
Then it gets worse. Not content with just ONE photo of themselves as their profile photo, some individuals take like, 50 photos of JUST THEIR FACES and then assemble them into a collage of some sort.So now, when you click on their profiles, you are treated to like a million different camera angles of their nostrils, eyebrows, facial hair, pimples, freckles etc etc. It’s like they are trying to convince you , “Look, it’s really me okay?” in case you get confused with someone else who coincidentally share their name AND their facial features.
I once had a female friend named Joanne Low Yan Lee who for her sake of privacy we shall refer to as Miss X who had been going on and on for months about this friend of her friend’s who is ABSOLUTELY gorgeous, with smooth skin, anime-like hair and that dangerous, bad boy look about him. Of course, she had only saw him online on his Friendster profile and the only thing she knew about him was through his testimonials, many from girls who described him as “leng chai”, ”sexy man”, ”bootlicious”, etc etc, all bordering on the pornographic.
When they finally met at a gathering at Starbucks, Miss X nearly puked her coffee via her nostrils.The cruel irony was that this particular dude, whom I shall refer to as Mr. X instead of Justin Teoh Boon Chuan, had the complexion and skin texture of a rotten pineapple. His bad boy demeanour came from several years of evading the law while selling highly illegal yet very much sought after pirated porn VCDs. All his female ‘friends’ referred to him as ‘the sexy one’ out of sarcasm and out of the fact that every single one of them had rejected his advances.
After her coughs and sputters, suddenly Miss X began laughing. I felt a bit disturbed, as clearly this was a bit rude. Mr. X was after all, a stranger she had just met. I reprimanded her for her superficiality. She then apologized and clarified, “It’s just so bloody funny ‘cause he’s actually better looking than you!”. On a totally unrelated subject, Miss X is from house number 12, SS 4C, Kelana Jaya and has a nose the size of Nigeria.
Online profiles do have their perks. But some people overdo it. Have you heard of people who have like, multiple Friendster accounts, and like, a megazillion blogs, each one detailing their personal life by the second? I mean, how many friends can one have? I have seen a few people on Friendster who each have like a total combined number of friends in the thousands. In my opinion, if you have more than a 100 friends, you are a celebrity and no longer need an online profile. Just stick to about 50 or so, and pass the rest to me.
The other day I went to London to visit my friend, Selina Sharmalar Solomon of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College, UK (not her real name, course or college). The politically correct term to describe her is “Facebook Whore”, and I feel that it has taken over her life. The moment I met her for the first time in a long while, she immediately exclaimed, “OH MY GAWSH, I have not seen you for so long…on Facebook”. I replied that Facebook didn’t appeal to me, and she replied with the most dangerous sentence in all of Womankind - ”Oh”- in a tone that suggested that I had defecated on her bed. To fill in the awkward silence that followed, I decided to ask her about the virtues of Facebook : -
“See see, it’s so cool, you can write on your friends’ wall! And you can also check ‘wall to wall’ and see what others have replied to each other’s wall! Cool right? Faster go write something on my wall!” And if you look at your friends’ photos, you can move your mouse over their faces and their NAMES WILL APPEAR! Cool right? And if you CLICK on their face, you can immediately see their profile! Cool right? And look look, you can give gifts to your friends! *moves mouse pointer over a Teddy Bear icon the size of a thumbnail*. If you click here, your friend will receive the gift! Cool right? And if you want someone’s attention, you can poke that person! Cool right? See, this fella has poked me. So I will poke him back. I tell you, I have been poked by him and his friends for like, 50 times last week. I better go mention that on his wall. Cool right?
We should try to do other stuff besides online profiling. Go out. Talk to an actual living, breathing PERSON. Gossip. Bathe. Fantasize about the opposite sex. Do something you can be proud of. Many years from now, will you tell your grandkids, ”Hey, when I was your age, I had an awesome online profile”? Or when you are lying on your deathbed, you ain’t gonna say , “Damn, I wish I jazzed up my HTML on my Friendster account”. If you got that last joke, you NEED TO GET OUT OF YOUR HOUSE.
So start living life outside of cyberspace more often. But whatever you do, stay true to yourself, don’t be a hypocrite and do come back to this blog often!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Thanks for the support!
Dear fans,
I have just returned from PJ yesterday after collecting my first batch of books to be sold to my classmates at Penang Medical College.Demand has been good, there were 57 confirmed orders, and more are buying!Many thanks to all those who have already bought the book,I am very excited thinking of you guys reading the book as I am typing this.
Also, note of thanks to Leowania,my editor and Cassy from the Marketing Dept. and my Dad who made it possible for me to get the books to Penang Medical College.
Cheers everyone and happy reading!
More posts to come on this blog!
-Jason Leong, author of The Twisted Stethoscope.
