Hanoi Day 5: The Trek to Mt Fansipan

Vietnam factoid
Mt. Fansipan is the highest peak in Vietnam, topping out at 3142 metres.

Reached the border town of Lao Cai (N22 29.584 E103 58.668) around 430am. There's plenty of touts at the station to get you up to the hotels in Sa Pa. Just go with the flow, they all charge the same, 25k Dong. There may be cheaper buses, but it wasn't possible to find someone non-partisan to advise us how to do so.

Lao Cai is a border town just a stone's throw away from China. Can see plenty of tourists here. It's also the only place that I saw Vietnamese girls who wore anything more revealing than long pants and long sleeves. It's likely due to the seediness nature of bordertowns.

We started our minivan journey at 103m above sea-level, and ended at 1495m in Sa Pa. It gets significantly colder here...


The rooms at Mountainview Hotel (N22 19.985 E103 50.571) is excellent. US$8 per room. Asked for flasks of hot water, then leaving them to cool to supplement my hydration needs. Drinking mineral water daily is biting a good chunk of my food budget.

We walked about the town square, being stalked by little girls the whole time. The Black Hmong tribe dress up their younger daughters in traditional garb, and unleash them on the tourists to sell handicrafts. They pick up English from the visitors, and are amazingly fluent. Although, I wonder if they might speak even better English, if visitors are less patronising; it seems that almost all English speakers unconsciously lose their diction & grammar when they start talking to the locals.

WeeLoong found a kindred spirit, and started a "You Loser" "No, you Loser" fight with an 8-yr old girl. It'ld have been embarassing, if it weren't so damn funny.


We took a late breakfast, and headed towards Cat Cat Waterfalls. The road starts west of Cat Cat Hotel (N22 19.967 E103 50.402), and there's a toll-booth (N22 19.946 E103 50.359). And at (N22 19.861 E103 50.035) we stepped off the tarmac and took the stone stairs leading down to the Hmong village.

Was impressed by the stairs. It was development that had given tourism dollars, back to the benefit of the local people. Encouraging tourists to come, and at the same time making the Hmong's commute easier and safer. There was almost 2km of well constructed concrete steps going down and up the valley. The inundation of foreign influences may be slowly polluting their culture, yet at the same time, it also encourages their traditional crafts that are in such high demand among the visitors.

At the end of the trip, we will learn that it was not advisable to buy souveniers from the craft shops. Because you'll be plagued by 'sales-women' throughout the entire stay, and it's more cost beneficial to spend the souvenier budget to purchase 'favours' at the same time you purchase goods. ...Um... 'favours' in the sense of making friends, getting a photo-op, help on the slippery slopes, getting email addresses etc. (Oh yeah, some of these 'mountain tribe' girls have Yahoo accounts.) Or just to get them to go away and leave you in peace to savour the tranquility.

We reached the Cat Cat Waterfalls at (N22 19.624 E103 50.047). We'd already climbed down to 1232m above sea-level. So we'll have a bit of a climb to look forward to at this point.

The path forked at the waterfall. We took the one going downwards and towards Mt Fansipan. Passed a few wonderfully secluded bathing ponds filled with pure mountain waters. Would be an excellent place to take a swim if the temperatures weren't in the low teens.

We continued this path towards Mt Fansipan for about a kilometre before we turned back. We only trekked to Mt Fansipan. I never said we made it to the 3142m summit.


The other fork at the waterfalls climbed upwards and took us in a small clockwise loop that brought us back to the main road.

The day was very misty, but we did get to see some rice terraces and such. And the photographers amused themselves with pictures of the local livestock.

We also had a round of bridge up on a small peak, just to be the first to penetrate Bridge to this part of the world. Also to give everyone a moment to catch our breaths after a particularly long climb.

There's a bridge at (N22 19.723 E103 49.769), where some of the men with motorbikes will spare you the rest of the uphill climb for US$1. The junction at (N22 19.874 E103 49.782) will take us to another village to the west. East goes back to Sa Pa.


Back in town we arranged our train tickets back to Hanoi. Then back at the hotel we negotiated a 2D/1N homestay tour to the villages in the valley. Got a much better deal this time, ie US$18/pax, with a personal guide just for the four of us. This was the shorter tour. I was more keen on the package that goes to villages a little further away, but the rest of the group balked when they heard about the 1.5hr uphill trek...


The night was too freaking cold to do much exploring. We snuck out and grabbed dinner at the first place that looked acceptable, then came straight back. Missing out on the rest of Sa Pa town.


BraveHeart was on TV.

Hanoi Day 4: The Train

Slept through the night easily. The sea is dead calm and the boat did not rock perceptibly. Almost felt like we're on a stilt house over the waters. The morning air was pretty cold this time of year. Fore-go-ed (fore-went?) showering. Although the others who did make use of the showering facilities had fun with the temperamental water heater that blasts cold and warm water in alternation.

Boat ride today was far more leisurely, since there's nothing scheduled. Just a ride from the boat park to Cat Ba Island, where we pick up some more passengers, and back to the jetty.

Relaxed on the top deck, catching sun and appreciating the scenery of islands that look like human faces, bosoms, cocks, etc. Um... I meant roosters. The other synonym is rather prone to misunderstanding.

It was only when we swapped tourguides at Cat Ba, that we got a guy who actually recognised my GPS device. He was more useful, and started pointing out islands and naming them for me. He also pointed out the hidden lagoons where Tomorrow Never Dies was filmed. The boats are not licensed to go there. The only way to take a look at the lagoon without going through red tape with the authorities was to stop at the village and borrow a boat from one of the fishermen.

The filming happened near a floating fishing village, which sees a lot of boat traffic for the seafood the villagers sell. It's really a cool lifestyle, these villages... Grab two dozen blue plastic barrels; seal them; lash them together into a raft; planks over the top; four walls and a roof; a few dozen yards of rope to anchor your real estate to an island. Stock some booze, and you've almost got a Malibu lifestyle with a huge, zero maintenance swimming pool, and without the risk of the pool-boy diddling your wife. The bay is so sheltered, it'll be like living on a pool deck.

What's amazing about Ha Long Bay is the cleanliness. Despite the production line of boats bringing boatloads of tourists hitting the islands at staggered intervals, the waters has remained pure. The industry is strictly regulated, each licensed boat is required to maintain certain standards, they can only stop at certain islands and stay on a designated course. Discipline and good sense keeps the water and beaches refuse free. I did not see a single Coke can, or discarded tyre washed up on any of the beaches.

If we had such beauty in Malaysia, you can be sure that local authorities will have raped the place and ejaculated commercial crap all over the place, all in the name of development, as some corrupt official lines his pockets. Who wants to go all the way to Langkawi to see a giant concrete eagle, pay rm20 per cab ride, rm50 per jet-ski ride, or see the museum dedicated to Mahathir?


Back at the jetty, we had our last "Big Lunch". Took the chance to talk to the other Vietnamese tourists. Most importantly, to learn how to order non-dog meat.

Vietnam Observation #4
Chinese 'cuisine' here pretty much sucks. Sweet and sour pork that's neither sweet nor sour. Lunch was at a 'Cantonese' restaurant...

And mini-van back to the city.


The mini-van will only drop us back at our hotel, and wouldn't take us to the train station. So we have to trek through town lugging everything on our backs. Didn't give me much trouble, cos I travelled light.

Dumped out baggage at the train station and took a walk around that part of the city. There's a smaller lake marked out on the map, so we thought we could try to find it.

This adventure failed it's primary objective, but it was more interesting than I had expected.

We took a general bearing and just went down random roads and alleys that lead in the general direction. My GPS isn't much help, cos it only marks my position and my trail, but there is no Hanoi city map that I could download into it. There isn't a community of GPS nuts here after all...

If the Old Quarter is like Petaling Street, then the rail station area is like Chow Kit.

Narrow streets. Old buildings. Sweat shops. A LOT of hair-dressers...

Even saw a 'hotel' that almost looked like the 'Pig Cage' dwelling in Kung Fu Hustle.

There were no other tourists on these streets with us. In fact it occured to me that, to the locals, we probably looked like a bunch of foreigners trying to find some Vietnamese tail, and rather unsuccessfully at that. It was at this point that I looked at the hairdressers with renewed suspicion.

There can't be THAT big a market for hairdressers... In such a poor part of town, no less. Granted that almost every Vietnamese girl keeps impeccable silky straight hair, but even then! I later had these suspicions confirmed by our Sa Pa guide. He confirmed that some of these establishments are more than likely to perform special services, which the locals have dubbed, "Happy Ending".

Well, now you know...


A note about trains in communist countries... They leave on time. Something that takes some getting used to, for us Malaysians. But no disaster this time.

We got a sleeper coach. The room was cosy and comfortable, and all four of us fit in one room just nicely.

And this night, we inducted WeeLoong to the game of Bridge. And the laughs never stopped. It's amazing that a commercial airline pilot can be so inattentive. Almost everything went past him.

Hanoi Day 3: The Sea

Today, we went to Ha Long Bay.

We took the US$45 option, which we bargained down to US$44, and then got a service tax slapped on it, making it US$48.40. This was the one and only time we ever got slapped with a 10% tax, anywhere!

