Again, a survey which requires real effort to count. Like how do you know these people on your Friendster list?
Met from work (92/327 or 28%)
Met online, then in real life (93/327 or 28%)
Met anywhere else (55/327 or 19%)
Met from school (43/327 or 13%)
Met online, but never in real life (29/327 or 9%)
He/she added me so I wouldn’t know (15/327 or 5%)
This is why I haven’t written a testimonial for you:
1) I don’t know you, you added me
2) Other than giving you money, you class secretary you, we never had any interaction
3) I wasn’t feeling creative enough (my testimonial will stand out in your list)
4) I have too many friends to write testimonials for
I’ve always figured the pecking order to be this:
The lesser-friended one will write testimonials for the more-friended one.
While this is not fair, it makes sense. Back when I had less friends, I had more time to write. Haha. If you want to be spotted on a local celebrity’s profile, write a testimonial for him/her! (What makes you think you’re so lucky to be in his/her first 10 friends list on his/her profile?)
Put proper effort into the testimonial – write creatively. Don’t use a horrible template. Be funny. Quote something that is relevant to the person. I’ve clicked on testimonial writers who are funny. It also helps to be photogenic with your real picture.
Oh while I’m at it:
1) Friendster will not delete your profile, testimonials, messages, pictures, bulletin boards etc. unless you post pr0n or impersonate a celebrity.
2) Whatever disappears is only temporary. Check your Sent messages to see if it was sent, even if there was an error. I’ve seen 10 of the same Bulletin Board post because the fella didn’t see it posted (but it was!)
Quit depending on it for your apparent social feed. As for server stability… chill. This isn’t Hotmail.
This morning’s Teh Tarik at Maju Curry House, Taman Jaya had cinammon.
This morning’s feeder bus was fast and got me sleeping at a bench in Sunway Pyramid at 9:30am.
Thanks to Frus, I finally have a pyramid-shaped Rubik’s cub… I mean, puzzle. Nabila told me of her car accident. Jin arrived, and this morning’s 11:15am screening of Troy was long, even though scenes were cut out. Must Orlando Bloom appear in a ship everytime? (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Lord Of The Rings, Troy…)
This afternoon’s sun and traffic condition was not forgiving as we inched to KL Sentral, to get to the monorail to Times Square. Met loads of people at the 4th Xfresh Gathering. Made noise. Was happy. Very happy.
This evening’s visit at Times Square found Daytona USA 2 machines! The graphics were modern-quality, with a looser-feeling steering wheel. On the bus home, I figured out how to solve the pyramid.
This post was horribly reflective of my laconic state.
I ran down to Texas
There was my woman
Riding a cowboy
Bowlegged on his weapon
I said hey pardner
Don’t you steal my baby
He said chill out my brother
Was not like we was steady
But hell I said
She had my momma’s ring
The one that I gave her
Don’t it stand for nothing?
He said she be wooing smooching b**ching
About mah dog
He said she be flashing tempting panting
But not for my log
As I rode into the horizon
He felt a cold shiver
I felt happy for him
I was proud to be a gift giver
Oh, and I’ve linked YK, Jing, Kristin, Debbie and relinked Dustyhawk and xen0s in that Links section of my narcissistic About Me! page.
I bumped into xen0s at driving school. (He gave me the Dumbass VCD! Heard of Jackass? This contains partial nudity and grossness too!) We waited hours for our numbers to come and our bells to be tolled.
My bell tolled at 2pm. I failed proudly. Overshot the slope even though I was going slow. I thought it was a tick in the Fail box, but he asked me to do it again. Thinking it was over already, I didn’t enter enough before the three-point turn. Turns out that was the Fail box.
I should be the patron saint for failed driving tests. I didn’t even get out the road! (Yes I intend to tell this story braggingly.) There were a few cars in front of me, and as they turned into the main road, I slowly inched towards the road. I didn’t stop at the white line though.
“Swap seats”, he said. He did a cool reverse and U-turn back to school.
That, my friends, is my proud failure. I shall take it again in two weeks, when I can afford it. I do not want your pity, although donations are accepted with open arms.
