Gotta get a bike, Gotta paint it red

Something in Dracula from Houston must have been subliminal... Cos I went and bought this, which I had been eyeing for a while. Managed to bargain the price down to a cool RM650. Bought it off a Malay bike enthusiast who's moving up to an RM3900 bike frame.

It's a full suspension mountain bike frame. A Haro Extreme EX2. Why a full-sus bike? A less bumpy ride. And from the looks of the reviews I'm reading, it sounds as tough as a VW bug. Or maybe it's just out of some deep-seated paternal instinct to protect my boys...

Well, what follows now is to transplant the rest of my bike componentry from my 2yr old Scott Voltage YZ4 over to this new old bike.

Bought my Scott at a good discount 2yrs back, for commuting, and to push up Bt Kiara (my skill level is far from able to ride most of those trails). And since then, I have upgraded every component on the bike. The Scott is still a beautiful bike frame with one little minor flaw...

It's missing two eyelets for bolting on a disc brake for the rear wheel. Found that out when I bought a pair of mechanical disc brakes last week. Thus, it gave me the extra impetus to buy this Haro frame. (Although this MOAB looks so much prettier....)

And next, I'll have to source a pair of wheel hubs too. The nearest bike shop is trying to scalp me for RM380 a pair. Am trying to find one at a quarter of that price....


And on some more serious news... Alan Greenspan retires from the US Federal Reserves at 80, and gold popped up to USD570 per troy ounce, an all new high in decades.

Perhaps Love

Once in a long while, a story comes along and speaks accurately of my own personal sentiments regarding love.

To borrow the words of a great philosopher, my sentiment is reflected as such, "Love : a grave mental illness." Plato.

This appears to be the theme in Perhaps Love. Not that I disapprove... It's good to see a theme more grown up than the usual Cinderella and Snow White stories.

But I still found the story horribly boring. It tries to do a Moulin Rouge thing, with circus performers, tango music, a tragic actress in a love triangle, and Jacky Cheung singing the bulk of the songs.

What were they thinking? Seriously! A chinese Moulin Rouge is like... a Bollywood Superman. (For a good laugh, please click on the preceeding two links, you won't be disappointed.)

I don't know music, but I know what I like. And I liked Ewan McGregor's singing way more than a guy who made his career and created his legend from his vocals.

I don't know music, but maybe it's something to do with the rhythm and cadence of tango music that makes it completely unsuited to mandarin lyrics. None of the songs were even halfway memorable. You know who wrote better lyrics? 阿牛 wrote more memorable songs than this. But that's just me.

The story revolves around three apexes of a love triangle. A mental case director, a mental case actor, and a mental case actress. I can't see how there's any love between the characters. The director wanted a sex-buddy for his long overseas filming jobs, and got comfortable with the girl. The girl wanted a break into acting, and take grotesque pleasure in mindf***ing the actor. And the actor is just a sad case of neurotic longing.

Perhaps love has missed the point completely. And the gratuitious song and dance sequences was how Moulin Rouge would be, if it sucked and used an amateur dance troupe. The cinematography was far from inspired. Watching the dance was like looking at spilt ice-cream on the floor: something that could have been very nice if a fool hadn't dropped it but is now just a disgusting mess on the floor that you wish you didn't have to clean up.

Plotwise, the love story climaxed early (at the same time as Takeshi's character), with half an hour to go. Which gave me some hope that the story will take a more guts-ey tragic turn: someone will die, either from tuberculosis (like Nicole), or someone's fit of jealousy (a good stabbing), or an unfortunate stage accident (like an ancient TV series I watched a long time ago, 戏班). The movie needed to end on an R+J tragedy or similar to have a glimmer of redemption.

The plot tried to go in just such a direction. Yet even while I was watching the clumsy fore-play, I realised that the director was going to pull out early and leave his audience unsatisfied. Wuss.


But watching the movie was not a complete loss. I made a surprising discovery about the actress, Zhou Xun. She's the blind girl in The Emperor and the Assassin.

Watched Emperor & Assassin many years ago in the cinema. And there was one scene that captivated me: where the assassin was sent to exterminate the family of a renowned sword-smith. After the massacre, the assassin found the blind daughter of the smith, who had been listening helplessly as her parents and brothers were slaughtered. The way she gazed sightlessly into the assassin's eyes.... Those were the most hauntingly soulful eyes I've ever seen.

I bought the VCD after that just to see those eyes again.

I've tried to look for a still of that scene from the movie, but can't seem to find it. Will make a still myself later.

Dracula from Houston

Sometimes it feels amazing when you find a piece of music that speaks to you on a personal level.

I've been playing Butthole Surfers' Dracula from Houston on a loop the entire time I'm blogging...

Got no future
Great big past
Little bitty guy on the rim of my glass
Gotta meet the plane so I can get my monkey
Teach him to be cool
But a little bit funky
Got no credit
And I got no fear
And I got about a buck
So I can buy a beer
Gotta see a doctor ‘bout the words I've said
And I gotta get a bike
And I gotta paint it red

Oh no
We gotta go
We're not gonna live forever
Why? Why? We gotta die
You know that we'll be together
Hey hey we gotta say
I could never be a savior
You don’t have to be there
Cause I'm never never never
Comin’ home

Three feet deep in a slow motion wreck
I was walkin' the walk
And I was talkin' to the best
I was wrinkled and shriveled
And steppin’ outta line
Had the end against the middle and losin every time
I was famous and heinous and crippled and sad
Thought I was invincible the baddest of the bad
Then I woke up one morning
And I stepped out of bed
Had to get a bike
Had to paint it red

