Wing's Music Cafe

The first time I went to this Wing's Cafe in Equinne Park, I thought this place was pretty cool for a hangout place. It's like a high-class mamak stall. But after checking out the menu, and discovering that a small glass of coke would cost me RM4.90 (exclusive of tax), I decided to order a plain diamond filtered water, as written in the menu (lol). The Heineken too, I noticed, was double the normal price in any 7-eleven outlets.

There were two guys singing on the small stage (if you can call that a stage). One of them was playing the keyboard and the other guy was playing the guitar. So we went on chatting among ourselves, oblivious to the guy singing and I personally found that the sound system was a bit too loud. Although the atmosphere is open-air but it was like the sounds couldn't escape and I was finding it real hard to catch what my friends were saying and I had to raise my voice.

Suddenly I noticed a girl's voice, singing Heaven Knows by Rick Price. I turned and wondered whether there was a female singer on the stage. Then I discovered, it wasn't a female. It was a male singer. The keyboard player, wearing a cap. His voice was high-pitched, but in a good way, something like Jeff Chang's, and a little like JJ Lin Jun Jie too. The way he sang Heaven Knows and Xin Bu Liao Qing (by Wan Fang), oh my god, can take your breathe away. My friends and I were so impressed by him that we dedicated a few songs and wrote on the dedication paper, specifying him, the keyboard player, to sing them. He sang a few of Jay Chou's songs and some new Chinese songs, all were great!

Ever since that night, we went there a few times again. All on Friday nights. Because that guy (we didn't ask for his name) only sings on Friday nights. There was once Lao Ann requested to sing onstage. He picked a Jay Chou's song, Black Sweater (Hei Se Mao Yi). He's a pretty good singer. We had always envied him and forced him to sing solo during karaokae outings. They had even recorded a video of him singing onstage, with the assistance from the keyboard player. The one on the left playing the keyboard is the cafe singer and Lao Ann is the one on the right.

p/s: Courtesy to ShinYin who took the pictures and KokChiang who provided the video.

A Spot of Bother

The newly released novel by Mark Haddon, author of "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time". It is a gift from a friend. I am a huge fan of Haddon's previous novel so I'm pretty much putting up very high hopes for his new release.

The story only started to get interesting when one of the main characters, George began losing his mind, which is towards the middle of the 400+ pages novel. Only then that I had sped up my reading. Haddon had managed to portray vividly the mind of mentally-disturbed people, in both his novels. It is nice to know what crazy people think.

"A Spot of Bother" is a story about the process of an old, retired man going insane, bearing the stress from knowing his wife's affair, his skin cancer, his daughter's marriage to (in his opinion) the wrong man, giving a speech on his daughter's wedding... The story was told in various points of view, all from him and his family.

Very much similar to Haddon's first novel, "A Spot of Bother" has a mentally-disturbed character; and it has a... what I would call, a 'hanging' ending, which doesn't land anywhere. But I would say that this book ends in a rather abrupt manner, though I cannot give any suggestions on what to be added. Overall I think this is a good book, but not one of the my best, highly-recommended. And as usual, one's first novel is always the best.

Cinta

It is indeed, a story about love, all kinds of love. The movie gives me an impression that it's copying "Love, Actually". (Great film. Those of you who love romantic movies, it's not to be missed.) There are five stories and everyone is inter-related in one way or another. Some stories are great and some are just purely stupid. I would say the best (and my favourite) story would be the old man with Azheimer disease. At the beginning of that story, there was a false indication of a possible romantic relationship between the Azheimer old man and Robiah (haha...) which disgusted me a little. But as the story progressed, it developed into a surprising and moving ending. The worst and shall I say, stupid-est story would definitely be the most eligible bachelor cum director/founder of a magazine falling in love with the MPH bookstore salesgirl. Being a rich bachelor and the owner of a big magazine coorporation I suppose he can do whatever he wants, date whoever he wants. But for some mysteriously unknown reason, he behaved like those young idol artistes denying his relationship with the MPH salesgirl when the press found out about that. So that the girl can have a reason to be disappointed and angry with him, and that he'd have a chance of performing a melodramatic scene in the LRT train proposing to her on his bended knees just minutes before she is off to the airport leaving the country forever.