I have just returned from PJ yesterday after collecting my first batch of books to be sold to my classmates at Penang Medical College.Demand has been good, there were 57 confirmed orders, and more are buying!Many thanks to all those who have already bought the book,I am very excited thinking of you guys reading the book as I am typing this.
Also, note of thanks to Leowania,my editor and Cassy from the Marketing Dept. and my Dad who made it possible for me to get the books to Penang Medical College.
Cheers everyone and happy reading!
More posts to come on this blog!
-Jason Leong, author of The Twisted Stethoscope.
Piracy to Porn
Every year seems to be Visit Malaysia Year.2008 seems to be no different.Malaysia has always been dependent on tourism as a vibrant component in our economy.In direct correlation to its importance is the efforts by our Government to promote Malaysia as key tourist destination.
While their efforts are certainly commendable, I feel that there is area for improvement. I say this because we have not tapped in the true marketing potential of Malaysia. For instance, why do we not promote the fact that Malaysia has the biggest thriving piracy industry in the world? Every year, piracy saves millions of consumers millions of ringgit by providing a cheap and readily available alternative to entertainment, be it Hollywood movies, or the latest Sony Playstation game. Thus with the money saved, Malaysian consumers have more buying power for their ringgit, and this in turn will boost the flow of ringgit within the nation and strengthen the ringgit.
Let’s not be secretive of the obvious fact that tourists stand to benefit from piracy. An original DVD in a country like Ireland, for example will cost roughly 20 Euros, which after conversion is equivalent to about RM 92.The apek who has bad breath and wears a gold chain with a dragon-shaped pendant at Sungai Wang Plaza sells the pirated versions of the same DVD containing the exact same content at the exact same quality for RM 15,and sometimes RM10 if you bargain well and wear a spaghetti strap. This means that the Irish person can potentially buy 8 more DVDs for the same amount of money back in Ireland. If you are a pampered rich momma’s boy and don’t understand the implication, this means that the foreign consumer will save. A. Lot. Of. Money.
Since piracy is already a huge problem which doesn’t seem to be solved soon, I say let’s make the most out of it and exploit the opportunity for improving our tourism industry. As they say, the Chinese have the same word for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity to make money’. My vision for the future is seeing tourists shipping back huge containers of pirated stuff back to their country and starting their own business there. Think about it. Not only will this also increase business for our local shipping companies but all peripheral industries like CD and DVD manufacturers as well as companies who produce digital-copying hardware and software will stand to gain from this and thus increasing also the government’s revenue through tax. It’s WIN-WIN! Think about it,open your minds!
For many years now, the government has tried to track down the hidden warehouses and clandestine factories which produce thousands upon thousands of pirated software and entertainment media. While the efforts of the police are commendable,I think we are overlooking a very obvious fact. Have you ever thought of the technology these pirates have in their hands? Let’s ponder about it for a moment. There are multinational conglomerates worth billions of dollars which manufacture their product, be it a CD album or a DVD movie, and sell them at high prices which though affordable by the average consumer, is greatly annoying. What does this mean?
This means that the technology that they use to manufacture their product gives rise to such high costs that they have to sell at high prices in order to make a profit. But wait a minute, what about the pirates in Malaysia? They sell their products at absurdly low prices. For instance ,an original CD album will cost around RM 30 to RM 40.But a pirated one only costs RM 5 to RM 10!If you follow closely, this means that the pirates, through their R & D department have come up with a way to produce CDs at a much lower cost ,thus enabling them to sell at low prices and effectively compete with the international conglomerates.
It is so obvious and yet we have missed it all this while! So, my proposal is this. Instead of cracking down their operation and arresting them, let’s have an open dialogue and sign an agreement with them which will result in the government gaining the secrets of their technology in exchange for freedom to conduct their operations. Once we do that, we immediately obtain an international patent and then market the technology internationally. What will result? Obviously international brands will flock to purchase our patent because it lowers their costs. This means that whatever they choose to produce and sell using our technology, we stand to gain a profit from it! I am not much of a businessman, but realistically, if we earn 1% of every CD sold by a recording label like EMI or from every game sold by Sony, taking into account that they earn BILLIONS per annum, by the end of the fiscal year, we will be flying around in our private jets because the tyres in our Ferraris are flattened from ferrying our rich fat butts from sauna to sauna.T he opportunity is there, let’s go for it.
If we follow through with the above plan,then it also makes sense to legalize piracy. This will mean that those interested in selling pirated media will have to register their business as a legitimate one. Any fool will rather be legitimate and pay a one time nominal registration fee than running away from the authorities all his career Again, the government will gain through taxation from the income of those businesses.
Another problem which I wish to address is porn, a taboo of our society. Pornographic material is now available everywhere and too readily so, if I may add. As a society,we cannot stop the influx of pornographic material in our black markets ,for that is too big a logistical problem. The Internet is being perceived these days as an information superhighway but in reality,it is a superhighway of porn.
