More than Words

A number of my friends become increasingly cautious of their choices of words when they converse with me because they know that at any instant I may pick out on their improperly-used words and amplify it into a massive argument which in their opinion was not even their opinion in the first place thus leading them to ironically blame me for 'twisting their words'.

That is not (entirely) my intention my dear friends. I do this because in one way or another am merely showing you the impact of presentation. It is like presenting a princess in a pumpkin chariot. This is a damned good post about how deep Words can go, you'll like it.

A few of of my friends have learnt the hard way to realize that the selection of words during critical conversations could be the difference between days of pleasure..or years of pain. Furthermore, we live in an era where some people communicate exclusively through instant messaging programs or social networks like I discussed before. The absence of body language (comprising 60% of the message) and intonation (≈10%) therefore leaving the measly 30% deliver your full message. Forget emoticons and the like; they are no more effective than expecting the car which is going to crash into you to read your bumper sticker saying "Don't come to close.. I barely know you.."

In Malaysia unfortunately, the importance of proper words has never been emphasized by our language teachers. (who are more concerned about us correctly selecting D instead of A when subject to vocabulary exams) Our society at large can be somewhat compared to the American way of speaking; choosing to express themselves in a more slapstick manner (i.e. more brash, loud and physically expressive). The British way would be a direct contrast with their subtle and soft uttering of words that (sometimes) even the most attentive rat would not be able to catch.

Thing is, unlike the Americans, us Malaysians actually cultivated this due to the nature of our multilingual society. More often than not, the one with the bery good England can barely utter a phrase in his mother tongue (until and if he finally realizes its importance when he's about 17.. *ahem* speaking from experience here). And so languages becomes like a buffet or more locally speaking, rojak - because we have a 'lil of everything.

Here's a simple test even. Ask 10 random people you know and let them watch an episode of Gilmore Girls or Frasier.(which as far as I've watched are the two most linguistically challenging series. Alright alright, I don't watch many anyway.. *pbft)

But I ponder whether this case is for better or for worse. I mean like I've mentioned, a powerful vocabulary would improve your ability to present the even the hardest case effectively. But then again, what's the point if the other guy is a Chinese businessman who converses in Hokkien half the time and is only fluent in Manglish?

Wa be hiau kong Hokkien oh.. 0_o"

The love paradox

After a L.O.N.G post, I thought I'd share this short one. And for added effect, read this with the Yoda slang if you can.

To love is to suffer.
To avoid suffering one must not love.
But then one suffers from not loving.
Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer.

To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love.
To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy.
Therefore, to be unhappy one must love,
or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness.
I hope you're getting this down.
- Woody Allen

Hats off.

My Digital Life

YES, I'm finally in Facebook.. and I have been warned that it's addictive. It is.

But to be honest, I've actually been avoiding creating other (what they call) social networks (SN) accounts for a few reasons:

1. It's gonna take a long time to rebuild your contacts there. Obviously the rival wouldn't let you import contacts from their competitors.
2. Why would I want to maintain two (or more) accounts?
   
3. I don't have time for this crap
4. I remember a period where SNs boomed and it used to tick me off when invites flood my inbox so
   
5. It was a boycott.

A familiar sight, ainnit?

And what's with the supposedly guilt inducing messages at the end?
If you are not interested, just ignore this email. Flickr won't bug you again and there's nothing special you have to do.
What, I'm gonna feel so bad that I didn't oblige in trying out your service against others that I might just have a go and who knows, it might be cool.

Now, that was talking about just one SN. We all know that the mac-daddy of all SNs was Friendster. But today, people have so many to choose from. Seeing that I obviously knew squat about anything outside this SN shell that I've cleverly crafted, I did some research myself to see what's so special about the rest.