After a late night at Matchroom Centro, I was inspired. A very simple thrash metal rhythm with old-Metallica-war-type-lyrics came of my exasperation waiting for Syefri to be fragged. Yep, he was on my team. I’m sure he’d wish me dead sooner too, as I camped out as the last man standing. I had the thrash riff for sometime, but that night was when I would connect them right. Yep, my first ever self-approved complete song, with the added weird acoustic ending for fun. Nope, it’s not downloadable yet.
Shom revealed the ever closing social circles of the people I knew on a Saturday breakfast.
I got to see that Bentley salesman (the one with the sweeet blues solos and classic rock chops) end a gig! I didn’t even know he was performing, as I was merely busybodying when Xfresh TV interviewed some rock star and his band, who had performed earlier. The Bentley dude was playing thrash metal (I think.) To think, the other Bentley dude, Shaun (also an excolleague) played in a bar band, when he otherwise noodles G3 stuff when I come over (supposedly showing me the merits of the guitar…)
Sunday? I slept, installed and played Far Cry (eat that, Valve and id Software!) and got a Indian barber haircut. Yep, my rock star hairdo had become immensely irritating when riding in the van, windows down, wind stabbing the hair into my eyes. Speaking of which I have a driving exam in exactly 5 hours. It would be wise to catch sleep in between then. Goodnight!
I drove relatively confidently down town without the death of the engine too frequently marring me, even parking and turning. Then, I marked attendance for college, and Syefri called.
“You going to the gig?”
“What gig? Today’s? Where already ah?”
“Black’s, City Square…”
“Eh, I thought it was further down Ampang, but I’ll drop by since it’s damn near my college.”
“I’m not going since I’m in Putrajaya lah… forgot.”
I was going to just drop by since I was broke, and I remember an email saying it ended at 1am, way past my bus schedule!
I found Az again, and found Shelley Leong the co-emcee, ready to smuggle me in as a member of the press. (I didn’t intend to write a review…)
By the time the formalities were done, I was adorned with a press kit and press tag. Impressive! Turns out that this was a bigger gig than expected. Like ICOM-end-year-project gig. Surprisingly organized, too!
I was ushered to the press section, and I met the equivalent of albnok at Xfresh‘s forums – kyaizen of Jamtank. (Syefri should be slapping his head repeatedly and selling his bass amp.)
He looked nothing like a rock star (but then, some colleagues don’t even know what kind of music I listen to. Do I bob my head frantically to classical music?)
I saw performances by… (oh wait, I’ll leave that for the article that will appear on Xfresh and Jamtank!)
He sent me home! What was even cooler was that he validated my area. Since you can’t get cheap good food in Plaza Mont Kiara, you’d have to drive past the Segambut Dalam bumps to Taman Sri Sinar for some nice mixed rice at a makeshift stall that had no name.
Hot damn. I felt bloody proud. Someday, I envision seeing a “New Sri Sinar Mixed Rice Restaurant” on Jalan Gasing.
You know you’re mature when you’ve created an invisible freeform cage of lasers. Oh wait, they’re not lasers. They’re not pure streams of single-wavelength light. They’re unpredictable as waves and rays.
In forgetting my physics theory, I may have stumbled upon the perfect analogy. The bars hold you, but they may not be straight vectors. They may bend. They may diffuse. All you have to do is avoid and contort yourself. Plus points for planting your appendages on colored circles.
Learn to please. Learn to not say something, just because your apparent ignorance or nonchalance will work to your advantage. I respect people who have commanded life such that things will fall into place; it is not luck but pure (unconscious?) deliberation. Hidden behind that political smile is a chess machine, doing tree traversals.
Learn that a fork in the road is not always a choice between good and bad; just bad and worse. Checkmate is bound to happen. In the immortal words of Dewey Finn, just give up.
You can’t sprinkle rainbow smiles on everybody’s faces. In fact, by doing so, following the shape, it would be an upright arch, or a frown. The words that come would be colorful, too!
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!
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.