So, we're looking forward to the "Big Boat", and the "Big Lunch", and the fluent English speaking guide. The trip started real well with a cramped little bus, packed to capacity, and a guide who's not all that fluent in English.

It was an uncomfortable 3hr ride to Bai Chay, which is just one bridge away before Hong Gai. That's where the tourist jetty is, where an armada of hotel-boats berth. We found our boat quickly, and waited impatiently to depart. The view here was already amazing, and we're looking forward to getting closer to the islands dotting the bay.

The waters are greenish blue, and dead calm. There's hardly any wind, but the movement of the boat gave a good 30kph breeze. The warm sun. The cool air. The smell of the sea. The sight of the limestone islands. The relaxation, wonderful. Except that the cold air makes my skin break out in a rash if I sit top-side too long.

The islands are one of a kind... They're like those phallic mountains you often see in chinese landscape art, ie tall, sheer-faces, narrow rounded peaks. Just imagine a whole bunch of these mountains together, and then you flood the whole place till only the tip shows.

Sorry I can't be more poetic describing these wonderful sights... There's no poetry in my cold silicon soul.

We made a stop at the island with the Cave of Surprises, which composed of several huge limestone caverns. It must have looked great when it was virgin. They've remodeled the cavern to make it tourist friendly. A wide path carved out. Strategically placed yellow spotlights. The ceiling machined smooth so no stalagtites are left to fall and kill. And the rubble was stacked up in 'artistic piles', hoping that tourist won't notice how much of it was artificial.

I walked on ahead and listened in while another tour guide did his spiel on his group. When our tourguide caught up, it was agony hearing our guide trying to do the exact same speech, rote learned from their Tourism 101 class, in his halting English.


Lunchtime, at least the Big Lunch did not disappoint. Fairly neutral and palatable foods in bountiful quantities. The four of us got a table all to ourselves. The others were still recovering their appetite from the dog meat, so I got the lion's share of the food.

After lunch, we began to teach WeeLoong to play Hearts. Yes, that game that comes with Windows XP.


Then we made a stop at Ti Top island. Nothing there but a viewing gazebo up on a 84m summit. It was quite a climb. But even a gimp legged Jap tourist made it. Think he had arthrodesis on one knee. The view was good.


Back down on the beach, there's kayaking for those who felt up to it. That ended in a minor disaster. Got my bermudas wet, and they're impossible to dry in these temperatures and humidity. Tried to air dry it anywhere I could, but it was hopeless. Luckily, the hotel at Sa Pa could do laundry at 15k Dong per kg, but that's 3 nights later.


In the evening, the boat chugged slowly to the 'boat park'. As it happens, there's a big "P" sign to designate the parking area.

The night was moonless, and the darkness quite complete. Such that you can see a green glow in the waters from the bioluminescent plankton. It's pretty cool to watch. When you spit into the water, you can see green ripples in the waters. Amusing as it was, I couldn't indulge too much. Was running low on fluids, and drinking water is expensive, and I down 2-3 litres of water on any given day.

Speaking of which...

Hanoi Travel Tip
1.5l of mineral water is 10k Dong for tourists almost everywhere. But they'll sell for 7k, which was the cheapest I ever saw in Hanoi, which also doesn't happen very often.

Hanoi Day 2: The City

The city wakes very early.

While the others dozed, I was on the balcony watching the traffic. Very few cars. A lot of motorbikes. A lot of bicycles. And no fat people!

Vietnam Observation #1:
I didn't see a single fat Vietnamese in Hanoi in the first few days there. All the men are wiry and fit. All the women are slim and fair.

Eventually everybody got up. Had breakfast. And talked with the hotelier about arranging a trip to Ha Long Bay. He offered 3 different 2D1N packages, for USD29, 35 & 45 per pax.

The USD45 package has "Big Lunch! Big Dinner! Big Breakfast!"

We told them we'ld think on it...

Our first destination was the lake (Ho Hoan Kiem, Lake of the Restored Sword). It's a well developed spot, with gardens all around it, a temple in the middle of the lake, and a toll-booth on the bridge leading to the temple.

This was when I felt that I was leading an outing of the photography club. Two Olympuses and a Canon were whipped out and started clicking away.

But clicking alongside them, I saw an unexpectedly high camera per pax ratio amongst the locals too... Seems that every second Hanoi-ite was sporting an old Nikon or Pentax SLR, those old metal affairs... For a while I was thinking that they were a press crew there waiting for some news-worthy event. Later I figured out that they're professional photographers, taking pics for those visitors who are without cameras, and then they'll run off to the nearest photo shop, develop that square of film, then re-use the remaining roll of film with the next customer. Quite a lot of effort just to make a buck.


Right after our first destination, we immediately met our first crisis. Wee's camera ran out of juice. But our photography club has an excellent support system and we helped him weather out the crisis.


Next on our journey was the St. Joseph Cathedral.

Then Pho for second breakfast.

Went and found the train station, and bought soft sleeper tickets to go to Lao Cai for the day that we get back from Ha Long Bay.

Got double charged for using the toilet at the train station. Locals pay D500, but I didn't get change for D1000.

The Temple of Literature.

Ho Chih Minh Museum. Closed.

Ho Chih Minh Musoleum. Closed for the day.

Lunch.

Military Museum. Charges extra for bringing in cameras.

Afternoon tea at cafe under the flag tower.

Walked about Old Quarter. Saw the Opera House and the Hanoi Hilton at night. Bought hats. Ate Vietnamese prepared western food for dinner.


Noteworthy events for the day...

We had an interesting lunch. Somewhere near the HCM Museum, we found a secreted restaurant (no sign boards) doing bustling business, mostly local patrons. We thought it would bea good place to sample genuine local cuisine, and quickly found ourselves a table.

Wee Loong proceeded to order us four glasses of fresh beer... by accident... before we were even seated. But it was a serendipitous accident, as we will later find. It was more beer than I had ever consumed in my lifetime prior to this day. Tasted better than the tapped stuff I had to sip socially before.

The menu was in Vietnamese. The waitresses didn't speak a word of English. But the menu had caricatures of animals on each page, so we thought we could handle it alright. We ordered a vegetable dish by pointing at a neighbouring table. So that's one down.

I managed to challenge everyone to try dog meat. And with some few phrases from a guide book, I managed to decode the alphabets for "grilled". I thought it was safest to order grilled dog, since all satay taste the same irregardless of the meat used.

Then we ordered a random (close eyes and point) pork, and a random chicken. The chicken was significantly pricier than the other meats, so we kinda looked forward to something special.

First came the boiled cold cuts of dog. Oops! The waitress took the wrong order. It looked like boiled pork, but with leaner, browner meat, and a thin darkish brown skin. Came with sliced ginger, a few segments of 'sausages', and some lime. This was more adventure than we bargained for.

First, the denial, we wanted to believe that this was the pork dish we ordered at random. But a taste removed all doubts. I guess I would describe the taste as... tastes like dog. It wasn't disgusting or anything. It just tasted like a different kind of meat. The texture was rather chewey... Like beef tongue. A little alien. A little funny.

Ravi tried a few slices. Wee spat out his first piece after chewing on it for a few minutes. Not entirely sure if Ben ate any, only remembered him poking it with his chopsticks. Had maybe about 8 pieces. Didn't mind the taste, but didn't like it too much either. I was the only one who tried the suspicious sausage segment. And, disappointing to some, it was not canine penis. Just some nutty or chestnutty stuffing in an intestine, I think...

This is where the serendipitous beer came in very helpful.

The other dishes came... But the dog-meat has already turned a few appetites. We were served boiled pork. And boiled chicken. It seemed rather suspicious that we somehow randomly picked 3 dishes of boiled meat. Especially the chicken dish, which had a very wordy name on the menu, but it only came out boiled??

Ah well... We're ignorant tourists. We suffered our lot silently.


The military museum was also a good visit. It was just a bunch of old photos, old war paraphrenalia (ie old flags, news clippings, chairs that some general sat on, different uniforms their armies wore, a clay bowl that some hero drank his own piss out of, etc), a bunch of trophies they collected from their enemies (ie a giant Howitzer, a few planes, the wreckage of a bomber brought down by their AAA [anti-aircraft artillery], a tank, a few vehicles etc), and diaromas of their victory in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the taking of Saigon.

Almost missed the Dien Bien Phu diaroma, as it was almost hidden off in a different part of the building, accessible through a door that looked like a service door. Maybe it's so that the exhibit can be diplomatically closed away when French diplomats visit, so they won't get offended by the gloating displays. But you would think that a people who devised the ingenious Maginot Line would be 'impenetrable' to ridicule already, where their military history is concerned.

Didn't really appreciate the military manuevers that brought them their victories. But through the theme of all the exhibits, one can come to appreciate that these are a people that has gone through a lot of shit, and had prevailed against everyone of them. Their nationalistic pride is well earned. They have the right to be a proud people. They have weathered numerous storms, and are fully capable of surviving many more.


Next to the military museum was a flag tower. No big deal really. You climb to the summit (29m above sea level), and get a little view around the city. But strangely, at the top of the tower, there are two stairways going down. When we got back down to the base of the tower, I can't find the doorway to the alternate stairs to the top.

