don't try these at home

i was tagged by intysaar and requested by che' chomeyll to do this. i am not very adventurous so most of these things, you'd have done anyway. not really in my writing mood so (fortunately for you readers) not much blabbering, hehe. if you have been following my comments religiously in other people's blog, you might've seen these here and there.

1. cussy-ied many lambs: can't exactly remember the correct technical term but apparently it's done to reduce the risk of infection to those lambs. didn't do it myself actually. just lifted up those poor lambs into the cradle and the farmer did it while my job was to lift them up into the cradle and apply those disinfectant powder. ouch!


2. drove from fr@nkfurt to @msterdam non-stop: can't exactly remember how far, could've easily been 700 km (437 miles). with wifey as navigator, can't quite decide which was trickier. but those blinding speed on the aut0bahn definitely helped in reducing the travelling time


3. caught speeding at almost double the speed limit and got away scot-free: 150 vs 80 (km/h not miles). and corruption-free as well. the usual thousands apologies and tired coming back from work at 2am thingy (i was!)


4. had a friendly chat with local melben police: due to some "misunderstanding" that i had. enuf said.


5. exaggerate about having lunch with other females with wifey: when she calls (note the tense) during lunchtime and asks about those womanly chatters in the background, instead of denying, i'd say that i'm having lunch not with one but four or five of them instead


6. touched the lightning arrester in my koleq: on top of the roof, of course it wasn't raining. i don't have a death wish, you know.


7. didn't cut my hair or shave for 2 years: not due to anything emotional. out of curiousity of how i would look like and just got sick of being too cold because i cut hair very short the previous winter. the verdict? even my mum didn't recognise me when she picked me up at the airport.


8. got a crush on my best friend's elder sister: when i was 10, hehe. older women?!


9. lived without indoor plumbing, electricity and piped water for 2 weeks: probably longer. during one of my homestay program when i was 16. first time i realised that a woman, 7 years older, could actually be crazy enough to be attracted to the nerdy me.


10. had a 6-hour nap: during my bachelor days. was coming home late around 2 am. i was getting maybe mini, not microsleep while driving. just stopped under one well-lit bridge because i didn't think i would get home in one piece if i continued driving. roaring rain hitting my car woke me up at 8am while engine still running. thankfully didn't die of asphyxiation or carbon monoxide poisoning or anything like that (belum ajal kot)

[edited]

i'm feeling generous today so i'm adding another one.


11. dated someone's fiance one week before she got married: hehe not my fault. she insisted

[/edited]

heh. not so crazy life after all. whom to tag? jeng jeng jeng. those neverending chitchat that we've had over the years, i don't think anything remotely as this ever came up so i'm quite curious about the one who had just ended her official term with her ASS. hehe you are tagged!!! and you nonah! for that last fling.

questions

before i went to bed last night, somehow i thought (nothing to do with fd's thinking blogger award) about surrogate mothers. no, i don't require any and i don't know anybody who wants one or would like to be one.

the question is (was?) has there been any hukum or fatwa about surrogate mothers? how about the relationship hukum between the child and mother in terms of muhrim et al? and what is surrogate mother in malay? so that i won't look like a smug when asking any ustaz about it.

constitutional monarchy

warning. long entry. commitment required.

once upon a time, there was a (ehem!) handsome prince. he hailed from a sleepy hollow and travelled to faraway land in his quest for knowledge and found himself falling madly in love with a princess from the capital city of the purple kingdom. while they strived to see each other day in and out during the scholarly period, the luxury was not afforded when they returned temporarily to their respective lands to retain acquaintences with the ladyships and lordships in their homeland.

like any other lovebirds in their mad illusions of being in love, they were grateful to the remote communication equipment that enabled them to be within speaking distance throughout. it was however, simply a meagre substitute of a four-eyed meeting and the burgeoning cost associated with it was simply not an alluring pleasure to the kings and queens.