Oh no
We gotta go
We're not gonna live forever
Why? Why? We gotta die
You know that wel'l be together
Hey hey we gotta say
I could never be a savior
I know that you’ll miss me
But I’m never never never
Comin’ home

Oh no
We gotta go
We're not gonna live forever
Why? Why? We gotta die
You know that we'll be together
Hey hey we gotta say
I could never be a savior
You don’t have to be there
Cause I’m never never never
Comin’ home

Staring in disbelief
Out at the gloom
I was forced with remorse to learn the bassoon
I got real good in about six years
Started playin’ out for a couple of beers
Then one day I was playin' at the gig
and in walked the monkey with a couple of funky friends
He came right over and said this is what you’ll do
You’re gonna get a bike
You're gonna paint it blue

Oh no
We gotta go
We're not gonna live forever
Why? Why? We gotta die
You know that we'll be together
Hey hey we gotta say
I could never be a savior
I know that you’ll miss me,
But I’m never never never
Comin’ home

Well, I've already got my blue bike. But I'll probably wait on that doctor's appointment.

Pekan Baru

My company has a client who has a couple of oil palm plantations in Sumatra, probably totalling 3 Singapores in size... They've an oil mill near Pekan Baru using our satellite broadband services. The system went down, and our contractor wasn't willing to commit personnel to service it. So it suddenly fell to me to fly there and get the thing working again.

Not too enthused about it. Cos when I go somewhere by car, I get to make mileage claims. And with the way my car sips petrol, I make a tidy little profit. But out in a boring little town in Sumatra, I don't get anything. And there's only 3 flights a week, I go on Tuesday, and I have to hang around there till Friday...

But it's work, so what choice have I got?

Gawd-awful early morning flight. No choice but to take a cab. Talked about Malaysia's economic disasters, past & future, the whole trip. The plane ride took off at 7.40 and I arrived at 7.20.

Luckily, the contact here met me at the airport. He slipped the customs people money to get me through without hassle. Who knows what's the going rate to smuggle in satellite transmitter parts etc... And if I let them know I'm just here to service an installation, they'ld insist on seeing my work permit/visa or something... But a couple of greens/blues/oranges/whatever greased the process far easier.

Hopped onto a car and driven almost 2hrs out of the town... Suffered a couple of minor head trauma on the way in, cos I kept dozing off in the car. But the driver was quite insistent that I see as much of his home as possible, and kept swerving the car sharply to smack my head against the seatbelt pulley. With each successive concussion, I lost more and more mental function, that it didn't even occur to me to just put the seat down and lie back until more than an hour into the journey.

They drive like maniacs here. The use of the car horn is a language all on its own. It can say a variety of things like, "Coming through!" "I'll bloody run you over if you don't get your crappy bike off the road!" "Don't you even dare think of cutting out into my lane cos I'm not slowing down for you, we'll die together if we have to."

It's better to just sleep through the nightmare and put my fate in the hands of God.

It took me all of two hours to get the thing working. After that, it's just a sad long wait till Friday.

I'm housed in some decent quarters at the mill. Room furnished with airconditioning, water heater, good spring bed, 24/7 maid service, food, gym. There's even pornographic art in my room. A kind of a spooky drawing of a topless kampung girl that reminds me a bit of Nang Nak. Small wonder that the previous occupant of the room took down the painting and put it face towards the wall.

I came prepared with appropriate 'desert island literature'. Some quasi-science/philosophy/art reading material that I prepared years ago. The kind of book that'll give you 6-12mths of reading in case you're stranded alone in a desert island... Gawd, it was boring!! I read a review of Godel, Escher, Bach in an issue of The New Scientist. I guess I'll eventually power through it somehow. For the same reason why people read A Brief History of Time.

The sex book I bought was much better reading. A lot of fascinating anecdotes on sexual cannibalism, stag horns, peacock sex, huge penises, etc. Oh, Stephen Jay Gould is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. It only *seems* that biologists think about sex all the time. But really, Gould writes very good stuff. He even wrote an essay on Lee Kuan Yew's eugenic government policies.

But the book I really wanted to read was Dan Simmons' Olympos. But I only have about 5-6 hrs of charge on my PDA, and there was no way to recharge it. Be assured that I'll be ranting about this book in a later blog...


Back to my living arrangements... The main door gave me a small reason for concern... There's a huge lead pipe for barricading the door with. What's up with that?

Is there some danger of the peasants revolting against the bourgeois? (Isn't it ever so cool to be able to put in a word of French to class up your vocabulary?)

Well, it appears that there had been some small trouble before.

The roads radiating from the main town are speckled with random small villages. Some village thugs have a habit of stopping the oil palm trucks and collect a 'toll' of a couple of fruits. They do this enough, and get a small truck load, and then come to the oil mill to try to sell the ill-gotten goods back to the people they stole it from.

The barricade, and the two guard-posts on the way to the quarters are necessary measures after an incident.

It's a sad, but not altogether surprising, state of affairs. What do the locals here have going for them? They've got a bit of land, and the short-sighted sale of which is only a one time source of income. The only industry around is logging, saw-mills, palm plantations and the palm oil mill.


And another unusual industry I noticed on the way in... I saw a roadside shop selling gallon bottles of 'bensin'. That's benzene, isn't it? And I thought, cool, why not? Even I have times when I felt that I could do with some mutagenic industrial solvent. Maybe there's some local industry that uses the stuff, and there's a market for gallon bottles of the stuff...

Then I saw more and more roadside stalls selling this. WTF? What's the mystery market for benzene here? Do they huff the stuff to get high?!