However, we can subtly change the perception of porn in its’ consumers, mainly men and a minority of very liberal women. Before I go further, let’s review a famous psychological experiment done by a dude name Pavlov.
For the unfamiliar,Pavlov conducted an experiment which involved conditioning a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell.This he did by sounding a bell near the dog every time before he fed it..This Pavlov continued many times over. After an extended period of similar repetitions, the dog became ‘conditioned’ to salivate whenever he heard the bell, and whether or not food followed thereafter was of no consequence to the initial salivation.
So how do we use the phenomenon of conditioning to our favour? First let us ponder for a moment our education system. Have you ever felt like just dozing off, falling into a coma or dying when you were in a classroom or lecture theatre and your teacher or lecturer was, with all due respect,as boring as trying to watch a baby worm grow to adulthood? I mean sure, he could be a brilliant academician who writes textbooks and research papers on his subject of teaching, but there is not just a line between a brilliant person and a good instructor ,there is an entire Great Wall of China with armed sentries every hundred feet.
I had a teacher once who had a voice so monotonous you could record it and sell it as a cure for insomnia and you would be a billionaire by tomorrow. There was absolutely NO DIFFERENCE in her tone. Whether giving an instruction or giving birth, she sounded exactly the same. You could drink an entire gallon of coffee and shoot yourself with amphetamines that morning, the moment you sat through half an hour of periodical tables and chemical equations with her ,you would be half dead. She was so bad, she could bore an unwanted foetus to self-abort .There was no subject on earth that she could make interesting. Not even porn.
Aha, you see where I am going now. In order to psychologically condition men of porn, why don’t we get boring teachers like her to star in porn movies which will absolutely bore men to deat….whoa..wait wait..let me backtrack here. Sorry about that.
Aha, you see where I am going now. In order to psychologically condition men of porn, why don’t we get boring teachers like her to teach the subject of Sex Education and Pornography ( SEP) to boys at an early age? Teachers will be encouraged to use as many visual and multimedia aids as possible to enhance the conditioning effect. After 12 years of school learning various facts, figures, graphs, equations and writing essays, answering multiple-choice-questions in pornography exams, men will come to regard porn the same way many regard the subjects they were taught at school. A forgotten, tiresome, pointless and obsolete subject, like Add Maths and Moral Studies. A subject that is connected to the memories of fighting hard not to fall asleep and of watching pictures of naked ladies through heavy eyelids and tears of boredom. The result is of course,men being conditioned to immediately spurn pornography for after years and years of laborious repetitions of pointless exams and criminally boring teachers, they become bored of pornography. Success!
I will like to end my article here with a disclaimer : This has been for entertainment and comedy purposes only.I do not for a single moment support piracy. To prove this, I will set up a website promoting anti-piracy propaganda. The website will be filled with awesome effects and HTML produced by software I bought from Imbi Plaza. I also do not support pornography, and have endeavoured to stem the influence of such materials by confiscating all my friends’ stashes of porn and safekeeping them in my house.
Okay seriously, I do not support piracy. Belilah Ori. Buy Original. And as for porn, let’s be grown up and avoid it, for it demeans women. And I have a girlfriend .I love you Komella! But I do want to point out that although this article has been produced just for my own personal amusement and largely composed of words and sentences shooting out from my arse, I have one question for you.
Isn’t it scary that it actually makes some sense?
While their efforts are certainly commendable, I feel that there is area for improvement. I say this because we have not tapped in the true marketing potential of Malaysia. For instance, why do we not promote the fact that Malaysia has the biggest thriving piracy industry in the world? Every year, piracy saves millions of consumers millions of ringgit by providing a cheap and readily available alternative to entertainment, be it Hollywood movies, or the latest Sony Playstation game. Thus with the money saved, Malaysian consumers have more buying power for their ringgit, and this in turn will boost the flow of ringgit within the nation and strengthen the ringgit.
Let’s not be secretive of the obvious fact that tourists stand to benefit from piracy. An original DVD in a country like Ireland, for example will cost roughly 20 Euros, which after conversion is equivalent to about RM 92.The apek who has bad breath and wears a gold chain with a dragon-shaped pendant at Sungai Wang Plaza sells the pirated versions of the same DVD containing the exact same content at the exact same quality for RM 15,and sometimes RM10 if you bargain well and wear a spaghetti strap. This means that the Irish person can potentially buy 8 more DVDs for the same amount of money back in Ireland. If you are a pampered rich momma’s boy and don’t understand the implication, this means that the foreign consumer will save. A. Lot. Of. Money.