Friendster : Boasts a community of over 30 million users worldwide. Has evolved into a dating site more than anything which imo just isn't relevant anymore. Targets 20-30 year olds.
MySpace : The current top-dog of SNs (rated by activity) targeting oogly-eyed teenagers. And even
Multiply : For "regular people, who lead regular lives". Meaning for those who wants to do a little of each.
Blogger: has become a type of SN with active blogging communities. There's also
Flickr : For professional photographers. Finally, not forgetting the infamous
YouTube: For people who love shooting videos etc. Devan, the king of series has even converted to what I call the YouWikiTube. He searches for all his clips (not those clips) in YouTube and anything he finds interesting he Wikipedias it. And in turn, he YouTubes anything interesting he stumbles upon in Wikipedia. (Ahuh, so sue me for using WikiP and YouT as verbs.) It's practically impossible to remain bored this way. By the way, if there were a stock for YouTube, I'd beg, borrow, buy and/or steal to buy as much as I can. I salute the founders.

I stumbled upon this very interesting read titled "Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?" by Danah Boyd. It revealed a very in-depth analysis of the evolution of Friendster as well as its downfall. On the other hand, she studies how MySpace ingeniously overturned Friendster's weaknesses and made it their very own strengths which contributed to the many pleasant surprises that I saw in Facebook

1. For one, the +Share album/photo overcame the redundancy of posting up similar photos. Not to mention the fact that we could easily label photos with users' names.
2. And so long as you complete your particulars, all this labelling can be done systematically without retyping anything.
3. Personalization, personalization.. personalization.
4. I'm guessing many more that I have yet to discover
   

The most important is actually point #3. The enabling of regular Joe's such as you and I to design widgets or themes to be used by other people is simply brilliant. For example, the SuperPoke widget that enables you to do more than poke someone. Another cool widget which stole another hour of my life was the iLike widget which enables you to put music and video clips on your profile. I also played the Music Challenge which is like the iPod music game. (i.e. Guess the title of the song or artist who sang it). And I know that's more or less only 10% of what there are.

"MySpace launched at a time when the enthusiastic surfers wanted to find more kitsch crap. They jumped on MySpace, created all sorts of culture and profiles complete with massive amounts of media, and helped figure out how to hack the system to make the profiles more expressive. MySpace didn't stop them. As a result, the cultural enthusiasm was nurtured and it grew and grew and grew..."
So it's obvious SNs that flourished were those that didn't limit creativity, further emphasizing my previous point.

Some of you probably wonder what's in it for free-to-use services such as friendster. Well, word has it that after receiving $3.1 million in funding only a few months ago, social networking veteran Friendster has received another $10 million from Palo Alto-based DAG Ventures. Bet ya didn't know that. I'm pretty interested to see the improvements to come from this fat cheque. Oh, they have even successfully won a social networking patent:

“The new Friendster patent covers the basic steps involved in joining a social network: entering a personal description and relationships to other users, mapping relationships and degrees of separation, and connecting to others through these friends.”

Wth. Desperate measures perhaps?

Nevermind that and back to my time-wasting in Facebook.. Actually, it's gonna be impossible for me to explain in detail something that is (and will probably continue) expanding. I imagine the day where another SN revolution takes place and changes the way we talk and meet people. If this technology isn't already advanced and thus convenient enough, what's next? Seeing that two/five senses (visual and audio) are down, the next would probably be say, being able to smell your friend's favorite scents? Taste his favorite food? Feel his favorite shirt. The signs are already there with the introduction of Smell-o-visions and Internet-based Fragrance enhanced Movies. It's either that or Johnnys like you and I who will be heading this change.

Indeed, the world is getting more fascinating as it gets smaller.

Ailee ft. David Choi proclaiming their love for YouTube. And dayum, she'd definitely have my vote for American Idol.. =D

Thanks, Ama.

To tell you the truth, I've been both desperate and hesitant to put up a post. Desperate because there's so many emotions and thoughts flowing past that I wish I had a thoughts recorder (another sign that I'm being pampered by my PDA) and hesitant; because they're literally worlds apart in terms of pleasantness.

Previously, I mentioned that I was in Penang celebrating Su's birthday but I didn't mention that all plans had to be cut short when I got a call from my younger sister.

"Ko, mommy ask you to come back now..", she begins in a shuddering tone. "Why?", I ask. "Ama just passed away.. so mommy ask you to come back now.." *silence* "...ko?"