thankfully, there was a frequent carriage service in between the distant lands and the golds required for utilising the horses was considerably less than the remote communication means. and the prince was forever grateful to his forefathers that even though his homeland was in a sleepy hollow, it was ideally located in the main trading lines between the capital city of the purple kingdom and the capital city of the administrative district which is around 17 miles as the horses ride from his little palace. the journey back and forth could be performed simply by hailing the long distance carriages that passed through his palace without the need to be switching into the infrequent domestic carriages somewhere else.

ok, this is taking too long. i don't have all day so it's time to switch style.

as natural as a young couple falling madly in love, their moment together would be maximised by delaying the journey home after spending a few days in the city as late as possible and the prince would normally reach his hometown well after midnight. the constant travelling then took its toll on the prince that he overslept on one of the journeys and found himself thinking of the best course of action of not to become too troublesome for the parents to go the distance of 17 miles and picked him up at the end of the carriage's journey.

then, he remembered there would be two public phones sitting pretty in front of a mosque in the grassy swamp (paya rumput) area in front of the mosque halfway through to the town (this was the time when mobile phone was not a norm). so the prince made a decision-of-no-return to alight the carriage and headed towards the public phones. while public phones were never famous to be reliable and free from being vandalised by restive youths looking for a quick fix in this purple kingdom, there were two of them so should one fail, there should be another one, right? wrong. to his dismay, both the phones were not in working condition and he found himself in the dark, literally and allegorically.

pondering his next move, he noticed the handsome, well-built bungalow in front of him across the road of a yaibee (elected rep). hey, it's the government of the people, by the people and for the people! it was the best candidate to offer open arms to a stranded traveller. plus it is simply not pleasurable to wake any other village folk in the middle of the night to find out that they did not have phone lines installed in their house.

with the usual assalamualaikum, he knocked on the door, softly. no response. again. still no response. wondering that the people inside were sleeping as soundly as he would, he ramped up the intensity of the knocking and the salam after trying for 15 minutes with no desirable results. finally, judging from the silhouettes flashing by the stained glass door, his knocking was fruitful in waking people up but not with the desired result of a groggy face opening up the door. and somehow the flurry of activities inside the house died down as quickly as it had started.

another persistent knocking for another 15 minutes yielded an unexpected result. in the middle of the night, he saw a group of village folks converging towards the bungalow with lots of things in their which he could vaguely made out to be cangkul, parang, pitch fork and makeshift clubs.

then, the leader of the village folks approached the prince and asked politely on the going-ons. while he was explaining the awkward situation that he was unwillingly put into to the leader, in came two groggy uniformed policemen on a kapcai wearing the expression of not amused being awakened from the middle-of-the-night-sleeping-shift routine due to this crook banging on the door of the yaibee.

"ini apasal ketuk pintu rumah orang malam-malam buta ni?! aku tangkap, gari masuk lokap karang baru padan muka engkau"

"eh! apasal pulak? senang-senang nak tangkap anak orang sebab ketuk pintu orang tengah malam? kalau anak ayam orang tangkap masuk reban dia pun tuan dia marah tau. ini pulak anak orang."

"abih? apasal ketuk pintu orang ni?"

"saya nak pinjam talipon"

"apasal tak pakai public phone depan masjid tu?"

"rosak"

"betul rosak?"

"tak caya pegi check sendiri"

"apasal tak ketuk pintu rumah orang sebelah sana tu?"

"hey, ni kan rumah yaibee. yaibee kata nak tolong rakyat. saya rakyat yang nak mintak tolong pinjam talipon je. daripada saya ketuk rumah orang sebelah tu, baikla saya ketuk rumah yaibee ni, betul tak?"

silence, dumbstrucked by the eloquence of the prince.

after a long pause, he queried, finally in a more civilised tone, he asked:

"buat apa sekarang?" "sekolah"

"sekolah mana?" "university"

"uni mana?" "obersi"

"patutla kurang ajau semacam je"