I couldn't leave with this mystery haunting me. So I climbed all the way back up, and down the mystery stair. This one came to a dead-end halfway down the tower. And at the dead-end, which was just a narrow enclosed space with light coming in through a port-hole, there's a mysterious little shrine, with an urn for joss-sticks. No idea what it was for. Now that explained why a young Vietnamese couple was down here when my photography club was clicking pictures at the summit.


One of the better sights seen today was at the rail tracks. At a barrier, we decided to walk along the tracks after a train had just passed. The track runs behind the backs of a lot of houses. And most residences keep their back-door wide open. From this vantage, we got to take a peek at how the locals live, how they furnish their houses, what TV they own etc. It was cool just to wander off the beaten path for a short while.


Vietnam Observation #2 & #3
Where are the cats? Did not see a single stray cat the whole day. Except for a few kittens in cages at a market. And we've not seen cats on menus either. Curious...

Another thing... I did not hear a single dog bark. All of them are subdued, with sad soulless eyes. Like they're just waiting for the shoe to drop.

Hanoi Day 1: The Flight

Finally finished the backlog of work from when I was away in Hanoi. Had to get up before 7 this morning (7/4/06) and drive through rush hour traffic to a bungalow hidden behind KLCC to fix a few things this morning. Big-shot Dato of I Berhad mah...

So finally, finding some time to blog at work again :)


Ok, back in Continuity Mode.

..............

Woke up and spent the whole morning just reading the papers while Ben puttered around with last minute laundry and packed his bags.

Thought of dropping by WeeLoong's place for lunch and maybe take his Schwinn for a spin. But the fellow just got back from a holiday in Rome, and we figured it best to give him time to sleep and pack instead.

We all met up at Changi late afternoon.

Can't recognise the airport anymore. The last time I was here was probably July 1996, when I took off to KL for my spirit-ectomy in Universiti Malaya.

Had a bit of afternoon tea first, since we'll be reaching Hanoi way past dinner time. The MacDonald's here has more interesting foods than Malaysia, but a lousier Coke-refill policy, ie none to speak of.

Flight took off about 5.30pm, and we touched down about 8pm local time.

The more you know...

Hanoi is in the +7GMT timezone, although its longitude is slightly further east than Singapore, which is at +8GMT. This is because West Malaysia and Singapore are following East Malaysia's timezone. Thus we're an hour ahead of everyone else on our same longitude.
Therefore, do the sums and you'll see that our flight took about 3.5hrs.

We were seated pretty far towards the back of the plane. The four of us couldn't get seats together. So I left WeeLoong alone sleeping, while I spent the 3hr flight standing near the loo like a toilet attendent, occassionally opening doors for passengers who looked puzzled by the door latch.

Used the time to find out what Ravi and Ben had planned out for us. And get some vague idea what Hanoi is going to be like.

I was determined to go into this holiday completely blind. With no expectations nor preconceptions to colour my experience. The only research I did was the safety of their tap water, and the forecasted temperatures for this time of the year.

At this point, the bulk of my knowledge about Vietnam was:

• The French, and also Forrest Gump, were there at some point or another
• They're Commies
• Tour of Duty used to show these goblins in black pyjamas killing American soldiers
• Residences in KL where Vietnamese workers live, often see a high rate of pet mortality ('stewing' being the chief cause of death)
• Top quality brides

So, yeah... there's plenty of gaps in my knowledge to fill in...


We took a cab from Noibai Airport into Hanoi. The cabbie will ask for US$15. Pay him US$10 only. Get an airport personnel to back you up on this. But you can't blame the cabbie for trying to get lucky with the occassional gullible tourist.


Google for cheap hotels in Hanoi and you'll often get Salute Hotel. But that wasn't where the cabbie took us to. We ended up at Backpacker's Hotel, which I've labelled on my GPS as Fake Salute. But the room and price was agreeable, and we didn't have any better ideas how to find the real Salute.

Dumped the bags and went out looking for dinner.


There are HEAPS of local food stalls all along the pedestrian walkways! I was dazzled by the bounty of genuine local cuisine! Was just hoping to sit down anywhere and pick out a random dish and be surprised. But I followed the more seasoned travellers and see where they'ld lead me.

We took a few turns around the Old Quarter part of the city, and ended up at ... City View Cafe. My compatriots ordered Nasi Goreng and Pork Fillet.....

I was speechless...

I comforted myself with a bowl of hygienically prepared Pho. Somehow, the Vietnamese noodles I had in Australia tasted better than the authentic article.


But the cafe did have a very good view over the lake. Had a time looking at the bright city lights reflected in the waters, accompanied by the pleasing ambience of motorbike horns.

It was also a good chance to look at the streets and learn how the locals cross the roads. The idea is to wade right into the traffic and move at a leisurely pace. As long as you don't stop unexpectedly in the middle of the road, the onus is on the motorbikes to swerve out of your way.

Cool...


We walked about the Old Quarter a bit more before getting back to the hotel.

The room isn't too bad. But only 2 beds, a queen & a single. We put them together, and could squeeze 4 guys on it if we sleep in an "E" formation.

WeeLoong, unfortunately was the middle horizontal bar. Ravi being the vertical bar. So, WeeLoong had the choice of either Ravi's ass or his dick facing his head as he sleeps.


Ben snores lightly. WeeLoong gnashes his teeth. I sleep through it all.

Hanoi Day 0: Getting to Singapore

The highway lights fly across the bus window in dizzying streaks of amber. The effect is pleasantly hypnotic, but it gets nauseating after a while. The journey is so smooth that the passing flashes of light is the only indication of motion.

It was worth the few extra dollars for the bus service with the newer fleet, with the better suspensions, and hopefully with the more well maintained brakes. Not to mention fresher seat cushions, greater elbow room, and more air to barrier my nose from the odours of my fellow passengers.

Asides from the risk of olfactory assault, a chaueffered Mercedes is really the best way to travel.

Although the engine may sound muted, giving the illusion of a leisurely pace, the bus is actually hurtling down the highway at breakneck speed. But such thoughts are best expunged from one's head once the course is already committed.

I'm sure bus drivers have to meet stringent criteria of safety and discipline to keep their well paying jobs. And like every sane creature created under God, they will similarly be motivated by instincts of self-preservation. My irrational fear for my safety must be entirely unfounded.

And I must be really tired if my mental boundaries of fantasy and reality are beginning to blur such.

----

Accidentally dug up this literary abortion from several years ago. I suppose it'll do to describe my bus trip down to Singapore.


Anyways, had a particular bad day of work. Several things just popped up all at the last minute that I have to settle before I can leave. But still manage to pop out 2hrs early to go home to pack.

Cab to the LRT station. Train to the city. Met up with a travelling companion going the same direction. Bought tix. Ate dinner. Choked on carbon monoxide fumes on platform while waiting for late bus. Get caught in rush hour traffic. Reach JB. Bus 170 to immigration. Over the causeway.

And reached Kranji MRT just 5 minutes after 11:28pm, too late to catch the last connecting train going east out of Jurong East St.

So, stuck at JE, but as luck would have it, I managed to catch a bus that still goes past Commonwealth Ave West, and that got me to Ben's place sometime after midnight.

Showered. Then used Ben's internet to finish up my course assignment and handed it up.

Yes, I'm pretty much a last minute kind of guy. My muse is strongest at the eleventh hour.

The Iran Oil Bourse

Why is it that I can't find a single piece of news whether the Iran bourse has started or not?

It's an action that will have wide ranging consequences, yet no one is reporting whether it has or has not happened.

Maybe I need to update my Search-Fu skillz...

Paronychia

Eeeewww!

One of my fingers started turning green, somewhere around the nail bed.

I think I burnt the finger while twisting spark-plugs out of a very warm engine. So there was a small spot of cooked tissue under the skin. After a few days, it became inflammed, but that always heals, no problem.

But when I started seeing a tinge of green under the skin... hmm.....

Lucky I've got a few medical supplies sitting around the house. Broke open a sterile needle, sterilised it just in case, since the needle expired 3yrs ago, and I lanced the green spot.

There was a fair amount of pus, oozing out like squeezing a pimple. The pus looked like green phlegm, and there was significantly more of it than I thought could fit in the tiny space under the skin. Squeezed out as much as I could. It hurt a lot less than popping a stubborn pimple.

Didn't have any convenient anti-septic in the house, other than a bar of Dettol soap. So I microwaved a mug of hot water, dissolved a half handful of salt into it, and soaked the finger in it for about an hour.

I don't know how effective that was. But I'm not man enough to cauterize my wound with gunpowder, nor burning pitch, nor red iron. Salt water is a harsh environment and it kills stuff. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea. That's as far as my rationale went, and it made me feel better about the wound. Or I could get a stiff brush and scrubbed the wound until I reach clean tissue, but unsurprisingly, I favoured the salt water approach better.

The finger looks much healthier this morning.

But maybe the ill effects weren't completely purged... It's entirely possible that some disease inspired dementia told me that this would be an interesting subject matter to share with my friends.

