The Accomplished

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I love the feeling of having went out and having accomplished many errands, like today:

I went for driving class. I was early so I walked to Taman Jaya LRT and hopped on the train back to Asia Jaya. GuesswhoIsaw it was Ching Wei, Joel’s girlfriend, also headed for lessons at the same time, same place. I was at my third hour out of ten. (My first hour was spent driving to KL, up to Jalan Duta and pulling back into PJ through Hartamas while the second hour was spent going down to Subang, to that huge roundabout, and back down the highway.) She complained that she didn’t get any of that action! I guess I was lucky to have a forgetful teacher then. He probably couldn’t remember that I did not learn slope parking, side parking or three-point-turning before that! Well it wasn’t all that grand, considering I was also the last to get a spot on his ever-changing timetable.

Today however was different! He asked me, “have you learnt slope parking and side-parking?” I said nope. At the junction to exit the school, he said to turn left, meaning we were going on the road! (So much for that question.) We went down the same Jalan Duta KL stretch, but pulled back into PJ at Jalan Damansara instead. With what was left of the hour, he taught side-parking. He then received a phone call, and went something like this:

“Aaa! Yes aaa! You buy the Magnum 4D Toto! 8603! 4451!”

Reassuringly enough, 8603 was the Kancil I was driving. Was I fated to die today?

He dropped by the office, since we weren’t sure if I had two hours of lessons today. “The other girl cancelled anyway.” And so began the extra (or rather, unexpected) leg-cramping clutch-action of the slope-parking, side-parking and tire-balding-three-pointer hour.

After that was over, I grinned at a poor Ching Wei, who’d already waited an hour for Joel. She certainly wasn’t wearing my “I went to town again!” smirk. We took the scenic route to Amcorp Mall, to look for a lurking Tech (yes I busted your secret hideout!) but found not him, but the lurky Dustyhawk instead. Once Joel came, I left for Bintang Walk, to collect my 512 Megabyte 400 Megahertz Kingston Value DDR RAM from Low Yat Plaza. I then found the elusive Robertson Audio MP3/VCD/CD player. “Wait ah I go ATM first…” I told the shopkeeper. I headed to the bottomest floor of Low Yat to find cables where the ATM machine used to be! Lucky me then, to have to go to Sungei Wang to find an ATM, because I found the MXJVC-branded variant.

After getting that for my mom (yes yes happy mother’s day in advance har har) I found a handphone-fixing shop outside of the Sungei Wang square that would fix my dad’s Siemens C30.

On the way home, I found that Pantera’s Reinventing Hell: Greatest Hits made for great music to nod off to. (I needed to test the CD player!) Yes that thrash metal greatest hits masterpiece. No I don’t find it boring. Hanna when are you going to buy it from me? I’m still carrying it in my bag yes I am.

As of time of writing I am listening to an old mix MP3 CD I made, wondering what the heck are the titles of the first 30 songs. Yep, it was probably a CD with one-hit-wonders (I had to Google the lyrics to find out what songs they were.) So much for skip protection; audio CDs didn’t work in the knee pocket. MP3 CDs were better off though, although sometimes it would have a mind of its own and skip and pop while sitting quietly on the table.

Thursday shall be even more interesting, as I sneak out of work early for a 5-6pm slot at driving school, and at 6:30pm, my first ever college class of the year!

Follow The Flow

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Friends who have walked with me in shopping malls would know of my flow-theory. I now tell it to the world!

My discovery of the flow: the hidden force; the current of humans walking! It came to me last year.

I bumped into a friend who was from West Malaysia at the Bangsar LRT bus stop, on the free bus to Midvalley. She was just going for fun and had no prior plans with anybody there. I on the other hand was going there to meet some people (can’t remember who but Syefri was one of them.)

None of my friends were there yet, so we just walked about first aimlessly. She was leading the way. She was walking into crowds and against the flow! It was struggled movement.

I then wisely proclaimed, “come! I shall lead the way! We shall walk with the flow!” (Cue Jack Black with shimmering angelic glow from my body.)

“Do not walk against the flow of the crowd!” I declared. “We walk with the crowd! Do not think of where to go! Let your legs do the walking!”

We then walked with the flow, uninterrupted, letting our legs lead the way, even up or down escalators.

With that, she bumped into an old schoolmate of many years back!

We walked somemore, and she bumped into yet another!

Before she walked with the flow, she said she had never bumped into anybody in a shopping mall.

