Thought suppression / Have a good weekend
You know, I actually have a post all lined up for discussion here but I thought that it was too bleak for a weekend. So I suppressed the urge to write it. BM, I haven’t forgotten what we talked about and I got the message history to go through if I do. 
Instead, I’m gonna just say, “Be like the dog and have a great weekend.”
yes, that’s a rubber chicken in its mouth
(mylerdude @ flickr, via everystockphoto.com)
Sexy are girls who eat / Priceless friendship
Had dinner with Jaclyn tonight at Good One BBQ House in Vic Park. I had a plate of roast pork with dry noodles and she had a combination roast with rice. She polished off her plate quickly and then began to eye the dishes that other ppl are having.
She patiently waited for me to finish my noodles (I eat slow) and then said, “Let’s ordered a plate of roast duck.” I said, “Aren’t you full?” She said, “Yeah but it looks sooo good. Don’t worry, we’d only get half a duck.” So we ordered that and finished that off as well.
She was so happy eating that plate of duck that it made me happy too. There’s something to be said about girls who relish their food. I think it’s sexy. It doesn’t hurt that she looks the way she does too. In fact other girls probably hate her for it, eating the way she does and still manages to look good.
Of course she doesn’t look like that all the time. But even when she’s not dolled up, she’s still good looking. Though like all girls, she went through a phase when she thought she needed to lose weight. Even then, she looked like this:
Tellingly she still picked a diet that will allow her to eat: The Atkins Diet. Heh.
She’s one of my friends who came back from HK. And turns out she’s changed her plans and will be here semi-permanently. However long that means, I’m glad to have her back in my immediate social circle for now.
In between gorging ourselves on the food, she updated me with her life in HK and her plans in Perth. We reminisce about past experiences, good and bad, and talked about relationships – ours and other ppl’s. We met up for only two hours tonight and it really does not feel like I haven’t seen her for an entire year.
She’s the one whom I talked about in my post, “Low Maintenance Friends“. I have quite a few friends who are just as low maintenance. Friends that I never lose a step with no matter how long or how far apart we are.
Friendships like these are priceless. I feel complete because of them. That plus my family, and the simple pleasures in life are my formula for happiness.
So reach out and get in touch with that lost long friend of yours. It’s worth it. 
I’m left-handed. We use the right-half of our brain more. Supposedly we are better at lying and making up stories, more artistic and creative, and have good imagination and all that. I don’t draw, and I don’t play any musical instruments but damn if I could string together random pieces of the English alphabet. Did that last bit even make sense? Who cares? It flows. Rolls off the tongue if you will. Melts in your mouth even.
Now being creative and all that, I imagined my creative juices being held in a glass that gets refilled from time to time. Some days it’d be overflowing, and some days it’d be parched.
On any given day a big amount of those juices goes into solving techie problems at work. Some bits go into juggling my finances. And a small bit goes into matching my clothes which reminds me of a joke I heard on The Late Shift:
Metrosexual: as gay as you can be without actually having sex with a man.
Hilarious™.
On the weekend, I solve problems of a different kind: where to go, who I want or need to see, what and where to eat, and more clothes matching. I don’t need creativity to decide what to drink – it’s always something with vodka or Chivas Regal. Plus beer. Plus Red Bull. Yeah.
And then …. no “and then”! … erm, and then, whatever creativity that’s left becomes words spilt out here for you lucky folks to read, and photos for you to see. Not bad for left-over creativity, innit?
/ego trip
Winter, this ain’t.