Then I found out that 'bensin' is indon for gasoline. And 'solar' is diesel. Ooookay... That makes more sense... They've got no petrol stations outside of the town centre. So, entrepreneurs will motor into town, buy up a couple of containers of the gasoline, and bring it back to his village and re-sell them at a mark-up.

The coolest thing though, is that nobody makes a fuss when you light up a fag at these petrol stations. Not many places around lets you satisfy your nicotine cravings while you're filling up your vehicle.


Anyway, finally Thursday comes around, and I left the oil mill. Early morning flight on the Friday, so took a room in town. Got to see a bit of the town centre. Had 250,000 rupiah in my pocket, and nothing to spend it on.

But did manage to buy 48packets of IndoMie. They're less than RM2.00 for 6pkts, where I have to pay RM3.30 for 5pkts in KL. And the Indonesian version tastes better than the Malaysian one. Well, at least I won't go home empty handed.


While I'm talking about travelling... I'll also mention a bit about how to get to and from KLIA.

Right after you exit the baggage claim, you can start making random eye contact with the crowd. I'm sure you'll then be approached by no less than a dozen illegal cabbies who'll charge you about RM70-80 for a ride into the city.

Or make a left, and follow the signs to the KLIA Express, where RM35 will take you into KL Sentral in 28minutes.

Or make right, and look for the KLIA Transit. It runs on the same tracks as the Express. But buy a tix to Putrajaya for RM6.20. Exit the platform at the correct stop. Buy another tix to KL Sentral for RM9.50, and go back down to the platform to catch the next train in 30min.

Thus, RM15.70 can get you into the city if you're not in a hurry.

Pedalphilia

I'm not talking about The Woodsman. Although I'm talking about 5yr old and 10yr old boys, this has nothing to do with PEDOphilia.

Joined my first mountain bike hash today.

I've been ghosting the KLMBH group since I bought my Scott Voltage YZ4 two years ago. In the beginning, I had no means of getting myself and my bike to the bash sites. Only bought my trusty Daihatsu Charade last year.

The only off road trail that's within manageable distance from my apartment is the Bt. Kiara trail, near Taman Tun. I've been there twice, just to push my bike up and down some of the trails. It's a very technical trail, and the bulk of it is beyond my abilities. Do wish I can skill up and tackle it soon, before all of it is lost to rampant development. Properties in Bt Kiara are lava-hot.

After buying the car, I told myself that I will start joining a few bashes, especially if it promises to be scenic and non-technical. Somehow, didn't get around to this for an entire year. Thought I'll do something to kick my MTB-ing up a notch this year. Checked the MSN group last night, and whadaya know, there's one today, and a whole bunch of newbies are gonna be showing too!

SET!

So I cleaned my bike. Got rid of the embarassing cob-webs. Wiped the chain and lubed it with fresh oil. And packed my bike off to Rawang. Found the hash spot after only one wrong turn.

104 riders this day. And met the near-legendary Pigpen Pat, who is responsible for the maintenance and creation of the bulk of the trails in Bt Kiara.

There's a long trail, 22km and a short trail, 12km. I signed up for the long one. Pretty ambitious, but no pain, no gain.

Started off at 9.30. A hundred riders following the hares off the road and into the rubber plantation. We had to cross two streams early in the trail, which slowly strung out the riders.

I hung around the back of the group, and followed a couple of guys to look for alternative crossings before doubling back anyway. By then, most of the group are no longer in sight. I followed the trail of paper until I caught up with a small group. A dad with a bunch of boys with him.

By then, the trail has gotten steep. My front derailleur was giving me crap and the chain slipped off the cogs no less than 5 times. I was also running out of breath, and had to get off and push. I found myself barely keeping pace with a bunch of 10year olds!!

It took the better part of half an hour before I left them behind! I'm not THAT out of shape, am I? I kept pushing forward, but never caught up with anyone else. Are even the newbies so far ahead of me already? Come on, there were waify (adjective used to describe Winona Ryder) Malay girls riding cheap and gawd-awful heavy steel LeRun bikes! Those monsters are a nightmare on the steep slopes.

A simple ride? That's freaking false advertising! And all this while, I was still on the shared track for both the short and long routes. The trail hasn't split off to sate the thirst of the sado-masochists yet.

There were a couple of downhills too. The trick is to relax and ride it out, picking you path carefully. Hard braking will just tip your centre of gravity forward, and you'll endo.

It is exhilirating as hell. The adrenaline saturates your brain and you feel like you can almost see the Matrix. My thought process went, Ohshitohshitohshit ohshitohshitohshitohshit ohshitohshit ohshitHowinthegoodLord'ssweetnamedidIsurviveTHAT!!!

I can almost understand now why there's a Kiara trail named, Boner. (This is a double entendre.)

But it gets trickier when the slope gets bumpier. If you hadn't chosen your path properly, or not skilled enough to pick the right path, you'll go don'tgointherutdon'tgointherut don'tgoindon'tgoin... HelloRut! GotothegrassGotothegrass and Wheeeee! and Ow!

The rider behind me saw me do a double headspin triple somersault. His words: "That was incredible!" I'm only sorry that I couldn't have seen it myself. I landed on my back, which was cushioned by my CamelBak filled with 3Litres of fresh water. I walked away from that fall with no more than a pain in my right butt. No scrapes. No bleeding. No broken bones. It's like a rite of passage, and it even felt great.

