Daily misery

that was the question posed by one of my close friend before he went back to Malaysia upon finishing his study in England. We grew up in the same hometown. He loves the town, even more so as he ages. I asked ‘Why not stay in England and find a job instead? I’m sure the jobs there are better than what our crappy hometown can offer.’ His answer couldn’t be simpler. ‘Family and friends are all that matter to me. Being close to them is what makes me happy :)’. I can almost picture his grinning face when he typed that into his MSN chat window.

‘Are you going to come back to Malaysia soon? What are you looking for there?’ then he asked.

I couldn’t give him an honest answer back then because I didn’t have one.

As life in Toronto starts to settle in, I manage to pull some thoughts together and will try to give a less patronizing answer to that question.

I want to design user interface. That makes me happy. After that, I want to go home to my wife and make dinner for her and watch Heroes together and go to sleep. Maybe a little bit of sex before that.

I’m easy like that. I’m the guy who doesn’t know what the definition of horsepower is and is more than happy to let his gf chooses the car he will be driving. I’m the guy who doesn’t wear a watch and couldn’t care less about the latest gadgets (my workstation is not a gadget!). I’m the guy who likes piano but doesn’t know how to play one but will tell the girl he’s trying to impress that he knows how to play piano well enough to make her cries. I’m the guy who doesn’t get expressive abstract art but will buy that Picasso’s piece with half of his fortune if everyone around him says ‘yeah, this is indeed an amazing piece of work.’

Malaysia can give me that life, no doubt about that. But if I can’t get it here, I probably won’t get it anywhere else.

My goals in life are not something to go wow over. But life’s a bitch like that. The easy things are always the hardest to get. No wonder everyone wants world peace or talk to God instead. Obviously I’m still working on the wife part and I still have a lot to improve on in what I do for a living. But I know a person who already did it - my dad. Back in the days, he and my mom would watch ‘Wheel of fortune’ together while my sisters and I would take turns screaming every possible combinations of words for the puzzle, to their annoyance. He raised us well and enjoyed every minutes of it. He’s an honorable man.

I’m slightly more handsome than my dad, so it’s not entirely impossible.

camwhore (kămhôr, kămhōr) (sometimes cam-whore or cam-slut)
n.

1. Someone who is armed with the notable ability of taking kawaii pictures of themselves from a downward angle coupled with a strategically-placed peace sign next to their cheek.

It is suggested that the ideal angle of the camera is usually 45 degrees on either the top right or left hand side (rarely middle) of the person’s head depending on which side of his/her face has less pimples.

intr.v., camwhored, camwhor·ing, camwhores.

1. To associate or have camwhoring relations with camwhores or a camwhore.
2. To accept ego-kudos in exchange for camwhore relations.
3. To compromise one’s principles and dignity for personal camwhore session.

[Middle English hore, from Old English hōre.]

Some samples:

notes: Su Ann and I discussed lengthily about the importance of having the ‘V’ peace sign in the definition (she’s the one who inked the original definition). We finally agreed that the sign can be optional and as long as the person is trying visibly hard to act cute in front of the camera with the very intention of attracting massive public attention to self-boost personal ego, he/she can utterly be touted as a camwhore. She even provided some exclusive samples for clarification.