Well, I'm accustomed to writing about weird stuff. Be glad that you've not read my gleeful account of the sounds of snapping human ribs with a large pair of pliers, or hacksawing a female jaw-bone. But I'm pretty sure I've not told anyone about the horror porn I've seen either. The real horrors are the one where the inept performer spent 40minutes stitching up an episiotomy.


PS. Isn't Google just wonderful for digging up inappropriate links?

George Lucas Sucks

This was the thought going through my head when I watched V For Vendetta.

Because in this movie, it is so immediately apparent that Natalie Portman is an amazing actress. Yet as Queen Amidala, this fact is expertly disguised under Lucas' direction.

But then again, maybe Lucas wanted to recapture the same magic as in The New Hope: amateurish acting & directing. Or he's completely clueless about how to work with talent. Of every Harrison Ford movie I've watched, his acting was roughest in Star Wars. Anyway, I blame Lucas for failing to make me see Natalie Portman in the same light as V did.

Enough digressing.

V For Vendetta is an old Alan Moore masterpiece. It is a complicated and thoughtful tale of an anarchist's fight against an evil government. Or some might say, a mad-man's terror against a stable albeit totalitarian government.

Natalie Portman is Evey, the Victim.

Hugo Weaving is V, the Vigilante.

John Hurt is Adam Sutler, the Villian.

? Who ?

John Hurt, the first chest-burster incubator...

...No... Who's Adam Sutler?

I dunno. Maybe the script writer has a problem with Adam James Susan, and
changed it to Sutler so that the audience won't get confused by a man named Mr. Susan.

...But why?

Well, audience are stupid people and get confused fairly easily, so Hollywood considerately dumbs down everything so that the befuddled masses don't stub their mental toes trying to think their way out of the theatre.


This isn't the only thing that was dumbed down. The sexual devience of each and every corrupt party member was taken out, (fetishism, pedophilia, a disturbing emotional lust for a supercomputer named Fate).

Some story arcs also had to be taken out, cos a 10 issue comic just won't fit in a 2hr movie. Certain characters had to be simplified, left undeveloped, or left out altogether. The widow of a fallen Finger-man, whose own fall from grace led her to assassinate Leader. A very long winded and not altogether that interesting arc. But taking her out, means that Leader had to be killed by some other means, and thus a complete re-write of the ending.

The ending is also air-brushed.

The comic book ended with a country in anarchy and chaos, as general disorder overwhelmed the government's forces. In the movie, there's a near bloodless revolution where an army of people marched into the streets that brings to mind the opening of Kung Fu Hustle with the gangsters in tux and top-hats.


Not to say that the movie wasn't good. It was most enjoyable. Although the message was diluted, but it's still more flavourful than the half-baked saw-dust that Hollywood usually feeds the mindless masses. And it's almost sad to say, that this is the best Alan Moore adaptation so far. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was so crap, and From Hell was only good for Johnny Depp.

Cats

"That's it. Cats. I don't need men. I'll raise cats and they will stave off the soul-crushing loneliness. Cats are better than men. Cats don't see you as what you could or never will be. Cats view everyone with the same distanced apathy. Cats are honest about the fact their love to you is only because you feed them. And cats, at least, eat bugs you don't want in your home."

--R.K.Milholland--

I've just spent two nights reading through my archive of Something Positive comics looking for this particular episode.

This one about the Homotron 5000 was what got me into reading web-comics in the first place. And what brought me to the Homotron comic, was this letter on Dan's Data, while I was still neck deep in my technophilia stage.

Something Positive is full of edgy humour that's unfit for mainstream media. But mainstream nowadays is just a lot of recycled crap, and after a while, you've seen them all already. This has wit, drama, friendship, tragedy, violence, pink pussy, a big dose of real-life-sucks & people-are-stupid, relationship advice and truths.

The wit and sarcasm is just gold. I'm grateful that this gem came along only now. If I had read this stuff a decade ago, I might have patterned my 'wit' by it, and I'ld probably have less friends than I do now. But then again, it's not like I've received a single birthday card from anyone in the last couple of years anyway.


PS. Statcounter allows me to see the referring page of who comes in to read my blogs. Yeah, I need a social life, but I derive entertainment from this activity. It's really funny when I see someone who linked here from a Google of "coitus & G-spot". Although I don't remember using that in a sentence before. Anyway, I'm interested to see how "pink pussy" will now rank me on Google. It'll be interesting to see.

Whoops! Speak of the devil. I just got crawled by a Googlebot.
crawl-66-249-72-51.googlebot.com (66.249.72.51)

Engine Re-tuning

Thanks to this compression tester on the right, I was able to set my mind at ease about my car engine.

Took out all the spark-plugs of my engine, and tested each cylinder compression with it. What a freaking relief that all three cylinders registered more than 150psi, within my engine specs.

Which means the piston rings are still ok, as are the intake/exhaust valves, and no leaky gasket. Thus, no expensive overhaul needed.

Having eliminated the mechanical causes, I went back to re-check all the possible electrical problems.

Took out the distributor contacts, which I just replaced a few months ago. Found the contacts all burnt and pitted already. Must have set the dwell angle too high. Thus confirming my doubts about the accuracy of my Made In China dwell-meter.

Have no idea how to recalibrate the thing either. Guess the only thing to do will be to replace the contacts again, and set it to a lower dwell angle this time. In the meantime, I just filed down the contacts I have now till I can grab a new one.

Had to adjust engine timing as well. A procedure made more bothersome since I upgraded to shining new Bosch platinum-tipped spark-plugs. Somehow, with these new plugs, the current running down the resistive cords aren't triggering the inductive pick-up of my timing light. So I have to swap back the first spark-plug with an old one to do the timing.

Just took the car out for a spin, and it now runs ten times better.

Happiness.

Now, if only I could also take the time to clean out the bird-shit on the bonnet, which is marring my new barely one week old paint-job.

Weird Science

Car has been running funny. The timing seems a bit off and quite erratic. There is significant loss of power. And pretty sure that my fuel consumption is affected too. Also finding the engine running warmer than before.

Tried to Google up a solution and came up with the weirdest nutcase information.

I had tried to retune the engine. And even bought a new set of spark-plugs.

Just hoping that it's not something mechanical with the engine. Worried that it's a leaky gasket or a piston ring problem affecting the compression.

...

It is obvious I don't know what I'm talking about, isn't it?

Taman Wetlands, Putrajaya

11 million MYR or more was spent building this 'largest artificial fresh water wetlands in the tropics'. The same money could have gone into preserving ten to twenty times the acreage of natural ecology, instead of trying to fabricate this artificial one.

But that's Boleh-land.

Been here two years ago, and found it mildly interesting. A couple of flamingoes, pelicans, swans, and ducks, and lots of grass. It's not as interesting as the other Paya Indah Wetlands park somewhere nearby in Dengkil, but it would seem that the 33m MYR project is in trouble. Eco-tourism seems to be a lost cause here.

Anyways, I came back to this park in Putrajaya because of this. It's a geocache with a Travel Bug in it. And the fact that I have 3 bicycles now, so I grabbed two friends along for a leisurely, scenic ride around the wetlands.

Tried to find the geocache with my GPS, but no luck. The GPS insisted that the cache is behind a TNB fence which we have no way of getting to, short of climbing over a fence and risking tetanus from the scratchy rusted fence. Later back home, I discovered that the geocache page gave two different coordinates. And I copied down the wrong one. That, or I may not be using the same map datum as the guy who placed the cache.

Didn't find treasure. But at least got a good morning's ride out of it.

And managed to see one lone swan. The pelicans, ducks, flamingoes are nowhere to be seen this time. The wildlife has mysteriously disappeared, but at least the park is still very well maintained.

From some biking forums, I've come across various recipes for home-made powerbars, using muesli, chopped nuts/almonds, caramel, raisins etc to make hand-sized energy bars for long hours of biking.

I wonder how these recipes compare to the chinese 'power-balls'.

ie. sugary bean paste, wrapped in glutinous rice flour, richly coated with sesame seed, and then deep-fried until the ball is oozing with oil...

OOTS #291

Panel 1: "I thought you said your dad was dead?"

Good News

Was having a most exhausting day driving all around Klang Valley, when I was lifted by this little piece of good news on the radio.

They're making a movie of Stardust!

Yes, I'm a Neil Gaiman fan-boy. Why else would Stardust get me all excited?

Ain'tItCool News already has the latest.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert deNiro! Also Mr. Casanova and young Ms Capulet.

And the producer is the guy who did Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Something worth waiting for....


Speaking of movies to wait for....

I just read V for Vendetta last night.

This is an Alan Moore comic from 17yrs ago. One of his ground-breaking works.

I can appreciate its genius. But it's not the kind of story that appeals to me. I tend to focus on characters in stories. And in a tale about a masked murderer, a victim, and a line-up of sexual deviants; it doesn't seem likely that one can find a character to root for.

But it's still a very thoughtful story. And the movie's coming out very soon. (Pity they couldn't get it done before 5th November...)

Queen Amidala is the victim, and Agent Smith will be V. Sounds pretty cool so far.

John Hurt will be in it too.

Who?

The guy who sold Harry Potter his wand!

Who?

