Is It Cold Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Get your winter coats out boys and girls, it's gonna be snowing this Friday!

Oh haven't you heard? There's gonna be a freak winter storm in KL, we might be snowed in so stock up on food and stuff quick!

I'm gonna go look for a snowboard tomorrow (does anyone know where I can find one in KL?) so that I can spend the weekend snowboarding in Bukit Belacan. Ami Yummy already made plans to go ice skating should Sg Klang & Sg Gombak froze over. Brown ice to skate on, nice.

To the hip-hop homies who wore snowcaps and bubble jackets in the hot and humid Malaysian weather, now's the time to don them in style and minus the profuse sweating, bless!

"Dear all,

For those who miss last weekend newspaper on the flood situation in Kelantan and Trengganu, the weather forecasted for around this coming November 15th is cold Siberian wind (due to melting of the ice caps – global warming) will be heading towards the equator and will result is another round of heavier rain hitting the East coast states. In this connection, the freak winter storm predicted for coming November 20th (article below) may have some truth, just stay aware and note the freaky weather in KL from now.

Rumours are surfacing about a freak winter storm that is expected to hit the Kuala Lumpur city centre on Friday, 20 November 2009 at around 7pm. Being near the equator, KL has never experienced such a cold weather phenomenon and residents used to the hot and humid weather are warned to take serious precautions.

Reliable sources think that there are reasons to believe these rumours following some unusual weather-related events that many parts of the world have experienced in recent history. Those who have never experienced extreme cold weather are advised to stick close to one another for support. I suggest reading this article on How to Survive Being Stranded in Snow and other similar ones you can find easily on the internet.

As I personally know some of these sources, I will send out further notices as we get closer to the anticipated event. Remember, mark 20 November 2009 in your diaries. In such an occurrence, there is safety in numbers so stay close to one another, especially after office hours!"

P/S: Please don't tell me you believe this crap? One of the most ridiculous e-mail forwarded to me ever, mindblowingly ludicrous! But then I wouldn't complain if it actually snowed here, would be a nice change right? =P

View From The Stands

The stage was set. A sea of red greeted my arrival in Bukit Jalil yesterday. 3/4 of the stadium was jam packed with fans bedecked in red and white. The noise level was wild, drums and trumpets helped to trump up the atmosphere and synchronise chants. Banners was unfurled around the stadium and flags of various kinds were on display (one joker even brought a PAS flag with a silhouette of the Malaysia Cup on the white 'moon'). Everyone was in a party mood - anticipating an excellent game as just reward for making a lot of effort to attend the game and show their support. It's game time!

But we were to be disappointed by an abject display by the team. The defenders were disorganised at best, missing tackles and making miskicks. The midfield went missing for major parts of the game. The strikers seemed nervy and kept holding on to the ball for too long. Main culprits would be Nizad Ayub (7), Norhisham Hasan (9) and Zamri Ramli (27). Looking at their game, they should be playing in Liga Belia Jajahan Bachok instead of at the highest level like this. Us in the stands were getting very frustrated with the inept gameplay on show.

After Shahurain scored the excellent first goal (again due to bad defending on our part), word on the stands was that we will not come back from that since the team is known to play badly after getting behind. True to word, they did. We still had hope going into half time though. But when Hairuddin scored another (yes you guessed it, atrocious defending again!) from the get go of the second half, there seemed to be no way back now. Even with Nizad and Norhisham taken out replaced by Che Hisamuddin (11) and Khalid Jamlus (25), the performance did not improve by much. By then it became apparent who is the worst player on the pitch. From where I'm sitting, major calls for Zamri to be taken out (and probably buang daerah to Rompin) was getting louder. I guess Negri players have also identified him as the weak spot as most of their attacks started coming through their left flank. It was like Negri having an extra player with his bad passes, positioning and tackles. It's practically a game of 10 against 12.

