Let Your Light Guide Me

Help me separate the wheat from the chaff,
And the glittering diamonds from the scattered rocks

A Fork in the Road of Life

It's that time again. When one begins feeling restless and yearns for a change. A change in environment, a change in challenges...just a change. That's the beauty of life I guess. How we move from one phase to another, transcending plain upon plain in our never ending pursuit of happiness and fulfilment.

Some call it the rat race, I call it poetry in motion. Living, breathing evidence that there truly is something beyond what we can see, feel or comprehend.

Change is good.

One thing I am glad for is that such desire for change stems not from my discontent, but from my passion to achieve. To do more. To be involved in the things I love. After all, the search for contentment can only drive you so far. Passion is the one thing which will see you through till the end.

A Fortune journalist once asked an American billionaire,

"What keeps people like you going? If if were me, I'd be content with having just a hundred million and probably retire there"

And the billionaire replied, "And that is precisely why you will never have a hundred million"

So true isn't it. A billionaire isn't driven by discontent over his financial situation, nor is he driven by the desire to achieve an ambiguous dollar figure. They are a breed apart, driven by passion and the desire to change the world they are in.

'Change'; how that word strikes terror into the hearts of some, whilst at the same time inspiring others to greater heights

A fork in the undulating road of life. How often we come across these, and how often do we take the safer, well-trodden path. Eschewing the potential for great rewards in favour of the coddling arms of familiarity.

I believe...

Be content with what you have no matter how much or how little,
Be passionate about your dreams no matter how big or small,
Be willing to take that first step and go for it,
Be oblivious to the people and things which work to pull you down,

I am at a fork road in my life, and life couldn't be better.

God is with me.

Divorced Women are Gatal

PAS again, bravo

That was the conclusion one PAS MP made based on his 'observation' of divorced women. He said that when he met such women at parties or gatherings, they don't seem sad about being single. instead he said, they seemed very gatal.

So let me see if I understand. According to our dear ol' MP here, all women who are divorced should walk around with a sad, sad look on their face. A few tears here and there might help as well. Doesn't matter if the divorce happened 10 years ago, or if the former husband was a complete a-hole. As long as a woman doesn't immerse herself in constant, self-deprecating misery, she is gatal.

And they wonder why people say the Muslim men of Malaysia are intent on subjugating women.

My Car Got Raped

Figuratively of course

I don't know why it took me so long to post about this, as it happened sometime during the middle of last week. Maybe it's because I was too traumatized by the savagery of the whole event, the impact of it all reducing my to a quivering, babbering heap. Or maybe it's because I was just too doggone lazy to update my blog. I think the latter sounds more probable...hahah.

Anyway, it happened like this.

1) Park car at the side of the road in front of house

2) Went inside house, got into bed

3) Woken up by sound of car alarm

4) Ran out of house

5) Saw car window broken with little bits of sharp glass all over my nice seats, waiting to pierce the buttocks of any unsuspecting soul who sits on them

6) Saw 4 dungguls on 2 motorbikes, scurrying away like the useless, rotten scum that they are

7) Overcome with grief. Ran away from home and joined a monastery

Ok lah, the last point is false, obviously. But the others are spot on. Especially point number 6. Those rotten scum! Look what they did to my car!...sighhh.



Those morons, they even stole a stuffed toy from my car, the one which you get free from McDonalds with every happy meal. What the??!! Can't these useless bums afford even a happy meal? Yeesh




I need my music!

The main thing they were after was my car's CD player. And they took it, along with half my front panel. Which btw, cost around RM210 to replace. RM210 for a flimsy piece of plastic? My goodness, I wonder who's the bigger crook, those petty thieves who stole my player and broke my dash, or those goons at proton and its suppliers.



Being the good, responsible citizen that I am, I decided to make a police report. This I did, inspite of me knowing full well that the police will probably take my report, roll it up into a ball of paper and have an impromptu game of dustbin-basketball with it.

Against the odds (and boy! are they huge odds!), I do hope our police will get off their arses and do something about the rising cases of petty crime and snatch thefts in the area. After all, what are they being paid for?




Well, maybe they are gonna use the money to feed the poor?

At first, I tried to console myself by thinking of these thieves not as worthless pieces of cow dung, but as poor destitute chaps who desperately needed the money to feed their starving family back home in their run-down kampung house.

See? ..like in the picture below.



In spite of my best efforts, that noble picture lasted for a grand total of 4 minutes. Pahh! Those buggers are probably gonna use the money they make from my stolen CD player to pay for their drug habit, or booze, or sex, or whatever it is which tickles the fancy of such low-lifes.