1. When I was 10 or 11, I participated in this district level Taekwondo competition. I was a black belt, advanced from the 1st round unscathed and my 2nd round opponent was a yellow belt noob. 10 seconds into the match, in what I remember was his first attack, he launched a harmless looking right sidekick that hit my face square and fair. I cupped my face, looked down, idling for a bit, tears accumulating around my pupils, before turning around and ran away from the center court in the middle of the fight, crying out loud. My coach threw in the white towel. I think my parents were watching from the stand. Proudest moment of their life.
2. Back in my high school, we had to take turns to clean the restroom. There was this one time when the headmaster ordered me to stick my hand into the toilet bowl to extract whatever that was clogging it. I remember it felt squishy but didn’t dare to look. It was kinda funny.
3. Primary 6 (equivalent to K-12 for US readers), my friend and I were playing Abu Ghraib-style torturing game in our classroom. I was what you would call the classroom perfect. One day, I had this crazy idea of tying my classmates up with ropes and laughed at them if they didn’t abide by my rules (which was pretty much ’shut up’ and ‘don’t bother me’ ). My friend just did what I asked him to do because well, we were friends. Suddenly the teacher showed up and man he was furious (one of my classmate was literally still being tied up on a chair, crying and terribly horrified). He wanted to know whose idea was this. Without even thinking I pointed my puny index finger towards my friend. The teacher whipped and shouted at him in front of everyone. I was the perfect and my friend was more the delinquent type. I was more believable. My friend cried for his innocence. Literally, he was kneeling and begging the teacher to stop hitting him, but never once did he say it was me who did it. I just stood there and watched. I still have nightmares about it.
4. I once stole 5 bucks from my friend’s (different one) mother’s purse so we can go play videogame. I told him it was my money.
5. When I was either 9 or 13 (I try not to remember), I had this big fight with my eldest younger sister over some stupid arguments. I pulled her hair and I think I slapped her. She didn’t cry violently but I could see from her teary eyes that she hated me down to the spine. Even now, I can still recall vividly her fury facial expression at that time. I felt so disgusted with myself afterwards but made no attempt to apologize. My dad would have been very disappointed with me had he found out about this because he once told me that I should treat every girl like a princess. It was probably a good thing because I never touch a girl like that ever since. My sister and I have a much better relationship now ^_^. She’s like my best friend and I think I owe her an apology. I’m so sorry, Karen.

How I can grow up and become a normal person, I will never know. I never did drug, crack, joint or ecstasy. Hell I never even put a cigarrette on my lips before. But many times I wish I can replace the last 3 things with stories where I had hurt myself badly, repeatedly.

As this coming Friday is the Independence Day of Malaysia, it is of course a customary practice for all Malaysian patriots like myself here to share some sort of congratulatory stories about the birth of our nation. Half a century of standing on our own legs, from being an under-developed country to a developing one, all without being tainted by any major, unfortunate dark history such as genocide, civil war or invading or being invaded by another country. Malaysia is a blessed child indeed.

While the nice things I mentioned above are true to some extend, and I have no doubt some of us have fought and are still fighting hard to make it remain so, we are at the same time losing many things that are fundamental to our forefathers’ dream 50 years ago.

At only 50, Malaysia is very ill - sort of like an internal bleeding, if you will. The Orang Utans are dying. Trees are going and gone. Malaysians are having less sex. Keris production is booming. The parliament is turning into a gung-ho chicken fight show. Everyone is depressed. No love at all.

It is best for me to not merry-go-around my readers into believing that I will write an entry with similar tones to the likes of Dr Chris Anthony’s ‘Merdeka – a non-Malay perspective‘ or Meng’s ‘This Merdeka, say ‘no’ to race-based parties‘ or Jac SM Kee’s ‘Nothing to celebrate if we ignore basic rights‘. All great articles I should say, pragmatic and matured tones in most regards but sadly, idling in the after-effects.

Initially, I was kind of hoping if I can throw in a few foul words or include an indecently exposed picture of my hairy ass facing a copy of Utusan Malaysia, maybe, just maybe it might create enough stir and shouts in the websphere to make these 1000 words at the very minimum, a memorable and controversial one. Something like ‘yeah, penyebar fikiran rakyat my ass!’ might work.

It’s just that I’m tired of shouting and being angry all the time. Being angst-y is so exhausting. At the same time, it’s not like the Gandhi cum pacifist approach of Jeff Ooi, SUHAKAM and the opposition party is making any leeway. Progress? maybe. Breakthrough? hardly. Of course, it’s stupid and naive of me to think anything might happen in an overnight. But self-reassuring measure to make myself feel better just because I care can only go so far. And to the next page, life goes on.

