Three months in twenty minutes

State of mind: amused?
Current soundtrack: DNAngel - Byakuya ~True Light (Miyamoto Shunichi)

It was either the internalised stress from the test or the Flaming Sambal pizza I ate for dinner (I prefer Domino's Spicy Sambal*, but it was worth a try), but I had a dream about strange large twin dogs, where one got tumours and mange yet the other suffered and died; a super sekrit mamak joint run by RTD officers, all of them in headscarves; and everyone in this strange dream world with hovering nametags and dropdown action menus MMORPG style, before my cramping insides sent me fleeing to the loo.

I don't think I'm going to get that image of the headscarved examiner yelling "Ya Allah, what are you doing!?" for a long while yet. Aish, tudung trauma...OTL

* has this site not heard of image slicing?

A short one

State of mind: drained

Well, the good news is I finally, finally, finally passed the circuit portion of the driving test. The bad news is barely 2 hours later, I almost rammed into a bus while attempting to get out onto the road.

...See you in July, SDC. *plonk*

On the plus side (also), I did manage to see an old friend of mine, Suzi, way back from primary school. We used to colour the illustrations in one of my Enid Blyton storybooks together. Fun times, those were. Also later at Pyramid I caught sight of my slightly-less-old friend Ju. She looked stylish as usual. *_*

I also took pictures of pretty flowers outside Sunway Pyramid



And messed around with one of them.



There's even an avatar version (muaha!)



And now I truly must be off before my New Media group leader decks me although three months ago I would have liked to deck him...

Beep, beep!

State of mind: jumpy
Current soundtrack: UlColo - Koi Suru Boy (i-chips)

So tomorrow I take my driving test...For the third time. I am nervous, to say the least. The last two times I went, I failed both sections, with varying degrees of comedic value.

Driving Test #1 - The first time I took the road test, my steering was shot and I got failed with 5 points out of a possible 20. By any standard, that was Bad with capitals. At least the officer let me finish the course and drive back in, even if he did say that my car 'staggered'. I'm not kidding. Terhuyung-hayang is usually a term associated with drunken men. =o=;

Shaken, I went on to take my circuit exam, ending up with a different model of Kancil than what I usually drive. (This matters, trust me.) I went to the hill test, which is the first 30%. I stopped on the hill with my front tyres planted firmly on the desired lines, put on my brakes and put my hand up 'till the officer told me to move on. I eased off the clutch, slowly depressed the accelerator, released the handbrake...and slid comically backwards.

I'd forgotten to take the car out of neutral, distracted by the old Kancil's skinny little gearstick.

Driving Test #2 - I'm still kicking myself over this one. Two points away from passing my road test! The road was clear! The officer was helpfully silent! Even the weather was nice and breezy! I was on the verge of passing, I'm sure of it.

Unfortunately, when I was turning back IN to the test centre, I slipped into the opposite lane and the officer gleefully failed me. OTL

Never mind. Circuit test still there. Passed the hill part. Went on to parking. Got in, prepared to go out, and...rammed into a pole. I WAS SO CLOSE.

I had no choice but to laugh with maniacal sheepishness all the way back to the driving school office to apply for ANOTHER retake.

Wish me luck for tomorrow, because if I botch this one I don't dare do a retake until July, during Exploration Week. I don't dare apply for leave too often this term. @_@

Still haven't really thought of what I want to do for the MMP Studio final project. Heroes, Helvetica or Ninja Teabags? Hmm. Dilemmas, dilemmas...

I could be wrong about this, but...

State of mind: unamused
Current soundtrack: Kiken na Curve (doa)

...I don't consider this much of an apology.

For those who haven't been catching the local/Malaysian news, the source can be summed up quite succintly with this quote off TheStar.com.my:

On May 9, during a heated exchange in the Dewan Rakyat with Opposition MPs over the roof leak at Parliament House, Bung Mokhtar had said: “Mana ada bocor? Batu Gajah pun bocor tiap-tiap bulan juga. (Where is the leak? The Batu Gajah MP also leaks every month.)”

