why wy?

Terry's car got stolen, which is pretty amazing considering the shape it's in.

It used to be Brian and Lingam's car, and was known as "The Beast". It had an ugly, rusty gash on the side and the front passenger seat had collapsed. If that car was a person, it'll be a crusty senior watching tv and drinking beer all day. A war veteran with a bad back.

If my car was a person, it'll be an lady, early 40s, graying hair but she dyes it. Still active, though age is catching up. Plays loud music from the 70s and 80s.

this post is dedicated to ak, who says I don't blog enough :)

It's the first day of the election campaign here and both sides have already called each other liars. It bodes well for the next month or so, maybe they can find new ways of mudslinging.

And heard this bitchy comment on tv: A scientist is trying to debunk the healing properties of the waters at Lourdes. He said: "You don't see the pope playing for the Vatican soccer team.''

Come on guys, scrounge up and get me a time travel voucher for my birthday. Not sure if it's real or not, but through the miracle of compound interest and time, these guys promise to take you to the future once time travel is invented and barring natural disasters like an asteroid hitting the earth.

No seriously, I've been seduced by the Helsinki jacket (or something that looks similar) at the Kathmandu factory outlet. The sale is on for a month, so I'll have time to think it over.

More tricks of the trade... I like the one about nurses.

From the almost daily grind and, a little late, another hilarious Microsoft story. Talk about we ARE the world, India and the Middle East are bits we don't need to know about really, until they refuse to be assimilated.

I'm blaming the blogging silence on jardinains, this game that Joe and I are absolutely addicted to. It's like breakout, with garden gnomes throwing pots at you. The best part is when you get to bounce the gnomes.

And we went to see The Suns play. They rawk! The Suns are formerly the Boredphucks but they play happier music now. That's globalisation for you, supporting a local band in melbourne. Other cross-country, what a small world, weirdness:
My boss is a chinese man from India cooking singapore and malaysian style dishes.
One of the aikido black belts is a Hungarian Vietnamese who now lives here.
The guys Joe met watching football here turned out to be family of Reuben, who is Johan's collage mate, and one of their good friends is Pavi's brother.
Johan's almost-missed-her encounter with Jane in Alice, whom he met cycling in Turkey. He tells it much better than I can, so head here.

It's finally warm enough to wear just a t-shirt outdoors! The weather is perfect, like air-con with sunshine.

And I need to vent and appeal to some computer programmer out there: Please, please,please develop a game that you can kill parking attendants. They are the lowest of the lowest scum on earth. I don't just hate them, I want to squish every molecule in their miserable bodies, that is after afflicting them with piles, dandruff, cold sores and every digusting disease known to man. So, a computer game (preferably freeware, but I would pay for the satisfaction) would be ideal for me to vent in a not so illegal way. You, the hero, win points for shooting attendants - more if you run them down - as they try to ticket harmless cars. Sort of like pacman, if you can visualise it. The graphics and sound is important - a messy squelch and screams.

I had the strangest dream this morning. A group of us were talking, and Lingam's name came up. Joe said: Ya, he has this ability to complicate things, and he told me this about wei - her mind is like a trapezium.

I have absolutely no idea what it means, but maybe my subconscious is calling for attention.

And in a real conversation during dinner: Nick was asking about what women like and what do they mean, one thing led to another and joe asked me: So, what did you want in a boyfriend when you were 19?
It was too good to miss. I said: I had higher standards.

But it's hard to imagine being 19 again - it feels such a long way away - even though I've come full circle, as I type this blog between classes.

What I did back in my first first year (and now)
watch friends and frasier (watch simpsons and frasier)
drink, even though it was more expensive ( drink less, even though it's cheaper)
hang out and go for supper at fong seng (no prata here)
taekwondo (aikido - definitely fewer bruises, though I'm currently sporting one on the wrist)
studied (hm... desperately trying)
had crap hair (have better hair)

And finally, the news. Australia has the highest per capita number of dopeheads. I feel like a sober person in front of a locked liquor store.

Saturday was the coldest day in Melbourne in six years (maximum of 9.8 deg), as well as the coldest August day in 26 years. Strangely, the flowers are out and chanting spring spring spring. I heard a different chant at my very first footy match that night: Melbourne vs Sydney. By the way, Melbourne is a regular team, just like St Kilda or Carlton; it's not two cities against each other. And to further confuse you, the Sydney team used to be based in Melbourne under a different name. It's hard to explain footy when I'm still not too sure about the game, but it's basically 32 men trying to kick or toss a ball through two poles. There were a couple of scuffles, but no-one got beat up bad.

new words of the week:
simpson's sky (from joe): pattern of fluffy clouds against a blue sky like in the opening credits of the cartoon.
tetris: to pack as many things in a small space
eg we bought so much food that we had to tetris the freezer to fit everything in.

The days of ugly authors are over.A gorgeous woman was being interviewed on tv this morning, and she was promoting her third book. Her name is Tara Moss, a horror writer I think. I remember horror writers used to look like Stephen King, all geek and glasses. The intellectual, mysterious expression is also popular, see Salman Rushdie or Philip Pullman. Now these guys are good writers, but definitely not People's Most Beautiful People. Tara Moss, definitely. Are authors to be the next sex symbol?

Real life has been overwhelming busy - we went for the singapore seminar that terry organised, got invited out to dinner twice, went for aikido, had my car repaired etc etc. In the meantime, the handover happened (sidenote: handover is a bad choice of words I think, it echoes Hong Kong) to the tune of musical chairs. The DPM is now PM, the PM is now SM, and SM is now MM. There are even worse acronyms thrown up in the reshuffle, like MCYS (Ministry Community Development, Youth and Sports) and MEWR (Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources). Mewr is kinda cool, but brings to mind stray cats, and MCYS just sounds like... cyst. Not the best of mental images.

