And as I shriveled my tongue to Carolyn’s “McDonald’s never puts enough salt on their fries” fries, I said:
“Beware my brother’s legion of ‘4D puzzle’ animals!”
A puzzled Hanna then asked, while sipping through her balloon-stick-made-into-straw straw, if she could buy it from me.
I said no, and drank my Vanilla Coke merrily.
Friday
Jing dragged me to Kelana Jaya for a birthday dinner. The place had plenty of funky curry servings, but to be safe, I would pick a less stomach-contorting fish and chip meal. Turns out the coleslaw was cold and funky.
Later at Midvalley, Syefri and I queued for entry into the Lord Of The Rings Marathon at 11pm. Nope, there were no pajama-clad people trying to win free stuff. However, before the movie started, some dude said the Subaru ticket winners would have a free buffet… Supper? Clap! Hooray!
What say me?
I stayed well awake for the interesting Fellowship Of The Ring (3 hours 30 minutes), anticipating each scene with just the right amount of enthusiasm. (No ARWEN!!! giggly screams…) I read attentively up to the part where the hobbits bump into a Nazgul, and read somewhat until they meet Strider, so it wasn’t so bad.
The Two Towers (3 hours 44 minutes) was a bit too subdued at the beginning, and I was waiting for the scene to change. Syefri snored. Hear that, Ed!
Proud to have stayed awake so far, I bought Teh Tarik, having the sleepless dragging torture of the second.
That did not help. Figuring I’d be able to see it again soon, Return Of The King (3 hours 20 minutes) had me sleeping during the starting war (and preparing-for-war) scenes. I didn’t know who or where or what anymore. Some dude would just take a horse to this kingdom/country/place and call for reinforcements, and he would be the heir. I’d even confuse Eowyn for Galadriel.
I’d catch some winks when I hear whooshes, and open my eyes when the sound changed. Gollum and gang would still be in the same place, so I knew I didn’t miss anything!
What about the ending? Why would ghost pirates suddenly come out so conveniently? (Orlando Bloom was in Pirates Of The Caribbean too… coincidence?) Why didn’t they just call upon them and wipe out the KISS-inspired Uruk-hai?
Someone said the war scenes were emotionally draining, but alas, they were all too fast for my eyes. All that motion blur! All that registered in my head were the whooshes.
It wasn’t butt-numbing, it was leg-cramping. I wished I had more leg room. This, coming from a vertically-challenged person.
Please don’t convince me to watch any part of the trilogy again. It was too daunting in one seating! (Okay, so maybe a Gold Class ticket might convince me…)
At 10:20am, I walked out, a free man, welcomed by the huge queue for the movie I just watched. Syefri and I complimented each other loudly and proudly about our 680 minute adventure.
I went home, slept like 15 minutes, and headed off to SAITO to meet Dustyhawk. We bummed around a bit before I went to KLCC Park for Rock The World 4.
The ticket-less crowd hovered over the barricades, toppling it over impatiently. We waited until their technical difficulties were over, and I greeted Hassan the All-Access-Pass-bearer. “Hassan! Shaz was in Pangkor so he didn’t get us media passes!”
Pan Global Insurance gave out bright neon-colored T-shirts for the moshers, but I took a blue one nevertheless to add to my free-T-shirt wardrobe.
There was no noticeable problem with the sound throughout the show. Fantastic! OAG’s show, starting with the must-jump 60’s TV, ended right after that song as the front stage barricade crashed.
Syefri, Aznin, Michelle and I ate a long dinner at KLCC, to come back much later to discover that the show was still on hold.
Highlights? Prana having the jumpiest funk mosh-core, causing some poor dude to twist his leg. Butterfingers, for something new. Of course there were many other notables, but that shall be reserved for a proper review.
Sunday
I bought an Alcatel SpeedTouch 510 ADSL modem and router with 4 ports for RM300 at PC Fair 2003, PWTC. No comment on it, since I had yet to test it. 🙁
Monday
Er, I blogged about my weekend.
This entry was posted in Pictures, Travelling on .
I met Dide for dinner last week, so that she may take a picture of my cool shirt with not so cool blurry text:
This entry was posted in Pictures, Travelling on .
It’s been a while. Freedom for a short while! I handed in my Director project on Friday, meeting the ever elusive lecturer. I then walked to Imbi. Yay! My 19″ Princeton monitor was done with repairs! Sadly, I would not be free to pick it up in the next two weekends, so it would stay at the shop as a display model. Bentley also had all these new axes (well, rather, old axes that were not on display before.) I can imagine licking and shredding it already.