I was staring at the wall, struck. "Think think think!", I shouted inside, as though trying to wake my paralyzed self. And I knew that I wouldn't be at peace with myself if I stayed the night despite the fact that I might reach at 5am when everyone's still fast asleep. It's family. It's blood, and blood's thicker than water.

"I'll get the first bus back.", I replied. I informed sulyn and her parents about the emergency. 20 mins later I was on a bus home.

My paternal grandmother whom i called Ama was diagnosed with the 'Big C' slightly more than a year ago. Doctors gave her 6 months; meaning that she championed through those expectations despite having statistical odds stacked against her. But it was anything but an easy route as she had to undergo a few major operations including an insertion of a metal plate into her knee. Only until recently was she unable to move by herself and her speech downgraded to monosyllables implying that she was actually pretty healthy in her 70s. Unfortunately as months went by, the frequency doctor visits increased with the deterioration of her vital organs.

Throughout my journey, my mind wandered to the past.. returned to the present and ventured into the future. I started recalling the times I had in Rasa (my hometown). Ah, good times - Chinese New Year, especially. My cousins and I would walk to the town to buy 10sen ice-pops just after our home cooked meals with the myriad of Chinese food that my Ama and Akong would have prepared. Despite Ama coming from a poor background and working as a rubber tapper once, she and my grandfather has never failed to put food on the table for all 8 children. When these same thoughts came to mind at the reunion dinner with many of my successful uncles and aunts, I pondered in awe of how far we've come. I'll tell you a funny thing, one of the last things I heard my grandmother talking to me was Gik Fun, Cantonese for marry. O_o" So you can imagine the questions I'll be getting the next time I attend a family wedding. Kudos to SL for laughing in the face of pressure tho, lol.

Then there was the funeral itself. Initially my dad and his siblings wanted to have the wake and funeral in Nirvana's (NV) Funeral Memorial Parlour which looked more like a hotel than anything. My mom and I just could not accept this idea of a funeral which would be so impersonal. The sales rep even said that people who normally use this facility are either without a family or living in a condominium. And it costs a bomb, at that. So finally it was held in my front porch.

Friends and relatives came from as far as Singapore and Penang to pay their last respects. Many whom I have never seen and will probably not see in a long time. And judging by the reason, not meeting would be the best hope. On the first day, my mother delivered a memorable eulogy. The notable part of it was when she said, "She was a very strong woman. And even in her last days, she was a very proud woman.. because she never wanted to trouble anyone.." At this point, my mother was about to burst out in tears because hit her hard and deep.
My grandmother was living in our house for about 2 months until she decided to move out. Despite warm reassurance from all of us, she - like my mom said - didn't want to trouble anyone and shifted out to a condo with my aunt. Nothing compared to having my maid walking in and out, it was lonely and quiet in the 3-room unit.
My mother's face turned red with distress, trying to finish her speech when sounds of sniffling noses and weeping people became apparent. Yes, my tear ducts couldn't hold it in too.

On the day of the funeral, everyone was wide awake by 8 including mua reason being I was put on 'guard' for the night. (So I stayed up, on guard, while finishing 6 episodes of Heroes). By morning, I looked all wolfenstein but was energetic enough to accompany my dad to buy breakfast for the Wong army. I think he took it literally and was practically stocking up for war. When everything costs about RM1-2, RM100+ on breakfast is no joke.

After the final service in the morning, the casket was loaded into the hearse. The family members then walked behind it for some distance. (although I am still not clear of the significance of doing so, and I hope someone will enlighten me). I actually sat in the hearse with my 3 uncles on our way to the memorial ground.

On the way, we drove at a constant speed of 70km/h while other drivers sped by. Then a moment of reflection. It's actually that way in human form too and ticks me off. Somehow, I don't think humans are that selfless to pity another mourning person. Instead they just want to get by and do their own thing. Then again, seeing that couldn't give two hoots about local crime and happenings, even I plead guilty. Maybe I should be a little more empathetic.

