Monday, November 27, 2006

The best laid plans..

Since two days ago, my plan was to be fully packed and in bed by two at the latest. Ad told me about the awesome in-flight entertainment that I didn't want to miss by sleeping so I figured enough of this insomnia crap, let's bring in the big guns (sleeping pill). I also wanted to be fully packed before I went to bed because I didn't want to risk the catastrophe that was last July's 30-minute-frantic-packing-job. Oh, but how I will cry if I forget my driver's license again.

Of course, it's now 4.01 am, I've been up since four am, I'm running on 2 hour and 10 minutes worth of sleep and I have done squat on the packing front. On the bright side, I managed to drop in on my friend's birthday party and finally finished the full 3.2 kms walk around Princes Park with the additional bonus of gossip, mindless chatter and sarcasm all around. Jesus Christ.. talk about plans gone awry.

I realized that I should be packing but today has been an interesting day of sorts and I want to pen it down before I forget. Firstly, I went to church, 4th time in my life, and didn't fall asleep during the three hour service, time ever, I should add. It was interesting to say the least. I have been meeting and talking with a couple of missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) for a couple of weeks now and I finally went to a service yesterday. Thoughts: It wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be. I would go into specifics about how I met the missionaries but while I may be actively wasting my time, I also realize that I don't have that much active time to waste. That made no sense, but let's just move on m'kay?

Then while doing some Christmas shopping for friends, I bumped into a classmate from high school. Don't you just hate the awkward pause that follows after a person yells out your name and your mind is pulling nothing but blanks? To add insult to the injury, we were in the same class for two friggin' years and were relatively friendly. In my defense,it's not like I had forgotten her completely. Our eyes met and did the weird sizing up/recognition thing before she finally went, "Karen?" Oh, the embarassment that followed after a long pause and too many false starts. And this made me wonder; are peoples memories just better than mine or have I not changed at all since primary school? And if I haven't changed does that mean I have the look of a nine year old or did I look nineteen when I was nine?

And finally, the birthday party. I had initially declined going, using packing as an excuse, but after threats of physical and privacy abuse, I caved and attended the party. It was fun and definitely good to see the birthday girl bursting with happiness.

Newsflash: Macca's crew have lives outside the Golden Arches.
That's her on the right. Yeah, she is pretty hot.

After the party I finally took a ride on the back of Jim's scooter, and can I just say that riding a motorbike is fucking exhilarating? Too righteous. On the way back, Neil wanted to see me drive his car. Kids, one year without touching the wheel and guess who's still got some mad skillz?? Yeah, holla at your girl!

What choo mean I can't pull that off? Is it because I ain't black? Oh, you racist pig!

I'm losing concentration but I just need to type this one last thing. The Assistant Manager at my Maccas store just recently implemented a new change in the holiday roster. The new rule is that if you're away for more than two months, you need to hand in your uniform and basically reapply for the same position after you've gotten back. Now, we've put up with a lot of crap from management, mostly cost-saving measures, but this is a new low. I only heard about it from my friend, Steph, who although has been working there for two years, apparently isn't worth Macca's loyalty. This is total bull because Steph is one of our best and most reliable workers. If this is the steps our store is doing to combat the high turnover rate, this isn't the way to go about it.
After chatting with her, she admits that she couldn't be arsed reapplying for the job after she gets back from Indonesia, which leads to Macca's losing a valuable crew member. The people who are going away for long periods are usually international students on their summer break. They're good workers and have usually been there a while. How is it fair to punish them for using their holiday to visit the family instead of grovelling at Macca's? How is that going to encourage any job loyalty among the workers? What the fuck kind of management material are they reading??

I write this now to remind myself about how angry I was when I first heard it. Tomorrow I'm going to the store to talk to the Assistant Manager and tell her what I think about this new rule. Granted of course that I wake up in time. At this rate, there will be a frantic rush again of the 'OMG-my-plane-leaves-in-an-hour-and-I-just-woke-up!!!' kind.

Photography project pictures for today

A cheap knock off

Faster than a speeding bullet

Traffic light for trams (tram light?)

Head on over to my Flickr page for more party and project pictures.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Contacts + rubbing = le ouch.


Contacts + rubbing = le ouch.
Originally uploaded by nerak.a.

Between my irregular wear and questionable contact-care hygiene, it had to happen at some point, right?

Friday, November 24, 2006

Blogger Beta?