And there you have it. Ten days, one demonstration one cabinet meeting later and several angry letters later, it has been decided that they needed to make these two troglodytes jokers fine outstanding gentlemen apologise. *stops gritting teeth* Their statements were nicely recorded here. I was quite satisfied with the fact that they'd FINALLY apologised...until I read stuff like this.

First up, Jasin's MP, Dato' Mohd. Said bin Yusof, famous for his close-one-eye philosophy some time back.

I regret very much that the May 9 incident in Parliament had been manipulated by certain quarters...

...Yuh-huh. No shit. We're all out there to challenge our MPs and chuck them into the longkang/drain ALL THE TIME. (Whatever for? Some of them do it pretty well without any help. ¬_¬)

When the Opposition always raised matters that I regard as disrespectful and with the intention to insult and provoke me and other Barisan MPs, what is our choice?

If you think they're trying to get a rise out of you, should you be obliging them?

...if it offended the feelings of any parties and women, I put my hands together and offer my apology...

'I apologise if you feel offended' ≠ 'I apologise for my remarks'

...this issue has nothing to do with discrimination of women or MPs being insensitive to gender issues but is merely a ploy by the Opposition to belittle the Government's agenda.

Nothing at all? Nothing to do with jokes about menstruation? Nothing to do with the fact you actually decided that might be appropriate to joke about in Parliament? Nothing...ah, man, I'll come back to this later.

And now Dato' Bung Mokhtar, Kinabatangan MP. It appears he has been guilty of asshattery before, but this is the first time I've seen him stick his foot in his mouth. He rather seemed to be enjoying the taste of it.

...the May 9 incident should not have become a big issue but the DAP had taken it up, through the mass media, and they wished to drag all women's groups in the country into it.

I think they came in all on their own, having smelt the pungent odor of whattheheckamate from miles around.

...we humbly, I humbly and with full responsibility wish to apologise to
all the women in the country if they felt slighted by the words that we uttered.

See reaction to Mohd. Said's apology. *resists urge to use quotation marks*

So, I hope with this open apology DAP will no longer play up this issue. Stop
selling old newspapers. It is no longer laku (saleable).

Oh. Oh, WOW. I'm so choked up by the sincerity of your apology, Dato'! *One. Lone. TEAR.*

In the end, the duo don't seem to have realised that the controversy they stirred up was well, one they stirred up! 'Blame it on the opposition' seems to be a convenient excuse for anything. You're in trouble because you make a snide remark about menstruation? Blame the opposition! You're late for work? Blame the opposition! Radioactive cauliflower monsters are attacking the KL Twin Towers? BLAME THE OPPOSITION, DAMMIT!

I only have a few questions to put forward about this issue:

1. If the remark had been about hanging, exposed pipes, and directed to a man, would the reaction have been the same?
2. If the remark had been directed at a Malay MP, would the reaction have been the same?
3. If the remark had come from the opposition, would the reaction have been the same?
4. Why did it take ten days for these two to finally decide to apologise, and in a rather roundabout manner at that? (Note that any variation of the words 'I am sorry for my remarks' do not feature in the statements)

If Dato' Seri Sharizat has decided to accept this apology, well, I can't say anything. But I still feel distinctly disturbed by the fact that these MPs exist. That these PEOPLE exist, in fact. We aren't Taiwan - we're Malaysia, and really, it's a shame that I have to admit we voted these individuals into their current position. 'Tis people like this that will keep eating at the BN majority at every (by-)election.

Watch out for falling widgets!

State of mind: dry-eyed

Tinkering with the blog layout again. Things may look funny for the afternoon.

(ETA: *groans quietly, having failed to centralise the title image within a shrunken wrapper, and concentrates on the colour scheme instead* Good grief, I PHAIL.)

(Son of ETA: Well, I think this is good for a start. And at least this template lets me center the image! :3)

Virgin Meme!