The next day, I went to Aznin‘s open house. (Yes, I finally mentioned your name. Yay.) I went in a crammed Kancil, with 3 people at the back. (4 people are very much doable, but short and skinny people ought to be in the middle, while long-legged people sit on the side!) We spun a few rounds, looking for house 28. The corner house was 24, while the next was 22… I checked my phone reminder for the address, and the memorable genius Fazri got it wrong. It was 24!
We sat, we ate, we stoned. The sleepy people gelled into the sofas.
Fazri’s Kancil-riding gang went off to Ezone at Low Yat Plaza first. It wasn’t until Fear Factor was on that we sat up – Playboy Playmates were the contestants! With all the advertisements, Syefri and I decided not to wait till the underwater challenge and keep them waiting.
Upon reaching Bintang Walk, we called Fazri. He wasn’t there! The jams stopped them from going. Ah well. We went to Bentley and then Combo Mix, but he had to leave. Ezone would not be as fun without anybody to watch me reap players in anything but Counter-Strike.
Sunday would be even more interesting. I walked out at noon, waiting for a bus. I figured I’d be late for Syefri’s open house at Shah Alam so I took a cab to the Kepong KTM Komuter station. The cabbie, an old Chinese man, was telling me how he beat an Indian can collector who went from there to Jinjang. He had RM10 in his hands but he refused to pay the RM4.50 fare because he said it was all he had left. I could just “um” and “uhuh”, knowing I had no small change, careful not to provoke him. 🙁
At KL Sentral, the wait was less than 15 minutes, and the trains I took were on time! Too much on time, indeed, that I arrived at the Shah Alam station an hour early.
We sat, we ate, we stoned. The sleepy people gelled into the sofas.
We then went to Wangsa Maju for Ed‘s open house. Met Choo Ki and Shaz there, among other local celebrities. Why am I mentioning them? Just so I have something to link to. 😛 Yes, some of these links can get really interesting…
We sat, we ate, we stoned. The sleepy people gelled into the sofas.
Oh yes, Iris the iristated phish is also linked from About Me!
How about today? A whole load to read since I hadn’t been in the office. A depressing load, even. Move I will!
This has to be the most uninteresting talk-about-your-weekend post ever. 🙁
I met a bunch of old schoolmates. To which two girls tapped me on the shoulder and, with an expression of shock and hand covering mouth, went, “Oh my God! ALBERT!”
I mockingly did the same back to them.
“You look so different!”
Ah yes, what could be more complimenting than girls acknowledging that I have:
1) eyebags
2) longer-than-a-schoolboy hair
They looked the same, just with different hairstyles. I was still taller than them. 🙂
Later, in a moment of silence, I pondered the previous meets with schoolmates I had not met for 3 years. Guys would go, “Haha you still look exaaactly the same. Never changed.” (This was very recent, with my longer hair…)
Then I thought of a bunch of girls I bumped into KLCC. They said I looked very different, (and much better, at that!) even though that was much earlier in the year, and I was still visiting my Indian barber.
Conclusion?
Girls know what to say when they meet old acquiantances. “You look so different!”
Guys are unobservant idiots. “You look exactly the same!” (Except me lah, I could tell the difference… unless guys tend to change more after school or something.)
Edited 14:11 hours 18th November 2003: We also bumped into a church friend of a friend. Ironically, he was selling insurance! Odd. Faith is about optimism, while insurance is about pessimism.
I went to KLCC to meet up some friends. While waiting, I walked around Kinokuniya to discover wrapped books! Had my friend who once worked at MPH, wrapping books all day, found a better pay here?
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s all they’re letting me read.
After the rest left, I took a cab with KJ to Sungei Wang. On the way, the cabbie commented on those new taxis on the road. There were fancy ones like the van-like one (RM4 per entry instead of RM2). We both wondered what it would be like in such a cab.
We went up to Ezone at Low Yat Plaza and got slaughtered at Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. The first map, that was. I forgot I was using the Light Side so I kept using Drain and Grip to no avail. 🙁 The next few maps saw us ganging up and slashing bots and humans to a good fragcount. 🙂
Next up, we saw Unreal Tournament 2003 being played nearby, so we joined in a server and reaped. Really. They were using alternate fire (like the Pulse Gun’s laser spray) but it seemed to have no effect on us. Rockets never seemed easier to lay, as we hopped. They were circle-strafing too, but for some reason we kept getting Killing Sprees. Even in teamplay maps, with us on one team, 3 to 4, we still beat them, with about 20-30 frags each, and single digits for the others. (50 was the team fraglimit). KJ only beat my frags in the last map, but he managed to join the server sooner.
