What am I?

*This is just another nonsensical blog entry right before I publish the main story by year-end*

My mum has a good friend whom she’s known for the past few decades of her life. Aunty L, being the caring person that she is, decided to “borrow” a few of my pictures from my house. She even took a few snapshots of my other photos using her camera phone. What she did after that was show my pictures to her other relatives and her nephew, Mysterious Guy. I’m locking up all of my things at home after this. Throwing away the key as well.

Mysterious Guy lives in another country. Aunty L gave him my email and “ordered” him to write to me.

For the first few weeks, Aunty L kept asking me if I had received any news from Mysterious Guy:

“Any email from him yet?” --------- “No…”

“Any news?” --------- “No…”

“So has he written to you?” --------- “No…”

No, no, no! Aaugh, leave me alone!

Aunty L seemed more anxious and excited than I was.

After her thorough investigation, Aunty L told me that Mysterious Guy couldn’t manage to email me because my email was not functioning, so could I please provide her with my email once again. That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my entire life as a human being. Why didn’t you let Aunty L know about this complication earlier? There’s nothing wrong with my email, unless if you had typed in all the wrong letters due to illiteracy.

I woke up one day to check my email, and there it was- the first email from Mysterious Guy. So I guess Aunty L finally managed to convince Mysterious Guy to write to me. Yippie, hooray… let the chaos and disorder begin…

Hombre Misterioso- who is he? What is he?

We corresponded a little bit (i.e.: just one email from him and another from me). He told me that he used to live in “Subang Jaya, which is in Selangor state”, as if I didn’t know where that place was, and as if I was some kind of picture bride from a remote, war-torn country who’s never heard of the name “Subang Jaya”.

A blonde once said to me, "Hi, I'm from Tennessee. By the way, Tennessee is in the United States..."

Wow, really?

Anyway, I decided to look for him through Facebook. Yup, he just started a Facebook account when I found him there. So the correspondence went on (i.e.: second email from me)…

JG’s email excerpt1: I've just added you on Facebook.

Mysterious Guy confirmed my Facebook friend request.

JG’s email excerpt2: No picture of you on Facebook?

Mysterious Guy’s reply: I am actually not too familiar with facebook. However I can assure you that I am not a ugly bald fat guy. Quite the opposite.

Quite a complex answer, I think. Reading through his emails once again and piecing together the basic details about his life somehow made me suspect he’s been suffering from a long-untreated disorder, which is no laughing matter at all. For a person at his slightly advanced age, I’m not sure how this situation can be remedied.

Another alternative possibility could be that Mysterious Guy was actually a dangerous drug lord who's only pretending to sound spastic and harmless through his emails...

After that, insane JG stopped writing to Mysterious Guy- I'm saving two people from eternal damnation on earth, you see. He never updated his Facebook account with anything else either after adding only two friends.

The average human being has about 250 friends. That was possibly another tell-tale sign of that disorder because he only has two Facebook friends- me and another pretty girl whom he had added first. No ex-classmates, ex-colleagues, ex-lovers or anything else on his fantastically empty Facebook page.

A few months after that, Aunty L came over to my house for dinner. She asked, “Why are you not writing to ****** anymore?”

“Oh, I’m just, well, busy…” I said, giving Aunty L the most popular excuse in the world for not contacting someone.

Fine, blame me for breaking Mysterious Guy’s heart. I get blamed for everything, including an active email address that supposedly could not function. Fancy getting blamed for everything in the world for the rest of your life if you were to marry him…

Oh no...

I don’t even know how Mysterious Guy looks like until today. Pretty unfair since Aunty L made such a nice compilation of my photos to be shown to her people located in almost every little village city in the world.

Matchmaking does not work for people like me. I tend to want to mess things up, throw firecrackers around, or something like that- not sure why; maybe I'm bored...

Riddle me this, riddle me that,

I’m quite the opposite of ugly, bald and fat.

What am I?

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(Scroll down for the answer, and oh my goodness, the first two sentences in the riddle actually rhyme!)

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Bloody hell, as if I care. There are too many other things in this world to be worried about- for example, that poor puppy in the video below...

LOST

The Legend of El Gato

Translation --> El Gato = The Cat
















I used to report to a little kitty cat at the place where I used to work in. He's not exactly the main person in the organization. God knows why I had to report to him. Anyway, here's a little video of him doing something really cute in the office:



In the early portion of the last millennium, the medieval city of Valencia, Spain was ruled for some time by one Capuletti Antonio Castells Agustín Teodoro, a somewhat renowned military General, legal arbiter and intellectual strategist who would come to be known during his military and monarchical career as El Gato.

I'm not sure how I should go on with this silly fairy tale...

Have a nice day.

What can you see...

10% of America’s population is currently facing the prospect of long-term, double-digit unemployment. When economic growth eventually returns, many will still be unemployed.