State of mind: slightly muzzy
Current soundtrack: EVERYBODY NEEDS MUSIC (HOME MADE Kazoku)

You can tell I'm bushed when I type Mebius as Moebius. No, I swear to you it is NOT a typo. I wish it was, though; they pimp the 'infinity' theme enough as it is, and it would make for some SWELL jokes...

I haven't done a meme on this blog yet, so I ganked this from Jeff Morris's LJ.

Pick a character from the following fandoms, and I'll tell you at least three things about him/her that are in my personal fanon:

• Ultra Ninja Manual


• Ultraman: Super Fighter Legend


• Ultraman Tiga, Dyna, Nexus or Mebius (Actually, you can ask about the other Ultra Heroes as well. It's just that except for these series, I didn't really give two hoots about anything beyond the giant silver aliens beating up evil. ^w^;)


• Saiyuki (Reload)


• Samurai 7

...You can tell I have an incredibly one-track mind. Comment away and I'll put it up in the next post I see fit. :3 It'll probably include news about my first week back here as well.

NOW this is the place for pure unbridled emo.

State of mind: jumbled
Current soundtrack: J Pop Rocks- No Regret (Koda Kumi)

As you can tell, I shut up. For a long time, even by my standards. And the foundations mentioned in the previous post? Yeeeeah, they're still standing, but whisper the name of that one particular lecturer and they flinch.

Let me try and start over.

*clears throat* When we last left CMYk, she was chugging along perfecting another MM Prod. interactive CD (blood donation—I LIKE this one) , a motion graphic (depression; needs a little more poking, but didn't do too badly) and that now infamous-among-MM511 online media project. The former two went almost as well as can be expected. The latter screamed, writhed, cursed, barfed pea soup, had its head turn 360° and sput-put-tuttered to a rather graceless landing.

Without putting too fine an edge on it, our clients was confused, we were unpleased, I was unacceptably emo and the lecturers received the largest surprise of all: if we had all handed up our work and done, in their words, 'pretty well', why were the majority of us reporting brimstone, anguish and threats of dismemberment in our post-project reports? As far as I can see, the problem may have stemmed from trying to please just about everyone. The brief said one thing. One lecturer said another. Lecturer #2 said something else entirely, and a sense of confusion reigned. One classmate with her flair for the dramatic apparently proclaimed that we had been 'abused'—while I sporfle over it now, on the day of the marks announcement, I might have agreed in a rather watery fashion. I told you I was emo.

...Which is my excuse for the long absence/hermitage/reclusiveness/hissyfit. It took three weeks of peace and quiet to get some of my old mojo back, and I'm praying hard there will be no repeat of last term. I graduate in about half a year. I can't change my results slip (which was...pretty dangerous). Things are progressing as they should for now. Gantt charts have to be drawn up. Project topics have to be decided. I'm talking to the fresh meat new students again. So, let's try and start over.

Once more into the breach, Ultraman![/insidejoke]

Of Field Trips and Kengchows

State of mind: ...decidedly emo. o_O

This year's first Exploration Week has come and gone - much of it spent in the trusty arms of Morpheus (read: Zzzzz...). I had some personal victories when it came to work—second Motion Graphics idea approved without too much sweat, similarly for Multimedia Production—but am still soul-searching over a few other things (Online Media 3 being one of them...).

Anyway, this is not the place for pure unbridled emo - yet. The foundations will hold a little while longer, be they shaken—and I bring news of Islamic art and Jason Grove's visit to our college!

-----

Islamic Art Museum outing, or We Drive All Over KL: 15/3/07

Make no mistake: the Islamic Art Museum of Malaysia is PRETTY. The art is pretty. The fountains are pretty. The whole second floor, with its high ceiling, glass walls and tall pillars, is sheer beauty. I wanted to lie on the floor in that space of light and air and just stare at the ceiling and its inverted dome.

We were, however, on a tight schedule, and no pictures were allowed. (You can see a small part of the second floor on the website's main page, though.)