When, the whole entourage reached, we had the final prayer and bid goodbye to the earthly body of my grandma, Chen Piang who is now with the Lord. May she rest in peace.

Ya know, during this whole procession, I couldn't help but think of how I wanted my funeral to be. I didn't want any tears, but laughter abound instead! I want a jazz band playing in the background. I wanted black priests to deliver their powerful speeches. I wanted people to remember me with a smile, rather than have their memories soaked in a tissue. But then again, why'm I ridiculously thinking about the end? Carpe Diem man, carpe diem.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.."

Thanks to everyone who has been" supportive towards my family in times of despair, be it emotionally, financially and your condolences.

Overdue but never too late

Over the weekend I made a trip up to Penang to celebrate the coming of age of a dear friend, Su. She turned 21 on 17.7.07 and so with the help of two main accomplices, Ms. Look(not her real name) and Mdm. Lu, we made detailed plans to bring out Su's biggest smile yet.

I reckon Su was pretty happy with the presents she got from everyone but most of all, she realized that she wasn't such a small deal to our lives after all. So from myself and on behalf of all yer friends around, we say:

Blow out the candles and make one wish
Since it's the day where you get your way
While everyone pampers you with gifts
I sit here instead and say

Happy 21st Birthday Tan Su-Lyn.

*Special thanks to Ms. Look from penang who claims I owe her. But Mdm. Lu you owe me one. Therefore Mdm. Lu, you owe Ms. Look!*

Supercrap

This was an eventful week, of which the most notable events happening was Devan (D) coming down from Penang. It wasn't exactly because of Devan though.

D came down from an interview and needed a place to crash before he headed back to Penang so I suggested he come to my place. So it was all good and when I got back, there was Devan standing with an older man. He flagged me down and signaled for me to park. When I approached him, he paused, gave me a bug eyed look and said, "Dude, I lost my luggage.."

Jw: What the hell?! How the hell?!
D : The cab fare was Rm14, so I only had one RM10 and the rest bigger notes. He said he didn't have any change. I gave him RM10 and I told him to stop while I get change for the balance from the mamak. I stepped out, got my change, looked back.. and he was gone!
JW : You sure or not? Hmm.. Ok, do you remember anything about the cab?
D : Man, that's the thing. I only 'know' he was Indian, driving a red/white cab under Supercab. And on the way, he made a call to the HQ to ask how much was the fare from Jalan 222 to Taman Desa cuz his meter was spoilt.
JW : Number plate? Name?
D : Nope.
Jw: Rightss. K, try to make some calls.

I know what you're thinking. It's a needle-in-a-haystack effort! But I had to try, right? So I called Supercab and asked them all I could but in turn they kept saying, "susah, susah..Ada number plate? Kalo ada number plate senang." I OBVIOUSLY knew that we weren't exactly baking a pie here, but if you the cab driver drove off with your luggage you had to do something with what you have, right? Anyway, after 5 minutes of listening to her re-tell the 'story' to her co-workers, she said that there was no such case of a Supercab driver calling to ask such questions.

JW : Dude, what's in those 2 bags?
D : Man, just my clothes and my certs!
JW : Your certs?! 0_0"
D : Yeah... but mostly photocopied ones. The original ones were the CIAST (some certs we got during an industrial visit) and the Dance club ones.
JW : *heaves a sigh of relief* Oohh.. aiyoh say lah, you already lost one of the CIAST certs to begin with and I'll reprint the Dance Club certs for you lahaiyo. (I made them. =p)
D : True.. true. But I had new clothes in there, the ones I bought from Thailand. Man, he took my favorite jeans too. Oh, and my book which I just bought! Man, I was halfway through!
JW : Damn taxi driver, too much. How could he take your favorite jeans? And you're halfway through that book man.

So we waited for about half an hour and he didn't show up.

Now. Lets rewind a 'lil. Did you notice any irregularities throughout the whole story? Well, at this point, I noticed a few.