Since piracy is already a huge problem which doesn’t seem to be solved soon, I say let’s make the most out of it and exploit the opportunity for improving our tourism industry. As they say, the Chinese have the same word for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity to make money’. My vision for the future is seeing tourists shipping back huge containers of pirated stuff back to their country and starting their own business there. Think about it. Not only will this also increase business for our local shipping companies but all peripheral industries like CD and DVD manufacturers as well as companies who produce digital-copying hardware and software will stand to gain from this and thus increasing also the government’s revenue through tax. It’s WIN-WIN! Think about it,open your minds!
For many years now, the government has tried to track down the hidden warehouses and clandestine factories which produce thousands upon thousands of pirated software and entertainment media. While the efforts of the police are commendable,I think we are overlooking a very obvious fact. Have you ever thought of the technology these pirates have in their hands? Let’s ponder about it for a moment. There are multinational conglomerates worth billions of dollars which manufacture their product, be it a CD album or a DVD movie, and sell them at high prices which though affordable by the average consumer, is greatly annoying. What does this mean?
This means that the technology that they use to manufacture their product gives rise to such high costs that they have to sell at high prices in order to make a profit. But wait a minute, what about the pirates in Malaysia? They sell their products at absurdly low prices. For instance ,an original CD album will cost around RM 30 to RM 40.But a pirated one only costs RM 5 to RM 10!If you follow closely, this means that the pirates, through their R & D department have come up with a way to produce CDs at a much lower cost ,thus enabling them to sell at low prices and effectively compete with the international conglomerates.
It is so obvious and yet we have missed it all this while! So, my proposal is this. Instead of cracking down their operation and arresting them, let’s have an open dialogue and sign an agreement with them which will result in the government gaining the secrets of their technology in exchange for freedom to conduct their operations. Once we do that, we immediately obtain an international patent and then market the technology internationally. What will result? Obviously international brands will flock to purchase our patent because it lowers their costs. This means that whatever they choose to produce and sell using our technology, we stand to gain a profit from it! I am not much of a businessman, but realistically, if we earn 1% of every CD sold by a recording label like EMI or from every game sold by Sony, taking into account that they earn BILLIONS per annum, by the end of the fiscal year, we will be flying around in our private jets because the tyres in our Ferraris are flattened from ferrying our rich fat butts from sauna to sauna.T he opportunity is there, let’s go for it.
If we follow through with the above plan,then it also makes sense to legalize piracy. This will mean that those interested in selling pirated media will have to register their business as a legitimate one. Any fool will rather be legitimate and pay a one time nominal registration fee than running away from the authorities all his career Again, the government will gain through taxation from the income of those businesses.
Another problem which I wish to address is porn, a taboo of our society. Pornographic material is now available everywhere and too readily so, if I may add. As a society,we cannot stop the influx of pornographic material in our black markets ,for that is too big a logistical problem. The Internet is being perceived these days as an information superhighway but in reality,it is a superhighway of porn.
However, we can subtly change the perception of porn in its’ consumers, mainly men and a minority of very liberal women. Before I go further, let’s review a famous psychological experiment done by a dude name Pavlov.
For the unfamiliar,Pavlov conducted an experiment which involved conditioning a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell.This he did by sounding a bell near the dog every time before he fed it..This Pavlov continued many times over. After an extended period of similar repetitions, the dog became ‘conditioned’ to salivate whenever he heard the bell, and whether or not food followed thereafter was of no consequence to the initial salivation.
So how do we use the phenomenon of conditioning to our favour? First let us ponder for a moment our education system. Have you ever felt like just dozing off, falling into a coma or dying when you were in a classroom or lecture theatre and your teacher or lecturer was, with all due respect,as boring as trying to watch a baby worm grow to adulthood? I mean sure, he could be a brilliant academician who writes textbooks and research papers on his subject of teaching, but there is not just a line between a brilliant person and a good instructor ,there is an entire Great Wall of China with armed sentries every hundred feet.
I had a teacher once who had a voice so monotonous you could record it and sell it as a cure for insomnia and you would be a billionaire by tomorrow. There was absolutely NO DIFFERENCE in her tone. Whether giving an instruction or giving birth, she sounded exactly the same. You could drink an entire gallon of coffee and shoot yourself with amphetamines that morning, the moment you sat through half an hour of periodical tables and chemical equations with her ,you would be half dead. She was so bad, she could bore an unwanted foetus to self-abort .There was no subject on earth that she could make interesting. Not even porn.
Aha, you see where I am going now. In order to psychologically condition men of porn, why don’t we get boring teachers like her to star in porn movies which will absolutely bore men to deat….whoa..wait wait..let me backtrack here. Sorry about that.
Aha, you see where I am going now. In order to psychologically condition men of porn, why don’t we get boring teachers like her to teach the subject of Sex Education and Pornography ( SEP) to boys at an early age? Teachers will be encouraged to use as many visual and multimedia aids as possible to enhance the conditioning effect. After 12 years of school learning various facts, figures, graphs, equations and writing essays, answering multiple-choice-questions in pornography exams, men will come to regard porn the same way many regard the subjects they were taught at school. A forgotten, tiresome, pointless and obsolete subject, like Add Maths and Moral Studies. A subject that is connected to the memories of fighting hard not to fall asleep and of watching pictures of naked ladies through heavy eyelids and tears of boredom. The result is of course,men being conditioned to immediately spurn pornography for after years and years of laborious repetitions of pointless exams and criminally boring teachers, they become bored of pornography. Success!