Lesson learnt: I forgot to raise my butt off the seat. If I had stood up a little, the bike wouldn't have bounced so much and I should have been able to surf down the slope with more control of my speed. When you're bouncing and your wheels air-borne, the brakes don't do shit. There's no traction. Braking in mid-air only locks the wheels, and that spells bad news when you hit the ground again. Either that, or get a full suspension bike. :P

After the fall, my rear derailleur started giving me trouble too. I couldn't shift properly to the low gears, and the rest of the ride became quite a pain. When I bought those SRAM 4 with the shifters, I asked how good is it compared to more expensive ones. The salesguy said that it's not good enough for serious enthusiasts. Seems like he's right...

I kept pushing onwards, and still no sight of the women and children. I didn't want to be last, even if this was my first hash. Although I can still spot the paper trails, I don't relish the idea of being left behind. After pushing up a horrible slope that nobody could ride up, unless he's Mickael Rasmussen... I finally came to the fork in the trail that distinguished the sado-masochists from the common man.

I've finally came 10km, and can either take a further 2km short route out, or another 12km long route. Wisely, I took the sane choice. The last 10km was hard enough for me. I had no intention of seeing the rest of what the hares had planned for us. I caught my breath for a bit and chatted with the hare.

I found out that the boy I had so much difficulty passing, was only 5 years old!!!! I was almost out-done by a kid 17% of my age!!!! I only passed him in the last kilometre!

The remaining 2km was uneventful. Finished the hash with just enough water to spare, and found myself being the first 15 finishers. I'm sure there were more scrubs than this...

Maybe everyone else went the long route? Or maybe the crowd got led down a false trail early on, and that's how I bypassed them. I never caught up with them, cos they were behind me all the while!

Took some well deserved rest, and carbo-ed up with what the ice-cream man was selling. Hung around the finishing area to watch people finish and observe the post hash activities. Some brought portable showers to wash off. One Caucasian dude unabashedly took off his lycra pants in full view of everyone. No towel. No hiding behind a car door or anything. Down came the pants while I was on the phone calling my sister. I had front row seats to his creamy white and blistered cheeks.

Got to admire some of the hardware (double entendre not intended) the riders were packing. Marzochi Bomber front suspension that cost more than my entire bike. A Whyte PRST-4 that costs more than my car (just the bike frame, mind you). Even a LeRun, so at least I'm not the saddest case.

It's a good day. Any day that you can walk away in one piece is a good day.

The damage:

-RM 5.80 for toll, and less than RM10 of gas to get to Rawang.

-RM 10 for joining the hash as a guest. The registration is so that they'll come look for you if you don't make it out.

-Lost the ear-piece of my fave specs after the crash

-One knocked up rear derailleur


-One crack in my bike helmet. That's why "No helmet no ride" is a hard rule at the hash. I made it through the day with no loss of G.C.S. so I guess I got off pretty lucky there.

-One bruise in my right butt. But you don't get a photo of that.

Autopsy of Engine Tuning Project

Maybe it's psychological, but the ride definitely feels heaps better after the tuning.

I can hit the same travelling speed on less rpms, and I only need to touch the gas pedal ever so lightly. The engine purrs sweeter. And I can power up slopes better on every gear. My Charade now tops out at 138km/h. Can't do better than that without gravity assist.

There is also a slight improvement in fuel consumption, which is really the main thing, isn't it? But I was kinda hoping for more. But that's probably cos the engine runs so much better now, that it's hard to hold it back at the optimal fuel economy speed of 80-90km/h. Travelling much faster than this, and air resistance becomes significantly greater and you burn more fuel. So I've been travelling at least 10-20km/h faster on highways. And I'm still getting an improvement to my fuel economy.

Sweet...

Another test is load.

My steed carries me around just fine most of the time. But like a woman, it becomes rather cranky when I invite other men inside her. And just as unforgiving too, cos even several days after driving a heavy load, she'll still be sluggish and unresponsive.

Well, Saturday, I went to Klang for Bak Kut Teh with a friend. That's an estimated load of 85kg there... The car did very well. We had a good breakfast. Then I drove around Jln Kapar and pop into every half-cut shop along the road.

A half-cut shop is a 2nd hand car parts store. They buy condemned vehicles, chop it in half, and refurbish & sell the engines and other parts.

I'm looking for the little metal door that covers my petrol intake. It had snapped off, and I was looking for a replacement. Had checked out 3 half-cut shops before this. Checked out another 8 this day. All no luck. Sad.

And on the way back, I missed a turn and ended up in a malay kampung. It's a very idyllic place, with tall trees shading the road. And at the end of the road, I came upon a surprise.

Wide open skies, undulating hills, and concrete monuments to the dead.

Stumbled onto a chinese graveyard quite by chance. Burial plots as far as the eyes can see. Drove in to explore, top a hill, and even more graves, and more hills, and the same again over the next hill.

It's a pretty cool discovery.

This may be strange, but I find graveyards very peaceful. Well maintained ones anyway. I also had a good time walking around the WWII monument in Labuan many years ago.

But the day was too hot this day to properly explore this place. I really wonder how far this graveyard goes.

Basking in the Warm Glow of Accomplishment, the First

This brag should have been written a couple of weeks ago.

A story of my kitchen...

I bought my apartment new. Well, it's a sub-sale, but what completed property isn't a sub-sale in Malaysia? We just can't get the idea of 'build then sell' through the heads of greedy developers.

Anyway, the apartment came bare. I had to put up lights, ceiling fan, and curtain rods in all the rooms by myself. And the kitchen finishing was disgusting.

They just slammed two lead pipes into the wall, and used that as the support to put on a lousy tin sink. There's no space to work, and makes the kitchen very uninspiring.

So Ikea comes into the picture.

