The Stars Are Falling Tonight

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."

William Blake, English poet, painter and printmaker

Whenever you travel, you'd want to see as many wondrous, special, weird, quaint, unique and outright-gobstopping things as you can before your vacation runs out of its time. You'd try to fit as many sights into your itinerary, cutting off sleep time, planning narrow hops between flights or trains - all corners you could barely afford to cut - just to see that little bit more. I know perfectly how that feels like. You ought to take a gander at the master plan of my North Indian Grand Backpacking Escapade (I made up this name, so there!) early next year - about a dozen cities from one side of the Indian subcontinent to the other in 3 weeks and a half.

That's a bit like how I like my life: Absolutely stacked and overflowing at the brims. I want to see as much as I can before I die. That's how I like my women too but that's another story.

Tonight after sundown, I'll hike up to End Point and plant my ass there till the cops make me leave. The Geminid Meteors are swinging by Earth tonight, and I'll be damned if I don't position myself someplace where they can hit me.

Just so you know, this is going to be a good year for the Geminids because the moon will be nothing more than just a slightly anorexic crescent in the night sky. The peak of this year's show would be on the 14th of December (also popularly and contemporarily known as 'Today, duh') at 14:45 GMT (which is widely described by Indian astronomers as 'a quarter-past-ten'). So we, the awesome people of Far Eastern Asia and Beyond the Pacific till Alaska (that includes you peeps in ol' Malaysia), will get the metaphorical front row seats this time around. About 60 to 120 fizzlers and sputterers per hour was predicted to be the max rate of atmosphere bombardment - that's 1 to 2 every minute! Of course, you got to move out of the light pollution radius of where you're living and head for the silent hills where the snakes are.

It's going to be grand - I can feel it in my spine.

EDIT: I saw 61 meteors! I wished I made wishes instead of going "WHOOOA!!!" like some backwater island yahoo every time one streaked across the sky.



Going on a star-hunt,
k0k s3n w4i

The Worst Drink I Ever Forced Down

"If you drink lots of buttermilk your stomach gets full. So in the olden days this is how people used to eat."

Sudesha, old Indian farmer

This ain't olden days no more, Grandpa.

It goes under the incredibly misleading name of buttermilk because it doesn't taste anything like milk or butter. Wait, that's an understatement - it doesn't even taste remotely like something meant for human consumption! They should warn unsuspecting Chinese Malaysian wayfarers against ordering it, maybe a sticker like on cigarette boxes that says "Quaffing of this beverage may make you not want to live anymore".

Glassful of Suck.

It's as sour as my socks after I jogged in them for three whole hours everyday, eleven days a week, and then marinated in unripe lime juice for a month. Beneath the tartness, there was a strong hint of some sort of spice - and when I belched, the overpowering aftertaste of murukku or chakli flooded my mouth.

The most unpleasant bit was those green bits you can see sticking on the inner sides of the glass. I've no idea what they used to be but they taste just like shredded grass. Not pot, but real grass! The type that fat four-legged animals that have horns and fart a lot like to eat! In fact, they taste so vile that the sourness was reduced to just a vague afterthought. Chlorophyll-flavoured fermented dairy byproduct is sooo not my thing. If it's true that things that are good for our health taste shitty, I bet I'm all strapped and set to live right up to the ripe age of 150 now.

After the first sip, I screwed up my face in such intense agony you'd think a horse with spiked shoes kicked me in the nads. Of course, being the stubborn jerk I usually am, I refused to be beaten by this... this... concoction of instantaneous murder. Second sip - hand gripping the edge of the table till the knuckles were white. I gave Phoebe the honour of having the third sip and an expression of unbelievable disgust immediately surfaced on her face ("How can any place serve something like this?!" she cried). And I proceeded in like torturous fashion till only a half of the glass of buttermilk was left. Damn, I wanna see the bottom of the glass! I bet that there was a piece of paper hidden at the bottom that read "You're some masochist, dude". With my determination and fervor stoked to boiling, I finished the drink till only a quarter was left.

And I gave up.

I... just... couldn't... go... on. I blinked stupidly and my eyes went out of focus. I was breathless and pale, and there were small beads of perspiration over my forehead and nose. I have lost. For the first time in my life, something tasted bad enough for me to not finish it.

If you never had it before - don't. Don't do it even if it's a dare. Not even to impress chicks. Because your face contorting as if a feather duster is slowly and forcefully pushed up your anus is frankly not a very impressive sight at all.