The guy who went into contemporary consciousness as the unfortunate spaceman with an alien bursting through his chest.

There we go.....


It'll certainly be very interesting to see if the movie can capture the essense of the comic. It's not an easy story to tell. There's a danger that it might degrade into a Zorro movie. Let's hope not.

Two Zorro movies in my lifetime is enough puke already.

Seen the trailers, and there's too much of a Matrix feel to it...

Geek Fest

Went to a nasi kandar place around Ampang Park this Sunday morning for a geek fest.

The GPS users from http://www.malsingmaps.com called a gathering, and almost twenty showed up with their toys. There was a land surveyor, an accountant, a senior manager of an IT firm, a CEO of a Friendster knock-off (Kawanster.com), an aviation cadet etc. It was a cool way to meet some new people. And get my grubby hands on some new gear.

One guy combined his GPS with a notebook running Google Earth, so he can have a satellite view of his position as he navigates around KL. One guy has a GPS watch. Some used their Pocket PCs with a BlueTooth interface. I was probably the only one still viewing the GPS maps in black & white, and given strong urgings to sell off my one week old purchase and start looking for a better one.

Met the guys who built the KL maps. It was a 16mth effort, primarily by two guys who've met each other in the flesh less than a dozen times. The map is really an incredible achievement.

One guy gave a tutorial on how he's incorporating Google Earth's hi-def pics as an aid to draw his maps. By using reference points and using the GE as an overlay, he can extrapolate some details without needing to track down every small lane/road.

Even got a look at a copyright trap. This is a deliberate mapping mistake, a small non-existent lane drawn somewhere in the map. So in case anyone tries to copy and paste this map into a commercial product and violate the copyright, these traps will catch them out.

An interesting day spent.

Garmin GPSMap 76

I've been trawling Lelong.com (the Malaysian eBay) for many months now for a second hand GPS receiver. And last week, I finally got results.

If you're not sure what a Global Positioning Satellite receiver is, then get your education here.

What I've just gone out and bought is a Garmin GPSMap 76. The seller just blew RM2500 on a newer colour model, the 60CS. So I'm getting a 7mth old, pristine condition GPS unit for a rather good price.

Been having a whale of a time playing with this new toy. Had wanted one for quite a while already. I can see where I am, see where I've been, and see where I'm going. It'll be great for jungle trekking, or off-road biking, so I don't get lost inside an oil-palm plantation somewhere.

The GPS unit can record where you've been, creating a track of you movements, so you can always backtrack your way out.

If you just want this most basic GPS function, then you can just get an eTrex for less than RM800 hereabouts (cheaper to buy in Singapore).

BUT, the GPSMap76 series also allows you to load up a map of your region. And this feature is definitely worth the premium that you pay for it. Although this function is only as good as the map that you can get for it.

There are a variety of GPS receivers out there, but Garmin models are the only one you should seriously consider, because of THIS. A community of GPS enthusiasts around Malaysia and Singapore have spent innumerable hours tracking all the roads, labelling them, and authoring the maps. And these maps are in a format useable by Garmin devices, and I can't speculate how much luck you'll have converting these maps to be compatible with other devices.

The map is INCREDIBLE. I can search for road names, malls, LRT stations, the nearest Bak Kut Teh restaurant (at least those that the mapper finds note-worthy) etc. And if you have a GPSMap 60 series, you can even have auto-routing. This means you ask the GPSr to find a way to get from point A to point B, prioritising time or distance, whether you want to avoid toll roads or not, and the device will show you the way. It's brilliant!

Best of all, the Malsing map is FREE. Free in the sense like, "free beer". Not in the sense as Linux is free. It's still copyrighted. But this map is proven to be superior to several commercial products for Malaysian roads. Products like Mapking will have you driving through concrete road dividers, or punching through cars coming in the other direction.

The GPSMap 76 that I have sadly lacks this auto-routing function. The 76 is a marine series, so routing from point A to B is frequently a straight line and a dose of common sense. Where the 76 excels over the 60, is the tide informations, NAVaid info, which will come in useful if I run a beer smuggling operation between Labuan & Brunei. And most of all, it FLOATS.

.....

If it's not apparent by now, the 60 series is the better toy to buy if you've got the cash. I got my 76 for RM820, so I'm pretty happy. All I'm missing out is the colour, the auto-routing, the electronic compass, the barometer, the altimeter, the hiking altitude graph.... But hey, my 76 floats.


And once I've got my GPS co-ordinates, the next obvious thing to do will be to download Google Earth, of course. Must've burnt a whole night looking for my parents' place in Sibu, and my sister in Melbourne.

I'm at 3deg 09' 09.64" N, 101deg 36' 18.96" E. Check out the golf-course view directly south of me, or the proximity to Ikea.

Next thing to do, will be to look for trail maps!

And GeoCaching!

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

While back in Sibu over the weekend, I decided to dig around my old books. I have a proud collection at home. Plenty of sci-fi and fantasy. A couple of detective fictions. A sticker book of prehistoric animals. Sandman graphic novels. And a near complete collection of the translated works of Mitsuru Adachi.

It often makes me break out in sweat when I hear my parents giving my room out as a guestroom to relatives with grubby-handed brats. I've invested a small fortune here. Many of these books had carried me through some of the most miserable years of my life.


This trip back, I decided to dig out Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and its sequel The Fall of Hyperion.

Like I said before, Hyperion is by far the best sci-fi I've ever read. It has everything. Murder mysteries. Lovecraftian horror. Starship trooper action. Space battles. Time travelling. Several amazing love stories. Detective fiction. Cyperpunk. Rambo II chain-gun action. Monsters. Poetry. Comedy. Tragedy.

But, it's not a sci-fi that I will recommend to the uninitiated. You need a solid grounding in Geek, or phrases like time-debt, AU, FTL travel, singularities will all be Greek to you. Otherwise, better to start with kindergarten stuff like Robotech.

You'll need to know some astronomy to understand what the author meant when he wrote, "Hyperion is afflicted with its Deep Ice Ages, although here the periodicity is spread to thirty-seven million years by the long ellipse of the currently absent binary dwarf."

You don't need to be Einstein to understand the effects of time-dilation in Faster Than Light travel, but it helps.

A useful primer perhaps, will be Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything, which will give you the solid grounding in real sciences before you can understand the speculated science.

And this is part of the appeal of Hyperion.


But if you just want to machette through the science stuff and just revel in the characters' stories, I suppose that's good too.


The story begins with seven pilgrims arriving at Hyperion, a planet on the border of known space. A planet also under threat from an Ouster invasion, a tribe of barbarians (read 'hippie communists') who had left the web worlds of cultured capitalists several centuries ago.

The planet is distinguished by the existence of the Time Tombs, an archeological find of great mystery. A mystery protected by the Shrike, a four-armed, metallic personification of bladed death. And that's where the pilgrims are headed, to petition the Shrike to grant a wish. One will receive his/her wish, the others will die.

On the pilgrimage, each of the pilgrims tell their tale, to prepare each other for the mysteries ahead. Sounds like The Canterbury Tales, no?

Yeah, I've bought that book, but I won't pretend that I've read it. It's a headache....

A lovyere and a lusty bacheler;
With lokkes crulle, as they were leyd in presse.
Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.

WTF?!

... Digressing again...


The story of the pilgrims began with the Priest's Tale.

The story of how an archaeologist from the Catholic church was exiled to Hyperion, where he undertook to study a lost race in the most inaccesible part the planet. How he discovered the village of 70 inhabitants, all mentally as capbable as Down's children, but who respect the burden of the cruciform. A mystery that will not be revealed in its entire horror until the next book.


The Soldier's Tale.

A passionate tale of a decorated soldier's hallucination of a lover in the virtual combat simulations, a love affair with a ghost in the machine, and ultimately meeting this lover in the flesh on Hyperion.

This tale is the author's vehicle to build up the history of his universe. Introducing the Ouster threat into the plot. And revealing the stark horrors of how wars will be fought in the future.

The group went out into the cool evening air, shielding their eyes from the staggering display of silent explosions which filled the sky: pure white fusion bursts expanding like explosive ripples across a lapis pond; smaller, brighter plasma implosions in blue and yellow and brightest red, curling inward like flowers folding for the night: the lightning dance of gigantic hellwhip displays, beams the size of small worlds cutting their swath across light-hours and being contorted by the riptides of defensive singularities: the aurora shimmer of defense fields leaping and dying under the assault of terrible energies only to be reborn nanoseconds later. Amid it all, the blue-white fusion tails of torchships and larger warships slicing perfectly true lines across the sky like diamond scratches on blue glass.

The Poet's Tale.

The story of a poet who discovers that the Shrike's horrific slaughter of innocents on Hyperion is the muse for his epic cantos, told in the dark sardonic humor of a delusional neurotic.

The funniest part was when the poet suffered a stroke during cryogenic sleep which destroyed the language part of his brain.

For the record, here is my entire vocabluary of manageable words: f*ck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherf*cker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo. A quick analysis will show some redundancy here. I had at my disposal eight nouns, which stood for six things; five of the eight nouns could double as verbs. I retained one indisputable noun and a single adjective which also could be used as a verb or expletive. my new language universe was comprised of four monosyllables, three compound words, and two baby-talk repetitions. My arena of literal expression offered four avenues to the topic of elimination, two references to human anatomy, one request for divine imprecation, one standard description of or request for coitus, and a coital variation which was no longer an option for me since my mother was deceased. All in all, it was enough.