When Zamri brought down a Negri player for the penalty, the Red Warriors fell silent. Zaquan Adha converted coolly, and at 0-3 down I decided to leave this debacle for my long train ride home. Apparently quite a lot of other people felt the same way. I think I caught the first train out of Bukit Jalil but it was packed full to the brim with Kelantan supporters. There's still a crowd on the platform, mind you. I'll tell you later about the train ride itself ;)

Some supporters threw firecrackers and bottles and even burnt stuff last night, but somehow I understood. You have to be there in the stands to understand the frustration. It didn't make it right, and I should know better since I had a firecracker explode at my calf leaving an angry red patch of irritated and slightly singed skin, but understandable. Many of these folks came all the way from Kelantan by all means possible. Some took leave to ensure they had time to queue up to get the tickets while some paid crazy money to buy tickets from touts when all else fails. When more than 60,000 supporters made all kinds of effort off the pitch, shouldn't we be expecting the team to be making the effort on the pitch too?

Yes we lost to the better team. Negri absolutely deserved the win, and we deserved the thumping we got. I reserve my praise only for Indra Putra (23) Daudsu Jamaluddin (15) and Halim Napi (1) who played well enough to preserve whatever pride we have left. Well boys, let's start looking forward to next year. Bukit Jalil sekali lagi boh tahung depé? Bereh!

Gomo!

Kalau support MU la Arsenal la bagai nak rak, local team masuk final tak pergi tengok serupa tak payah.

Guano gu, jupo di Bukit Jalil malé nih?

Misunderstood

Don't you just hate it when people misunderstood what you're saying and the result made you look bad?

Case in point, I dropped by a branch of a bank earlier today to make my car and house loan repayments. Filled up the forms, queued for like 5 minutes, went to the counter, gave the teller the forms and fished out the cash from my wallet.

I gave him a lump sum for both repayments, and there's a balance of RM35.36. But because of the rounding up the balance due was RM35.35.

So the teller did his stuff and then started taking out money for my balance. He gave me RM35 in notes and started counting the cents from a box of change. I noticed there's still 1 sen coins in the box, so I casually asked him:

"Ada lagi 1 sen?"

Perhaps it was my tone, or he was caught unaware, he replied:

"Memang kurang 1 sen sebab rounding up".

Arghhhh, and with that he effectively reduced me to a cheap ignorant idiot who even asked about the 1 sen deficit! I started to correct him, but then the damage's done. Note to self, go to a different branch next time.

Abah

Was surprised to see on Facebook a picture I've not seen before, yet so familiar. It's a picture of my late paternal grandfather Allahyarham Haji Abdullah Haji Salleh (known affectionately to us grandkids as Abah) when he was still a teacher. My auntie posted it up from some stranger's short blog entry about him.


"Cikgu Lah adalah guru yang mengajar SMAS Pulai Chondong ditahun 70an. Ia tinggal di Kampung Galang. Ketika berulang alik kesekolah ia menaiki keretanya kalau tidak silap Datsun. Beliau sudah lama kembali kerahmatullah. Dahulu guru dapat mengajar murid dengan berkesan kerana dapat sedikit sebanyak dapat menggunakan body contact iaitu seperti menggunakan kekerasan tangan dengan niat mengajar. Jadi kita murid adalah merasa takut dan ambil berat untuk belajar." - dsnbuluh.blogspot.com

I've heard countless stories about him from my dad, my mom (whom Abah doted on like his own daughter), my aunties and uncles. Of course since I spent a lot of my childhood days with Abah and Ma, I have my own memories of him.

I remember him asking me to buy his favourite pack of cigarettes - Peter Stuyvesant - and I always get to keep the change. I remember him taking afternoon siestas on his favourite kerusi malas (deck chair with multicoloured plastic strings wound around the metal frame, you know what I mean) shirtless and waking with reddish stripes all over his back.

I remember motorcycle rides with him, me in the basket in front and him riding leisurely. Nobody wore helmets back then. I remember burning my knee on his hot motorcycle exhaust when I stumbled while getting off. I still have the scar to show for it.