Besides, there are also some irrelevant points in the stories. For instance the guy with some kidney failure disease, couldn't they just perform dialysis treatment instead of having to make his sister donating her kidney for a transplant. And why in the world would his sister died after the transplant? I mean, there would be a greater chance of the kidney failure guy dying (having a foreign organ in his body) than the organ donor dying, wouldn't it.

However there are still some points worth complimenting, such as the realistic, very Malaysian-ised settings, some moving scenes and lines, some originality... I also like that they filmed random people at the beginning and the end of the film. It creates a... warm feeling and it reminds me of what Julia Roberts said in "Notting Hill"... "Some people really do spend their whole lives together." Overall "Cinta" is a fair film for a local malay movie and if your expectations weren't high, you may even find it good.

macaroni bolognaise

Today is a memorable day because I had cooked a meal for myself for the first time (other than instant noodles, of course). My recipe was macaroni with some tomato mushroom flavoured sauces.

Ingredients:
macaroni
Kimball (or any other brands) spaghetti sauce
onion
garlic
chicken meat

Procedure:

1. Prepare ingredients by chopping the meat, garlic and onion into small pieces.
2. Put oil on frying pan.
3. Wait till oil is hot.
4. Put garlic in.
5. Add in onion.
6. Add in chicken meat.
7. Add in spaghetti sauce.
8. Fry till fragrant. Then the sauce is ready to be served.
9. Put macaroni in boiling water.
10. Cook for 9 mins. (This depends on the brand. Look for the instruction. It is very precise. 9 mins means 9 mins. No more, no less.)
11. Pour the sauce on macaroni.
12. Ready to be served!

*Special thanks to Shin Tien who guided me along with the procedures. :)

the wrong thought

There are some things in life that can't be changed. Once you did a wrong thing, made a wrong move, said the wrong thing, had a wrong thought (and people know about it), you just can't take them back. People will forever remember you for the things (and the thoughts) that you've done (had)...

The Forgotten

I realized how freakishly easy it is, to isolate myself from my friends. Just vanish like that, into thin air. All I have to do, is to change my handphone number, create a new msn account... That's it. I don't even have to have new email addresses or new friendster/facebook accounts cause I can choose to just ignore the messages and the emails from friends. The idea of disappearing scares me. Of course, at the beginning my friends will worry about me, call each other up and check if they had hear any news about/from me. But they can't find me. They don't know where I stay or work (even if they do, it'll be too troublesome to come knock on my door). So in the end, I'll become a person they knew a long time ago. When they have gatherings and one of them happen to mention my name. They'll say, "Ah yes, ShinLoo... I wonder what happens to her. She used to be my close friend." Maybe they'd remember how funny, how weird I was, and how much they enjoyed being with me. But still... I'm just another person who once crossed their paths. And time will make them forget...

the worst birthday

I curse the two thieves who stole my laptop!!! I curse them to hell!!! I wish they'd get hit by a car, get cancer, choke to death, go to hell, get raped, drown to death, and all the other possible causes of death would do just fine (besides committing suicide and natural causes, as that would be too easy for them). It happened on 11th of March, a day after my birthday. They came in wanting to take a look at the rooms for rent. Having seen the guy a day before, I opened the door to let them in. They stayed in the house compound for, I believe, less than 5 minutes. Yet 10 minutes after they left, I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the empty table, where I placed my laptop. My mind was totally blank when I answered the test paper questions. And after the test, I found out another bad news: my housemate, ChoyChing's laptop was also missing. Due to my stupidity and carelessness, two laptops are gone.We waited 2 hours in the Serdang Police Station to file a report. And when I checked my statement which was typed out by the policeman, I saw in the age column, 24 years 0 months. What an irony.

Lessons learnt:
1) Do not trust strangers.
2) Do not open the door to strangers, even if you have met the person before.
3) Ditch the thought that "The world is beautiful and people don't do bad things to each other." or "Bad things won't happen to me."
4) Grow up and stop being so naive.
5) It's never wrong to be too careful. Better safe than sorry.