Let's go back a bit. There were six of us: me, JL, Cons, YM, James and WY. The plan for the day was quite simple, and had two steps:
- everyone meets up between 9-9.30
- hitch a ride from James' mum to museum and back

The plan instead morphed into THIS:
- 9.30 comes, and WY's missing
- long discussion on whether to keep waiting, or sod it for a lark and just go
- James' mum can't take us all to KL
- JL decides to drive, following James' mum from behind
- James' mum ninja-speeds off and we lose her
- decide to go to KL on own
- become hopelessly lost between streets
- arrive at museum in various stages of pissiness, sweatiness and relief, swearing the museum had better be worth the trip.

There's actually quite a bit to see in here: little (and large) models of famous mosques, matchlock rifles longer than we were tall, the most fantastic traditional robes, Chinese Muslim calligraphy, little books illuminated with gold leaf and beard combs that you could fill with rosewater so your wonderful chin tresses would smell sweet AND look spiffy. They had a special exhibition connected with spices around that time, and JL and Cons were VERY interested in the coffee section. >_>;

There's also one thing and one thing only you can take pictures of in the IAMM: the domes. They're very proud of their lovely lovely domes.

The museum has a little open courtyard with some fountains, so I would strongly recommend packing a lunch and taking a day trip. The food's EXPENSIVE, and if you don't like Middle Eastern cuisine, you may be pretty much screwed. The day we went, a la carte was not available and we had to have the RM38++ set lunch. All the appetizer and dessert you can eat (and they had some GOOD desserts, milk pudding yum), but see the comment about Middle Eastern cuisine. I'm still wondering how my baked chicken tasted like tandoori chicken. Good tandoori chicken, but still...

Souvenir shop has a lot of selection. I ended up buying a canvas bag and a postcard to send to Delilah. :D They have books for the kiddies, too, and I read through one. Somehow it amuses me to think of Moses/Musa flying into a rage and grabbing Aaron/Harun by the hair. By the hair. *giggles*

One thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was how nobody could seem to realise I was Malaysian. Some snack seller outside the museum thought me to be Korean; a guard inside was genuinely surprised to find I was a local. @_@ I wasn't even dressed that outlandishly - just a bit of layered T-shirts is all. I wonder what would have happened had I wore my cheongsam out...:D

-----

UK Antenna: Shynola's Jason Groves does TOA 16/3/07

Thank you, British Council, and thank you, o Multimedia Lecturers of Awe, for getting this guy to come in. The talk wasn't superbly formal, but it was quite funny. Jason Groves presents a lot like me—runs on for a bit and sputters to a stop. ;) He did have a lot of stuff to show, much of it incredible levels of pretty. And there was a 'documentary' about one of the first live action music videos they shot, which was amusing beyond all compare. I would love to be the King of Siam...

He even had fangirls. Quite a few of them. One of them me. *flees*

Kengchows all in a row: Mr. Groves, BC lady #1, our MMD head and BC Lady #2. Thanks for coming, guys!

In other news, I'm still learning how to drive.

In which one talks of many things.

State of mind: in pain
Current soundtrack: Whatever it is they're playing at the printer's (but bless Mr. William and his wireless connection!)

The world has decided to treat me quite nicely as of late. Ideas and concepts for Motion Graphics and MM Production have been approved without too much fuss and flurry, which is pleasing to say the least! Online Media 3 is still about the same, though. It's a very complicated situation. Suffice it to say the 'client' wants us to sell the product without revealing anything about it and there are two 'managers' who can't seem to agree on what they would like us to do. No wonder my group is 'ResLes'. Yes, I made up that name. I iz smurt.

...I don't think 'real' projects are like this, are they? D:

-

I have a penfriend in Japan, back from my school days. Online she's known as Delilah; she runs/used to run a fansite for Koumyou Sanzo. It's all kinds of cute, but now I can't even remember the URL. Or the site name. *swt* We haven't been keeping in touch for some time — my fault here, as preparing for the scholarship presentations and such last year took up a fair bit of time. I did, however, manage to send her a postcard last month just before the CNY hols, thanking her for her birthday wishes, filling her in on the situation here and apologising for the delay between replies.