(leonbidon @ stock.xchng, via everystockphoto.com)
Winter is the time that …
Ministry of Sounds Sessions Tour 2006. Tonight. Line ups:
Metro City :
09.00 – 09.40 Mind Electric
09.40 – 10.25 Adam Kelly
10.25 – 11.10 Kriece
11.10 – 12.30 Goodwill
12.30 – 02.20 DJ Sneak
02.20 – 04.10 James Zabiela
04.10 – 06.00 Hernan CattaneoOld Berlin :
09.30 – 10.30 Ziad
10.30 – 11.30 Weavy
11.30 – 12.30 Jon Noonan
12.30 – 01.30 Kenny L
01.30 – 03.45 John ‘00’ Fleming
03.45 – 06.00 Anne SavageClub Capitol :
09.00 – 10.00 Smoulder
10.00 – 11.00 Greg Packer
11.00 – 01.00 Grandmaster Flash
01.00 – 03.00 The Upbeats Live/The Upbeats DJ Set
03.00 – 04.30 DJ Hazard
04.30 – 06.00 DJ Ban BanAmplifier :
09.00 – 10.20 Philly
10.20 – 11.40 Gully
11.40 – 01.00 Buex
01.00 – 03.00 Deadly Avenger
03.00 – 06.00 Koma and Bones
The plan is to kill a couple of hours at Metro City warming up (it’s gonna be a cold night at 8°C!), then spend the rest of the night at Old Berlin for John ’00′ Fleming and Anne Savage. Woohoo! Obligatory pics and vids to follow – may be a challenge as Old Berlin is just one big dark warehouse. Seeya tomorrow.
Technorati Tags: Ministry of Sound, MoS, rave, clubbing
Special effort for faraway friends
I have two friends to catch up with, both of whom have just dropped by from Hong Kong. They are from different circles so I will have to catch up with them separately. It’s an effort especially when you are normally not in the mood to go out, or when you have to move your schedule around to accomodate the visitors whose schedules are much tighter than yours.
But friends, and relatives whom I like, who are visiting from the eastern states or outside of Australia are a group of ppl whom I will always make time for. No matter how tired or uninspired I am, I will always drag myself out to meet them. And once I meet up with them, I don’t know why I would have even contemplated not coming.
Sometimes they may be apologetic for dragging me out to see them but I always say to them,
How often do you come here anyway? I can see everyone else some other time.
I feel that every minute spent together with ppl that you don’t normally see everyday is that much more special. Quality over quantity? Or is it that all the goodness of the company get condensed into the limited time that you have together, such that it becomes even more intense and enjoyable?
But don’t let the title of this post fool you – I treasure every minute that I get to spend with my favourite friends and family no matter near or far. Time and money is nothing if you don’t have ppl around whom you can share with.
What’s wrong with hard labour?
Since the restaurant winded up last week, my mom and my brother has been at logger heads. My brother has found a job at a meat-packing factory – Dorsogna to be precise. Mom thinks it’s beneath him, or I wonder if she thinks that it’s beneath her?
Her argument is that the family did not move all the way here from Malaysia for my brother to end up doing a blue-collar job. My brother asks why does she look down on the job, which my mom denies. But the exact phrase I keep hearing her say to my brother is, “Why can’t you find something else?”
It’s funny how she was the one who encouraged me to go into the restaurant business. And she knew how angry I was when I heard relatives say that I was wasting my university education. So her attitude now is contradictory.
To be fair, my brother has always chosen the easy way out of everything. The least amount of effort expended if possible. In engineering, we would have called that “efficiency”. But my mom has always chastised him for it.
However, I’m also of the view that if my brother is happy – the job is quite well-paid and the hours are decent, then why can’t she be happy for him? She says that there’s no future in the job. I like to be optimistic and think that a factory floor worker can still rise up if he/she shows enthusiasm and a love for the job.
I ended up saying to her that we moved here to get a better life, and that we have succeeded in doing that. She does not dispute the fact but she still couldn’t help but get all worked up about it. I guess she worries that he is somehow suffering from doing such a job.
Though, it’s a way of thinking that I don’t agree with, that a lot of Chinese ppl would associate hard labour with suffering and shamefulness. Hey at least it’s better than being unemployed!
While snobby ppl turn up their noses at these so-called “粗人”, they are quietly building their houses and offices, cleaning them, fixing the roads that their expensive cars drive on, repairing their pipes and connecting their electricity; looking after their kids and frying up their favourite plate of char kuay teow. Some are even richer than you think – they are just too humble to show it.
Don’t judge a book by its cover; don’t judge a job just because it relies on physical exertion rather than mental.