I will like to end my article here with a disclaimer : This has been for entertainment and comedy purposes only.I do not for a single moment support piracy. To prove this, I will set up a website promoting anti-piracy propaganda. The website will be filled with awesome effects and HTML produced by software I bought from Imbi Plaza. I also do not support pornography, and have endeavoured to stem the influence of such materials by confiscating all my friends’ stashes of porn and safekeeping them in my house.
Okay seriously, I do not support piracy. Belilah Ori. Buy Original. And as for porn, let’s be grown up and avoid it, for it demeans women. And I have a girlfriend .I love you Komella! But I do want to point out that although this article has been produced just for my own personal amusement and largely composed of words and sentences shooting out from my arse, I have one question for you.
Isn’t it scary that it actually makes some sense?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Many many thanks to my blog idol, Kenny Sia!
Thanks so much, bro!
For mentioning my book on your blog, it's an honour!
Hail to www.kennysia.com
For mentioning my book on your blog, it's an honour!
Hail to www.kennysia.com
Lamp Post
Everyone hates to be a lamp post. I don’t mean being an actual lamp post, made of metal, filled with wires, forever stationary on some random, back alley or downtown street.I am talking about being the social role that you assume when you (and only you) are in the presence of another couple who are your friends.
I have to say here at this juncture that being an actual lamp post might also, quite possibly suck a lot.
But nothing sucks more than you seated in the driver’s seat of your car while two of your friends who are conveniently boyfriend and girlfriend are in the backseat, canoodling, cuddling, lip-mashing, playing tongue hockey, exchanging DNA or whatever cool term you guys used to describe what the old generation used to call, ‘making out’.
We’ve all experienced it. We understand what it’s about (we all did Biology in Form 3 right?).We know the process. We get it.
And we freaking hate watching other people do it. Especially if the blissful couple who are physically fusing their skin to each other’s are our friends. Even worse if they are mere inches away in the backseat of your car, totally oblivious to your presence and even more so towards your driving services.
Sure for a moment, jealousy creeps in at least for the first few seconds. Then hatred for a few more seconds. Which finally gives way to long lasting, semi-permanent disgust and loathing, two distinct emotional entities which are almost guaranteed to kick start your intestines to do the Macarena.
Even worse of course when you overhear the sweet-nothings whispered to one another. One of the absolute stupid ones I have ever heard ( and have never whispered to my own girlfriend) is this : -
“You are the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep.”
That is the most absurd thing to ever say to another human being, regardless of how much you love the other person to whom you are whispering said disgusting sentence.
If I ever hear my girlfriend say that to me, immediately my reaction would be :-
“Are you trying to say you only think about me twice a day?”
or-
“Am I such a dull, uninspired and boring personality that the thought of me at night makes you go to sleep?”
And the worst thing about is that it is an absolute lie. Stuff like “you are the love of my life” or “I think of you all the time” may be saccharinely nauseating, but at least it can be true. Not this one. Because I can absolutely guarantee you that the first thing you think about in the morning is not your significant other, no matter how hot he is in bed or no matter how much of a man she makes you feel. Here’s what happens in the morning.
You are blissfully asleep. Perhaps dreaming too. Your day has not begun yet. It’s all dark and cooling. Bliss. Your body is recuperating, growth hormones are spurting all over your body, your circadian rhythm is ---
KRRRRRRRRRRRINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Your alarm wakes you up and lo and behold, your first thought of the day is :-
HUAARRRRGGHGGHHHHHFFFFFSSSLLLPP
That is your first thought of the day. Your primal instinct, enraged at having woken up, all summarized in a series of consonants. It ain’t your girlfriend or boyfriend, who may be next to you in bed, thinking the same exact first thought of the day.
And when you have finished that first thought of the day, the next one isn’t about your girlfriend or boyfriend either. It’s not “ I am so happy to have her/him in my life. She/he completes me. Makes me whole. Makes me feel happy. My companion. My soulmate. I love her/him.”
No it’s not that.
It’s ‘SNOOZE!!!!!!”
That’s the word we form in our brain EVERY MORNING for EVERY DAY for THE REST of our lives. SNOOZE starts your day. It is the embodiment of the fact that human beings,no matter our religious, racial, cultural or individual differences have one thing in common besides the fact that we like watching Lost :- we really hate waking up.