By then, our two hours were up, or we’d be spawn-raping Battlefield 1942 games. 🙂
It seems that most cybercafe-goers can’t handle 3D first-person-shooters other than Counter-Strike. 😛
KJ then showed me his wonderful shortcut back from Sungei Wang to KLCC. (I never walked back to KLCC since I could get the bus home from there…)
He walked through the open-air car park opposite Starhill Plaza. The one with giant tomato sauce cans. It exited at Eden Garden Restaurant. We crossed the road to pass by Wisma UOA. From then, it was all familiar territory, but he surprised me again by walking through a car park before Mandarin Oriental Hotel. We entered KLCC via the starting point of the park’s jogging track. All in, 15 minutes.
We met up with Dinesh, and we took a Cityliner bus to head nearer to Ampang Puteri Hospital. KJ, upon realizing it was our stop, rushed out. I didn’t know what his rush was. What, were Cityliners more aggressive in Ampang?
(Edited 19:04 hours 18 November 2003: Dinesh and I later realized that we forgot to touch out our Touch And Go cards, resulting in a penalty! We kicked KJ for that.)
We took a cab up to Johnson’s place for his birthday party. There was a small golf course on the left, as the cab went up the hill, going up anti-clockwise.
Three of us entered in awe, with at least five luxury cars with single digits for license plate numbers.
I went inside, and saw a tiger carpet with a head. I kicked the head. Ow! It was not stuffed. It was a plaster casted head.
The inside of the house had Chinese vases and oriental ornaments. The house had mirrors! I could imagine the disco lights coming down, and a fluffy pink bed for all the groovy kinkiness of Austin Powers.
On the way out to the barbecue pit, I saw a swimming pool. A swimming pool! I did not see that on my way in. There was also a raunchy Statue Of Liberty. She had liberty, alright.
Food was good, if not overcooked by master of ceremonies Shaz.
Met the overly philosophical Ed there, among many other familiar faces. We sat, we ate, we told stories.
Ayman crammed Quek, Kristin and me in his jeep. Who needs a motion master?
I got off at Ampang Park and flagged a taxi. By chance, it was the RM4-per-entry one! It was past midnight so I didn’t kick a fuss. It had no front seat. There were two tires in the back, where there were two ‘back‘ seats facing each other. He took the tires and placed them in the front.
It had a glass window between the passenger and driver seat, and a black tray in between to pass the money.
He reached my place at RM17.40. I handed him RM20 (I didn’t ask about midnight charge.) I waited for the change.
(Translation of conversation in Malay.)
He: What, I haven’t even counted the midnight charge!
Me: I thought you already set midnight charge in the meter, since the meter went up in 20 sen increments instead of the normal 10 sen…
He: No, it’s RM4 per entry, and 20 sen increment during the daytime.
Me: Ohhh okay… thank you very much.
I quickly got off before he could say anything. 🙂
I had a double pass for My Boss’s Daughter at GSC Midvalley, and I had a free Saturday with absolutely nothing to do.
And so, I called all possible fans of Ashton Kutcher. (Meaning them females.) At least 10 straight out could not make it, but 4 said they could and (hours) later could not.
At one point, false hope was so high, I felt like Thomas Edison when he found the right filament. Of course, the rain drowned all hope.
Like a curse it was! I did not believe in luck and fate and all that, but this was too ironic indeed. Today was supposed to be a Saturday. The easiest day to go out. The holiday season was on. Nature, however, was all against it.
In an awesome act-of-God, God meddlesomely knew that I had a college project to finish. I didn’t even bump into anybody familiar in Midvalley!
It wasn’t until I broke out of routine that I would break the spell. I was hungry, but not hungry enough for a greasing of fast food. I walked to Rotiboy, and I bumped into an ex-classmate from school!
“Albert!”
I didn’t recognize him at first. A lot later I realized he was the Malay prefect who negotiated in Chinese with the gangsters. And here I was, a banana, unable to speak Chinese. He looked Chinese anyway.
I don’t even remember ever trying the legendary Mexican Bun, so I asked how many would be nice for lunch. He sold me two for RM1.50. Later I found that one bun was RM1.50. 🙂
It was nice, strong smelling, collapsingly crunchy, and had sweet butter on one end. How do you tell which end is it, so you don’t start there?
However, after two, I was full, and I didn’t feel the same addiction that many have described.
I was supposed to meet up with Shaz in KL at 9:30pm to borrow his digital camera. He had college before that so I couldn’t meet him earlier.
Instead of bumming around town walking alone as usual staring at people, I figured, why not break fast? I called 5 friends, all of which could not make it in the end.
Shaz’s class was cancelled, so he could come a bit earlier. It was like fate. If only he would call and I would say I was eating dinner at One Utama, and that I’d only be in KL at 9:30pm. If only.