The Scholar's Tale.

This is by far my favourite love story. I have re-read this tale more than twice.

Those who watched Adam Sandler's 50 First Dates will recognise many of the elements.

A young archaeologist is cursed with Merlin's sickness while investigating the time tombs. She begins to age backwards. Every morning she awakens, she becomes a day younger, and her memories regress by a day.

Like Drew in the movie, she weeps in denial every morning, finally catching up with her forgotten days and finding acceptance later in the day, only to forget it all and begin the process anew the next morning. Until the day she tells her father not to let her remember anymore.

So the scholar carries the burden of lying to his beloved daughter every day of her life as she grows younger and younger. Until he arrives at the Time Tombs with a five day old babe.


The Captain's Tale.

This is not told cos he may have been shredded by the Shrike before his turn to tell his tale.


The Detective's Tale.

Here, the cyberpunk element of the future is introduced, of how the AI's co-exist with humanity, and of their own conspiracies for the fate of Hyperion.


The Consul's Tale.

This is a Shakespearean tale. Of a pair of true 'star-crossed lovers', but who shared a hundred days more together than R+J. A space-boy who fell in love with an island girl. Every journey he makes across the stars means his island lover gains another 11 years of age over him. Blame Einstein for the paradox.


All meshed together, these tales create an incredibly detailed and imaginative universe brimming with endless possibilities. The delivery just blew my mind the first time I read it.

This book earned its rightful place in the very short list of books that I read twice. Right there with Tolkien. But not quite there with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I read three or more times.

And thankfully, also one of the very few books that will get such a lengthy review from me.

WTF ?

I have a nemesis! I can't believe that there is a Klan dedicated to my extinction!

The Colour of Sin is a Crispy Brown

My phone camera is pretty crappy, so it might not be possible for you to recognise this blur of brown on the plate.

This, dear friends, is the picture of SIN!

Take the foot of a pig. Steam it until the meat is soft and tender. Then deep-fry lightly just till the skin is crispy.

There's a lot more to the recipe than this, but this is as much as I can figure out.

Steaming cooks and softens the meat without leaching out the flavour and juices in the meat, like what happens if you stew the meat.

Deep-frying alone will harden and dry the meat, and often dissolve away much of the fat in the meat.

But a combination of the two creates a miraculous dish of soft tender meat with juicy fat and crispy skin. It's like an orgy in your mouth.

And it only costs less than a dinner for one at TGIF. Not to mention that the restaurant also has crabs at RM13 /kg.

Business is mad, there's a specialised cook for this dish. And probably a whole production line for sorting, gutting, cleaning, and cooking crabs. The restaurant spans across 3-4 ground floor shop-lots.

You can find this restaurant at these approximate co-ordinates: N2 deg 18.320' E111deg 50.875'. You may GoogleEarth it, or head there with a GPS.

Mere walking distance from my parents' house in Sibu.

With this promise of a taste orgasm, maybe now I can convince some friends to come visit me in Sibu some time...

OOTS #285 & Langkawi

In the latest OOTS, Haley's line is:

"You can't understand me, so let me just say that you're a frigid bitch and your thighs look fat in that armor."


Taken me some time to get around to it, cos I just got back from Langkawi.

Will write about that trip, but I have to pack for Sibu tomorrow.

Will explain why I'm going to Sibu, or even where Sibu is, but I also have an assignment that I need to submit before Saturday, and I won't have the internet connection to do that in Sibu.

And I'm also sun-burnt from the hot tropical sun of Langkawi.

And my colleagues were so kind as to arrange a full day for me tomorrow...

Which I'll have to somehow manage despite being crippled cos a Honda Prelude rear-ended me yesterday, just before my flight to Langkawi.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!


But at least I have a new toy to play with to keep me balanced.

Finally got hold of a GPS! Extremely good 2nd-hand condition, at half the price.

It'll be cool to use it in Hanoi.

Will review my gizmo some time. And explain Hanoi another time too.

Speaking of reviews... am also asked to 'audition' for a game review magazine. Gonna try to come up with a decent game to review. But have been playing so few games lately. Probably did less than 5 games in years.

Pulau Langkawi

Finally, a job assignment that brings me somewhere decent!

A satellite installation at an island in Langkawi had failed for a couple of months already, and our usual contractors are too overbooked to service us, again. So it fell to me to head out there to fix it.

It's a tropical island with good beaches. So, I have no complaints.

But before I head to the airport, I had to go pick up some invoices from the office. Somehow, it didn't occur to my manager to hand them to me before I left the office the day before... So, on the way to the office, I got rear-ended by a Honda Prelude.

That damnable man was practically sleeping at the bloody wheel, cos he hit me with enough force to bump me a few feet forward into the back of a Kembara. It was morning rush hour traffic so he couldn't have been going too quickly, yet the impact wedged shut my boot, and crumpled up my bonnet.

Well, his radiator sprung a leak and his front took more damage than me, so that gave me some malicious comfort. The Prelude is not the most common car in KL, so parts will really cost him.


But my car was still driveable, but not safely so, as the buckled bonnet won't lock right and might pop up on the highway. This couldn't have happened at a worse time. Just before I need to get to KLIA, and back on Thursday, and there again on Friday, and back again on Sunday. That's a few hundred ringgit damage in cab fares...


Well, enough whining...

So I got to Langkawi, met the representative from our client at the jetty. And we took a 20min boat ride to Tuba Island, an idyllic place with a population of a few thousands. We were headed to the primary school there, which was the benefeciary of this company's community outreach, thus explaining why such a kampung school can have IT equipment and a satellite broadband subscription.

The school happened to be having a sports day. It's rather amusing to see their house names are Satria, Waja, Wira & Iswara. But this is Mahathir's home after all.


Managed to get the work done in an afternoon, which gave me almost 24hrs of time to kill. That's where I made the mistake of asking the cabbie to take me to a cheap and clean place. If I had realised that my accomodations would be charged directly to the client, I would have gone somewhere closer to a beach...

If I boozed, I might have had a great time with all the duty-free beer. But as it were, my only entertainment was munching pasar malam food and watching Robin Williams on TV.

Next day, I rented a bike from a nearby shop and went cycling. It was the crappiest bike I've every ridden. Ever. I estimated that I could make my way from one end of the island to the other in 1-1.5 hrs. That's where the nice beaches are, the west side.

Took me 2.5hrs to make the journey. Crappy equipment can really suck the fun out of your favourite activities. Like reading a bad book. Although I did make a few random stops and found some of the polluted fishing areas carefully kept hidden from tourists.

At the beach, I was only rewarded with the sight of one chick in bikinis. Only one. It wasn't yellow, but it was polka-dot.

Only had half an hour to swim before I had to take a cab to return the bike and get to the airport.


The cabbie is ex-army. We talked about scandals in the Malaysian military. About our Spitfires that we purchased from the British, and left to rust in Arizona before fencing them off again to some other suckers.


Managed to get back home in one piece.

Then unpacked.

And packed again for Sibu.

OOTS #284

Finally, a good cryptogram after so many weeks.

And I must apologise for taking so long to get around to this. It appears that quite a number of Googlers have been here to look for the latest solution and not finding it.

"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime."

So let me introduce all OOTS fans to THIS.


Or... if you can't be bothered, here's the fish.

Panel 3:
What?

Panel 5:
No, wait, that verdict doesn't make sense. Laws don't work that way.

Panel 6:
I've seen enough of my thieves' guild friends sent to prison to know that this should have been a conviction.

Panel 9:
But.. but it doesn't make any sense!

Panel 10:
No! I'm not OK, this whole trial made NO SENSE!

Panel 11:
We WERE guilty! It shold have been a guilty verdict! I can understand if they wanted to reduce the sentence due to the circumstances, but it should have still been a guilty verdict.

Panel 12:
Oh, never mind, I don't know why I'm bothering.

Panel 13:
Wait--Elan, what did you just say?

Panel 14:
Oh my gods, Elan! That's it! Elan, you're a genius!

Venusian Sixth Sense...

So... I took a weekend off my gaming, and took a whole day to clean up my apartment. Had been servicing my bikes in the living room, so the floor was quite greasey. And my quarterly mopping was long overdue.

So I took a day to hose down the floors and scrub it till I nearly slipped my disc.

Anyway, the first friend that dropped by saw the cleaning, became immediately suspicious, and asked me who I'm cleaning for?

The next friend that found out that I had been cleaning, also became suspicious, and wondered who's coming to visit.

It seems that the only reason a bachelor will clean, is when he's going to bring a girl he wants to impress.

And when a guy cleans too regularly, he must be gay.

I once had a profound respect for women's intuition. But after some scientific observation, I think it's just a roll of dice on the craps table. If they jump to enough random conclusions as frequently as they buy shoes, occasionally they will make a connection that might strike one as intuitive.