The economy’s bad and has yet to fully pick up. Regardless of the economic situation, life still has to go on. People with families still have to make ends meet. They need to put food on the table- or as George W. Bush puts it, “to put food ON your FAMILY”.

Surviving tough times is not easy for most people. I know many who have to take up part-time work right after their routine 9-to-5 “ordeal” at the office.

While walking around in a shopping mall, a lady approached me. She’s the kind of person that I’m just too afraid of meeting in a dark alley... and in broad daylight too.

“Because we care, XOXO”

She’s an insurance agent- the kind of person who suddenly becomes your bestest friend in the whole wide world and the entire universe, and constantly calls you up to ask, “How are you? How’s work today? Do you still feel exhausted after work? Maybe we can hang out and have coffee this weekend- my treat! You take care, alright?”

I’ve ignored a few of such people and they’re no longer my friends after that. I’m not a very reliable friend because I don’t sign up for every insurance policy that comes along my way.

Anyway, about the lady who approached me at the shopping mall, she first produced her business card to me and introduced herself.

In more glamorous terms, the lady is called a “Financial Consultant”. A consultant is defined as “a person who gives professional or expert advice”. The lady is also a degree holder.

As I was about to walk away, the lady produced a second business card. I was a bit surprised with her action at first: “Wow, multi-tasker. Very entrepreneurial…”

And then my mind somewhat momentarily flipped out when I saw what was on her second business card. I couldn’t believe my eyes…

I just met a Financial Consultant who’s also a Fortune Teller! The economy must be really bad in spite of the nice things the government is telling you…

So anyway, I’ve got her contact number and email. What should I do? There were suddenly so many things racing through my mind; so many questions; so few answers…

If I were to call her, what should I say to a person who has two completely different personalities?

While typing out this entry, I suddenly thought of a few possible questions that I could ask her, IF I should ever decide to call her:

1. Which party will win the next Malaysian general election?

2. Who will be the next President of the United States after Barack Obama?

3. Tell me the exact moment when I will be officially married. Tell me-the date, month, year, hour, and minute. Where will the venue be at? Tell me EXACTLY how the place looks like, I don’t care how.

4. A lot of horrifying, heart-wrenching natural disasters take place when each year is about to draw to a close. Where and when will the next disaster take place so that we can warn everybody about it?

5. What will I have for dinner tomorrow?

6. Which country will host the 2020 Olympics?

What can you see?

Backyard discrimination

I was at the Monash University recently to use its library. The library was AWESOME! It had clear signs telling you where to go to look for the required reading materials, and just about anything else- unlike this particularly pathetic Malaysian private Higher Education Institution (HEI) that I will talk about by year-end. I immediately blended in with the student crowd in Monash- probably because there were so many Asians everywhere. And I wasn't even officially a student there! Amazing!

Picture above: Nice landscaping

Picture above: This building is called the "Ming Wing". I was told that many people had jumped off this building before out of sheer frustration.

Inside the student centre

Picture above: A scene that's so familiar in so many American teen or youth sitcoms- boy runs down from staircase and notices his dream-girl standing nearby, talking to a group of girl friends, or vice versa...

Picture above: Here's a picture of me posing outside the Sir Louis Matheson Library. I'm a self-conscious person. So I kinda edited myself out from the picture. That library was so cool... unlike the one from where I got my previous postgraduate qualification from- the jokers over there manage the library as though it's an army concentration camp, and the library's just only slightly bigger than my mum's kitchen and dining room combined!

We shall now talk about one of the most stressful places I ever made myself enroll into for my previous postgraduate studies. The only reason I went there was through a casual recommendation by a medical doctor who went there for a part-time course. He didn’t complete the programme because “that place had some issues the time I was there”, so he said. But hey, personal recommendations through friends and relatives are one of the six reasons why a potential student ends up choosing a particular HEI, with the other five being the following reasons that I won’t discuss in detail about:

(a) Knowledge and awareness of study destination

(b) Cost issues

(c) Environment

(d) Geographic proximity

(e) Social links

Heck, even my postgraduate research focused on customer experience in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). But all I got from this HEI that I went to was a whole load of sh*t. I paid them everything, owed them nothing, but still got sh*t from them. Life can be quite unfair sometimes.

There used to be many middle-aged working people who signed up for this HEI’s selection of postgraduate programmes when I first enrolled there. These people sounded very experienced in their chosen working areas. One was merely taking up the programme to gain extra knowledge (he already got another postgraduate qualification before that). These people spoke with confidence in the classroom without fear of being looked down upon. They knew their stuff. They were the Baby Boomers and the relics of Generation X. And many spoke fluent English. I was the quiet mouse who merely listened to them showing off their knowledge. I was the Gen-Y little kid in the classroom who still had a lot to learn. In many class presentations, these older people preferred to have me use THEIR ideas. Little kid had to listen, you see.

Baby boomers and Gen-X people

Almost a year later, the student crowd slowly changed to that of mostly fresh graduates and international students. The students mainly came from India, Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa. There were a few from Indonesia and China.