I find it hilarious how hard Blogger is pushing for users to switch over to Blogger Beta. It used to be a small line at the start of the log-in page and now it's taking up three quarters of the top page when you're logged-in and at the Dashboard. It looks fairly promising, what with it's new privacy controls and post labels features, but it took my technologically-challenged self effing forever to 'master' the HTML knowledge needed to tweak blog templates, and I'm unsure about their new 'drag + drop' template editing (read: what will happen to my mad HTML skillz??). Anyway, if anyone reading this has already switched over, do leave a comment about what it's like over at the Beta side. Is it greener there?

I've been playing with the idea of starting a month-long photography project for a while now and two days ago I finally decided to commit it. The project is this: for an entire month, I will take at least one photo a day, a documentary of sorts, if you will. The photos can be of anything; an interesting event of the day, something that caught my eye, a fly on the wall.. there are no rules. I was inspired by an article at Photojojo, a really good and innovative photography blog, about a guy who took a 365 photos for an entire year. The end product were memories that were immortalized on film. Of course, I don't think I have the patience to go through an entire year, so I'm making it a month, with an option to extend of course.

It makes for good practice for people like me who want to move past the 'point and shoot' photography stage and it is also fun, or so I read. So for an entire month, I'll be snap-happy and if I meet you be accomodating and willing, yeah? Wishing you thanks in advance!

I went around campus and the city yesterday, running errands and taking pictures and most of it are uploaded on my Flickr page so mosey on over if you're interested. Rather unexpected was the 'graffiti' theme in a number of the photos taken, some funnier than others.

Make Property History

DSC00162

Wall art @ Melbourne Central

The last one is actually a wall at Melbourne Central, but I think the spray painted sign at the top wasn't in the original conception of the wall art. I could be wrong, but who cares. I'm still amazed I've never seen that wall although I go into Melbourne Central at least once a week.

Also, as an additional challenge for myself, multiple photos that I am included in must have me flashing something besides the generic grin. Seriously. There's only so many pictures I can view where I am wearing the stupid inane grin before I go crazy and want to cut /digitally erase myself out.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

A watched pot and all that jazz..

My download of the latest episode of Veronica Mars will be completed in about an hour and I need something to distract me from staring at the fluctuating download speed and willing it to go faster, which explains why this post came about. I can't actually think of anything to write about so as a time-wasting gimmick here are some pictures I've taken over the past month with colour commentary that will hopefully take about an hour to type out. Once the download is completed, I am gone, regardless if I'm mid-sentence. You have been warned.

Ready, set, go!

Protest! at the City: part 1

I've asked a lot of people from different religious backgrounds to explain it to me but countless hours of questions, confusion and "I don't know! What kind of a question is that anyway?!" endings later and I'm still not exactly sure what is so damn bad about the Falun Gong movement. Is it a cult? The Christians, Buddhists and Agnostics mostly answer with a resolute, "YES" while the Smart-Asses go, "aren't all religions a cult technically?". Five bucks says that these smart asses are the seminally smug, totally pretentious douchebaggy students in lectures who answers "it depends on what your definition of _______ is" to every question raised by the lecturers. You know the kind. They exist everywhere without geographical borders often occupying the left-mid-front seat in the lecture hall.

Protest! at the City: part 2

But back to my original point. Google led me to a bunch of news articles that were first hand reports of ex-Falun Gong followers who had quit the group after inflicting grevious body harm on themselves. Apparently third degree burns have the ability to make people come to their senses regarding dodgy 'spiritual' groups. A quick check revealed that the news articles were from the national Chinese media, so that was that.

Protest! at the City: part 3

Then finally I came across a journal article by a British scholar that I assumed was fairly unbias and it was a good read. Except I forgot most of it now, which is highly embarassing but in my defense the exam material had to take priority, right? Anyway, one point that stood out was that since the Chinese government was a strict Communist regime, the development of a group that would challenge it's ideals and core beliefs would pose as a threat to keeping the citizens under control. If that makes any sense.

Oh gosh, the download is done. Kthxbai!


Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Ruminations

- I got a forwarded email from my brother, the "Ashley killed herself because Jack deserted her, and although this has no connection, if you don't pass it on you will die ARRRR!" kind. And because I know my brother, I am pretty damn sure that he passed it on, not under any spam or entertainment pretenses, but because he, all 6'1'' 96kg of Jon Wong, is afraid that the virtual spirit of Ashley whatshername will come to kill him should the nontangible, nonphysical, nonharmable spirit find out that among the wide WIDE space of the interwebs the mail remained unforwarded seating in his inbox . I call, WUSS, and rest my proverbial case.