Saw some interesting choices for kitchen counter-tops there. Either a cheap particle-board with a tough heat-proof laminate; or an elegant solid hardwood counter-top. Both will run perfectly across the 8ft kitchen area that I've got.

The laminate is easy to clean. Does not need maintenance. But if you're unfortunate to drop something on it hard enough to crack the laminate, you'll never be able to repair that. Also, particle wood is difficult to cut a neat hole in, and you're likely to get a jagged edge where you cut it.

The hardwood is more expensive. And looks very elegant. But being wood, it needs some love or water will damage or warp the wood.

The decision was made for me when I saw a solid hardwood board at the AS-IS corner. Marked down 30% cos there's small dent in one corner. Used a wood oil and saturated the wood with a protective sheen. Bought a jig-saw and cut a nice hole for the sink. (Bought the sink outside Ikea. Those Ikea sinks are overpriced.)

Important note when you buy sinks: make sure that it comes with all the necessary fittings to clamp the sink to the counter-top. Some of the discount sinks I saw don't come with these fittings. And it may be quite difficult to buy these fittings separately. I've not seen any in the hardware shops I've been to...

So I've got the counter-top, a hole, a sink. I bought just one kitchen cabinet to support the counter-top. Didn't want to get a full set. Expensive. I'll just wait for discount cabinets and grab them then.

Joy:
-I've got a solid hardwood kitchen top with 8ft of working space! Nice.

Disappointments:
-The bloody kitchen wall is slightly concave, so there's a lousy gap between the middle part of the kitchen top and the wall.

-The wood oil does shit. Water from the tap drips onto the wood, and after a while, it gets mildewy. One time a housemate toss a wet rag onto the wood, and that spot becomes permanently warped. Ikea sells a different kind of wood treatment oil, which makes the whole surface sticky, and is no protection against the mildew stains either.


I made do with the situation for the time being.

Then comes Christmas. Ikea redecorates the show rooms and discard some used stuff. I started dropping in everyday when I can. (Living across the road from Ikea is kinda cool.)

Eventually, I got 3 more cabinets, with doors, and drawers!!

Managed to get the whole thing installed when my dad dropped in after Melbourne. He bought an electric planer in Melbourne. We used that and trimmed the countertop edge until it fits into the concave wall.

Put legs on the 3 new cabinets and put them in.

I took out the sink and did some more work on the kitchen top. Used an orbital sander that I bought from Bunnings, and tried hard to get rid of the gunky oil from the surface. Then bought a can of Minwax Wood Finish & Stain.

Painted the whole piece of wood a deep mahogany colour.

Piece of advice when using this wood finish... The first coat is EVERYTHING! I thought I could just slop on the first coat, then be more careful with the second and third. But it was difficult to cover up my laziness with the first coat.

The first coat is EVERYTHING. Make it count.

But it still looks great. And the surface is now waterproof and everything. But I added a layer of Minwax polyurethane just to be sure.

Yeah, the cabinet doors don't match. I've got two panels biege, two panels mahogany, and two panels steel. But it doesn't look too bad. Full price of one mahogany colour door is RM150. So, I'll deal with the mismatched doors. It's not worth enough to make them look all matching and pretty.

And see how the drawers come all the way out. They can come 95% out without falling off. That's what's cool about Ikea drawers. They're pricey as heck, but the price after the AS-IS discount is more acceptable.

Then I get a plastic tray, and I've got a neat little cutlery drawer. How cool is that. Um... it does seem like an inordinate number of knives, doesn't it? But I don't think I even got ALL my knives together in this shot either. I've enough blades here to dispose of a corpse. Bone knife, de-jointing knife, serrated, non-serrated, even a couple of good stab-bey ones...

Yea... I'm probably disturbed... But we all know that already...

I almost wanted to add a Global to my collection. Saw a couple in Melbourne. It's the Hattori Hanzo, of chef knives...

But I'll end the blog here before my blood lust manifests itself in a socially disturbing manner...

Y - The Last Man

A friend told me she was reading Y - The Last Man. She likes Life of Pi, so her tastes carry a lot of street-cred with me.

Took me one night to rustle up 41 issues of this DC/Vertigo comic. (I might teach you how one day, but not here.) And I've not been able to stop reading it.

Premise of the story: A plague has killed off every male on earth. Everything with a Y-chromosome just puked up blood and died. All at the same time. Like rapture, that took all the men and left the women behind.

All, save Yorick, the last man, and his chimp, Ampersand.

The story immediately reminded me of The White Plague, by Frank Herbert. (You know, the Dune guy? That movie with Sting? The giant phallus that plows through the desert planet of Arrakis and shitting out melange?)

In The White Plague, a bitter geneticist created a virus that killed women. Don't remember liking the story much, since I generally enjoy stories with a good protagonist. And one of the main character in the book is just a random dude who managed to crawl inside a decompression chamber with his girlfriend when news of the plague came out. But you've got to respect Herbert for writing about genetic terrors years before Koontz or Chricton did.

But the writers probably took more inspiration from Mary Shelley's The Last Man. (You know, the Frankenstein lady? The one that got no respect for writing sci-fi in a male dominated literary arena in the early 1800's.)


Anyways, Y...

Despite what the title of the graphic novel might suggest, this isn't some shounen shtick. Nor does the character wear leisure suits. The last man is an unsuccessful magician with a painful sense of humor.

Add a geneticist, a name-less agent from a secret government agency (like Agent 99, you know... but this one is agent 355), a post-holocaustal Mad Maxine world, and the adventure begins.