** the next paragraph is where the background music of What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong comes in as I will try my best to make it sounds as passionately touching as humanely possible **

I always believe common Muslims, Chinese, Indians and all other ethnicities in this country have every intentions and would give all possible efforts to live peacefully and harmony together. I still do. Naive and idealistic, I’m sure. But I grew up having Malay friends calling me a ‘cibai cina’ and me calling them back ‘babi melayu’ and then we later would play soccer together and ate burgers sitting side by side on the sidewalk whistling and making sexist hyena sound towards all the ‘ahmoi and awek’ passing by. We were young and color blind. But when clueless and ignorant high marky-marks like the DPM and UMNO youth kept making retarded remarks like how Malaysia is an Islamic state or how blunt tanah melayu keris is, it only makes things harder for everyone. Personal agenda or not, most of us can care less but when they use the constitution or social contract or what-the-fuck-ever as a basis of their pretentious attempt to defend our ethnic rights, they are putting Ah Beng and Abu in the boxing ring and that my friend, is how political officials get elected.

** music ends **

NEP is a racist issue, no matter how much olive oil you put on the gasing trying to spin it. Any discussion on topics regarding two different ethnic groups is a racial issue. This article you’re reading right now is racist, I shall not fight to claim otherwise. You can put as much GAY GAG orders to try to ‘control the discussion of sensitive issues’ but it is still gay. Everyone from my aunties in kopitiams to your abangs in mamak stalls talk about it, everyday. People talk about stuff whenever there is an inequality. But true, good equality can only be achieved by putting in place properly managed inequalities. In other words, there’s no such thing as purely equal. The reason why you and I are getting an equal slice is because someone else out there is getting a much smaller slice.

Having said that, it can be fairer. much fairer.

How? I don’t know. I don’t know how to do that without having a dialog with other Malaysians. When was the last time all of us sat down and had an honest discussion about NEP from ground up, detailed level? Uhm, 50 years ago? There are smarter people than you and I out there from all ethnic groups that are willing to talk about these so called sensitive issues in a civil and open way. These people are in many ways more tolerant and patriotic than Alvin the smart ass or the current administration will ever be.

Sadly, all the smart people are being gagged.

So let everyone talks. If talking about these ohmygod-this-is-so-sensitive-I-almost-have-a-premature-ejaculation issues will lead us to the path of May 13 Incident, 1969, then so be it (and we all know it won’t). We will kill each other soon enough anyway, judging by the growing rate of the number of my Chinese friends who hate Malays because of NEP and vice versa. The question is, if it eventually does lead to bloodshed, will it be because:

1. we can’t come to a satisfying solution for all parties after having dialogs and actually understand the underlying problems. We end up eating each other heart. or
2. we do nothing. Non Bumiputra keeps testing the water and bloggers keep writing about inequality and human rights problem. NEP remains the big white elephant in the room. We continue letting the government runs the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) engine.

But we are all free people.

There are no justifiable needs to hand out GAG orders like toilet papers. There is no need to use government to threaten others who have different standards, or to be threatened by them[1]. Looking to our Founders, our traditions, and the Constitution, the government should be ashamed. Our forefathers are spinning in their graves because the only few times you (as in the government) ever put us in the front page of the world is when something stupid or shameful happens.

Who is the current administration to say which one of you get to say what, when and how? Who are they to say we, the Indians, Malays, Chinese, Ibans, Kadazans and etc, can’t have a matured and intelligent discourse about our national crisis and our citizens’ rights without resorting to stabbing and poking each other with Keris or chopsticks? For one thing we are all civilized, for another we all are damn tired of this already and if not for anything else, I don’t want to hate or fear when I don’t know what in all our mothers name is really going on. We can all solve this, if we will just take a step back and listen to everyone.

I have faith in Malaysians. I believe we can talk this through. Every times the government starts arresting bloggers, issues GAG orders, censors the media and whatnots, that’s every inch closer we are getting to killing each other. Because we will start guessing. We will start fearing. Malay fears Chinese will take everything away, Chinese is angry because Malay is not playing fair and the Indian is angry because they are getting all the leftover. And the government is “protecting” us from killing each other by spreading and fanning the FUD. Then the ‘Youth’ fraction of main political parties get all ‘youthful’ and adrenaline pumped up every time this happens because they get to compare whose penis is longer and whose wrinkly balls are bigger. I choose to hear it directly from a radical Malay that he is calling me a ‘cibai cina’ than from a government warning that if they don’t prevent him from speaking to me, he is going to call me a ‘cibai cina’.