P.S. It might just be me. The natives probably like it a lot. I mean, they invented it, didn't they?



Buttermilk-ophobic,
k0k s3n w4i

It Crawled Out Of an Indian Kitchen

"What's this disgusting slimy blob?"

Calvin

Bring him back, Mr Watterson! Please!

Last Friday, I paid a visit to Guzzler's Inn located at the outer rim of the backwoods cow village we refer to affectionately as "our beloved university town, Manipal" - and while tactfully staying out of earshot of the schools' Nazis admins as "that bloody hellhole". It's been more than a year since I've last seen the dinner joint, and I could barely recognize it anymore with all its brand new refurbishments and posh trappings and... stuff?

Note to self: Get my vocab up to speed on interior design lingo.

Oooh, classy.

Oh yeah, and third block exam's binned finally. And in less than a month, it's the fourth block grind. And the big, scary Year Two University Examination almost immediately afterwards. I am closer than ever to accepting God as my Lord and Saviour. Maybe this "power of prayer" thing can like, do some good shit for me, y'know.

Anyway, I always prided myself as someone who can always pick the best eats out of a menu. It's like a inborn talent thing - like how some people can touch their nose with their tongue or predict the result of Malaysia's next general election. I always try to pick the stuff written at the top of a list (because naturally, restaurant owners tend to write their top hole stuff down first), remember to ask the waiter for their specialties, and employ a heavy-handed use of pure dumb luck.

But that night, my powerz of psycho-menu-pathy has failed me utterly. That's because,

1. The items in the menu were arranged in the order of the cheapest to the highway-robbery-est.
2. The waiter speaka da Inglis like some of our politicians a la Malaysia.
3. The exams have used up all my reserve emergency dumb luck.

Here's what we had for starters, Goop of Doom Chemical X Cream of Spinach,

Ick.

I mean, just how often do you find green soup, I ask you? And no - you may NOT crack Dr Seuss jokes here. It is forbidden. You instantly forfeit 20 cool points from your cred in my eyes if you succumb.

Phoebe braving a brand new world. Her last words were reported to be "Oh heck, who wants to live forever anyway?"

Okay, to be fair, the algae goop wasn't bad at all - mainly because Phoebe had sampled it before on her previous visits and recommended it to me. I don't know what they put in it but I'm sure it wasn't spinach. And it's not as gooey as the picture suggests. No, seriously.

Next on the table was This,

This.

Yes, it's This with the first letter capitalised and italicised. I'd bold it too but I don't wanna overkill. It's not your regular 'this' at all, no - it's This, as in "What. The. Fuck. Is. This?!" said in dramatic staccato with your nosed screwed up right in the middle of an expression of utter incredulity. You are flabbergasted. Gobsmacked, really. You toyed with the notion of trying to prod it with a fork but you thought better of it - because you know a tendril of slime is going to pop out, grab your cutlery, and stab you in the hand with it if you pull anything like that.

Your best bet is to laugh nervously, then look at your dining partner and make a nondescript comment like "That's... interesting," about the dish while carefully keeping one eye on it in case it tries anything funny. Of course, be a gentleman and say, "You first."

The sewage surprise was, I think, a rather commonplace Indian dish called Palak Paneer - which sounds suspiciously like an Outer Rim alien species from a Star Wars flick. It literally means 'spinach (and) cottage cheese' and I said 'commonplace' because I ordered it once before from elsewhere. It's exactly as I remembered it; cubes of tofu-ey cottage cheese in triple-blended spinach purée (if the blender was rigged up to a jet engine, naturally). I was duped into ordering it again because the waiter insisted that it has "leafy veggie". I've seen less mangled "leafy veggie" coming out of my nether chute, I can tell you.

What India has against greens anyway? They are always either mushed, juiced or deep-fried to hell and back again. And my grandmother was surprised why I attacked the kailan and kangkung when I went back to Malaysia for my vacation. One nation constipation, that's India's culinary motto. It probably evens out the diarrhoea epidemic here that afflicts us innocent foreign types. Please don't kill me Dr Vishaal Bhat! I am just kidding! Honest!

It's a so-so dish, in my opinion. It's hard to enjoy something that looks like it came out of a hippo's anus.

And like just Fear Factor, there's always a third course. Here's the main,

Harmless looking, eh?