"dah, kamu datang nak marah-marah tak tentu pasal, kena la balik"

after that, not interested to have any more conversation with the uncivilised men-of-the-law, the prince continued having rational discussion with the leader of the village folks. he was made to understand that the yaibee was not around and the his bungalow has been robbed a few times, hence the additional precautions taken by the household. directing his comment towards the kapcai men, the prince remarked that if he were to rob the house, he wouldn't be knocking on the door just to attract attention but more likely to bring it down instead.

then, the prince was offered to use the phone inside the leader's house instead. 15 minutes passed by and the groggy faces of the king and queen showed up with their own carriage to retrieve the stricken. finally, they all lived happily ever after. err well, not really but that's a different story altogether.

threatened *something*

while cik rotidua thanked me for submitting one entry only during her absence in the virtual world, she is not going to thank me no more. i am going to further compound her misery and add another blog alert into her subscription alerts ]:-)> hahaha *evil laughs*.

wifey was supposed to have her next regular check-up at the end of the month. but when i was out of the shower yesterday, she told me that she had some stains which had never happened during the gestation period of alyssa and amelya. it didn't seem to be a major concern that i did not rush to the hospital, sirens blaring and honking everybody that was on my way. however, did not want to take unnecessary risk either. so, took emergency leave, went to the panel clinic, got referred to the specialist, had breakfast at the nearby mamak restaurant and send the children to their respective nurseries before making our way to the specialist clinic.

there was simply no parking spot around dsh when we got there. so i dropped her off in front of the hospital, did another round before settling into into a faraway parking spot. surprisingly, despite normally having made to wait for endless hours to see the obygyn (sp?), she was already inside the consultation room when i got there so i just waited outside.

from the second-hand story that was delivered to me, apparently it's called threatened contraction (not quite sure about the second word) where some endometrium were shed (i think, i wasn't there to ask). i was told that the little fella was happily swimming and as i suspected, not much of a concern and maybe stress induced. but unfortunately, any recreational activity had to take a break some time (daymn!). she was given some hormone to strengthen the whatever. on top of that, she was awarded medical leave until the end of the week which means i have to send both of the children to their nurseries instead of just one of them.

all things said and done by 11.30am, we decided to spend the rest of the day without the children (yippee!) watching a movie. it was an unplanned date so we just caught whatever interesting that was showing in the cinema and agreed on the third installment of mr beany.

even with the occasional burst of laughter, i wasn't very impressed with the movie. no wonder futuredoc also said she didn't quite enjoy the movie.

weekender

sat 14^th. apr 2007: if you were wondering why the newslike reporting, it is due the the confusion cleared between me and lollies when we were chatting on friday between dateline and deadline. the date that you see at the beginning of the paragraph is a dateline whereas the deadline of myself submitting my application for the post passed on friday without me submitting my application. after weighing in all the pros and cons, i decided to go with my first instinct of not applying.

i am not going to post a longwinded entry here because it is almost 1am and it would be definitely past 1 after i'm finished with this one. i don't want to compound tomorrow's (today's infact) blues with a sleepy head.

saturday morning was spent in a casting studio. amelya was called for a casting session for this formula milk ad. i doubt that she'll get it anyway because both of my daughters do not have any acting talent passed down from their parent (not from me definitely) and they do not readily act or react on whatever instructions given by the photographer and amelya is very camera-shy, also like her father. and she is not exactly an image of a well-fed toddler with her small frame and very lean figure. but they had fun anyway running around the studio as you can see in the photos. while we were there, the studio took the chance to update alyssa's profile as well.




coming back from the studio, somehow my rajin mode was all abound and i decided to clean and reorganise our "long term storage area" (read under the stairs) and now it is very and and highly organised that i could start to shove in more clutter underneath.

after the afternoon nap and spending some quality time with the children, i was down on all fours spending more than an hour scrubbing the bathroom. it is so clean now that i would gladly usher anybody including futuredoc and che' chomeyll into the bathroom should the need arises now. or somebody could lay a comforter inside if it's dry enough and still feel comfortable sleeping in it.

sun 15^th. apr 2007: at 8am on sunday morning, i was already standing in astaka field to take part in the paintball competition organised by our ruling party in the gomen.