Now I’d usually bump into people in Midvalley, because I walked with the flow, but I did not bump into anybody that day. Perhaps it was because I had transferred the flow and exhausted some of it. Nevertheless, I was happy to have parted the ways of the aimless teenage shopping-complex wanderer.

(End of original flow-following theory.)

Anyway, back to Monday. I went out with Jha to Bintang Walk. We were in Lot 10, going to take the pedestrian bridge to Sungei Wang, when I saw this makeup artist applying makeup on presumeably an interested passerby. I got Jha to do a double-take to see the makeup artist’s horrid eye-makeup, and guess who I bumped into?

Az. Without a guitar. (Though he did have a friend who was going to get one…)

I have always bumped into Az in the weirdest places. (Nope, gay bars are not one of them.) We did not have each others’ numbers; we do not have each others’ instant messenger contacts; I haven’t gone to a gig with him performing in it; I’ve never gone out with a friend just because Az is coming, etc. Sure we’re friends on Friendster and he’s in my links, but it’s not like we talk through there. Which is freakishly cool then how we always bump into each other.

Perhaps, then, I have met someone, whose flow is just so intertwined with mine. It could be like Yin and Yang. Terror guitarist… and not-so-terror guitarist. Tall… and not-so-tall.

Break The Nines

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I snapped the niner, will my sextet last?
This experimenter wound it down too fast
I changed my chord but resolved no tension
For time won’t afford me calculation
The law of scale says the tone I’m using
Is out of place and sounds disagreeing
Alas turning back makes for bald tires
I can’t hit the sack till the spark fires

Guitar Geek High

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I am on a guitar geek high.

I took home Anis’s Kapok-style guitar (classical shape with steel strings) and modified it. Since the strings had little rings for their ball ends, I tried putting my old thick E string through them in a flash of inspiration. A tremolo on a classical guitar bridge! I wound it through a few times. After all that, I played a chord and tugged on that little loop I made (around 12 centimeters in diameter) and it raised in pitch. A little. (Borrow someone’s digicam I will!) Ideally, I’d have two bars clamping on the rings, or at least one steel bar going through it. It would then pull all six strings, raising their pitch.

Illustration 1: (Pardon the crude Photoshopping.)
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You’re Not So Boring

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The Internet is evolving to help the average user not seem like a boring person. What do I mean?

Remember how you’d chat on instant messengers, say MSN Messenger, until you’d have run out of things to say other than Hi or Bye? Say bye to those moments for good with online games! No, not evil Ragnarok-type-online-games; I mean games like MSN Solitaire Showdown! When you run out of a topic, it’s the perfect time to call out this side distraction. Ironically, the people who I find myself playing this with are conversation-worthy like Nora and Scherzquin (though it’s obvious we’re doing it for competitive score-keeping.)

Next up: Friendster Quizzes. They’ve made it simpler. Earlier, it was “Describe your ideal romantic date.” Now it’s “Coke or Pepsi?” (I choose 7-Up Ice now by the way.)

Oh and get this: Lipton Iced Tea or Nestea? Interesting. Soon companies shall cash in on this as survey research.

I get so many of these in my bulletin board that I wonder who bothers reading all of them. Heck, I haven’t even joined any Friendster clone because there’s probably going to be more where that came from!

Dammit if you have so much time, write me a testimonial.

And now, I’m seeing forum spammers I know (who usually have nothing to say but “LOL“) getting blogs. Oh joy, let’s all read about how they brushed their teeth this morning.

Oh hell I’m a hypocrite and I just did my first ever quiz. In two parts. Go read it, because I spent so much time cracking wit over it, and then optimizing it to fit in 4000 characters (but it still couldn’t fit despite being 3900 characters due to Friendster bugs) so I broke it into two. (Nope I won’t post it here, you’d have to be my friend to read it!)

Oh hell I’m going to make a blog system for Xfresh. I never announce works in progress until there is any work done on it, so yeah. More avenues for bloggers of average compositional ability. Well, at least it’s free!

P.S. Anybody noticed that layer seven of that quiz I took is missing? I can’t find any bulletin board post with layer seven…

Sharing Genes And Jeans

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Muchly delayed this be, I post this anyway.

Ages ago, my mom brought my sister and I to Amcorp Mall, where we (my sister and I) both got our first pair of jeans. She picked the more faded of the two. At home, she changed her mind, and took the dark pair instead. Ah well, I wasn’t picky.