- From this week onwards to whenever I fancy a change my resolution is to read more and lie less. In Hell, right next to the people who speak in theatres are the people who lie to missionaries, I'm willing to venture. And by read more, I mean not read Stephen King's 'IT' for the eighth time.

- The weather forecast on my browser is so damn honest, that although the temperature outside is 8 Celsius, it states that it "feels like: 4 Celsius". I don't know which is scarier, the fact that the weather forecaster is more honest than me or that it can 'feel'. Hmm.

- I'm looking forward to going back to Malaysia because finally will I be then be reunited with my Coldplay albums, and my Baseketball DVD. The awesome, delicious food that I used to dream about and salivate over no longer really holds much temptation since I discovered I was allergic to eggs. So really, apart from the benefit of meeting up with old friends and family, the only other perk to going back to Malaysia is the pirated DVDs.

- What ever happened to my Zwan CD? It's not still I start humming the chorus of 'Honestly' that I remember that it's been lost, caught somewhere in the black hole of living and constantly travelling between two places, since 2004. Or maybe it fell behind my desk at home. I'll make it a point to check.

- My life is a string of cliches as much as it pains me to admit; working a McJob, the addicted-to-gambling, glasses-wearing Asian, pop-culture obsessed teen, which is why there is no surprise that I'm experiencing the sophomore slump now. I'm thinking of taking next year off, do an internship and get some experience in the media field, solidify my passion for journalism and all that. But I don't think that'll sit too well with my parents. And deep down I know that journalism is something I've always wanted to do since I wrote my first diary entry at age eight (and I would proceed to tear it up in a fit of rage when I found out my sister was reading it three months later), but I second guess the choices I make much like, you've guessed it, any cliched fickle minded teen out there.

- And then I proceed to shit my metaphorical pants when I think of the competition in the industry and my less-than-savoury writing skills, which includes but is not limited to my penchant for hyphenating every-single-damn-word, and arbitrary use of commas and semi-colons.

- I think this is the most intimate post since gosh.. I can't remember. I sometimes think that I should build my blog around one theme, either be a movie/tv review type of blog or a pop-culture commentary one, because I get personal as often as a fat kid rejects cake, but then I remember that I started this as a log of things I thought about and weird stuff I found on the web, ya know, general life. Which unfortunately for you, the reader, is often knee deep in contemporary pop culture. Which reminds me..

- One drawback to going back to Malaysia this time around is the sucky movies premiering there as opposed to Australia. Waiting... and The Wedding Date? Seriously? SERIOUSLY???? That is NOT entertainment. That is just one desperate diner-style-Clerks-ripoff with Ryan Reynolds as the lead, which should say enough as it is, and another waste of film that should not be touched by anyone with a Y chromosome or lacking that, good sense. Those damn pirates better deliver quality fare or a bucket better be passed around for the collective tears of the movie-going public. Yeap, right here buddy.

- Don't tell my parents but the main reason why I'm going back a couple of days after my exam ends if because I want to catch Borat before I go back. This means you Jon, if you're reading this. In my defense I've been waiting for what feels like three lifetimes for the damn movie to premiere in Aus. I'm going to be obnoxious and pull rank and play the 'but I was making sexy time with Borat even before the term 'Jagshemash' entered the outer fringes of your vocabulary' card. While it may be ostentatious it is also true. So that is the reason why I've pushed back my 24th departure date to the 27th (you squeal and I'll make sure that is the only sound you ever make again, Jonny Boy).

Friday, November 10, 2006

"This one time we mated a bulldog and shih-tzu? We called it a bullshit"

I was walking home from Safeway just a while ago when an overwhelming sense of dread overcame by entire being. There and then, I knew something bad was going to happen, my gut telling me that I was heading for a mugging. While walking into the store I had been hit up by bums for change three times in total, one which I ignored and the other two which I declined to give change to. Did that have any part to play in the unexplainable feeling of dread? Maybe. The bums that asked for change were obviously friendly among themselves, a family almost. I reckon I'd be lucky to even wrap my palm into a fist against the four sons and eight friends should a mugging were to occur.

Which is why I chose to go out another exit, the dodgy back route, that would help me avoid the family but risk the possibility of bumping into a strung out junkie that might be hell bent on getting more cash. What I realized in the couple of months that I had avoided the dodgy back route was that a new and very garish looking pub had opened. So in place of junkies, the route is overfilled with pissed working-type people wearing slacks and button down tops. They're equally annoying but I'll take the drunk yuppies anyday, thankyouverymuch.