Batu Dam

Costed me a fair bit, even with some mad bargain hunting, but I've got Red up and running. Had to spend a bit on a new wheelset that's suitable for disc-brakes. RM420 for a pair of Taiwanese knock-off hubs and fancy looking wheel rims. That's still a third of what I'ld have to pay for fancy Shimano hubs and bling-bling Mavic rims. And putting most of the new components from Blue over, and I've got a nice ride.

Got itchy, and bought new Deore shifters. LBS guy (local bike shop, just across the street from my apartment) assured me that it'ld work with my SRAM derailleur. But after I brought it back, of course it didn't work. Wrong index ratio, I could only get 7-speeds with my 9-speed gear sprockets. So I had to buy a matching Deore LX rear derailleur, from a different branch of the same business, of course. At the same time, forwarded them some feedback of their new branch and staff.

Then I serviced all the old stock parts for Blue, put everything together. And fetched some more bits and pieces and to get Blue up and running also. Albeit with a crappy suspension fork and very old tyres. But it still rides sweet.


So now, I've got two mountain bikes. (Well, three, if I also count my old LeRun, but that's way too heavy for trail riding.) 2 bikes ADD 1 friend = Adventure.

So I inducted a friend into this activity. His wife threw a small fit at being excluded from the activity and called us Brokeback Mountain cowboys... hummmm.......


Anyway-s, we tackled the Batu Dam trail on Sunday. It's an excellent place to cut our teeth into off-road riding. A good part of it is scenic as well as easily rideable. Then comes an uphill bit where we have to get down and push. Then some moderately challenging downhills (which I did not attempt at full speed, cos I forgot my helmet), and some insane downhills. And plenty of leeches.

Some parts of the trail has been damaged. Locked wheels digging into the dirt and erosion created some treacherous ruts. And although some bits have been repaired, it is not as well maintained as Bt Kiara.

But it's still a hugely popular spot. Met no less than four groups on the trails.

At the north-most end of the lake, there's a refreshing stream where a few families were picnic-ing. We took a break there and soaked ourselves. The mountain water was so cold that I probably turned into a eunuch.

Then we took the way out onto the highway, and found our way back into the dam via a hole in the fence, thus completing a clockwise loop around the lake.


It was a good test ride for Red. Full suspension makes a difference. No sore buttocks. The boys are safe. And I can pedal across bumpy bits much more effectively.

Childhood memories of food

Tehtariksatu tagged me for this meme like...4 months ago...

List down 5 childhood memories of food.

1. Chewing gum
The tidbits stall right outside my primary school gate always made bustling business when school was out. This was before the school was smart enough to build a proper canteen and set up business within the school compound. In those days, boys (of course, only boys do this) who have the munchies during school hours will have to run the gauntlet of prefects, teachers, wandering deans, pak guard etc all the way across the school field, pop out of the gate, buy their supplies, run back and lose themselves amongst the anonymous masses before they were intercepted.

And there was one kind of chewing gum that you can't find nowadays. It's probably illegal now. The chewing gum wasn't very tasty. Nothing tastes better than Wrigley's Double Spearmint. What's special about these gums though, was the packaging.

The gum was moulded into a cylindrical shape, wrapped with a thin white paper with the butt of one end painted orange.

Yes, it looks just like a faggot. (That's 'ciggie', for those of you who don't watch enough BBC.)

Almost everyone buy those and role play with them. Acting like Joe Camel, or the Marlboro Man.

You won't find sweets like that anymore!


2. Greenbean soup with hard-boiled egg
Back in kindergarten, the school served tea for all of us growing children. Nobody packed their own food. Everyone got the same food. It was a social equaliser. That, and everyone wearing the same uniform, same bag design, same pencil-cases, same pencils etc... We respected each other as equals. Except for the fat boys.

It's nasty to say it, but children are born cruel. Nobody taught us that fat is bad. But if someone is huge, our young minds automatically label them as fat, and treat them differently. Like a bull elephant, you don't want to provoke it, but neither will you be too comfortable getting too close to it. Even the boy with the mouthful of dental nightmare got more respect than the fat boy.

Anyways... the tea in school. I use to wolf down everything. Until one unfortunate day when they served green bean soup and hard boiled eggs. I only remember puking out my guts outside the classroom. It left a scar. Was 10-15yrs later before I felt comfortable eating any kind of bean soup and hard boiled eggs again.


3. Fish porridge
My mom left me with a nanny in the next flat when she heads to work.

For lunch, she often makes this porridge with slices of fish.

Only, this is a very bony fish. With all the fine prickly bones that you can never remove completely.

Eating that porridge was like walking a mine-field. You have to be alert, and catch those bones before you swallow. For every bone I caught, half as many I missed. Luckily I never lacerated my oesophagus.

And some magazine somewhere that I read when I was young, said that fish bones is brain food.

So, it's all good.


4. Roast piglet
It must have been 1983 or 1984.

My parents took me to Bangkok on vacation. And my poor sister was still too young to travel, so she was left with some cousins for the whole two weeks. She must've been traumatised, thinking that her family has left her for good.

My most unforgetable memory: the roast piglet we had for dinner one night.

Somehow, olfactory memories are more memorable than visual or auditory ones.

The crispy, succulent skin of the piglet.... Yummy...

It was only more than 17yrs later, that I got to re-experience that dish again, at the random wedding dinners that I get invited to. And it'll never be as good as that first memory.


5. Fried chicken wing
The most frequently bought food at the school canteen ever since I was old enough to be trusted with money. It was 60cts per piece. Nowadays, the average mamak will charge you 2.50.

Ashamed...

Almost everyone enjoys chuckling at a dirty joke or two...

But the level of filth that I'm able to catch... sometimes I'm ashamed of myself...

From an episode of Family Guy, when Brian is invited to direct a porno film...

BRIAN: "There's just no way I can do this... I've been around... You know er... I've licked my share of peanut-butter, but I think you need to find yourself a new director."


If you didn't understand the Goober reference, be grateful, and don't ask.

Meme of Four

Seems that I got tagged by Ben for this meme. I've come to the conclusion that this 'meme' thingie is something like a chain letter going around bloggers, and builds up more links between blogs, in an attempt to widen the catchment for visitors...

So, here's to duty....

4 Jobs I've Had In My Life

• Wan-tan mee stall owner (well, technically, a partnership for my hostel's open day, but it's more interesting than writing 'IT Engineer' four times).
• Door to door flyer boy for a community centre
• Partner in an IT service business (learning to great frustration that M'sian companies are interested in cheap, not quality; and their purchasing officer are only interested in what's their cut).
• Research engineer

4 Movies I Could Watch Over & Over

• Chasing Amy, directed by Kevin Smith, which I maintain is the most enjoyable love story I've every watched. You've got to love a movie with dialogue like,

"Fuck Lando Calrissian! Uncle Tom nigger! Always some white boy gotta invoke `the holy trilogy'! Bust this - those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down - even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit. You got cracker farm-boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy - blond hair, blue eyes. And then you've got Darth Vader: the blackest brother in the galaxy. Nubian God. Now Vader, he's a spiritual brother, with the force and all that shit. Then this cracker Skywalker gets his hands on a light- saber, and the boy decides he's gonna run the fucking universe - gets a whole Klan of whites together, and they're gonna bust up Vader's `hood the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that!"

"Intergalactic Civil War?"

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A lust-driven Disney villian? That's like the most powerful thing Disney ever did before all their executives got clobbered by the stupid stick.
  

• LOTR:FOTR. (The Horn of Gondor. Hyuk! Hyuk!)
  

• JFK.
  

4 TV Shows I Love(d) To Watch

• Coupling
• MacGyver (Class-A role model)
  
• Scrubs
• Family Guy (It's embarassing how many obscure pop references I can understand...)
  

4 Places Where I've Lived

• Sibu, Sarawak
• Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
• Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
• BSH, Singapore
  

4 Places I've Been On Vacation To

• Kuantan
• Langkawi
• Melbourne
• Bangkok
  

4 Places I Would Rather Be

• anywhere with a good swimming pool
• the next geek-con where Neil Gaiman does a book signing
  
• a self-sufficient farm in New Zealand with a nuke-proof bunker until the mess in Iran blows over
• inside a bank vault, with an exit strategy
  

4 Of My Favourite Foods

• Sarawak / Foo-chow mee (Took me 9-yrs to find a place that sells near authentic ones outside of Sarawak)
  
• Bak Kut Teh.
  
• 花旗鸡饭, not seen outside of this one restaurant in Brunei, and it's gone now.
• Pork fallopian tube. Seriously. This dim-sum place in Brunei used to make an incredible dish. The dictionary definition for succulent should have a picture of this dish in it.
  

4 Websites I Visit Daily

• http://www.gmail.com
• http://www.somethingpositive.net
• http://kitco.com
• http://www.financialsense.com
  

4 Beautiful People Worth Tagging

• say again? beautiful people?
  

Fiction extrapolating current events

One thing that I'm noting also, from the few books that I've been reading recently... A number of authors are venting their disapproval of terrorism in their works...