1. Meter spoilt - coincidence?
   
2. A taxi driver will always collect his fare, even if he's blocking Bigfoot, he will collect his fare. And the killer..
   
3. How the hell would a cab driver not have change?!

Now the scenario has taken a twist. It's turned into luggage-thief. Crime rate is on the rise I tell you. Just the other day, my mom's office got broken into. Petty theft. Stole a handphone and a few CPUs. I almost laughed cuz my mom's comp runs like an overclocked P75. But there's the P&C data which is a whole different story altogether.

Back to Devan's case. He's still contemplating to either make a police report (which is pretty useless imo) and/or write to the papers with the title 'Malaysia - Paradise lost'. So the drama. I would've named it 'Cabbie stole my jeans!'.
The next time you take a cab, please do note down anything and everything you see especially if you just came from out of town. At least get the driver's name, agency, and car registration plate regardless of whether or not he's that nice.
Also, this post is not intended to defame anyone or any company. IMO the transportation system has improved alot, but still, shit happens.

Run rat, run.

I'm sittin here in my boring room. It's just another sunny Wen'sday afternoon. I'm wasting my time I've got nothing to do. I'm hanging around, I'm waiting for you. But nothing ever happens, and I wonder.

That's the direct opposite of what I'm going through. (In case that sounded familiar, that was the lyrics for the one hit wonder, Lemon Tree by Fools Garden) Schedule's been ultra hectic and I don't foresee it getting any easier.

I'm lovin it! =D

Perhaps this is one of the perks of the non-working lifestyle which I'm going for now before I find a permanent job which ties me down. You get to do whatever you want, whenever you want. But in turn, food's not guaranteed to be put on the table. It's the typical rat race scenario all over again; whether you want to be in the rat race and run in that treadmill. I wish i could better describe a rat race but I found this interesting take online by R. Ayana. I hate the fact that I don't see myself anywhere near this writing skill but it's just too good:

A rat race is, of course, a treadmill. Even if two rats ‘race’ on a single wheel, neither wins or loses. They go nowhere and see nothing beyond their next step. All they achieve is (an) exercise – until they step off the wheel.

The human/rat race lives in a delicious illusion of progress; the same drives, hopes, fears, addictions and personalities are clothed in an endless series of fashions and faces, a gene pool which maintains itself and acts as a brake on true change.

While running on The Wheel you can only keep your eyes ahead on imagined destiny or destination, creating a tunnel vision that excludes everything else, a vortex that appears to move past while you spin the Wheel. Getting off the wheel can be tricky once momentum has built up.

Attempting to stop suddenly can throw you for a loop. A rat can spin out or be violently thrown off the Wheel. To get off the wheel it’ a good idea to first note where you are and recognise what’s happening before gently slowing to a complete stop. This can be difficult when other rats (or domesticated primates) are running in the same Wheel – or rut.

Each rat has to do it for themselves. And they all have to do it together.

Told'ja.

So on the other hand, do we come out, like the adventurous rat who comes out to scavenge for a BIG and seemingly inexistant lump of cheese. This rat might starve, get killed, get into fights with scavenging rats also fighting to survive, or worse suffocate and die from a rat trap. On the other hand, a discovery of the coveted treasure would assure he would never have to run anywhere for anyone.. anymore. In a sense, we're all running, but what're we running after? And will your running get you anywhere?

I know some of you just went, "oh no.. it's another one of those conflicts about the future". I can't help it, it eats you up sometimes. Especially if you're 'jobless', lol.

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted
One moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip?

That's the lyrics from Lose Yourself and captures the key point I'm trying to drive here. That if you see an opportunity to get your cheese but you knew it was not of the conventional system of finding a job etc., what would you do? I've heard enough stories from working adults - wait, I'm even hearing it from sulyn - that they fear one day it might come to a point where they dread their job. Unfortunately by that time, commitments would have rolled themselves into our lives and to take that kind of risk is like telling the General that you have to search for water when bullets are flying past your face in the midst of war. You can't just run out then, can you? We just can't afford that, can we?

*inhales..thinks*

I reckon I'll run around for awhile for the time being.