Many moons later, I came home, and my mom declared such:

“Your sister is taking your jeans to cut at the knees.”

It wasn’t about her asking permission. It was a matter-of-fact statement.

I got such a scare recently, after buying two pairs of jeans! They were missing from the place where I’d expect clothes to be. Now this was scary, since I actually paid for these rather handsomely. (In contrast to my wardrobe of exclusively free T-shirts, caps and shoes all legally procured.)

Dammit sis, just because we share genes it doesn’t mean we have to share jeans. (I don’t refer to her as sis, but hey let’s all play the anonymizing game.)

Nope, she did not kidnap them. They had been misplaced in a blue bag, used for ferrying clothes from the two houses that we lived in. It was in a (laundry) limbo all this while!

Yes this post is hanging.

Hang No More

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I finally figured out what was wrong with my computer that caused it many rude restarts (to be noticed by those who see me online). One wonky stick of 512 Megabyte 400 Megahertz Kingston Value DDR RAM. So much for dual-channel 1 Gigabyte dreams, then! The computer no longer crashed at certain Macromedia Flash 7 objects, accessing random folders on the hard disk, or any 3D game at random intervals.

Let’s see what else. Yes, I got in a Kancil for the first time, and got acquainted with the intricacies of the clutch pedal. I wonder how my dad drove around in his old rustmobile with a clutch that apparently didn’t work. I then headed over to KLCC for a free posture analysis thingy. Aye, it is true; I have a shoulder level alignment problem. I then walked to Bintang Walk, clocking under 15 minutes, to see the drool-worthy missing-pickup Line 6 Variax 500. (Of course, the 700 model was also there, but it wasn’t close enough in price to an American Fender Stratocaster.) Oh, and I’m also broke and waiting for the money to come out of the wall to be passed into the coffers of my college.

Roll Call

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Alrightey mates, I’ve had some updating to do in my links in my About Me! page. Yes, this is the only time you barnacles shall get front page grande. Here, in no particular order, are updated or added links: Chibimelody, Redphayze, Joeybear, Hyrza, Leech, EC, and LIONEL.blogs.

I went for the Tempered Mental single launch (yes a single with um, 7 tracks). It was at The Jazz Bar, notably so as Syefri pointed out a bass amp bigger than the guitar amps. Flatline was one of the opening bands, and even with their 3 guitars, the bassist still overpowered them, leaving only a little wah through.

Their show rocked, with new stuff we had yet to hear. I shall spare you here and squeeze creative juices on the article.

Anyhoo, the taxi driver I hailed had the windows partly down. Halfway on the journey some conversation like this happened (in Malay though):

He: Do you want to smoke?
Me: No thanks.
He: Why? Quitted or you just never smoked before?
Me: Never smoked before (hesitating to translate…) I’m allergic to the smoke. My uncle used to fog the hall even though his room door was closed. I got this weird coating in my tongue.
He: Ah okay.

That would’ve been a blatant lie of course, since I did just step out of The Jazz Bar in O*range. 😛 Even after a bath and change of clothes the smell still lingered!

I could see the cabbie flinching as a cigarette-deprived addict. Nyahaha. He was easing his throat, with symptoms of a cold. He was rubbing his nose and reaching into his pocket.

I could’ve just told him it was fine with me, but I wanted to see how bad it could get. 🙂

My personal take on smokers? People who smoke are really one of us, but I don’t equate smoking with coolness. They’re not any evil-er than us. Well you can stand in one corner puffing away, but flinching from cigarette withdrawal is not cool. Haha.

Then there’s that thing about it relieving stress. Sure it works, but there are other stress-relievers that don’t give you bloody coughing in the morning. Computer games. Onanism. Making noise on a guitar/drumset/wall/table. Sure, these activities merely distract you from the worries, and you’d still go, “how now?” afterwards, but it’s not like cigarettes help you totally forget either. That, my friends, requires more potent mind-state-inducting chemicals. 😉

Oh, and I finally fixed the filler comments!

Scary Toilet Man and some updates

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Today, I shall write about the scary toilet man, or scary janitor for you American-educated people.

He is the man who hovers about, standing in a corner of the ASTRO toilet, waiting for you to be done before he swarms in and sprays your cubicle with disinfectant. He stares at you, waiting for you to vacate the urinal.

I met one such Scary Toilet Man at Hard Rock Cafe. He was standing there, playing with the powder and the perfume. When I was done, he handed me two pieces of hand wipes. I thanked him.