What's fun about the story is that it's unpredictable. And very well written. The dialogue is intelligent, and thoughtful. It's no coincidence that one character is an English lit major, one a theology major, and one a doctor. It allows the writer to go nuts, and let the dialogue communicate all the messages that the story has to tell.

Imagine a world without men... Asides from the extinction, it's almost utopian, when you think about a world without religious leaders, war-mongers, nuclear sub crew, etc. Architecture will certainly be more attractive. Yet, it's also sad that there'll be art such a world will fail to create, or maintain.

But men do not have a monopoly on stupidity. In a world of women, stupid shit can happen as well. A sobering reminder that it's people that makes people miserable.


Anyway, in just two nights, I've caught up with all 41 issues, and looking forward for more. The writers are good, and I trust that they'll be able to maintain the quality of their writing. They're matured enough that they didn't put in a gratuitious lesbian scene until issue 32... But I also wonder at the childishness of throwing in the random ninja into the story.

There are a lot of laugh out loud moments in the story. I particularly enjoy several of the more obscure pop culture references.


Yorick has a lighter with "FUCK COMMUNISM" engraved on it. That's the lighter John Wayne gave to Jesse Custer's father in Preacher.

Y's girlfriend dressed up in a hot magician's costume, and Y made a reference to Zatanna.


And I just love the dialogue.... My choice favourites:

"I told you, I'm not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with--"

"Are...are you crying? What'd I say? The ladies usually love my enlightened view of pronouns."

"I'm a reporter for the Monthly Visitor."
"A perfect name for that rag."

"My name's Toyota. Yeah, yeah, I know. 'Like the car?' You think that's what the Japanese said every time Harrison Ford came over to our country? I swear, you bigoted American men are all the same."

"Rose, anyone who finds my g-spot on the first try is allowed to call me Allison."


And:

"My dad says getting dumped was the closest thing he ever had to a bar mitzvah. He doesn't think he was even part of the human race until a girl broke his heart."

Order of the Stick #268

If anyone's hunting for the latest cryptogram, I don't think I can help much.

Too few words. My best guess from context is:

"Ohhh, swell."

Conan The Vegetarian

I'm sure we all have some fond memories of Arnold.

The Conan saga is still one of the better fantasy movies pre-LOTR. In the last millenium, when one thinks fantasy, the few movies that will always come up are almost invariably: Willow, Labyrinth, Conan the Barbarian, and maybe DragonHeart.

Austrian accent and all, the Californian governor had few greater successes than Conan.

But my favourite is still the movie where he went all soft, and N.A.G. (New Age Guy), and didn't eat meat.

You know, the one where he muttered the immemorable, "I know now why you cry. But it is something I can never do."

. . . . . .

Full marks if you answered T2: Judgment Day

I just watched this movie again last night.

I think this movie was one of my best memory of the early 90's. Growing up in boring Bandar Seri Begawan, the number of times I've been to the cinema, I can count off one hand. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of those...)

I read multiple movie reviews on T2. Long write-ups in the Straits Times. Interviews with Arnold, Linda, James Cameron etc. The technology that made the movie possible. I used to be able to tell you how much this movie costed, and how much Arnie was paid.

I knew this movie well. It was incredible because it was groundbreaking. They created the most unbelieveable effects with the technology available at the time. And even in these times when computers are developing at a geometrical pace, those effects were not surpassed until The Matrix.

I just watched the Director's Cut of T2. I think I know the theatre cut well enough to tell which parts are new. In general opinion, the parts that sucked were the ones in the director's cut.

Sarah Connor got a wet dream sequence where she got to snog Kyle, her epic one night stand from before.

John got to teach the T-800 to smile.

Then in the scene where Sarah was picking out bullets from Arnie, they pried open the CPU of the T-800 to switch it to write-mode so that the T800 can learn. Sarah tried to destroy said CPU, and John stopped her with, "Look, Mom, if I'm supposed to ever be this great leader, you should start listening to my leadership ideas once in a while."

Then a boring family scene of the Skynet programmer. And we see how he switches off his computer by pressing on the [ENTER] key. Without saving his super important work.


Just goes to show that sometimes, the Director's Cut makes the movie worse. The original cut was awesome enough on its own. Cameron just wanted to make a few more bucks with extra footage that really deserved to remain on the cutting room floor.


And asides from the memorable N.A.G. quote, there's a piece of narration that Sarah said that's very thought provoking as well...

"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him; never Shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there, and it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one who measured up.

"In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."

It's interesting when you think about this in a biological, Darwinian aspect... A machine makes the perfect step-father.

Think how natural selection has favoured the gene that favoured women who go weak-kneed at dashing rogue pirates, but instead marry the boring man with financial security. There are research that has postulated this to be a significant survival trait. Think about it.

Similar research has also vindicated men who obsess about large bosoms and round hips. It's a survival trait.


ANYHOO.... I also discovered that there is an alternate ending for T2. Managed to dig up the script.

Basking in the warm glow of accomplishment, the second

There's nothing like getting your hands all dirty and greasey to make you feel like a man!

Yesterday, I tuned the engine of my Daihatsu Charade myself.

Yessireee.

Bought a distributor cap, sparkplug resistive cords, contact points, vacuum hoses from spare-part shops.

Cleaned and gapped my spark-plugs.

Replaced the sparkplug cords & distributor cap.

Removed the air-intake housing to give me better access, and also to flush out the carburetor with some cleaner.

Changed my vacuum hoses. Old ones were hard and cracking, sometimes disconnecting themselves and causing havoc with my engine idling speed.

