The Devilish Note

When i was younger, i knew what gift/s got bestowed on me. I was thankful for one and was equally curious about the second one. You see, the second gift god gave me was the ability to talk. ..... alot. In fact, i hate report card day because i know at the bottom of the page, there is a small note which states

Kenneth seorang pelajar yang bijak. Dia juga seorang pelajar yang sentiasa ceria. Tetapi terlampau banyak cakap. Sila ambil perhatian.

Translated:

Kenneth is a bright student. He is also a fun and cheerful child. However, there seems to be a lack of oral plug which can stop him from talking too much. Kindly invest in one.

When i was younger, i dread for this day as my parents will continuously nag, scold, remind me that i talk alot. I usually wonder, do i really talk that much or it was just a figment of imagination of my teacher/ teachers. I only talk during recess. and moral studies, and during language classes, and sometimes during maths and sciences class. I know i never talk in history class. I was too busy falling asleep. Yet, this gift was meant for greater things. I hoped.

Now looking back, i see that most employers are looking for people who are able to communicate well, both written and verbal. Well, most people are trained to write since they were toddlers. However, the skill of communication needs to be well honed either by talking to friends or strangers. It is a mastery of both the brain and tongue. The sharper your tongue, the more efficient information gets through.

Advertisers are now looking for more effective methods to pass on a message besides written signage beside the road. Here is an example, do you pay more attention on the billboards or on your speedometer when you are speeding down the highway. Interestingly, most people look forward to know how much they have clocked in on their mileage rather than looking at the passing boards.

However, most companies are investing in information networkers to pass on the message. You see this alot in malls, gas stations and other heavily congested areas. Because it is easier to listen than to read and memorize in a short period of time.

Moral of the story, talk more, listen more. Earn more! XD

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Now playing: Stereo Love (Edward Maya ft Alicia)

Gherao (The Finality)

This post was postponed for a few months due to lack of inspiration and commitments. ;P

On the horizon, a group of native aborigines was circling what appears to be a thin man sprawled on the ground. The natives were masked but they circled the accused with authority. There were no sticks brandished but their eyes mark with such intensity that the grounded one was not able to prop even his arms up. Dust were kicked up, such that it gives the crowd a light layer of protection from the baking rays of Ra.

It would have been honor and glory if the plans were made right. Such burden as too great for a man but he was the One. He was presented the golden seal from the Oracle. The All-seeing. Definitely they had seen something in him to present him with such authority. A plan that would mark this town as the next Athens. The stakes were high but he he was game. What is life without stakes. It would be like playing poker with the blind.

Fate however hid the aces. The town people was not supportive of the idea. That would bring destruction, one elder shouted. That is against our believe, our culture, another yelled. Yet he would not listen. We have what they need, his hand waved towards the lush surrounding. They promised to take just a part for their needs. One year, one year and everything will be fine. If only he had knew that the Oracle wanted him to save the town. If only.

The barren land was now a habitat for scavengers. Lifeforms disappeared as water frizzled into nothingness. It was dusty and thirsty for the man. He was not the One anymore. His eyes were wild. Sanity was driven out of him by scorching rays. He needs space. He needs air. Beyond the circling crowd was freedom. So sweet the smell.

He lost his judgement. With one frantic look, he dashes out from the encircling. Without warning, a hail of stones and pebbles rained down on him without mercy. No, mercy was gone with the purity of the land. He was stoned alive. Blinded and broken, he tried to run. To move. The torrent of gravel seems like an eternity. Battered he lay there.

Vultures swarmed down, claiming their reward on a broken soul.

Summer Post-Mortem

Qhen we are a child, we use to wonder what is our priorities in life. Life back then used to be homework and games with the usual test or assessment. Nothing else matters back then. We have friends and company. Money was not an issue as parents are there to fund us. As we grow, our materialistic behavior grows as well. We are exposed to media advertising which subjugate us into thinking material that we want as needs.