while paintball would be such luxury for me now with my always-in -the-red monthly budget, i was invited to this competition because somehow i am a (uhuk!) member of this party and we'd be playing for free. i am all for free stuff so there i was at 8am, nervously waiting for my turn to try it out this latest sensation for first time.

for the benefit of those who have no clue what paintball is all about, it is the latest sensation of an urban recreational activity in the form of glamourised combat games that we normally played in kampungs, using slings or hand made bamboo sticks instead of pressurised guns. the main objective of the 5-persons-team game is to "rescue" your flag and which is kept at the enemies base and bring back to your own and "kill" as many opponents along the way. and you have the bunkers as your protection against enemy and sometimes friendly fire.

it was definitely fun and most of the players are first timers anyway so we were happily reliving the inner child in ourselves. there were so many teams and we got to play 3 times. we won 2 games, one by default because the opposing team was disqualified and lost one. but it was not enough for us to be on top of the group to qualify us to advance into the second round.

it was a hot day and in a way i was glad that we didn't advance because i just couldn't stand the dehydration of playing under the afternoon sun anymore.

somehow, i was not even "killed" once in the three games that we played and to say that i was hiding behind the bunker all the time would not be true enough because i managed to rescue my flag in one of the game. it must have been my lucky day. evidence included with the outfit that i wore today devoid of any orangy marks.

i would spare more description for you to read and just look at the not-so-good-quality photos that i attempted, braving the dehydration and exhaustion and blurred visions that comes with the hot sun.




i definitely would have trouble staying awake tomorrow so maybe i should try out these dance moves in my room to keep the eyes open throughout the day.

despite all those energy consuming activities, i still submitted an entry today at the current time of 2.31am. did i not tell you that i had a productive weekend? and for those who are still reading, i congratulate you because this is a longwinded entry after all.

blogging endorphin rush

from a survey that has been on-going for a few months running, it has been confirmed that moshimoshi have been officially declared addicted to the net generally and blogging specifically. among the telltale signs that reaffirmed the earlier suspicions are:

• number of subscriptions: while the list started out with a meagre two or three blogsites, it has been growing exponentially. however, the actual number at the moment could not be revealed due to a confidentiality agreement with moshimoshi.


• updates on current affairs: the amount of time reading current affairs in beebeecee has exceeded the duration spent to read the physical paper strewn around in the office and at home.


• personal vanity: while moshimoshi did not start off as a conceited person when he started falling in love with the net, he religiously adhered to the twice weekly session of shaving his face. of late, the frequency had been reduced to a weekend ritual only.


• household chores: while the opportunity of capturing the moment of his spouse vacuuming and mopping the floor had been nonexistent in the past, it is now a regular scene in his household, much to the chagrin of his wife.


• mouldy bathroom: the washroom being used exclusively by moshimoshi in his household has registered an exponential growth of mould cultures. moshimoshi used to spend hours controlling the population growth but the hours spent scrubbing out the moulds have been substituted by sitting and grinning silly in front of the pc. moshimoshi will not even dare to imagine the shocked expressions to be carved on futuredoc's and aiechomeyll's faces if they were forced to use the wc.


• obsession with alerts: it has been found that he has the peculiar habit of trying to read out every single alert that appears on his subscription alerts. he will not rest easy before he sees these New Blog Alerts: 0 New Comment Alerts: 0 Comment Tracking Alerts: 0. and he will read every single comment that was left on somebody else's entries, totally disregarding the fact that some of the comments are hardly connected to him by any stretch of imagination.


• gossip update: moshimoshi knows much more about people living on the other side of the world as opposed to the people who are physically around him. it was a shocking revelation to him to learn yesterday that the person sitting in the room next to his had submitted her resignation letter on the 1^st. april and will cease to work with the company starting 1^st. july. worse still, he only discovered the news when he was told by gartblue whose room is merely 100m from his via g00gle chat!