There were also a couple of young executives who took up the course- they looked lifeless and lethargic, typical of any junior executive who had just survived the ordeal of being bullied by seniors at the workplace, added with stressful after-office-hours traffic jams just to attend 2.5 hours of evening classes for just a few times in a week. I noticed that they found difficulty in adapting themselves to a class that had so many “foreigners” around them. And they could barely converse in the English language, making things even worse. I’m glad my few years of interaction with international students finally paid off. I was suddenly made group leader for a few class presentations. So this little kid suddenly became the blind leader leading equally blind people. AWESOME!

There has been a sudden change in the student demographics in this HEI for its postgraduate programmes and I find this phenomenon somewhat perplexing. A change in marketing, advertizing and student recruitment strategies, perhaps?

The Gen-Y people

Let’s now get to the boring part, shall we? The part where an irate customer starts complaining about the substandard services provided by this private HEI. And this is just the introduction for now…

There’s a youngish-looking security guard at this HEI. He looks suspiciously like Jack Tweed. Yeah, Jack Tweed, that good-for-nothing publicity-seeker. During those few times I had to be at this God-forsaken HEI, he’d stop me and ask questions belligerently as to why I need to enter the building (to be explained in detail by year-end). Oh for God's sake, I didn't pay you people so much money only to be ill-treated like that!

I didn’t go to this place often, especially ever since starting on my so-called extensive research work. Me, a somewhat decent-looking, innocent kid in office clothes, gets treated like a terrorist each time I made my rare visit to this particular Malaysian HEI. But this silly security guard gets all soft and crumbly like an excited over-heated apple pie when a sexy Kazakhstan girl in a tight singlet and khaki pants walks past him. I’ve seen that happen before and it ain’t fair! Bias! Stereotyping! Ethnocentrism! Whatever!

Even when my friend followed me to this HEI to see what this place was like and perhaps study there, he wasn’t even allowed to enter the building. He wasn’t wearing formal office clothes, so that’s another reason why he wasn’t allowed entry into the building- an organization just like any non-Michelin-three-star-rating, artificial and snooty restaurant where waiters speak with fake French/Italian accents. I had to leave him, a person who had yet to experience working life, outside the building just like this poor dog in the picture below…

Picture above: Dog's owner was inside the restaurant whereas dog was tied outside. Location: Brighton

And I suppose they’re gonna come up with this weird rule next year whereby uninvited guests are supposed to be chained to lamp-posts so they won’t be a threat to this particular HEI community.

I have had the opportunity to attend a short-term course at an international school before. Yes, security there is tight because they’re guarding children of important people. But the security guards there used a different approach when dealing with decent-looking strangers, especially those innocent-looking ones such as me. They SMILE. They were FRIENDLIER, unlike those retards from this God-forsaken private HEI that I had decided to go to previously for my postgraduate studies. Who or what were those HEI retards guarding anyway? Sexy Kazakhstan girls?

This particular HEI is not even a world-class university- it's an HEI with first-class furniture and third-class mentality. It’s not even an international school inundated with kids of important dignitaries running around, hence the tight security. It’s not even guarding any valuable national treasure or military intelligence secrets. It’s just one of the more than 500 private HEIs in Malaysia. It’s just another private HEI that has to fiercely compete with other private HEIs to survive in the education business. So far, it seems to be doing well, what more with impressive marketing strategies utilized on a regular basis.

I shall write more about this insane, stress-inducing HEI by year-end, using a different writing approach, inclusive of modified swear words, after which I shall move to another blog or stop blogging.

Mad of Madoff

Here's a look at another real-life Voldemort.

Sesame Street explains the Madoff Scandal...



I wonder which Sesame Street episode this came from.

Let the healing begin...



90-year-old Madoff victim goes back to work (after losing his entire life savings of more than $700,000)...

Creepy crawly

Pope Benedict XVI has had a little more interest than he realised while delivering a speech in the Czech Republic.

The Pontiff was speaking at the medieval Prague Castle's ornate Spanish Hall at the end of a concert perfomance.

While he was addressing politicians and diplomats, a spider appeared on his white robes.

It disappeared from view for a moment, but then could be seen crawling up the right side of the 82-year-old Pontiff's face, then reaching his ear.

The spider then reappeared on the Pope's left shoulder and scampered down his robe.

It disappeared and Benedict XVI carried on. He is on a three-day pilgrimage to the Czech Republic and urged the heavily secular nation to rediscover its Christian roots.

Source




Your adrenaline's rushing. You feel panic setting in. You're in danger. You must keep it together. The best way to survive a dangerous situation is to stay calm... The Pope did it well... He didn't freak out at all. I would've gone mad and started killing the little animal with the nearest object I could find. Didn't matter if I was being filmed and broadcasted live on TV.

Dare not imagine how things would've been like had it been a bigger spider...



The YouTube video above received rave reviews worldwide.

Ewww........