Our perspective towards our surrounding and society changes. When we are child, we care more about the environment. This behavior mutates as we grow older. We no longer care about the precarious and fragility of the nature to sate our hunger for money. We see the consequences in plenty of uncontrolled forest burning in Indonesia. Forest burning reduces waste disposition cost as well as the cost of purchasing fertilizer.

Our perception on society changes. Everything is a crazy rat race to the top. Our vision on society status is based on the monetary part rather than their sincere personalities. You might be thinking oh no i am not as superficial as you think I am but i can tell you, there are inkling that this happens. Especially in urban areas where money is what makes the world spins.

Peace is no longer about equality but more on who has the bigger stick than the other person (quote Ironman). Help is given when a reward is expected. A person may have a thousand friends but he /she would not know whether there is a knife behind their back.

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Now playing: Thinking of Me (Olly Murs)

Don't hold back.

I figured out that i am old since i crossed the 21 threshold. Yea, that is the limit guys, not some fabled 25 or 30 as the cut off line. I learnt that my patience level grew lower when my age heightens.

I do get pissed off and get a little quirky at small things. Usually, these things don't go my way either. However what i would like to say is that we are right to feel angry and pissed. It is human nature and instinct. What I would suggest is not to hold back your feelings but do let others know what you are feeling so they can either 1) help you get back on your feet or 2) stay away from you to avoid further pissation. Just saying.

Uh my summer days are mundane as i filled my twilight nights with reruns of movies and chocolates. Yea i get what it means being a couch potato. Lethargy washes over you like a tide of procrastination. I just got a set of 6 books at a good price of 30 bucks. It is an array of books ranging from water technology to marketing strategies. It was a good buy considering one book costs around 5 bucks.

Now i spend my time browsing through some of the books. Hahahaha, kind of like a consolation that i am doing something productive :)

How is your summer going on?

Back to the Blogosphere (Bersih 2.0 9th July 2011)

Sometimes, i wonder why i seldom blog. Maybe it is due to my laziness. Maybe it is the inspiration. Or maybe it is my it is my inability to come up with a cool blog title.

It has been near to months into summer and i am still kinda in a haze on what is going on. I know things are happening around me but i seem to shrug them off my shoulders. Today, I would like to highlight on Bersih 2.0 which took place on the 9th of July 2011. Well, GLC newspapers such as the News Straits Time (NST) kindly reminded the public that it was clearly a sham event. The newspapers portrayed the masses of protestants during the event as barbarians.

Naturally, each protest has their cause. Who would dedicate time and money on something if they do not worth anything. So Bersih 2.0 is here to start a peaceful rally for a better, more just election. Is there anything wrong?

So what the government thought was that this rally might "educate" the public on the tyranny which is happening as we speak. Well, only a retard or a child might not know this but the general public of Malaysia do know what is going on.

Although I personally think that bringing a rally down the road isn't a really good idea, but what choices does Dr Ambiga has? Yes the Gov suggested that she can organize the event/ rally in a stadium. And yes she can apply for a licence to do the rally in the stadium. But FYI, MOST STADIUMS are owned by the Gov. And the in the end, the "stadiums" rejected her application.

Yes the Dr Ambiga played all her cards, but the Gov holds the ace/aces.

Next, media played their cards. By effective spreading of rumors and news, the peaceful event turned into a horrific war with tear gases and water cannon. Well how did it happened? Easy, the Gov feed GLC media board with misled information and loads of cash. I would like to highlight in particular the NST did a particular good job in superimposing a fake picture of a dude (so called Bersih supporter) throwing what appeared to be a homemade bomb to the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU). This picture appeared as the front cover of the paper on 10th July 2011 (Date is vague, i forgotten). Come on, child ply much?

Everywhere around the globe, protests and rallies do happen. Only in China and Malaysia, rallies are purposed as something that we should not do. I do understand that China is a communist country. Freedom of voicing out your opinions are not exactly legal. But in Malaysia, we do practice this thing called the Monarchy Democracy similar to that in England. Yea we do have our King. But by democracy we also have the freedom to voice out what is right. Since the government did not provide us with the right media to feed our opinions, yea i agree now that we should bring it to the streets.