I remember his ungainly Subaru (or was it Daihatsu?) minivan, and his red Fiat car. Apparently my dad said he loves small cars.

Che Na and myself on the hood of the Fiat, on the way to Bukit Ajil. Pic taken by Che Ni.

I remember trips with him and Ma and young Che Na and Makdik to Penang and Langkawi. I even remember asking him what does the signboard 'ikut kiri kecuali memotong' means.

I remember him taking the flight to KL with us, my first time ever. I remember him sending us off when we boarded the flight headed for London back in 1993. I remember excitedly reading letters from home telling us in East Ham that Abah and the rest are planning for a visit. He never came.

A few months later he passed away while we were a million miles way. While I was a million miles away.

To that unknown blogger, thank you so much for reminding me about this man I loved. Abah, once in a while Pih still thinks about you. Al-Fatihah.

Phone Trivia

The other day over lunch, I was talking to some friends about handphones (mobile phones, cellphones, don't be anal) and the fads that was considered the in thing back then. Behold I present, Top 10 Handphone Facts Of Days Yonder!

1. Remember when every other person owned a Nokia 3210 or 3310? The biggest draw was the Snake game, which can keep you occupied for hours on end. Getting your name on the High Score of your friend's phones was the ultimate reward.

2. Circa the same period, these phones made it possible for users to compose their own ringtone. No more annoying factory standard tones, hello annoying self-composed ringtones! Some people would buy the small booklets with the codes to the latest songs, some had the musical gift to be able to dictate the codes by ear. Bless!

3. Somehow it became a (very daft) trend to hang the phones by a lanyard around the neck. For those who can afford the prohibitively expensive small phones, it didn't look too bad. But then you'll see idiots with a 3310 trying to do the same and end up with a stiff neck at the end of the day.

4. Phones then was very much customizable physically. You can change the plastic casing for about RM10, and also change the screen backlight from boring yellow to white blue or red. Then some bright light discovered that you can put a picture on the LCD which only shows up when the screen is off. When the screen lights up, the picture disappears *gasp*.

5. There was a time when transparent plastic casing was a sought after item for it's cool factor. How to make it much cooler? By using a special battery with multicoloured LEDs that lights up whenever the phone's active i.e. incoming call. Groovy!

6. Remember Ericsson T10, Philips Twist, Nokia Banana et al? Those used to be cool...

7. Now how about Sagem, Alcatel, Siemens, Mitsubishi? If you have no idea that they used to produce handphones, then you must be quite young. I wonder if any of them are still producing handphones?

8. Simcards used to cost an arm and an ear. I bought my Maxis simcard for RM198 at a stall in Carrefour Subang Jaya (it was even pricier before that, RM200++, does anyone remember the price?). Now they're practically giving it away for free. Bummer.

9. It used to cost 60 freaking cents per minute to make calls from prepaid numbers, and for most folks they had to make a RM50/RM60 topup last for a month. SMS was the way to go brother.

10. When desperate, or whenever you know the other person is using postpaid, or whenever you feel cheap, just do the popular thing - misscall! It's the Malaysian equivalent to the 'hey, call me back' message at no cost at all. People who misscalled me often will just get one from me in return. It's my way of saying 'can't, my credit's running low too'.

Got any more?

Jaded

Boss: So how's our penetration rate year to date?
Me: We're currently at 13.9%, while plan for the year is 8%. We have exceeded the target by 5.9%
Boss: I think the plan was too low.
Me: No, I don't think so. As at Decemeber 08 we were only at 5.4%.
Boss:. Hrmm, ok.

That was the closest I came to slugging my own boss. I was given that target of 8% because the penetration rate has been rather dormant for years. Now that I've exceeded the target by a big margin, how dare he say that's because the plan was too low. I've worked my ass off for this shit, saying 'good job' was the least you can do.

I need to leave.