Today the post came as I was looking out the upstairs window and I knew she'd written back. Would you believe I could pick her postcard ('tis almost always a postcard) right out from the pile of mail we'd received? Two floors down? In any case she congratulated me on the scholarship offer, included New Year's wishes and went on to reassure me that all was cool and everyone had busy times. She went on to add 'Besides...you and me are and will always be good friends after all.' Oh damn, she got me there. I hadn't written to her for so long and she had every right to think this fandom-based friendship was over, but it was like nothing had changed...except for the fact this time her postcard was really messy. ;) I hope she's doing OK. She's not the type to make so many spelling mistakes per postcard, my surname aside..I really must bring that up with her the next time I write.

One wishes one had or could make more friends like this, but in life sometimes you take what you get. Thanks Delilah-san, you're really, really something.
-

The ninth day of Chinese New Year (out of 15, for the non-local readers) is said to be the Jade Emperor's birthday. Hokkiens hold this day in highest regard, and on that day we hold certain prayers and rites (Pai Thnee Gong, which is how the papers like to spell it). Marion D'Cruz would have a right good laugh at me, but this is the one day I feel most Hokkien out of the year. The rest of the time I'm the polytheistic Buddhist banana who goes round bending paradigms. At midnight on the ninth day, I may be praying to Thnee Kong in English, but I'm holding those joss-sticks and folding the gold offerings with the rest of the women. It's kind of comforting, and some kind of anchor, if you like. And this year, I have a new phone, so I took some pictures (coming as soon). This I can do. This I can profile. This is my festival.


The preparations start a bit earlier, when the offerings are set up for the altar. Pineapples, plums, pomeloes, oranges and longan Usually my grandmother puts red paper cuttings on top of and below the stuff, but this year we went without. She is 80-something, and those are small scissors...maybe next year I'll take her place. At about 9-10 pm the altar gets prepared for the prayers, and the front is draped (sort of) with this cloth. It's a fairly interesting cloth, what with the lions and the brass studs and the 8 Immortals round the top edge.


This is what the altar looks like after we're all done praying.
Sometimes I forget halfway what I want to ask Thnee Gong and end up with long gaps of silence as I wave the joss-sticks, but it went all right this year. What did I ask for? SECRET.


Now comes the good part. We fold the gold! Every year my gran goes out and buys this special type of hell's money paper, which is stamped with gold leaf and has a stylised picture of the 3 Gods of Prosperity (Fu, Lu, Shou). She prefolds it into these triangles, and after we finish prayers, out comes the paper and the little plastic stools, and all the ladies sit outside in the night air folding up a big pile of gold as an extra, final offering to Thnee Gong. After this there are more sheafs of hell's money on top, folded to look like sheafs, there is a last confirmation of prayers before the altar and the pile of gold is set aflame.


People say that when you see the sparks going up and disappearing into the sky, it's a sign the offering of gold has reached Thnee Gong. Logic tells you it's just little sparks borne up on a hot wind, going out and floating down in the darkness, but then you remember the one year where the sparks did NOT go up properly and your grandmother broke her leg, your mother got stuck in a horrible job and your sports house lost horribly in the school sports. True story, this.


My belief system condones midnight snacking. When the last embers have burned out and everyone's done with flouting the rules against open burning *shifty eyes* some of the cakes come off the altar and go back into the house, where we cut them up and eat them. :D I assume it's kinda like eating birthday cake. All the bright red ones are ang koo or 'red turtles'; the pink one is huat kueh or 'prosperity cake'; the flat white one is bee koh or sweet glutinous rice. I don't know why I like huat kueh — it's bright pink and doesn't really taste of much — but I'll happily cut off chunks and start munching contentedly.

After that everyone goes home and sleeps, hoping that they won't wake up late for classes or work tomorrow. Birthday or no birthday, Thnee Gong's people gotta EARN!