It’s heart aching that some of us have actually forgotten that exactly 50 years ago, Tunku Abdul Rahman and the Malay Rulers had asked that “in an independent Malaya all nationals should be accorded equal rights, privileges and opportunities and there must not be discrimination on grounds of race and creed.”[2].

I’m sorry if this post doesn’t come across much as a congratulatory story. The selection is pretty limited nowadays. There are only so many times you can replay the Mount Everest or Nicole David story.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Love, AL

So here’s the story.

As a child, I used to go to this Buddhist temple with my parents. I love that place. It is situated by the river and has a majestic interior with the marbled floor, flying dragons on the wall and all. Definitely a prominent landmark in my town. When I was 19 or 20, I converted to Christianity and have been ever since. It wasn’t like I didn’t like dragons anymore and Buddhism has nothing at all to do with dragons as I later found out. It’s just that I’d been spending so much time with my girlfriend that time and she went to church semi-regularly, so might as well. And I did all of this while living in a Muslim-dominant country.

Such unique experience is hard to come by. If anything, it teaches me about the fundamental notion of religious pluralism and that it’s ok to share a tooth brush with someone of a different religious faith. Ok maybe not the later. When I see a leader from a nation talks, swears or acts by the name of God, I smirk. When I heard from my ex-gf the first question her Caucasian roommate’s parents asked her, upon knowing she’s from Malaysia, was whether she’s a Muslim. Before she could answer, they said they don’t want their daughter living with a Muslim. That I smirked too.

The way I see it, if there’s one thing out of the many that remains absolutely the same about Buddhism and Christianity, besides from the obvious fact that they both (and Islam, surprise! surprise!) teach and preach on the notion of love, peace and care, is my prayer. Throughout the years, my prayer has always been the same, every single word. I pray for the safety and happiness of my family and friends. Of course, I had to change some of the words like ‘Lama’ to ‘Jesus’ and I had also noticed the difference in the way you cup your hand during prayer.

I believe in God, make no mistake of that. But I’d learned from experience that that statement is different from ‘I believe in God and you should too’. And that itself is very different from ‘I believe in God and you should believe in MY God too’. And then (ok, last one), that itself is very very different from ‘I believe in God and you should believe in MY God too or else you can’t go to heaven after you die’.

There’s this guy - Owen. He lives by the simplest faith - do no evil. He is as close to a saint as a living man can be. He cares for his family, makes pancakes every morning for his 2 and 6 years olds, married for 30 years, is planning to have a third honeymoon with his wife somewhere in Ireland, joins Red Cross and been to countries like Kosovo, Iraq and Darfur on humantarian mission. But there’s this problem, he is not a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or a Mormon. He’s spiritual, but not religious. In this world, he would be what we called an atheist. Can he still go to heaven after he dies? Oh did I tell you how he would eventually die? Let say a stray bullet went right through his head while on a mission to distribute food in a refugee camp on some remote areas in Sudan. That’s also the day when his eldest daughter turns 7.

We are living in a society where people look at you differently because you believe in a different God from theirs. Hell we can’t even talk about these things without screaming at each other. And if you believe in religion as my father and mother and friends and girlfriends had taught me to believe it, then maybe you will smirk too. Because then you will start to see the irony of all these connerie.

He’s a prominent player in the area of data visualization. This is one of the best talks I’ve seen on TED. Watch out for the finale.

because…

• we can’t say no when THE woman proposes marriage. (yes, I know technically we can but you get my point…)
• if my wife is richer than me, I can but are not supposed to get even a tiny teenie portion of her financial asset when we get divorced. Poor Nick Lachey.
• we don’t have Victor’s Secret.
• it’s not ok for us to talk about our feelings, how terminally sad it may be.
• last but definitely not least, we are always wrong.

Of course, none of these can win in an argument with women because they carry the ultimate trump card - ‘we carry your little human inside us for 9 months and we have to push it out off our vagina and all you do is stand by the bed side with tears coming out of your sappy eyes saying ‘mygawwddd, that’s my little baby’, or not even that!’

Really, don’t even bother to try to counter that argument. You will just end up making yourself look really bad. Like really really bad.

Although you can always say ‘pregnant woman is the most beautiful thing in the world’ to score some points among them.