Why do you think babies are so difficult to deliver? One would think that anyone would be excited at getting delivered into the world right? But no, babies too prefer to sleep and not wake up. That’s why they cling to their cord, and turn their bodies into difficult positions. It’s their way of saying, “Oi gimme five more minutes”. It’s their snooze button.
That’s also why they Egyptians mummify themselves.They are just so afraid of being woken up in case they were not really dead that they wrap themselves with cloth,stuff their mouths, and seal themselves in large, grandiose tombs. That’s a more powerful kind of snooze button.
And so you reach out to hammer the snooze button, the one that used to have the word ‘SNOOZE’ printed on it in white, but now has rapidly faded away thanks to the daily friction from your index finger. Now it roughly says “-OOZE”. That’s how your morning is. A series of snoozes.
Girls, if your boyfriend really does think about you the first thing he wakes up,he is cheating on you.
Boys, if your girlfriend really does think about you the first thing she wakes up, she is gonna dump you.
Cheers!
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Are You Malaysian?
Beyond your IC
Part 1
Are you Malaysian?If you were born in Malaysia,of course logically you would answer yes,you are indeed Malaysian.But is ‘Malaysian’ merely a nationality,a label to differentiate people according to citizenship?I believe that the term ‘Malaysian’ is more than just what your passport or IC says.It is an identity,which cannot be acquired through location of birth,illegal immigration,marriages of convenience or by staying in Malaysia for an X amount of years.To be truly Malaysian,one must experiences the nuances of life that only our country can offer.
Here is a list of criteria one must comply with to be truly Malaysian.You may be a Caucasian expat who has lived in Malaysia for decades,or you can be a hip 15 year old girl with belly piercings.Anyone and everyone can fulfill these criteria.Simply said,almost anyone can be Malaysian.
1) You must have been / still being educated in a government Sekolah Rendah or Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan.
This I believe is the most crucial initiation process of anyone who will grow up to be Malaysian.The experiences offered by government schools are absolutely vital.For instance,every government school has that Discipline Teacher,almost always male,who graduates from the School of Hard Knocks.He will brandish a nice long and thick rotan that gives an almighty swish when he rains down punishment unconditionally.Long nails will earn you two slashes on the butt and sometimes,depending on his mood,a good few slaps or two.And theres NOTHING you can do about it.If you complained to your parents about the disciplining being too harsh,they will hesitate to confront him about it for they too were once victims of their own discipline teachers.
In private schools,students are devoid of the pleasure of the discipline teacher.There,corporal punishment is deemed as barbaric.The worst punishment they do mete out is detention and official letters sent to parents,which really,does nothing.Detention is where they meet their cronies,and letters often get ‘lost in the post’.It is a paradoxical universe,where teachers hesitate to punish and are afraid of losing their jobs to complaints from parents who pay the equivalent of the national debt of Czech Republic to keep their precious princes and princesses in school.I feel sad for these kids.They will never experience the sheer exhilaration of playing truant and inventing excuses to save our butts from the rotan.They will never tremble in fear and wet their underwear when the Discipline Teacher stares them down like little maggots he would sooner squish with his shoe than give the time of day.They will never enjoy seeing the utter humiliation of fellow trouble-makers at the hands of the Discipline Teacher,bending over and letting the rotan have its way with them.Or the pure,undulated amusement of being amongst the hundreds of students during assembly watching him berate the entire school for trivial matters like letting the air out of the teachers’ car tyres and throwing eggs and flour at the Headmaster’s office.
In every government school,there’s always one Weird Teacher.This character is one that is famous throughout the school but for all the wrong reasons.It’s either a teacher who can’t teach for nuts,like an English teacher who pronounces ‘air’ as in the Malay word for water,a teacher whose face resembles an ape,or the resident psychopath who talks to himself and wears make-up.And of course,the always popular Perverted Teacher.Every school has at least one,and is always male.In an all-girls school,he will be the bane of the gals’ existence,constantly looking at their chest region,through the thin baju-kurungs.In an all-boys school,he will be the fun of the party,the one who tells dirty jokes at the end of classes,shares tips with the guys and points out interesting features of his female colleagues.Will you get this in a private school,where sexual harassment lawsuits will be flung left,right and centre by conscious parents?
2) “The dirtier the restaurant,the better the food”
Think for a moment of your favourite local eat-out place.If it’s a restaurant with air-conditioning and clean toilets,you are not Malaysian.It should be a place that is preferably open air,with lots of flies.If the toilets are absolutely disgusting with fungus growing on more fungus,you score an additional 60 points.The operators of the restaurant must be absolutely filthy to look at,with a variety of stains on their aprons.If they have no aprons,voila,another 60 points.It can even be a small nasi lemak stall set up by the local loud-mouthed makcik or the Ramley Burger stall operated by dodgy youths driving modified Kancils.Adhere to the maxim, the dirtier,the better.