Figured out how to connect a dwell meter. (Which I bought in Melbourne, along with the xenon timing light)

Measured the dwell angle, to make sure I'm reading the dwellmeter correctly for my 3cylinder engine.

Put in the new contact points as the old ones were already slightly burnt. Followed by several minutes of starting and stopping the engine while checking the dwellmeter until I've got the heel gap right, with the dwell angle settling over the upper ranges which I'm hoping will be better for higher speed performance. But then, the dwellmeter is a cheap one, who knows how good the calibration is in the first place...

Warmed up the engine and made adjustments to the throttle screw, idling adjustment screw, high speed idling screw. Engine idling had been off by 300rpm for the last few months, and there's great satisfaction to have it done right finally. Now the engine won't sip so much fuel while sitting around waiting for the lights to change.

Had a few hiccups using the xenon timing light. Almost thought I toasted it when I put the inductive pickup too near the engine. Even packed the thing up and accepted it sadly as broken already. Then I took it out again and gave it a few more stubborn tries. Finally got it working. Figured out where to point the strobe light to find the engine's timing marks. On the CB23 engine, it's this little window on the clutch housing, looking onto the flywheel. So... what am I looking at?

The service manual I printed out helpfully told me to set the ignition timing to 5degrees BTDC (below top dead centre) at 800rpm. Erm.... Yes... But, how, what????

Then, several more readings of www.daihard.org told me to look for a small dimple on the flywheel with the strobe light.

Adjustment was easy. Have seen a mechanic do this before. Just loosen a nut under the distributor and turn the distributor around until you've got the right timing, then tighten the nut. That mechanic did it by ear, turning until he thought the engine sounded right. My timing light showed that he was off by a good 10 degrees. With the light, it was easy enough to align the dimple to the notch, tighten the nut, cover back the window on the clutch housing, and JOB DONE!!

Well, I don't get to adjust my air fuel mixture since I don't have a CO level meter. But this should be set right from the factory, and a cap is put over the adjustment screw. And from the looks of my sparkplugs, it doesn't look like my mixture was overly rich.

I only skipped over the valve clearance adjustments. I probably don't want to open up my engine and try to adjust something to a clearance of 0.20mm. Pretty sure I can't measure a fraction of a mm with a ruler.


This adventure was brought to you by:
-Maybank Credit Card Centre, for giving me an RM50 MPH Book Voucher
-MPH, for selling me Auto Repair for Dummies
-http://www.daihard.org, for the Daihatsu engine manuals

We live in interesting times

Many of you must have heard of the ancient chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

Yet, many of us who do read a bit of chinese have never come across the chinese equivalence of this curse.

In fact, it was quoted from an Eric Frank Russel story, U-Turn, published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1950.

"For centuries the Chinese used an ancient curse: 'May you live in interesting times!' It isn't a curse any more. It's a blessing. We're scientific and civilized. We've got so many rights and liberties and freedoms that one can yearn for chains for the sheer pleasure of busting them and shaking them off. Reckon life would be more livable if there were any chains left to bust."


And before this, it may have been mentioned Carl Jung, the guy who had dreams of giant phalluses...


You may follow the trail of this mysterious quote here.


Anyway, back to ancient Chinese curse...

We are indeed living in interesting times....

Meltdown in Shanghai

How much attention did you pay Looney Tunes?

I grew up on Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

These cartoons are classics, and we might never see their like ever again.

Hanna-Barberra cartoons were too tame, no hunting rifles nor falling anvils, and favour silly un-funny puns. Mickey Mouse cartoons were kinda pointless as well, none of the major characters speak proper english.

Instead, I picked up an odd accent from Bugs.

If you watch Bugs Bunny again today, you'll be surprised by some of the dialogue that you might not have caught when you were young.

There's the pair of Goofy Gophers that talk like Frasier and Niles.

Even Daffy spouts diaglogue like, "What's with the copious flow of lacrimal fluids?"

Foghorn Leghorn's racial slurs like, "That boy's so stupid he thinks a Mexican boarder pays rent!"


You don't hear lines like these these days.

The Promise, 无殛

I've only watched two movies in the cinema last year, Kung Fu in January was totally worth it; and The Promise at the very end of the year. But that's only cos I got some free cinema vouchers only valid in 2005. I waited and waited till the very last day of the year and there was still nothing worth watching on the big screen.

You must have the right expectations before you walk into a movie theatre, or you'll be served with disappointment almost every time.

The Promise is directed by Chen Kaige, famed director of Farewell My Concubine, and The Emperor and the Assassin.

I had enjoyed The Assassin immensely. Asides from the sheer grandeur of the battle scenes, the dialogue was the most enjoyable. The mandarin accent spoken throughout the whole movie was elegant and beautiful. It's like watching Obi-Wan do Shakespeare. (The old Obi-Wan, not the coke-head one.)

So, when watching The Promise, I was expecting a fantasy story, good directing, and beautifully spoken mandarin.

The movie scored one out of three.

And also, I never expected to see a Korean Superman. [He's faster than a speeding bullet. As strong as a locomotive. Orphaned, the last of his people. Came from a country where everyone dressed in white robes and lived in igloos. He can turn back time to save his love. And he flies.]

Another disappointment was the Korean and Japanese male leads. What the hell, are there no more good looking chinese actors left?! I have no problem with their acting performance. But their mandarin accent lacked authenticity. Which just spoiled it for me.

The plot is ludicrious. But it's a fantasy, so that much was forgiveable.

There's some pathetic CGI, which was distracting. It interfered with the suspension of belief when immersing yourself in the movie. The fake battle scene only reminded me of a computer game.

The one saving grace of the movie? It has Cecilia Cheung.