I was billed as Mutton Hyderabadi Biriyani in the menu. The waiter told us that it is very spicy but Phoebe and I just pooh-poohed his warning. Hey, we are Malaysians! We invented the sambal! We use fucking cili padi in our fried rice! And so far, all the stuff they consider to be spicy here turned out to be disappointing flops. Plus, I'm also a wasabi junkie and I chow down on Nando's Level 4 Peri-peri chicken on a regular basis. So bring it on, matey!

But damn, the rice was on fire!

I held my end up pretty good, I think. I didn't even break a sweat, but I admit that biriyani was pretty darn close to some of the hottest stuff I ever ate. I must remember to ask them what they marinate the mutton with the next time I visit. It was some seriously potent shit.

Phoebe, on the other hand,

Pawned.

It was so freaking funny. Her face was completely flushed and her forehead, bridge of nose and cheeks were sweating profusely - in full air-conditioning! (especially in the other picture which she wouldn't let me post up). Her eyes were definitely a bit watery and her lower eyelids were puffed. She drank up a quarter of her glass of water after every bite, and the smirking waiter was practically standing by with the jug ready to dispense refills. And through all that, she kept insisting to me just how much she loves spicy food, totally refusing to throw in the towel and surrender.

I can't wait to challenge her to a wasabi eating contest back in Malaysia later. That promises to be one heckuva funny face-off.

Vae victis!
k0k s3n w4i

Limerickish Scallywaggery

"You know the happiest day of my life
I swear the happiest day of my life
Is the day that I die"

The Day That I Die (2002) by Good Charlotte

I love this song. It's so unnecessarily morbid. Yet upbeat.

Here's the sequel to a story I hope you remember
Of that bitch Socks and her babies back in October
She had a lair
It was under a stair
And she owned that little hole till early December

Then along came Mom and her little brood
And kicked Socks and her litter out of the 'hood
And ever since then
Mom lives in the den
Now she's stuck there because her ass took root,

"... I am pleased to announce that the coup d'état is a barking success," said Mom in a press conference.

"Doesn't it make a difference that Sock's is your daughter?"
"That her kids are your grandkids?" asked a pesky reporter
Mom thinks for awhile
And gave doggy smile
Saying "Dog eat dog, hon - and that's all that should matter."

Beans, Mom's second-in-command - she disagrees
With her mother's aggressive invasion policies
So she packed her stuff
And left in a huff
And now she sleeps with the enemies,

Beans (top right), quite literally sleeping with the enemy.

The rest of Mom's puppies then followed Bean's defection
Turned tails and ambled off to join the opposing faction
Together they cry,
"Now we are five!"
Then promptly lost interest and took a nap in mid-action,

"Viva la resistanZZZZZ..."

Okay, okay - enough lame shit rhyme for today. I got a Microbiology practical exam in the morrow so I'll just caption the rest of the pictures and leave them at that. Back in October, we started out with eleven yipping furballs.

Since then, one got pupnapped while the other five
They died in the valiant attempt to stay alive
So a la Survivor
A two tribe merger
And the puppy quintet sang, "We Will (hopefully) Survive!"

Sorry. Couldn't resist. That was seriously the last one, I promise.

From left to right: Beans, Spot, Pup 1 (who looks like Patches), Pup 2 (who always look so deadpan), and Pup 3 (who is damn antisocial).

Beans, Spot and Pup 3 belongs to Mom while the other two are Sock's. I wonder if they take turns feeding the kids, but guess that don't really matter since they have taken to gobbling solids (ugh, wholly unintentional rhyming here).

Beans: "I shall seet on yew."
Pup 2: *Unflinching deadpan stare*

"Hi, I is Beans."

By the way, I think I've found a new favourite. Meet Spot,

Spot: "Zombie pup is gonna eet your brain!" *sink teeth into head* "Grrr... Ngam ngam ngam..."
Beans: "ZZZZZZ..."

I call her Spot because - well obviously because of that white splotch on her butt.

*Raises eyebrows*

I also like the fact that her four stubby feet seems to be wearing plaster casts. And the orange brow dots.

And that tail! Don't get even get me started on the tail!

Emo Pup sez "Go away... Let me emo."

Full body shot.

Plus, she doesn't have that scruffy unwashed look that stray tend to have - she's so velvety. I'm seriously thinking of keeping her for real.

"I'm behind your pants, stealing your laces."

Will write limericks for soup,
k0k s3n w4i

Christmas Came Early This Year

"Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born king."