I will tell you of a famous restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.Well,the term ‘restaurant’ is a bit of stretch as it is more of a small room that somehow has people selling food out of it.It is smack dab in the middle of KL,with traffic rolling just 50 cm away from the main entrance.The carbon monoxide from exhaust pipes,sulphur from the nearby construction site,dust and smoke will mix with the pungent smell of the restaurant’s ‘toilet’ to form an aroma that is potent enough to kill horses.This wonderful assault on your senses will then be complimented with the stench of sweat from unknown bodily regions of the restaurant staff.The ambience is provided by walls with their paint peeling off and moss growing in every nook and cranny,sometimes even in the armpits of the cooks.The dining music is provided by rude Hokkien uncles debating politics.
But I swear to you,the prawn noodles that they serve are the best ever.The soup sweet and spicy to the tongue,the noodles soft yet springy and the prawns fresh and succulent.Topped with hot chilli paste and sometimes hard boiled eggs,it is literally heaven in the midst of hell.You just cannot replicate the culinary experience in a clean,air-conditioned restaurant with well-trained waiters and chef,no matter how hard you try.Yes,one might wonder where exactly the good taste comes from,but as they say,ignorance is bliss.
3) You must be an arsehole on the road
We Malaysians can spot a tourist from a mile away.He is the one who drives carefully,doesn’t kill anyone,and actually signals before he turns.That tourist,by possessing some innate gift,has actually figured out how to read road signs,which is written in an ancient language with weird diagrams that we Malaysians just cannot comprehend.I mean,what exactly does a yellow sign with an exclamation mark with the words 90 km/h actually mean?Is it trying to urgently (hence the exclamation mark) tell us to go beyond 90 km/h?Ask the tourist,he knows!And,we really need to learn how to park without obstructing an adjacent car’s path of exit.I know its abnormal,but seriously,I think double-parking may,and here I stress on the word ‘may’ cause serious inconvenience to other drivers.Maybe,I am not sure.Research is still being undertaken on this subject matter and results should be out soon.Stay tuned.
Scientists say that one of the major cause of blindness apart from trauma to the head and looking at Miss Malaysia/Universe contestants are bad diet and a lazy lifestyle.This is because our arteries become clogged,and therefore less blood goes to the retina to supply it.Soon,the retina will slowly die off,causing loss of vision.What the scientists have failed to take into account is another more serious cause of blindness.
Cars fitted with front headlamps that emit ‘white light’.
Have you ever had your corneas barbecued by cars fitted with such lights?These lights are powered by 80 million megavolts of electricity and are EXTREMELY bright.You can tell when a car fitted with such lights are nearby because suddenly,it’s daytime again.If you see such a car heading your way, TURN AWAY IMMEDIATELY unless you want your windscreen to be melted.
But I understand why some people see the need for such lights.I am also aware some of you reading this may possess such lights or know someone who does.Here’s a maintenance tip.If you think the lights are not bright enough,you can check them easily.First,with the lights switched off,bend down until you are eye level with the lights.Open your eyes as wide as possible,and try to focus very very intensely on those krypton bulbs.Try not to blink.Now,again,the important part here is to keep your eyes still very widely open,as if you are watching porn for the first time.Get a friend to start the engine,but leave the lights switched OFF.Don’t panic,for this is all part of the routine.Keep your eyes wide open.At this point,your friend should release the brake and press the accelerator as hard as possible.If done properly,you will probably see a very bright light.Thats a good sign your headlamps are working.
4) Be proud of Manglish,but ditch it the moment you see an ang-moh
We are very proud of our accent,as if we somehow worked for years to perfect it.The true Manglish speaker can by the very simple usage of ‘lah’ , ‘mah’ or ‘hor’ can completely turn a conversation around.It can connotate sarcasm,praise,reprimand, and even seduction.For example – ‘You are very good looking”.Now,to a non-Malaysian,that sentence may only serve one purpose,that is to praise.But we Malaysians can twist it around with just one extra syllable.
For instance,if a guy were to end it with a very low-toned ‘lah’,it would immediately indicate that he is horny.If a girl were to deliver that same sentence with a slightly prolonged ‘mah’ accompanied by a discreet roll of her eyes,everyone will see that she is jealous.And lastly,if a mother were to utter that sentence to her daughter ending with a sharp ‘hor’,that will indicate that her daughter actually resembles Jabba the Hutt’s backside.
And yet,with such a powerful linguistic tool at our disposal,we would never dream of using it in the presence of foreigners.Why is that when we have Mat Sallehs for company,we never speak Manglish to them?Where do all our ‘lah’s and phrases like “ is dis your wan or my wan’ go?Suddenly,we speak normal sounding English,and our grammar becomes horribly correct and pronunciation atrociously perfect.