-

Circumstances come together in long and convoluted chains (particularly when I try to relate them) and suffice it to say I read a manga called Star of Happiness: Haghall. It's about an alien from the moon who's trying to prove to God-the-balding-disembodied-head that humans need not be destroyed just yet and there are good people still among them. It's part alien comedy, part existential drama and occasionally rather heartwarming.

I had a rather disturbing dream a few days back where there was an animated version of Haghall - possibly a movie. They found him guilty of killing a whole bunch of babies by strangulation, and the way he put it he said he prevented them from becoming the 'flaws' they would have grown up to be. It was a bit disturbing, but it DID fit in creepily with the tone of the actual manga. And I could actually see him doing this, trying to save the Earth from being ruled by pillbugs and telling God see, there are good people, you need not kill everybody off yet.

What I don't understand is how nobody has yet screamed at Haghall "WHY ARE YOU LIGHT GREEN!?" even if he's 'supposed' to be some Mexican masked wrestler on an exchange program. :/

L > T?

State of mind: somewhat confused
Current soundtrack: Heisei High - Ultraman Tiga - TAKE ME HIGHER (V6)

See, this is what you get when the blogger's grandfather was a Latin student and the blogger's mother has taught English for more than 30 years.

The newspapers astound amuse puzzle me sometimes. Apparently a couple of days ago in the Malay Mail (famous for being sexy enough that the government threw a hissy fit and shut the weekend edition down), there was an article on how a 'tomboy' was denied entry to a popular nightclub in K.L. Quotation marks aren't mine, so it's clear we're not talking about a merely boisterous and bustling young woman here. No, we are talking about They Who Must Not Be Named: lesbians. Or sapphists, if you prefer to be less offensive to the long-suffering people of Lesbos.

So. The woman who cannot enter a club because she has short hair and dressed in a masculine fashion? Tomboy.

The teen who spirited her girlfriend off, acts like a man and has a short short buzzcut? Tomboy.

The woman who likes other women but is still feminine and is quite happy to maintain the stereotypical 'female' role in a relationship? Possibly Still A Tomboy.

...Let's try and shed some light on this, shall we? I called upon the 1337 and wordly powers of Dictionary.com and compared our two words. Let's see what it says for 'tomboy'.

–noun
an energetic, sometimes boisterous girl whose behavior and pursuits, esp. in games and sports, are considered more typical of boys than of girls.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v1.1)

Hm. Nothing about alternative sexuality there, eh? Let's try again.

–noun
n. A girl considered boyish or masculine in behavior or manner.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Nothing about liking girls here, either. Something is obviously wrong! D:

–noun
1553, "rude, boisterous boy," from Tom + boy; meaning "bold or immodest woman" is attested from 1579; that of "girl who acts like a spirited boy" is first recorded 1592.

Still nothing! But wait, I hear someone in the back. "These are all American dictionaries! You are following the West!!!11!" Fair enough. Or rather, we're following the wrong part of the West. Let's bring out a big old British English dictionary - the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. It's a bit old — 20 years, to be exact — but I hope you don't mind.

–N COUNT
A tomboy is a girl who likes playing rough or noisy games.

Nothing about liking others of the same gender, people. NOTHING. For that, you have at least three very useful and appropriate words: 'homosexual', 'gay' and 'lesbian'. Two words are already accepted in the Malaysian press, kinda, so why won't you use the L word? There it is sitting in a corner on the verge of cutting its wrists, playing emo music and feeling fat and unloved.

Is 'tomboy' some strange Malaysian euphemism for teh gurlsex that I haven't heard about? Because as a real tomboy, one who preferred Sabre Rider over Sailormoon, eschewed frills and pinkness and went from 'boys suck' to 'certain boys still suck, but damn that one is FINE', I reserve the right to feel a certain irritation. Besides, even if it IS a euphemism, please exercise your sparkling wit to come up with some way to refer to the more feminine lesbians of the community, hm. They need love and reference too.

A word of advice to the Malaysian press at large: 'lesbian' is no dirty word, no dirtier than 'gay' or 'homosexual' or 'triskaidekaphobia'. You will not be stricken, smitten or covered in pimples just because you use it. Honest. :)