With corrupted medias, the public voices are stifled by the masses of rubbish the gov feed to us daily. Do you believe what you read on the paper or do you filter out the truth yourselves. Stand up for what you believe in although the others might nudge you to do otherwise. It is you, your voice your country. You decide.

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Now playing: Flash Delirium (MGMT)

Day Trip

Last thursday has got to be one of the most happening days since I got to the states.

Made a trip downtown LA in Hollywood, then Santa Monica. The total travel time was

about nearly 6 hours with about one hour to Hollywood and about 2 hours to Santa
Monica from Hollywood. All of this include waiting for bus and train. Despite the tiring
travel involved, it was truly worth the trip as we really saw AMERICA. What I see here
in my area is a barren desert with nothing to offer.

For the day I only had one travel companion with me but I have no complaints. She was
punctual, considerate and good listener/talker. We headed out early in the morning to
catch the bus. After arriving at the central bus station we bumped into a colleague who
was nice enough to direct us to our destination. To be honest, we were both very lost at
first and was not sure of our heading. But all I had to do was ask around. From the bus
driver, the old man at the bus stop, the security guard at the train station to the punk
with a scateboard by the sidewalk. All were nice enough go give me correct directions.
Anyways, our first destination was Hollywood. The first thing me and Candy realized
was that the scene was totally different from our area. The buildings were taller, the
people were well dressed, there were more cars and even the sky was different. But
within 60 seconds my money was stolen. Dont worry, it was only a dollar. You see, there
are people in costumes hanging around Hollywood ready to take pictures. Some guy
dressed as zorro "seduced" Candy into taking a pic with here. He did it all with a
hispanic accent.

Madamme mossel eh, do you wanna takeh the pichah wither me ah?

After we took the pic. We were about to walk off when he suddenly told me in normal
American accent. "Dude, we take tips for pictures". I gave him a dollar and walked off.
Haha, serves him right. Even a dollar was too much. Being in Hollywood was nostalgic
as Ive been there once with my family. It was good to see the place again, nothing has
changed.

Candy looking into the horizon looking for HK

After spending about 2 hours in Hollywood, we headed off to Santa Monica Pier, as you
can see from the picture above. The place was somewhat not what I expected. It was
infact better. There was something about it that made it kinda special. The scenery
was very vibrant. From the sidewalk towards the pier, I can hear tribal drums being
played by street performers, loud techno music played from topless cars and the sound
of wind whispering through my ear. There was a mini themepark on the pier hence the
ferris wheel. Seagulls were flying about, and the sound of people muffling the sound of
the tide bringing in the waves. I guess it kinda reminded me abit of Penang :(

The trip ended well and there was hardly any difficulty in our trip. Going out again
next thursday. Will upload more photos. :)

Important messages

Sometimes you know something, you know you are doing something right,
but if you don't tell /don't tell properly, people wouldn't know /wouldn't get it.

You don't expect people to understand if you don't convey your message properly.
Next thing is, again, don't assume that people will understand...

If you don't follow these rules, whatever that is gonna happen, you don't put the blame on others.

One very simple example that happened to me today explains what am I gonna tell in this post.

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I always plan my time. "Sometimes" when I've got lot work to do, I wouldn't wanna waste time unnecessarily when I could settle tasks in a more efficient way.

Yesterday afternoon, dad told me to go his office today (morning) to help him with some of his work, as usual.

I promised.

I was thinking to myself. Since my car is already time to service and since there is a workshop nearby my dad's company, I could settle things one shot; where I could help my dad, at the same time fix my period-red myvi.

This morning, I managed to wake up early and I thought things could go well as what I've planned, but suddenly my fat sister told me she was going for slimming. Worse still, she told me she had to take my car because her car ran out of petrol.