• cleaning the car: while it is generally accepted that his usual excuse of not worth cleaning the car due to incessant daily rains has some grounds, the PREGNANT spouse was seen cleaning HIS car due to his perpetual procrastination of looking for the ideal time slot to shampooing, wiping and vaccuming the vehicle.


• compulsive entry submissions: while it started out as a single entry in a week, the frequency of entry submissions are slowly growing to about two currently and it is not unfathomable that the entry count would increase gradually in the future even though it will be a long way before moshimoshi could even dream of competing with juara belogging, miss nonah. he was last seen submitting an entry that was totally nonsensical at 1.30 in the morning on a working day.

voices from the grave

if you've read my previous post here, you would've known about this cemetery issue. i have not yet made up my mind on which side of the fence i would like to be on so i will offer no opinion yet. but there's another article in thebintang here that made me wanted to comment so much on that article.

Group in favour of cemetery “Construction of the cemetery began in the middle of last month and will be completed in phases,” Alpadzul said. “Construction for Phase One will be completed in two months and the burial plots fully occupied in two years. Part of it can already be used (for burial) and its first ‘occupant’, a 52-year-old lady, was buried today at 5pm.” Phase One covers five acres and will be able to accommodate 1,500 burial plots. There will be five phases altogether.”

i just hope people constructing the cemetery won't be trampling over the first occupant. let her rest in peace. and what time did this guy gave his statement again?

“The cemetery will cover a 50-acre space. There will also be a 30-metre buffer zone surrounding it,” Shakir said. “The cemetery is actually located 40m from the nearest residential area as there’s a road covering a 10m distance before the 30m buffer zone. This forest (where the cemetery is located) was originally 1,000 acres in size. The cemetery will only occupy 50 acres, while the remaining 840 acres will remain as a botanic park. The buffer zone, which includes the botanic park, will have some existing and new trees. We'll try to minimise the effect on the existing natural environment as possible.”

that is a really huge swath of land to build a cemetery. not fun to get lost in the cemetery alone when it is fully occupied. and if my arithmetics is correct, he conveniently forgot to mention what is going to happen to another 110 acres of forest reserve. that is more than 10% of the existing forest.

Shakir said the cemetery’s construction costs about RM10mil in total, which will be borne by the state government.

and quite a lot of money to spend too. any quantity surveyors would like to second that figure? wonder what they'll do with the money they get from chopping down the existing trees.

“This cemetery is not only for those residing in Kota Damansara but for all in the Petaling district. It's currently in the process of being gazetted. We estimate that this cemetery will be fully occupied in 10 years’ time, based on the average of two to three deaths a day, he said.

10 years only? there goes my chance of going there due to old age then. unless i meet my lights out much earlier than the average life span of males in this bolehland.

“We'll also create a website with e-commerce features. This will help facilitate communication and allow us to handle issues better. The website will also have updates of the cemetery’s ‘occupants’.”

didn't know that trading among the dead will be the in-thing in the future? or the living relatives need to do bidding for the plots? and hey! at least i'm assured of a way to still submit entries to my blog while lying down six-feet under.

while we are at it, i'll quote another article, still on thebintang published the day before, about the possible loss of biological life related to this project.

Zoo rushes to save aquatic plant PETALING JAYA: News of land marking within the Kota Damansara has sent Zoo Negara staff scrambling to save an endangered aquatic plant. The zoo’s assistant curator of Aquarium Tunku Abdul Rahman led a team to collect the Cryptocoryne minima from an undisclosed site in the forest that is part of the Sg Buloh Forest Reserve believed to be earmarked for a mixed development project.

now you know why i haven't made up my mind to whom i should side, being an all-time self-proclaimed greenie.

business and leisure

the slavery unit of our kompeni had advertised internally for several "special" positions in the company and let's just say that one of the position offered is "made in heaven", for me.

while we have many many people people within the company, i came third to being the most eligible candidate. the most eligible one would be my immediate superior now, whom has nothing to gain at all by applying for the post. the second most eligible would be my former superior whom had transferred to another department on promotion, also with little or no incentive to apply. which means the most eligible candidates to apply for the post would be moi, myself and i barring some outsiders who won't be applying because it is advertised internally. and i am in a dilemma.

first, let me list down the benefits for me.