FOOD
We went to Hartz Chicken Buffet. I took loads of fried chicken and little biscuits. Refillable ice lemon tea is heaven, man. Unfortunately I didn’t read all the signs and I took liver disguised as fried chicken! Eugh. Had to finish it, or I’d have to pay for it. 😛
I O U
I was walking towards the bus stop, and I passed by Low Yat Plaza. In a weird Sixthseal kind of way, this blur-looking guy comes up to me, asking if I speak Chinese. We speak Malay.
Apparently, he needed RM24 to get a bus back to Banau, Negeri Sembilan. He showed me his IC and an empty wallet. He said his friend took his money.
I pointed to the police car parked across the street (at Sungei Wang) and told him to go report his friend. He then admitted that he owed his friend money. “Itu you punyer pasal”, I said. It was his fault, him to blame.
He pleaded again, saying he would call me and mail me the money. I turned around to check my pocket (not very safe thing to do) and I gave him RM5. I told him to go ask some other people, since that was ‘all I had‘.
Shaz’s digicam was in my pocket, but I figured it wouldn’t be safe to let him know. He had a real authentic pitiful face though. 😛
I hereby unleash the camboy in me! (Took quite a while since I wasn’t photogenic today. 🙁 )
It was holiday bonanza at Berjaya Times Square‘s Cosmo World Theme Park. I hopped in line, happy to have RM10 off the usual RM30. One of the gang stayed behind, walking stick in hand.
Note: As I have never rode a rollercoaster before, I shall warn you that I will give my account of the rides very excitedly and positively.
Six of us (Ayman, Jerry, Calvin, Brian, Brian’s friend and I) queued up for the rollercoaster. I went through the technicalities of it with the physics expert Ayman. Well, we didn’t sign a consent form, so we could still sue. 🙂
It started off slow, and I just shouted some nonsense for the fun of it. It wasn’t as scary as expected… the force was stronger, and the air crashing into my face was more apparent.
It could only be scary when the rollercoaster went through two railings, rolling sideways. (From standing below, you could see the support beams vibrating!)
Even the loop wasn’t so bad, since our heads were thrown forward to stare at our shoes. At most times I leaned on the bracing padded thingy so my head wasn’t bouncing about.
Verdict? Jerry said: “My Honda can go faster than this.”
I walked out straight, without any swagger. 🙂
Next!
We went on the magic carpet clone. This was a bit scarier since the thing would hold you upside down… and you would slide in your seat a bit. It seemed to go on forever too! I saw a poor fellow lose a 20 sen coin. It fell down oh so gracefully, apparently in slow motion.
At this point the young ones (well, 15 years old) were feeling headaches.
There was the DNA Mixer. This one looked very promising. Two rows of seats would be doing backward rolls and forward rolls real quick. I felt my stomach go up and down during the spins, but that was it… I couldn’t remember what the ride was about after that. 🙁
Then came the kid’s play turning thingy. I wouldn’t know how to describe it, but it was a counter-clockwise movement in a clockwise-moving set of arms attached to a huge pole that extended almost to the balcony. It wasn’t so fun as I wasn’t afraid of those heights. 😛
We then headed for lunch. On the way out, the guard marked an ‘M‘ (presumably for makan/eat) so we had one more free entry on our unlimited ride pass.
McDonalds there was packed, and there were no ATMs in the place, so we had to walk to Low Yat Plaza for that. We headed to McDonalds in Sungei Wang, and the 3 young ones had to leave. They were tired from walking from Berjaya Times Square to Sungei Wang!
Ayman: “Kids these days get tired just walking a bit.”
Ironic how it should be the old geezers (Jerry, Ayman and I) who should get tired. Bintang Walk was never really for kids anyway… the walking and purchasing power is different from your average family shopping mall. 🙂
Dide made her grand entrance at the Bintang Walk/Lot 10 corner McDonalds. Nope, not to be confused with the Sungei Wang one. (She told us to meet her there.) Shaz also met us there. After that I followed her and her boyfriend to Bentley, while Shaz, Ayman and Jerry went back to Berjaya Times Square.
Bentley was crowded, presumably because two local axemen were showcasing Fenders. My butterscotch Ibanez-to-be was out of stock! Grrr. Not like I had the money just yet anyway.
We then met up with Shaz, Nabila, Johnson and Michelle for dinner. Secret Recipe was at a desolate corner in the planned-to-be 80% full Berjaya Times Square! After that, Nabila, Shaz, Johnson and I went to Starbucks. Again, there wasn’t much crowd to see around there. Maybe it was the wrong time.
Heck, Bintang Walk was surprisingly less crowded than usual, although it was a Saturday and it was holiday season.
As I am writing this, I am having a happy relapse of the day’s rides. I feel dizzy. I feel like I’m in the DNA Mixer again, rolling backwards! WHEEE!!!