Me being a kind brother, told her nicely that I wanted to go for car service, but I DIDN'T mention about helping my dad (that was my first mistake).

So my sister's reply was, "Aiyo, my car no petrol la, you go service tomorrow only lar.."

I was like, well, sounds OK.. anyway she was in a rush for the slimming appointment.

After she went off, I thought, since I can't bring my car to service today and since dad didn't remind me about helping him (I quietly ASSUMED the task was not really urgent), so I thought it's ok to go tomorrow then... I planned this all in my heart and I "pictured" myself telling dad about this and he was okay with it.

My second mistake was I sort of assumed that his work can be delayed as well and third mistake was I sort of expected dad to understand that I don't have a car when I didn't even tell him..

So later on when dad came back in the evening, he was a little unhappy and he said, "told you to come this morning, yet you didn't come..."

I did not have a good answer to explain myself and so I re-think and analyse the whole scenario which led to this ending..

Just because I didn't inform my dad earlier about the incident this morning, he already assumed that I've forgotten about going to his office... but I can't blame him for assuming because I didn't tell, I don't expect him to know.

I can easily put the blame on my sister by saying "neh, jie took my carrr larr"
but I didn't, because it's not entirely her fault, it was mine also because I didn't tell her I have to go office to help my dad. So I can't expect her to know..

So moral of the story is, tell people what you wanna do, if the thing that you gonna do, involves others, directly, or indirectly.. so that people know what exactly you're doing.

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Another story which also explains my words:

Happened also on yesterday night,

my sister is just like me, maybe that's how our family do things, because my dad has the same bad habit as well, that is, "sometimes" we do things and we don't bother explaining or telling others.

So yesterday, she got an interview at a childcare nursery. Apparently, she simply applied on jobstreet last summer and they called her up few days ago for an interview. She was not interested to get the job at all but she wanted to go anyway.

She went at 4pm.. and she had no idea what time the interview was gonna end.

So around 7 - 8 pm, my mum and I were wondering where did she go, mum was saying that interview cannot be so long and doesn't really make sense that childcare nursery open until so late. Then my mum started calling her, but she didn't pick up, called many times and no one picked up....

My mum got quite worried, and I could understand, because recently there are really lots of bad news regarding security in Malaysia, such as 8 years old girl got raped in the toilet, a man attempted to rape a lady on a bus, acid splasher and so on...

I asked her boyfriend and her boyfriend wasn't sure where was my sister and he couldn't reach her as well, so mum got more worried.

Since we "roughly" know where is the "childcare center" (as my sister also roughly told me the location), we decided to go and look for her, and in the end we managed to spot the period-red myvi and we stopped and looked for her.

Apparently, that so called "childcare center" is not really a childcare center but more of an English literature tuition center for kids. My sister was still in there and she said her interview ends on 8:30pm. She was kinda shocked and slightly pissed of our "surprise visit".

I think/"assume"

Her first mistake was, she didn't tell me exactly where she will be going when I asked her.

Her second mistake was, she didn't tell clearly that it was an English literature tuition center but she told me it was a childcare nursery instead. Why is this message important and should be conveyed properly? because with common sense, we know childcare nurseries normally don't open until so late, since childcare service is meant for busy working parents, and 7 - 8 pm ? who works until 7 - 8 pm? hahaha

Her third mistake was, she didn't at least text us saying she might be home late and she didn't text us despite my mum's limitless phone calls.. until one point I "assumed" she turned off her phone because at one point my mum couldn't reach her already..

That's how important to deliver right and accurate messages.
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As we also know, many aircraft crashes that caused many deaths happened due to failure in communication or due to failure in conveying proper message between pilots, co-pilots and flying crews.

Why, because if your message is improper which doesn't explain/tell the exact meaning or instruction, no one will know the seriousness of things... and the result will be... bomb... and crash...

So, I hope this post does bring out the meaning of what I wanna share. This is as a reminder for myself and for our readers to refer.

*Don't assume...