Charles Wesley

Of course, those aren't the original words of his song. The old lyrics started with "Hark! how all the welkin rings."
Now you know why they changed it.

Yesterday, I was at the Bread of Life Ministry on Yin Yee's invitation for an extra early Christmas bash this year at their new church over at the Trade Centaur (yes, you read right, - it's spelt that way),

Indian Engrish.

I can think of a couple of reasons why they have decided to celebrate Jesus' birthday on the 1st of December instead of on the good ol' two five. Considering that the party slash variety concert theme is 'Real Christmas', it might very well be an indirect subversion of all the secular and commercial "traditions" that have sprung up globally over the centuries (a big, fat, jolly man in Coca Cola colours comes to mind), and an attempt to bring back the real reason for the joy of the season; the Birth of Christ. After all, why not rejoice His coming onto planet Earth on any old day everyday if he's that important to you, right? The second reason is less to-save-the-world-from-its-stupidity-ish - the KMC students won't be around for the regular winter solstice Christmas.

Oh incidentally, I took my very first elevator ride this year with Hua Min - a lamb from the Bread of Life's flock who I met on the ground floor of the Centaur - because I didn't know which floor the church is on. It's just some stupid vow I made at the beginning of the year to get more exercise for myself. But it got stuck at the floor we were suppose to get out. The doors opened an inch apart, and stopped abruptly - along with the warm hum of the machinery.

Getting stuck in an elevator in the first elevator ride I took in a year - God must have assigned some really lousy, third-rate screenwriter to do my life story. The intercom and the distress bell were both out of order. I actually laughed out loud because the whole series of coincidences was, frankly, quite hilarious to me. Hua Min was not amused.

Fortunately, it started moving again to the ground floor, where more church girls got on in spite of Huamin's and my warnings. One girl simply said, 'It works fine. It just doesn't open on the second floor. You just need to ride it up to the third floor and then hit the stairs. Some Satanists sabotaged the works.' I made up the last bit, of course. For some reason, I really did half-expect her to add something like that. Sigh, people are just not fun these days.

I also wonder just how often Hua Min goes to church to not know about the elevator glitch.

Her name is Lemon. Addendum: this is a picture of her before we got together.

At the entrance, I ran into Phoebe and she was giving out some... err... tinselly, glittery... thingies to arriving guests. It was the first time I saw her in a saree.

Cute, ain't she?

Jolly St. Nick.

Things kicked off with Nickson and the church band performing a few Jesus songs - and damn, I didn't know that Nick can sing so well!

Well, actually I did know. Every night when I walk past his house, I can hear him singing and playing his guitar. It's his way of praying, he told me.

You'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures in this post. They tend to be somewhat grainy and messed up chromatically, because I didn't want to use the flash and disturb the performers. Photoshop can only salvage so much.

Flute dude and flute chick.

The thing I really didn't know was that Yin Yee can play the flute. And afterwards, Yin Yee stepped back and flute dude launched into an amazing Amazing Grace solo.

Next up was a slightly-revised skit by Lester based on the Parable of the Prodigal Son by Jesus (Luke 15:11-32), and the actors were that-batch-17-guy-whose-name-I-don't-know - and our very own Microbiology lecturer, Mr. Anand,

Mr. Anand plays God/Dad.

It's a pity that I already know which parable they were talking about right after I've heard the first line - it's kind of like watching the same movie twice, but it's worth the price of admission just to watch Anand freak out and go "MY SON!" at the prodigal son returneth bit of the skit. Not that I had to pay any admission, of course - the Bread of Life Ministry paid for everything, fruit cake, drinks, tinselly glittery thingies and all (I'm eating the candy they gave out yesterday right this moment as I write). I simply must ask them where they bought those butterscotch flavoured ones.

One thing I did realise was the number of hot chicks affiliated with the church,

Holy Thriller.

Almost made me want to renounce all my pagan ways and embrace God right there and then. Same reason why I attended my first ever camp at the local Seck Kia Eenh, and subsequently became a practising Buddhist. Like I always say, if you must have motives, have questionable ones. I am still in my early twenties - I still retain my teenage right to remain stupid.

Of course, no Christmas themed shindig is ever complete without breaking out the choir,

"Joy to the world, tra-la-la-la..."

One of the things I often do is watch other people's expression when they are singing hymns in church, and watch the conviction and passion written all over their happy faces. There's a secret joy, a happiness, a sense of being of free from all the doubts, disbelief, insecurities and semantics (well, maybe not semantics) the rest of us are saddled with.