Perhaps maybe deep deep down inside,we realize how terribly uncool we all sound with our Malaysian accents.This is why Malaysian movies will never make it big in Hollywood.And some of us are so desperate to shed our natural accent that the moment we find a plausible excuse,we put on an accent.Perhaps that’s why we love practicing our fake accents with Westerners
I mean,you see many pretentious people who spend a week in Western countries suddenly develop an accent so thick,it’s unbelievable.Sure,an American accent sounds good on a person with Caucasian features like freckles,pink flushes,clear blue eyes,blonde hair,etc.etc.But when a guy who looks like he should sell pirated DVDs for a living suddenly says , “Hey dudes,Jessica Alba is like sooo totally hot,man I’m like so totally on that bod man.Far out!”,you just know it doesn’t go together,like wearing a thong to church.It’s just wrong.
And then on the other side of the coin,you will NEVER ever see foreigners attempt to imitate our accents.It’s physically impossible,because the moment they try it,their brain receives impulses from the muscles controlling the vocal cords,which tells the brain that “it is VERY UNCOOL to sound Malaysian“ and the brain will just shut down the muscles for a few seconds,which will render the would-be impersonator speechless.
But yet,we must stand tall and proud of our accent!Speak like true Malaysians wherever you go!Do not compromise our identity for sake of clarity!If you’re Malaysian,lets say out loud in the spirit of brotherhood, “WE CAN DO IT WAN LAH!”
And if you are a foreigner (especially if you are Australian,British or American) reading this,I say this to you with all sincereity.Try the Malaysian accent out and give us feedback.As always,just by virtue of your status as a Westerner,your opinions should always matter greatly to us.
Hor.
….to be continued.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Contradictions
Life is so very full of contradictions that it should come to all of our surprise that we do not observe them more often. Yet, they are there. The problem is that the pairs of observations that would make up contradictions are so obscure, so vastly set apart in our overall take on life that it is sometimes hard to put them together.
It was not too long ago that we used to hear of how
I remember the news broadcast. It was on ntv7 I think. There was a grim-faced Chinese spokesperson, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and pantsuit, staring off-camera at some figure, interviewer perhaps. She was speaking Mandarin in a deliberate tone, while subtitles appeared below her chest, describing in rather dramatic sentences how the panda bears were being poached for their meat, skin or whatever, and sold across the globe, and appealed for the international conscience to put a stop to this trend, lest the WWF lost a mascot and change their merchandising profile.
When I saw that piece of news, a rather nasty thought came quickly to my mind. I also remember thinking that if I were a foreigner, perhaps a Caucasian, I would definitely be in an appropriate place to say it aloud, but alas, I was, and forever will be, a squinty eyed Chinese boy.
But, if I were indeed born with bluer eyes, this is what I would have gladly said to that Communist :-
Yes, we will start saving the panda bears, the minute you guys stop drinking shark-fin soup.
I mean, we Chinese people eat EVERYTHING that moves, man. It is not just a offhand remark passed down from generation to generation. If its back faces the heavens, we will eat it. You give a cow to a person of any other race, he would probably drink its milk, cut it up for meat or peel its skin off for leather ( hopefully all those done in that order).
But a Chinese person would go a few steps further. The eyeballs and brains would make excellent herbs, the intestines an interesting addition to beef noodles, etc etc.
I remember watching a show on TV once about snakes. It was set in
1) Person suddenly finds a snake in the house
2) Miraculously, a camera crew happens to be in the house.
3) Instead of helping, the camera crew just films the house owner dialing 911 in panic
4) When the call is finished, the house owner looks at the camera, clearly in distraught, says something profound, like “Oh God I hope they get here soon”
5) Commercial break
6) Now, a rough, rugged sort of man who shaves once every lifetime, wearing thick boots and speaking in a Southern accent is introduced as a “Snake catcher”
7) Mr. Snake Catcher tries to catch the snake.
8) He almost catches the snake. .
9) Commercial break
10) He catches the snake. The day is saved.
Now I can’t help but thinking that the whole show would be more efficient if they just sent in a regular Chinese man. He would go in there so fast, the camera crew wouldn’t reach the house in time. And I can picture him catching the snake without so much a hint of fear, grabbing it by the tail and kung-fu chop the snake senseless. Then he would proceed to ask the house owner if he could use some pots and pans for a while. And by the way, did he have Oyster sauce?
Speaking of animals, I recently went to Seaworld in
They also had a giant underground aquarium where we could see exotic fishes swimming about. Of course, there were some Chinese tourists looking at them while rubbing their tummies, drooling out of the corners of their mouths, never taking their bulging eyes off the bigger fishes.
What’s neat about this theme park that it also educated the public on the plight of the animals it showcased, many of them extinct. There were posters showing how marine life is threatened, and how uncontrolled sea mining and pollution were destroying the marine life. There was one poster in particular that showed how unregulated big scale fishing was dimishing the population of fishes.
Next door at the Seaworld restaurant, they served fish n chips for just 9. 95 AUD.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