To look at the bright side, I should be thankful that I had backed-up my final year design project report, two copies, one in each thumbdrive. And due to this misfortune, I had seen that many people care about me. There are a handful of people that I should thank:
1) Eric who lend me his laptop, indefinitely.
2) WeiJian who helped me format the pc, installing not only the basic microsoft offices, but also AutoCad, Visio, PPStream, plus songs, movies, pics, etc.
3) Lydia who helped me find part time job to cover my loss and expanses.
4) My roommate, ManYee who said:"Use my laptop. I've already written the password over there."
5) LingYue who is always ready to listen and help, unconditionally.
6) Julian and the Minlon people who expressed their concern and are willing to offer help whenever needed.
7) My family who offer financial aid and a possibility of a new laptop, but which I declined.

darkness, engulf me...

"Due to the darkness of the sky,
you can see the stars above;
The darkness is to set off,
the brightness of the stars;
And I,
I am just like the darkness."
~Takuya Kimura in "Long Vacation"~

all is dark
i am falling
refusing to listen, to feel, to see,
to care
allowing myself to be wrapped by the darkness
slowly, silently, numbly
until the end of time

i'm NOT an alcoholic!

Getting drunk is a good feeling. I feel happier when I'm drunk. And alcohol is good! But the hangover, it sucks! And the memory of the things that you've done when you were drunk, it can haunt you for the rest of your life. For those of you who had never get drunk all your life, trust me on this: you don't wanna try. To convince you I will tell you about an extremely embarrassing night I recently had. We went clubbing in Ruums because it was Lydia's birthday. Having to break one of my new year resolutions, the least I could do was to vow and promise myself:
1) Not to smoke
2) Not to get drunk

I only managed to keep one of the promises. I guess I just don't know how to control the amount of alcohol I take and my speed of drinking. I started by feeling a bit dizzy, by the time we got back from the dance floor and got down from the stage (we danced onstage, can you believe it?), I was as drunk as can be. I managed to walk back to our table and sit myself on the chair without support, but after that when the alcohol started to take over me, I couldn't even sit straight. I needed the support of two guys, one arm on one shoulder, in order to walk out of the club without tripping. And all I did was laugh, apologize for being so much trouble, laugh, tell my friends that I like them, and laugh.

As if this is not embarrassing enough, I puked when we reached the place where we ate dim sum, right on the tar road. The feeling was so unbearable. And I was so lucky that my friends were there to take care of me. I was half-dead when I puked again out of ManYee's car window on our way back. So Choon had to stop his car and come down to check on me while ManYee handed me the tissue and water. As I saw KokChiang cleaning my puke from the car door, I felt that I've sinned terribly. What good have I done to deserve these people as friends? I puked again when I reached home and the next morning. The hangover and gastric are the end of my physical suffering from the sins that I've committed, but the mental guilt goes on.

The only things that I've benefit from this incident were:
1) I got to hug people.
2) I got to sleep on LingYue's shoulder.
3) LingYue said I look prettier (for some mysterious, unknown reason) when I was drunk.
4) I got to watch people like LingYue and Julian dance onstage. (Ha!)
5) I discovered the fact that LingYue and Julian dance like clubbing kaki when they're slightly drunk.
And number 4 and 5 satisfied me the most.

crazy is just you or me... amplified

"Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy."
~from the movie Girl, Interrupted.

I'm reading a book by Paulo Coelho. The title is "Veronika Decides to Die", a birthday present from a friend upon my request. A weird and funny title, I know. The story is about a girl, Veronika, who seems to have everything she wanted - boyfriends, career, family, looks et cetera. But she's not happy. So one day, she decided to die. She took an overdose of sleeping pills but woke up in an asylum. However, though she failed to kill herself at that time, her heart had been damaged and she would die in few days. From there the story goes on to how she lived through her remaining time, things she uncovered, the meaning of life et cetera.

Like his every other book that I've read, I cannot quite grasp what message the author is trying to convey. What a shame... But there's one part of the story that I like a lot. The part where one of the inmates of the asylum told Veronika a story. The story goes like this...

A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad. The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, and which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them. When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication. In despair, the king prepared to step down from the throne but the queen stopped him, saying: "Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then, we will be the same as them." And that was what they did: the king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country? The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.

I was chatting with a friend on MSN and we were talking about weird people that we know. Now that I think of it, weird people are probably from that particular kingdom. Hahaha...