Pah!

IPO Celebration @ sevenatenine

A job well done

After more than a year, and countless hours spent holed up in a freezing air-conditioned room with nothing but a cup of lukewarm coffee to warm the gonads, AIM has finally been listed on the MESDAQ board of our stock market.

Looking back, the entire project had its fair share of ups and downs. There were annoying people, there were bitchy people, there were annoying bitchy people. The whole gamut. I wondered how in the world I survived unscathed.

To celebrate, the board of directors and management of AIM decided to throw a small celebration at sevenatenine and yours truly was invited as part of the due diligence group to (a) be a kiasu fellar and stuff myself silly with free food and drinks, (b) waste precious space, and (c) waste precious oxygen.





Yes yes, it's another one of those boring company functions masquerading as a party. Although truth be told, I did find myself enjoying it somewhat. That enjoyment stemmed mainly from the quality of the food and not from the titillating conversations which were taking place around the room.



Have you ever been to a corporate function where you vaguely recognize the people there, but you can't in all your life remember their names? If you haven't, then consider yourself blessed ... hahaha. Not to say I don't enjoy corporate events and all, I do actually, a lot. It's just the need to make small talk with whoever happens to be standing next to me which I find quite to be pointless.

Example of pointless small talk.

Me: So which company are you from?
Random person: I am from company ABC. What about you?
Me: I'm from Horwath.
Random person: Alright.
Me: Yup.
Both of us: *Stare off into space*

Now imagine this same conversation repeated ad infinitum throughout the night. Still wonder why they always serve alcohol at corporate events? It helps numb the pain, seriously.



Ok lah, there were some corporate goons whom I was more familiar with and we had a pretty good time catching up on important things such as which senior partner at KPMG got unceremoniously fired for some sexual scandal, should we invest in crap counters such as EONCAP and how come we aren't getting paid enough.

The night started off with a speech from one of AIM's major shareholders, YBhg Dato Shamsuddin Bin Wachamacallit. While this dude may be a Dato and all, and he really is a nice guy to boot, his public speaking skills should best be used as a cure for the hordes of insomniacs out there. This guy can put a sleeping guy to sleep. It's that powerful.



When he ended his speech, there was a roar from the crowd. Finally! Now bring out the food! The food was really good, and everyone settled down and managed to have a pretty good time. Below are some pics taken from the night.

Blockhead

I am suffering from a severe case of writer's block. Nothing seems to be flowing through my mind. Well, nothing creative and post-worthy that is.

Too many things are weighing on my mind. Work concerns, my business, annoying clients and a heck of a lot more crap which I can't be bothered to mention. Sometimes I wish I could just take a nice holiday to get away from it all.

Now that would be nice.

*Wishful thinking*

I know.... my incessant workhalism would never permit to enjoy such creature comforts. At least not at this stage in my life. Holidays will just have to wait for later.

Perverts Visit My Blog!

Nooooooo....

You know how most blogs have a counter which keeps track of visitor activity? Well, I did a check on mine yesterday, just to see what sort of readers my blog was attracting...and guess what..



It seems that paedophiles are somehow finding their way to my blog. Sighhhh.

An example of a pervert.

Thank God For Holidays

Ipoh mari...

The past few days have been a welcome respite from the usual hustle and bustle of life. Looking back, I regret not taking leave on Monday. Not like I had a choice though, I had to go all the way to Jelapang, Ipoh to visit a client's factory. Which by the way, has got to be the crappiest factory I've ever seen in my life!

The whole factory has the look and feel of a deserted warehouse. Pretty creepy. It reminds me of those huge, lifeless factories in B-grade action movies where the Hero faces off against the evil-to-the-bone villian.

The floor of the factory was greasy, the lighting was dim, the furnitue was dingy, and the people working in it looked like they've never seen the sun in years. It's something out of Village of the Damned, where hordes of lifeless, half-zombies shuffle around the place, oblivious to the rest of the world.

The ironic thing is, the factory manufactures soap. Yup, the little white bars which you use to keep yourself clean.

I'll never look at another bar of soap the same way again.


If only we had more Sultans...

Anyway enough about work. The past few days have been pretty entertaining. Not only did I manage to get quite a lot of work done (personal work lah ah-buh-then, you think I'll do office work on a holiday??), but I finally got to catch up on some much needed R&R.

Ahhhh, if only we had more sultans celebrating their birthdays throughout the year. See, we should be glad that in spite of how useless our royal families seem to be, there is at least one good reason for having them around...hahah.