• instant promotion- grade is higher than mine so i'd be promoted if accepted. no more waiting for this year, next year or whenever. grab those apples now.


• future promotions- i don't need to worry about future promotions in the next 5 years. the post has much easier promotion path. the fact that nobody else would be doing anything similar would certainly help. this company doesn't promote people easily. even our pekerja cemerlang award recepient can vouch for that.


• focus- since it is really a specialised position, i don't have to think about anything else and just concentrate on this one. hopefully no more of those i.t. stuffs that the bosses seems to think that i know everything about and no more people should bug me if they cannot access the internet to check how much the shares they bought yesterday is worth now, their little gremlins in their notebook have acted up and significantly slowed it down, their colour printer won't print the antiques bid they made on e-bay and no more surveys about whatchamallit software that other people are using.

hey, since life is fair, the advantages also come with disadvantages

• what? more of this- well, since it is a very specialised position, more of the same thing to come. i've been doing similar things for the past 4 years and while i don't exactly hate the subject, i don't jump out of my bed at 5.45 every working day planning what to do today with regards of work either. so, i'm not too keen to continue doing it for the next 5 years or so.


• what next? - the specialised position says it all. let's say i applied and got the job and life goes happily ever after for the next 5 years. by then, i would be on top of my world and then? it would be too late for me to go anywhere else so the bigger chance for me to rot in doing the same thing again. unless i go out of the kompeni, doing the same thing also which i would do best. while that is a different thing altogether, still it will be more or less the same thing. don't think i quite like that option.


• no testing the water- while it would be nice to just apply on suka² basis, the slavery unit always frowns upon people turning down on promotion. then, they would be like ok, since you turned down my offer because you like whatever that you're doing now sooo much, you can rot there for a while and enjoy it for much longer period.

i have up to 13th. to decide and submit my application. aarrggh!!!. if my current superior applied for the post because he has been asked to by the slavery department and accepted, i stand to gain also to cover his vacated place! and by the way, the additional money would definitely help tip the balance of my budget.

now, on the other news, haven't seen anybody mentioning about this subject despite the hyper-active submissions of new entries. while the front page was splashed with the bogus b0mb threat at the 13th. longest bridge in the world, maybe not many people have seen the other news. managed to catch a glimpse of thebintang today and saw this:

Bloggers may have to register BLOGGERS using locally hosted websites may be asked to register with the authorities, Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor said. He said registration was one of the measures the Government was considering to prevent the spread of negative or malicious content on the Internet.

apparently, it is either the gomen thinks that we are not smart enough to decide which is bad or good for ourselves or we are too dumb to practise self-regulation. or a politically-correct (an obscene oxymoron) way of saying we only allow people to kow-tow to us and sing praises to us, all the time only.

the fool is I

today is no april fool day, for me at least. if there is such thing as april fool, i would be one of the best candidate to be the fool. because today, as it has been for the past 6 years, i have yet to surprise my dearly beloved with a present or flowers hidden somewhere around the house.

while she might think that i am always more charming, sweet talking, in awe, friendly, full of smiles, appreciative, funny, playful, gentle, nice, lovely, hyper, excited, passionate, caring, attentive, fair and thoughtful when i am with others, it will always be the case when they are compared to those moments when i am showing my disagreements and anger.

and while everybody else that i am talking about sounds like they are more intelligent, successful, hardworking, loving, romantic, determined, creative, multi-tasking, impressive, religious, caregiving, visionary, thinner, prettier, compassionate, thoughtful, artistic, smart and hardworking, believe me it is difficult to better all the best traits of one thousand people. i gave up doing that a long time ago. she should know that she has enough of those qualities that she will be the only one for me for a very long time.

and not to further disappoint futuredoc, i gave to you some special moments that we have shared for those 6 years that we have been together, in chronological order, albeit small ones.

happy birthday sayang.