Onto a far more pleasant thought - chocolate. Just made the perfect, good enough to be served in a cafe chocolate cake, thanks to a recipe in the papers and joe's skill with the beater. And it's even got a rich dark chocolate glaze. Don't think I'll make it back home though, mom's kitchen is sugar-free and joe doesn't have an oven.

Am about to OD on superheroes this weekend - saw Hellboy on dvd, finally got around to Spider-man 2 at the movies, and they're showing X-Men on tv right now. Hellboy was fine, but I liked the comic better. Spidey was all right, it was nice to see Doc Ock with a decent haircut and glasses. Coincidentally, the superhero theme continued on my usual non-comic websites. Like Talking Cock and Campus Capers. Check them out, it's funny.

And I wrote this sometime ago:

Ten signs you are a comic book geek
1) You know the difference between Earth 1, Earth 2 and Earth 3. Sidenote: This reminds me of a philosophical argument we had to do, about mutiple earths (water and twater). Nuff said.
2) You have a secret superhero/villain identity.
3) You are the comic shop guy from the simpsons, or know someone like him.
4) You know how many times Jean Grey/Phoenix has died.
5) Having already tried with all your friends, you try to convert jehovah witnesses to comics. And succeed.
6) You can spot Stan Lee in all the cameos he's made.
7) Mylar.
8) You know the orgin of every comic book character ever created, their brother/sister/partner/pet dog but can't remember your neighbour's name.
9) You poke holes in movie adaptations.
10) You can locate Gotham City, Metropolis and Genosha on a map.

Just read the latest in movie news and this caught my eye: "Van Helsing" writer-director Stephen Sommers has landed the rights to Flash Gordon.

I really, really liked Flash Gordon as a kid, before I realised how cheesy it was and then I redeveloped a kitschy love for it again. It's a pretty lame plot, football player (or astronaut) gets marooned on strange planet, saves villain's daughter and blows stuff up. But the sets! The rockets made of tin foil! Ming the Merciless! And the music of Queen! Damn, it was good cheese. Like Barbarella.

And Ralph Fiennes is playing Voldermort in the next Harry Potter. Almost every other famous British actor is in the series, you could start a new game, three degrees of Harry Potter and come up with some interesting links. The next instalment will be directed by Mike Newell, who is famous for Mona Lisa Smile (bad), Donnie Darko (good) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (Erm). Hopefully, the new film will be dark and funny, and without Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts (who did a movie together - see, this three degrees of Harry Potter thing really works).

Johan is in Darwin. He's been taking really good pictures, like the one below. You can see more pictures here and here.

cuties on the streets of Cambodia.  

It's going to be national day back home and I feel an urge to celebrate it. I think's it's just because there's a continent and an ocean between me and Newton Hawker centre, because I've always celebrated National Day by being in another country.

I'm even tempted to try to listen to PM's National Day Rally on the Net, not sure if my blazing fast 56k modem can hack it. Don't worry about my mental health, I still find the National Day Parade a waste of time.

It's funny, I can remember the chorus to all the national day songs they put out but I can't sing majulah singapura or recite the pledge. I've been lip-syncing all this while...

The computer labs where I'm typing this used to be the hottest room on campus, and I've always thought it was the heater. Turns out the air-con hasn't been working for most of first semester.

Joe is coming on Saturday.... count 'em days! :)

In less exciting news, I got a job as a waitress. It felt surreal, laying tables and taking orders. I couldn't quite believe it was happening to me, maybe because it felt like a scene from gordon ramsey's kitchen nightmares (bloody good reality show btw) or any cooking series. Mum freaked out a bit when I told her, and she was probably thinking
:a) What, my daughter, a graduate, is waiting tables?
b) Will they work her to the bone with heavy plates and hot soups? Cinderella in a restaurant?
c) Will she still have time to study? Is she going to flunk and become a waitress forever??? (cue music from the Psycho shower scene)
d) All of the above

She relaxed when I told her that it was just temporary until I find a better-paying job (true), it would give me much needed pocket money (true, a glass of cooper's ale is $3.60) and the work is easy (soon to be true).

Other than my obvious inability to mop, I'm still grappling with the menu, which has nearly 100 items on it (Nick counted). So, there's a dine-in price and a take-away price, and I need to know ALL OF THEM. That's because they use the cash register to store cash, and all calculations are done with pen and paper. On my first night, I forgot to total up the bill for one table and double-punched another bill. But everything else went smoothly and they still want me back, so am keeping fingers crossed.

I figure if I can remember my anatomy I should have no trouble with the menu, but I'm not sure if I have a finite amount of brain space that I want to turn over to mango chicken ($10.45, $9.90) and tamarind prawns ($17.10, $15.10).

Then, there was a customer who wanted to know what szechuan sauce tasted like. (me: Er, peppery.) It's hard to describe, what does an apple taste like? Like an apple. She also wanted to know if we could do a szechuan sauce with duck instead of pork/beef/chicken/fish. I tried not to let my confusion show and mumbled something about asking the chef, but she ordered something else instead.

It's a fairly odd combination if you ask me, and will either turn out brilliant or disgusting. Turns out there is actually a recipe for Sichuanese duck in one of Monica's cookbooks. But it's an extremely complicated stuffed roast duck served with a rich gravy made from bones.

Joe's in KL, and he debated whether to tell me that they were eating ampang yong tau foo. He figured I wouldn't be thrilled to hear, so he delayed telling me until just now. Not that it made a difference to my reaction, as he just found out the hard way. It doesn't help that we didn't get to eat ampang yong tau foo the last time we were in KL, because Julian missed the turn-off. Julian is still hoping we'll forget it.