Oh well.

And finally, an exit performance by the church's rawk stars!

Lester and That Other Guy. That's not a red thong Yin Yee was holding. Or was it?

La décoration intérieure.

I was told that the volunteers worked way into the night glitzing up the simple, little church in anticipation of the big bash, not to mention all the time they spent rehearsing for the awesome performances of the night - all to spread a little bit of that cheer and joy that I see so often on their faces. There's something quite moving about their willingness to try and share, and spread the love.

Anyway, before I end this post, there's just one more thing,

Reverend Edward Francis.

Midway through the night's programme, the pastor (and founder of the Bread of Life Ministry) took to the stage to speak to us on the subject of Christmas, and shared a verse with us from the Book of Luke chapter two that went something like this,

"... the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news that will be a great joy to all the people. Today your Saviour was born..."

He started off by letting us identify with him, telling us the story of how he used to be an idealistic young man who thought that Christianity is a whole lot of hogwash - until he discovered the great joy of accepting Christ into his life. He related his efforts to us, about how he would talk to anyone who would listen about the Good Word everywhere he went (which apparently included speaking at train stations and inside the railway cars too). He described the hardships of people ridiculing and even hating him for his choice of faith, and how most of his relatives do not share his beliefs.

Next, he tell us about how Christianity is for everyone ("... to all the people...") and that it didn't matter if you aren't Jewish, American, English or any of the races which us Asians typically associate with the religion, citing an example of the opposing view of a scientifically-inclined individual who would think that Christianity is 'for people that aren't intelligent', to quote the good reverend. He went on (quite to my surprise) to allude that intelligent people think that they should believe in the theory of evolution because it reinforces their identity of being smart.

Then, at the crux of his speech, he pulled out a shocker. He said that Charles Darwin himself converted to Christianity and recanted his ideas on his deathbed.

It's not a red thong after all. Sheesh.

Or at least, it would have been a shocker if I haven't already heard that nigh a thousand times by various people who were - shall we say - disapproving of my belief in Darwin's theory? What the reverend referred to was the infamous Lady Hope story, which have, by large, been discredited. The strongest evidence against it, in my opinion, is the dismissal of the story as pure fabrication by Henrietta, Darwin's daughter who was present in Darwin's last days (in spite of her being a Christian herself and was pained by her father's irreligious ideas), and that view is shared by the other members of the household. Not that any of this matter to me, of course. Whether Darwin believes in his own ideas or not does not subtract anything from the fact that it's still a damn good theory.

The pastor's speech started off great, and he was pleasant to listen to. He was earnest. He shared with us his experiences. He told us about his beliefs. He expressed his opinions of human nature. Then, he recounted a story that has been universally considered to be false (or disputed - whichever floats your dinghy) - and that, in my opinion, casted a hue of questionability on the other things he said before that. I'm sure that in debators' and speech-makers' lingo, that would be termed as "Stravovaski's Blunder" or "Demosthene's Oratory Suicide" or some other equally cool names.

I have nothing against the pastor, nor do I think that his integrity is suspect - I am quite sure that he merely repeated the story after hearing it from someone else and neglected to check its veracity. It's like how some of my Muslim friends always tell me that Neil Armstrong converted to Islam after he heard the Azan from the moon (he personally denied it publicly), and how a few of my Christian friends said that national hero Datuk Azhar Mansur converted to Christianity and moved to the Land of Auz (publicly denied too last year by the Datuk, who's in Langkawi right now). I've decided to write about this because I simply have quite enough of that Darwin myth rearing it's ugly head up again and again in Creationism vs. Evolution debates - even though it really shouldn't have any pertinence on either ideologies' proponents' opinions.

I really did enjoy the way Pastor Francis talked though. His intonations and inflections in speech was reminiscent of the popular stereotype of TV evangelists that go, "Belieeeeeve in Jesus-ah, and you shall be saved-ah," and I would certainly love to hear him speak again someday. I've heard a lot of nice things about him before this - and after meeting him for real and shaking his hand, I find that I couldn't help liking the man too.

The Christmas Tree.

Anyway, thanks for having me over for the Christmas bash. Here's a shout out to all the people over at the Bread of Life Ministry for working so hard to make this pah-tay such an awesome success!

Happy birthday, Jesus.

And Merry Christmas, y'all.



Sincerely so,
k0k s3n w4i