3 posts from April 2008

I know that a sizeable percentage of my microscopic pool of readers are wondering whatever happened to myself. You can say that I have been lazy, or busy, or ran out of ideas, or becoming a boring person, or others. Work [a word not to be taken literally] has taken most of my time and attention, until I had to forget about everything else. Receiving a MacBook Pro out of the blue and not having an internet connection in my room made things worse.

But I love my MBP. I still have not decided what to name it. It won't be talked about in this post; it'll go into a 'My MacBook Pro' special.

How about a review of April 2008?

On the eleventh, my father took my brother and me to a supper buffet at Hotel Equatorial. This hotel can be considered as my family's number one hangout back in the 1990s, for Saturday night dinners. This night was the last night for the Scandinavian cuisine promotion, happening at Etoile Bistro. The sight of Scandinavian country flags make everything almost better.

Nothing much was to be seen, because the Swedish chef has packed up everything. So we headed to the coffee house downstairs and ate several dishes from curry mee to samosas to nasi beryani to baguettes.

Just a few days after I received my MBP, my brother came back from Frankfurt with an issue of Fantastic Man. Sadly to say, HE magazine was nowhere to be found. And since that I will be gifting Fantastic Man to JK, I made a copy for myself at the photocopy shop.

... and had a Photo Booth-aided shoot.

There was one day when I had to bring my mother to Sooka Sentral to meet someone, and while they had their discussion, I toured the complex to find food outlets, appealing young Caucasian office workers and a brand-new but incomplete fitness centre called Synar, which has a rock-climbing wall.

And on the seventeenth, I went to UiTM Shah Alam to see my mother giving a speech to graduate design students. It was a very hot day. There is something about this corridor that reminded me of a retro movie called Ali Setan.

On the twenty-forth, I hung out at Borders at The Gardens to make use of Starbucks' free WiFi. The speed was perfect to hold a video IM with one of my e-friends. Now my iSight is truly devirginised.

Oh, on the same day, I was having lunch with my mother at Nyonya Colors. I took pictures of the cafe when this guy [said to be a police officer] went ballistic over me and grabbed my camera away. I thought he was going to crush it as he explained how paranoid he was to have his picture taken. Luckily my mother was there to defend me.

Haha, on the 27th I participated in a creative writing workshop guided by Kam Raslan, the It author of the season. I expected a group of young secondary school kids but in reality, it was mostly people from the aged group, the kind who frequents Silverfish and thebookaholic.

Kam was very selamba in his speech. He was telling us about the techniques of... writing well [I don't have his notes right now]. After the free sandwiches, tea and coffee, I asked Kam to sign my journal. He chirped, "Oooh! A Moleskine!" [the way he said it was 'mowl-less-keen']. I said, "I thought it was pronounced as 'mo-luss-kee-na'". Then Kam made his trademark ambivalent face. It followed quickly by a photo session. I did an array of facial expressions, which confused him a little. Though in this picture, I'm the one who's looking confused.

A mystery was solved. Kam Raslan is NOT Karim Raslan. So for the past few months, I have been admiring two different men whom I thought was the same person. Remember, Kam writes stories, while Karim writes political stuff [meaning that that guy I saw at The Star election forum was NOT Kam].

Um, I guess that is it for April.

While waiting for my full report on the arrival of a portable Apple computer in my life, I am going to post what happened on Saturday the 12th. A friend of JK, known as Rugs, came all the way from the comfort of his Singaporean workplace called Front Row, to enjoy how a weekend in KL feels like, and I am honoured to be his seasoning.

It started from collecting Rugs at the KL Sentral monorail in the rain, and JK drove us off to CM Annexe, to check out an art exhibition thing. We got there at about 4.45 p.m. and found a painter and a curator telling a story out of a huge oil painting spread out on three panels.

Not too much was gained from this visit because... well, art is subjective and when it inspires this group of people, others might not be inspired at all. An hour later, we were on our way to Bangsar Baru to have dinner. We took a 'scenic' route through Taman SA to view the posh bungalows. When we reached Bangsar, we were delighted to find a parking space on the street! We dropped by Valentine Willie Fine Art to see a hardened crocheted chair, among other things. We reached to an agreement that we need to eat. As usual, Country Farm Organics was the first choice of eatery in Bangsar. The three of us ate a dish of brown rice and drank soy yoghurt which had a 'wooden cupboard' scent to it.

The main reason we were in Bangsar was for the RE:PLACEMENT One Night Spend sale. Some of the things that are on offer were the overrated white perforated pointed leather lace up shoe [don't know the proper name], limited-edition dresses, blouses... and others.

JK picked up a billowing monotone chiffon [?] blouse to help heal his ailing wardrobe, due to the lack of directional fashion items. I took several pictures of thick-framed glasses-wearing men, before heading off to sevendays. And for the first time, I bought something. JK and Rugs commented that it's what Björk would wear in her concerts, and it's a graphic brocade mini dress.

The night came and we still had an hour to kill before going back to CM Annexe for a special event. JK got excited with his own idea of bringing us to Lorong Haji Taib, near Chow Kit, where all the brothels are. It was still raining, so there weren't many prostitutes hanging about. But we were still delighted. Of course, this is nothing compared to Singapore's Geylang [?]. We also circled KLPAC and saw no one around. So it was time to get to CM Annexe.

The event we attended was Jerome Kugan's album launch. He's the sub-editor for KLue magazine and he interviewed me for my I Got Shot article. Apparently he has been working on this album for "nearly two years.... no, one and a half years". Guest performers include Azmyl Yunor, Bernice Chauly and Ferns. It was only at ten thirty did Jerome started his performance. The whole time, we munched on colourful icing biscuits [referred to a 'primary school biscuits], made popular by Khong Guan.

No good pictures came out of the small show, but here is a ridiculous picture of JK, Rugs and me being amused with ourselves.

After 11 pm, we left the gallery to see if the Ricecooker shop was open. Odd that it's a Saturday night, and it was closed. No punks were seen in that area, too. We walked back to JK's car that was parked near the Federal Court, where we took some more ridiculous pictures.

Right after that, a group of film students from Universiti Malaya approached us to ask for a video interview. We were asked about our dressing, social problems and for Rugs, how different Malaysia is to Singapore. This guy was in charge of the camera.

The excitement ended there when I was sent home. I had trouble sleeping that night. I was anticipating for something incredible.

I couldn't contain myself.

No more teaser trailer-esque pictures appearing throughout the week.