Which is why I feel this quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is especially
relevant now.

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe gets that.

According to IMDb's trivia page for H2G2, other actors that were considered for the role of Zaphod Beetlebrox, the President of the Universe played by Sam Rockwell, include Jim Carrey, Robert Downey Jr, Will Ferrell and Bill Murray. The first two would have gotten the job done par excellence but the latter? Bill Murray owns the wry, sarcastic, wit-on-a-stick sthick, but he playing an almost-rockstar, seminally psychotic President in this time is just not going to cut it. Do not get me started on the abomination that would have been Will Ferrell as Bettlebrox.

On the other hand, other could-have-been Arthur Dent's include two Hughs, a Laurie and a Grant. They're both British, so the accent would have been perfect. One is slightly more famous than the other whereas the other has shown more diversity in his roles, although ito be fair to the other Huge, he can only play one type of character sincerely.

For some reason or another, lately whenever my mind is in wandering mode, this picture keeps coming to the forefront of my mind, thus causing me to explode into fits of giggles or sniggers that are highly inappropriate in any given situation.


I think I love this van so much that in effect, my love for the show is slightly skewed and totally biased. And when they trade in the van for the moped.. heh. I'm giggling all over again.
[while petting Petey, who's head has been taped back on by duct tape]
Blind Kid: Pretty bird. Can you say pretty bird? Pretty bird.
When I was nine that scene made me laugh every single damn time I watched the show, which by the way, was a lot. Click here to relieve some of the most quotable moments in Dumb and Dumber.

In line with Britney Spear's recent "Hey, you know what? I AM only twenty five,y'all" epiphany, the word Fed-Ex has reached new heights of public flaggelation and Jessica Simpson, if she hasn't realized already, will go back to gracing the back pages of US Weekly and People Magazine, and that's on the days that Paris, Lindsay, Britney, Christina, Gwen, Nicole, Larry, Moe and the other Stoodge is on a hiatus. I do pop culture regularly on my blog, not the celebrity type normally, but I do feel that someone needs to point out that should Britney continue the way she's going, Elizabeth Taylor's eight marriage record will cease to be impressive by the time Britney is forty. Not even twenty six and two failed marriages under her belt? A future record in the making, I'm calling it; you heard it here first.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

"It's liquid. It's courage. It's liquid courage."

I'm in a weird kind of mood right now. Much too energetic to sleep, too hyper to watch a movie or read a book but not too shameless to dance to Justin Timberlake's 'Damn Girl'. I blame it all on the Beastie Boys. Instant adrenaline rush, party of one. I've already terrorized people's Friendster pages, their email (my apologies, Charm) and logically I should go on MSN to use up the energy but I'm not really thinking coherent thoughts or typing real well now either. Thank you Microsoft Word for your spellcheck feature.

So here's a bunch of thoughts I've been pondering over.

- How do people who listen to their iPods or Discmans not bop their head to the music they're listening to? Especially when a real upbeat song comes along, how does one resist the urge to sing along/break out their inner funkmaster and throw down the phat moves? There is 6 billion plus people in the world and about 25 of them visit my blog regularly so I know I can't be the only one who feels that way. No, really. How do you sit still when The Go! Team starts playing or the guitar riff from AC/DC's 'Highway To Hell' comes on or when the "Ba-ba-ba" kicks in in Beach Boys' 'Barbara Ann'? God, should I ever have the Beatle's 'Twist and Shout' on any of my CDs you can bet I'm going to break out into a spazzy head-bopping-shoulder-swivelling-toe-tapping number of the worst kind.

Okay yeah. That's it. In retrospect, I should go and edit the "bunch of thoughts" to "thought" but I'm feeling pretty darn lazy and silly. So, to heck with it.

Fact #1: Young MC's 'Bust A Move' is the best song to end a night like this when you're feeling dance happy and shamefree. Awefreakinsome.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Things change

Somewhere between here,

The cutest baby born in a clinic ever


and here,

Totem pole style

i. Jon not only came to exist, but would grow to become a giant that towers over midget me.
ii. Lots, and I mean LOTS, of guys would come to be spellbound by Gill's charms.
iii. My eyesight would lose its 20/20 brilliance and keep deterioriating.

It's official. My eyesight just got worse.

If the subject of having babies in the future ever come up, between my totally awesome ezcema and equally as awesome potential blindness, don't raise an eyebrow when I say I'm going to adopt, m'kay?