Scouting for Apparel

On Saturday morning, a few friends and I went down to Jalan San Peng to source for some apparel for our proposed retail shop. For those of you who don't know, the place is pretty cool. They have practically everything you can think of in terms of textiles and apparel.





Rows and rows of apparel wholesalers line the streets, with each of them hawking a variety of funky looking clothing. Alright, most of the stuff there are pretty ah beng, but if you look hard enough, there are quite a few gems waiting to be uncovered. Some of the shops had really dodgy looking mannequins like the ones shown above. Needless to say, my friend Jon's fetish for dodgy mannequins began to manifest itself.




One thing about Malaysians though, we aren't great at coming up with names. Don't believe me? Just take a walk around Sg Wang or something. The names of the stores are mediocre at best, and downright nasty at worst.

Take the store below for example. Why would anyone call their store 'Good'? How boring, if I had a clothing store I'd probably call it 'Bernard's House of Amazingly Skimy Clothing!' (yup, including the exclamation mark). See? Isn't my idea so much better? Amazing how with just a few simple changes, a name like 'Good' can be changed into something so much more powderful eh.

I'm a marketing god!



Not to be outdone, another shop just a few rows down named itself 'Good Luck'.



Who is the person with the amazingly good looks here, is it both You and Me?.....



Nope, it's just me...hahah, lame.



We finished by noon, and by then we were tired, hot, sweaty and hungry. Ah well, nothing like a good morning of trekking up and down rows and rows of funny sounding stores to work up an appetite.




Portraits 'R' Us

Next up, we went over to Central Market to check out the prices of their hand drawn portraits. Malaysia, being a land of exotic-ness (well, according to the ang mohs lah) and cheap labour, we saw the potential in selling these stuff overseas through the Internet. No concrete plans have been made yet though, but it looks pretty promising. Only time and more research will tell.



These abstract pieces of art are supposedly very 'hot' amongst the ang moh tourists. It sells much better than those traditional portraits. I guess its because there are already loads of portrait artists over in the West, but how many of them can actually do authentic Asian/Balinese/Indochina-ish style caricatures eh.



Here's a friendly artist who provided us with quite a bit of useful information. Also, the picture of Gandhi below is made up entirely of dots! Pretty impressive. I know I must be really outdated, but it's my first time seeing such a technique.




Dining at Eden

On Saurday night, my friends and I initially planned on having dinner at some place in KL. Turns, there was some function going on there and the place will only be open to the public 2 hours later. Two hours later?? Asking a Malaysian to wait for 2 hours for food is almost like asking NASA to delay the launch of their space shuttle because a few of their launch technicians have gone for a tea break. Impossible!

In the end, hunger took over and we went over to Eden for our food.











Ever wondered how handphones are made? Well, wonder no more.



Table manners? What table manners? *urppp*. Here I am chomping down on some poor ox's tail. Ahhh, dee-lee-cious!



Being hungry does strange things to a person. In this case, 2 of my galfriends were so delirious with hunger that they began making out with one another. Cool!! She's probably gonna kill me for posting this photo up, but too bad...hahaha. It's worth sharing.



After dinner, we headed over to Asian Heritage Row for some drinks. Eager to try out a new watering hole, we eschewed the usual Bar Savanh and Cynna Bar and opted for.... Cafe Senja instead (huh?). Our stomachs were too full for any sort of boogey-ing you see, so Senja it was.







We thought that the place would have some interesting drinks and exotic blends, but in the end the place turned out to be just a fancy mamak stall. The decor and ambience was pretty nice, and could lead you into thinking otherwise, but one look at the menu (Kopi Ais, Milo Ais, Limau Ais) confirms it. Yup, a mamak stall.

Oh well, at least they had these nice little candles decorating the table.










Another Pit-Stop at Luna Bar

On of my Horwath colleagues got a new job at Citibank (yup, he'll be joining the city that never sleeps) and to celebrate, we headed over to Luna Bar for some drinks.



What was initially supposed to be a pretty large gathering turned out to be just a time of chilling with a few of my old colleagues. It was pretty fun though as I haven't had the chance to catch up with one of them for quite some time.

So they arrived in their office attire, straight after work. Seeing them suddenly made me realise, "Oh no! We've become those uncles in office attire at night spots, the very same uncles which we use to laugh at when we were younger".

That realisation hit me like a 1 ton piece of turd.

Noooooo!!!



Here's the soon to be Citibanker with his girlfriend, Carol.



Another working uncle.



And this is Samuel, who has the honour of being one of the first person I know at my age to get married. Bravo bravo! May you be fruitful and multiply!