Skyrockets in flight

Heard a song on the radio that brought a smile to my lips this afternoon.

I never expected to hear the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" on the radio. It's a really nice song, has a catchy melody, and is a simple and perfect kara-oke duet with that special someone (and you should refrain from duet-ing this song with a blood relative).

But hearing it on Malaysian radio? This cultural backwater with the retarded censorship board that:
-bleeped every swear word in Al Pacino's Donnie Brasco and nearly spoiled the movie for me
-banned Daredevil from the theatres because of the word 'Devil' in the title
-changed the title of Hellboy to the gawd-awful-sounding Super Sapiens
-banned all movies with a homosexual theme, such as Robin Williams' The Birdcage
-snipped off some good scenes of Cecilia Cheung in The Promise

It's just funny to hear this pornographic song playing in the airwaves. This is the first time I've heard it on radio. Were they thinking that the song was about an ice-cream??

Read the lyrics!

Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight
gonna grab some afternoon delight.
My motto's always been; when it's right, it's right.
Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night.
When everything's a little clearer in the light of day.
And you know the night is always gonna be there any way.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Thinkin' of you's workin' up my appetite
looking forward to a little afternoon delight.
Rubbin' sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite
and the thought of rubbin' you is getting so exciting.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Started out this morning feeling so polite
I always though a fish could not be caught who wouldn't bite
But you've got some bait a waitin' and I think I might try nibbling
a little afternoon delight.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Please be waiting for me baby when I come around.
We could make a lot of lovin' 'for the sun goes down.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Repeat chorus.

OOTS #264

More cryptograms!

A short and sweet one. It should be pretty easy to work out the dialogue from the context of the comic.

Panel 1: Aqmd. Rmtdwx!
From context, it's pretty obvious that the rogue just rolled successfully for a 'Listen' check. So that's a likely candidate for the 6-letter word.

Panel 2: Fqgj mx dow gwrrt! Fqgj! FQGJ!
The key word here is 'gwrrt'. Double letters are a big clue. In the context of this comic, a five-letter word with double letters that's plastered over almost every panel: 'cells'.

And with these two clues, the rest of the puzzle is quickly solved.

Panel 1: Wait. Listen!

Panel 2: Back in the cells! Back! BACK!

New Year Resolutions

Finally getting a bit of time in the office to ramble a bit... There's a few installations that I can't proceed cos the GM of the site is receiving commission from an existing service, and I can't go in to install another service (at the instruction of a different boss apparently) until the manager can finesse the situation first.

That's doing business in Malaysia...

Was about to write something silly about why I can't get the word Mango -(I just love wikipedia, it's even got helpful tips on how to slice a mango)- on my mobile phone's T9 predictive text dictionary, whereas words like Klingon, Kirk, Picard etc are in. Yet, Skywalker, Jedi, Yoda are absent while Jabba & Hutt are in...

Go try it. Every mobile in the world is using the same dictionary.

Like I said, that was a little too silly, even for this blog...


Anyway, it's 2006, and time to make some new year resolutions.

I'm not very ambitious, so I won't bother with the old cliches that are bound to fail anyway, like exercising or eating healthy etc...

So my one resolution is: to remove the word F*** from my verbal vocabulary.


I've been profanity-free for more than 28yrs. The F*** word only popped spontaneously into my mouth when I looked Death in the face a couple of months ago.

On a dark night, in an un-lit residential estate off Jln Ipoh, I brought my car to a complete stop at a dark intersection. I was particularly careful. After almost a year of driving in KL, I've become very jaded and always wary of idiots on the road.

True enough, as I stopped, a car came into view from the right, at speed. Any self-loving fool will not be driving that fast in a dark residential area like that. But this was an uncommon, f***ing retard.

He suddenly cornered straight into my lane, barely caught himself in time, and missed me by inches. The car was coming right at the driver's seat. Another 12 inches, and his bloody machine would have smashed through my door and into me.

In that split second, realising that my life might be ended so ungraciously by the bastard son of a poxy whore, only one word came to my lips. No other words was more suitable to express the burning anger that I felt, seeing my life about to be taken so unjustly.

It's odd to realise that in my near-final moments, I was not feeling peace, nor regret. Just a burning anger that I deserved a better way to die.


Anyway, so that's how F*** entered my verbal language, and now, it's going out.

Primetime, baby!

Call me pathetic, but I get a thrill out of seeing hits coming in to my blog from Google.

The bulk of these new visits are after the CRYPTOGRAM TRANSLATION of HALEY STARSHINE'S dialogue in ORDER OF THE STICK (OOTS). [Shameless plugging of keywords for Google's search-spider-bot thingie...]

It's also nice to see my blog popping up on the first page of a Google search.

I need a life? More Order of the Stick

http://www.statcounter.com is the best tool ever for bloggers. I get to see the last 100 people that viewed my blog, and often deducing quite accurately who's doing the reading when...

As had been pointed out to me by a Win2k user logging in from Singapore... I really need to get a life and not spend my time watching the statcounter tick...

Fortunately, he wasn't able to convince me to stop. And I discovered that the last few hits were directed at my translation of Haley's dialogue in Order Of The Stick.

And the cryptograms are back in the newest comic!

In issue 260:

Panel 2: "Come on, baby, open for mommy..."


In issue 262:

Panel 1: "You stupid lock! Open! Why won't you open??"

Panel 2: "Going to kill you..."

Panel 3: "I hate amazing quality locks!"

Panel 7: "Gee, thanks, no pressure there."

Panel 8: "Damn it! OPEN!!"

Panel 7: "I am totally in love with you."