As I came out, it was obvious that the birthday boy made full use of the free hair gel. I too, went. I fumbled with the perfume since I was not used to artificial smell application. I couldn’t stop laughing to myself as he stood behind!

Back to the daily commentary.

Good Friday – Why did everybody make a fuss about it like it was a Day Of Obligation? Being a born Catholic I knew and wondered why people were leaving the office early. Heck, I went early too. 😛 I met up with a distraught Nabila who had been bumming around KLCC because the Australian Embassy was closed for Good Friday. Gee mate, they got our Malaysia-should-take-holiday-whenever-possible disease!

And so we dined at California Pizza Kitchen, overhearing these Singaporeans who said they wanted to party. Preferably chemically-induced. LOL. So we said to them, warp speed to Warp mate!

Saturday – The whole day was spent with colleagues going fragging in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and then Battlefield 1942’s various mods. We ate at Burger King for dinner and bumped into Dragon Red (minus Landslyde) who were there for a audition or something.

Sunday – I arrived at my driving school at 9 and waited for an hour, sleeping with the class. The lecturer was sick. A replacement arrived at 10, giving a half-hour lecture and then taking a half-hour break before finishing at noon. Yep, if you did the math right, it would have been one and a half hours. The other 3 hours, or the fun-in-the-sun maintenance class, would be only for students not from this school. Happy I was for the discount! To add to that, I skipped the obligatory Easter church-going day!

I got home to a combined multitude of technical support. Joanne wanted to know if she should get the same hard disk I got (the Western Digital 80GB JB model, that I would not recommend because of instability…) Allison had trouble with her second-hand ADSL modem. uneeq‘s friend had trouble with her laptop. I can’t remember who else. Add sound editing for my sister to the list.

For once I have to run for the bus and really end the blog post like this so taaa!

Gostan!

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It was a Wednesday morning, and I was drinking Teh Tarik laced with cinnamon at Maju Curry House, near PJ A&W Drive In, Taman Jaya. (Yes, they put cinnamon whether you ask for it or not.) I ran to the Taman Jaya LRT to take the LRT to Asia Jaya, but I realized my train was on the other side!

Dashed I did, to Asia Jaya. Lactic acid attacked my legs. I reached SDC, my driving school, and waited there for an hour. I let the others be sent to JPJ, where they would take their theory exam. The van came and drove to JPJ, that was smack opposite Maju Curry House. 🙁

Since I was late I had to take a number and wait one-and-a-half hours. When I got in, I took a practice session in the waiting room. I then went in and sat for the real thing, in front of a computer. I clicked A for the first answer (see, it pays to read my blog!) and it didn’t move. I clicked again. I added a few more clicks on A for safety.

It suddenly responded, and apparently my first 15 questions were answered A! I had to click on the previous questions to answer them correctly. Apparently, each computer was connected to the main server and whenever someone was done, and the results were being printed (obviously through the computer-hogging parallel port), my computer lagged. Presumably everybody lagged too. At least the timer didn’t move when it lagged. I could hear a lady coming in and telling another test-taker, “Don’t double-click! You will answer two at the same time!”

After probably 15 minutes (including 5 minutes lag) I was done. I got 46 over 50, where the passing mark was 42. The lady at the printer told me to take the printout to my driving school so I could register for the maintenance class. And so, I took the LRT back to Asia Jaya. The lady at the school took it and said to come on Sunday morning. I wish I photocopied it so I could gloat and show it to my mom or something. 🙁

And now, for the rest of the irrelevant day that I choose to share with you!

I went to Bintang Walk to buy a RM6 guitar strap. The bottom peg was real hard to fit in. It was sweet though; I could live my dreams of being a standing rock star/busker now. I also found a Santa Cruz 12-string guitar for RM450! Now I know where the Central Market buskers got their 12-strings from…

I also just bought a RM15 Melody DVD-RW disc from this shop with the knowledgeable old man. The same shop, the only one in Low Yat Plaza that sold DVD-RAM discs (albeit in cartridges). As I walked on to this other shop that I’d never bought anything from, I saw this same hot chick I always saw there. Damn. For once, she asked me what I was looking for. (You, babe?) I told her I was looking for a DVD-RW disc, and she pointed to the same thing, at RM10! Argh. I wish I waited. (RM10 is below the cost price, according to a collegemate who sells CD/DVD media.)