Terry Pratchett's Thud! is a story of an ancient, pointless grudge between dwarves and trolls that goes back centuries. Ankh Morpork is a multi-ethnic, multi-species stew of culture. A group of traditional tunnel-dwelling dwarves drop in from the old country, and start to promote 'spiritual awareness' in the urbanised & 'corrupted' city dwarves and stir up ancient resentment towards the trolls. Then the dwarf holy man is murdered and a troll is suspected, leading to inter-species violence in the streets.

Pratchett's Discworld novels are frequently satires of contemporary events. Such as Going Postal may be a satire of the Enron scandal. Or Soul Music -with my favourite Pratchett quote: "We're bigger than cheeses,"- is a satire of the Beatles.


Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Giant, where the Caliphate conquered India and commited atrocities. But he did distinct the line between the spirit of the religion, and the power-hungry madmen who were abusing the beliefs of their people.


In Olympos, an old-style human and the moravecs discovered a derelict nuclear submarine, armed with 48 MIRV ICBM missiles, each carrying a payload of 16 'black hole' warheads, which will create 768 mini blackholes ping-ponging around Earth's gravity until the entire planet is obliterated. It is an extremely creative doomsday scenario. The submarine was manned by 26 soldiers of the Global Caliphate. The author was trying to illustrate the mindless & deluded insanity that could inspire man to create such a weapon.


Seems like everyone wants to say something about the Middle East.

Happy Hallmark Conspiracy Day

My heart bleeds for each and every man who's forking out for three-figure flower and dinner bills.

Olympos by Dan Simmons

Life is sweet after getting the guillotine off my neck.

Can indulge myself, like spending 2.5hrs at Borders, reading Dilbert comics, or stuff on mountain biking and triathlon-ing etc... I'm certainly under no delusions whatsoever about my level of fitness, but one should still seek improvement, and also to shame meself into seeing how far short my level of discipline is compared to real athletes.

Love Borders. All those unwrapped books. It's good for me. I'm a bookworm.

Been so for a long while. Maybe it started because I am socially autistic. Or perhaps I just enjoy listening to smart people 'talk', (I vocalise every word I read in my head). Both will also explain why I'm frequently quiet amongst company; stupid things pop out of my mouth with alarming frequency, so I'll much rather not hear myself talk.

But if someone's recounting his knee surgery in great detail for the fifth time, or giving a running commentary on what Bree Van De Kamp is wearing, my brain may compell my mouth to speak and gush forth the garbage verbiage.

I'm digressing...

Back to books...

I used to read a lot. But these days, what with all the many little things that's taking up slices of my leisure, I'm having to cut down on quantity and focus on quality.

But with some exceptions... I still read Harry Potter so that I can tell people that Snape killed Dumbledore. Also Da Vinci Code, to experience the depth of disappointment to see how the whole world is taken in by such gimmicky drivel. It's like... watching Revenge of the Sith...


But I'm not here to review bad books. Not now...

Let's talk about good books.

I'm pretty much all about fantasy and sci-fi these days. If I were to name my favourite sci-fi, I'll go with Dan Simmon's Hyperion. That's where the creature on the right came from. It's the Shrike. An enigmatic & undefeatable killing machine guarding the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. This is the Balrog of Dan Simmon's world. An immediately identifiable icon of death.

The story of Hyperion continues in Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and Rise of Endymion. And I'm still not entirely sure how the Shrike came to be...


Anyways.... I can't seem to be able to hold onto a thought here, and it's taken me almost 400 words to get to the point of the book review.


Dan's latest book is Olympos, the sequel to Ilium.

Unfortunately, I can't talk about Olympos without talking about the book that came before it.

In Ilium, there are three discrete 'worlds' all happening together.

First there are the moravecs, a race of artificial beings created by humans millenia ago, and seeded in Jupiter, its moons, and the asteroid belt. They are a fusion of the organic and the cybernetic. They have autonomy, but also programmed to have a great curiosity in the human consciousness. They spend their lives conducting scientific explorations on Jupiter's moons and discuss literature like Shakespeare or Proust.

Being a being of scientist and engineers, they're picking up readings of critical quantum disruption on Mars, and have built a ship to investigate.


Second, there are the 'old-style' humans on earth. Living like terrapins in a terrarium. Everyone lives to be a hundred, exactly, in eternal youth. Every 20years, they are 'beamed' up onto one of the many artificial satellites to be rejuvenated. These satellites also facilitate childbirth, and heal fatal injuries. After a century, the human is retired from field service, and a birth is then allowed to take place.

Humans spend their lives teleporting all over a care-free Utopian earth. Everybody is illiterate. Robots handle all labour. Nobody works. Their only diversion is entomology, recreational copulation in a freely loving society, and a soap drama showing the Trojan war round the clock.

And the human females have evolved a something to keep and catalogue sperm sacs. So when their biological imperative drive them, they can sort thru the genetic material of any of their many one night stands over the course of decades, to fertilise the new life. Thus, creating an impossible society where a father could be copulating with his own daughter and no one would even know.


And in the third world, Priam's walls are under siege. His worthless son Paris has carried off the bride of Menelaus. Agamemnon has launched his ships and those of his allies to help his cry-baby brother get his wife back.

The whole cast from the Iliad is here. Achilles. Odysseus. Small Ajax. Big Ajax. Hector. Helon. Nestor. Cassandra. Andromarche. Patroclus. Briseis. Scamandrius. Apollo. Athena. Ares. Aphrodite. Hephasteus. Zeus. And many others. The Archaens. The Trojans. The Greek pantheon. The Muses. The Furies.

The cast that didn't fit though, was Dr. Hockenberry PhD University of Indiana.

For some inscrutible reason, some beings of unimaginable quantum powers have styled themselves as the Greek gods, and recreated all the heroes from Homer's Iliad to have them enact the siege of Troy.

The doctor has a PhD in literature with deep knowledge of the Iliad. He lived in the 20th century, but somehow, his body and memories had been reconstituted intact in this bizarre world, and tasked to give the gods a running sports commentary on the events around Ilium. Only Zeus and the commentators (and Cassandra to some extent) know the Iliad, but somehow, the entire cast, including the pantheon, are all following the script.

And if "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", here the powers of the gods are explained by pheromones, nanocytes, quantum fields or tunneling etc...

But what is most exciting, is to read the stories of the Iliad, finally in a readable form! Because seriously, I do not have the mental constitution to work through an epic volume of ancient Greek poetry.

I read this book before watching Troy. Which gave me an excellent perspective to enjoy all the bits that Hollywood did right, and the many many places where they shafted history in a fairly uncomfortable place. (And I don't mean the back of a Volkswagen.)

For example:
-The siege lasted 9 years or more.
-Achilles' gay-love for Patroclus, and upon their deaths their bones were mingled for sweet eternity.
-Menelaus did not die.
-Helen didn't escape with Legolas Paris. She was cornered by Menelaus in a temple. And just as he was about to plunge his sword (not a double entendre) into Helen, she bared her boobs and Menelaus changed his mind.


I'm digressing again...

Anyway, at the end of Ilium, all three worlds began to come together.

Olympos is the exciting climax. Of the fates of the 'old-style' human, after they found out the terrible truth about the orbiting satellites. Of the war between the pantheon and the Greeks, orchestrated by Hockenberry, who is enviably sharing Helen's bed. The conclusion of the Trojan war, which ended differently when Odysseus and Achilles are taken out of the equation.

The twist in Olympos, is the nature of Prospero, Caliban, Setebos, Sycorax, Ariel,and Miranda.

Yes, the cast from Shakespeare's last play: The Tempest.

And an enjoyable bonus ending, with Achilles and Penthesilea (an Amazon warrior of great beauty who was defeated by Achilles in the Iliad). Aphrodite gave Penthesilea an intoxicating pheromone, keyed to Achilles' senses only, to aid her in her ill-fated duel. But the big bosomed dumb blonde went and challenged Achilles standing downwind. HaHaHaHaHaHaHa. Resulting in the poor hero becoming helplessly in love with a corpse.


Better stop before I give away too much of the story.

Verdict: Good book. Read it.

Y's Insights

Remember Y - The Last Man?

The lastest ish has got some interesting insights into the female psyche...

"When's the last time you lathered and rinsed?"

"With what, Dr. Mann? The second the plague hit, you people started hoarding every last bottle of shampoo. I've been inside supermarkets where women left entire aisles of canned goods, but cleared out the goddamn HAIR-CARE section."

"There are plenty of farmers left, Yorick, but the cosmetics industry was run my men. Vidal Sassoon is a collector's item now."


Heh heh... in a post-gendercide holocaust, Head & Shoulders will be the new currency.

The author also has something to say about love...

"Love isn't an 'emotion', it's an abstract construct mammals assign to a biological imperative they don't fully understand."


And I thought I was a cynic...

You learn a new word every day...

Today's word is : Yaoi

Isn't it interesting to note that for every 10 perverted men with lesbian fantasies, there are at least 1 middle-aged woman with gay fantasies...

And I'ld like to further applaud the awesome genius of Wikipedia... I'll bet doughnut to dollar that an Encyclopedia Britannica editor will never ever come up with such a well researched entry.

Guillotine

Don't you just hate it when there's a bloody deadline hanging over your head, sapping the joy from your every waking moment?

I would be writing here, but there's work to be done...