A couple went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. They had been fighting over the last couple of days but hey, everyone needs to eat. A minor fight broke out again before the dishes arrived. Exact reason remained unknown, or too petty to be bothered with. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant meal.

Towards the end of the meal, the girl broke off her fortune cookie with little interest. She then smiled, probably after reading the words of faux wisdom, uncovered from within the many broken pieces of the crispy cookie.

It says:

Do not dwell on the differences with your love one…try to compromise.

She passed along the message from cupid to her boyfriend. They both exchanged smiles. They both fought for the bill. They both left with arms around waists.

I wish my arm was around her waist. But my story branched out on the last part to the dark realm where everything ends up not too well, or remains unchanged.

She returned all the things I ever gave her the next morning.

Looks like it’s time to turn on the answering machine again.

When you compare the specs for OpenId and hCard, you might see two totally different things. OpenID is more like your state ID/driver license while hCard is like a business card (I suck at analogy). But they do share one common feature - an Open Standard.

Let me talk a little about OpenID. First, OpenID is not a trust system. You can’t build trust if you don’t have an identity. That’s what OpenID gives you - an identity. That’s also why analogically, it’s a state ID, not a master keycard that gives you access to all department doors (assuming you’re a CIA). Many social sites now support OpenID - livejournal.com, zooomr, Hampr, ma.gnolia, technorati and many more. It also has a wide range of code libraries that let you implement your own OpenID server and whatnots. Here’s how it works:

First, register an OpenID with one of the many free OpenID servers out there. I use myopenid.com. To associate your own site with the ID, instead of having to sign on using the default yourname.myopenid.com, add the following tags to the header of your web page.

(more…)

Last week, University of Nebraska Lincoln officially unveiled its spanking new website redesign. With this redesign, I humbly believe we now have one of the top web sites among all the other US academia institutions, aesthetically speaking, and also in terms of support for web standards, accessibility and usability guidelines.

Some people had asked me about the design and wanting to talk about it. Honestly, I don’t think I am the right person to discuss that with. You should all go bug him. But on a personal level, I like it a lot. Taking into consideration the problems/circumstances we had had during the entire process, I think Aaron managed to come out with a design that not only looks really good, but also plays well with everyone else’s mind. Yes, it deviated a bit from his original design, which, by the way is stunning, along the process but we really tried to fight and preserve as much of the original design identity as we can.

I can however, talk a little bit more about the codes. Some argued that the markup can be tighter and I agree. It is always a very challenging task to come out with a solid markup that works on 4 or 5 different layouts across multiple browsers. Add to the fact that we have to keep in sync with certain layout elements from previous design markup to ensure smooth transition, not to mention various content layout and a grid based design (see below), things can start to get pretty interesting.

Other than the usual bruahaha - it works in the latest version of all modern browsers, adhere to web standards, validates, resizable +- 2, graceful fallback for JavaScript treatment – I have several other interesting points to share:

1. Painless web page conversion is one of the main focuses of this project. Brett Bieber, our lead software engineer, helped me a lot by guiding me trough the inner working of the dwt template we have in place. By coding the CSS/XHTML markup around the template, I think we made the page conversion from the old UNL template to the new one a fairly easy process. All a web owner needs to do is to replace the CSS files and click the ‘Update’ template button in their Dreamweaver. Everything else is pretty much taken care off. This is especially critical when you have thousands of web pages from many different departments to convert. And we can easily push out bug fixes and codes changes to all the template users without them having to do anything to apply the patches.
2. Different set of layouts can be applied using the same markup by just changing the BODY id. Such set up has helped us a lot in terms of codes coherence and maintenance. But the downside is you might run into trouble with multiple CSS overwrites properties. It really takes a good documentation and stacking practice to keep me in check on which CSS attributes has precedence over the other.
3. UNL is one of the early adopters of Adobe’s spry framework. It is a pretty solid library, albeit a bit heavy on the size. I really like the animation callback function and how the library handles associative arrays is a nice breakaway from the prototype library. We are going to have a lot of fun with this thing ;-).
4. Although it might not be noticeable at first glance, this new design is actually a grid-based design. See here: Grid image!

A week after the launch, we are still working on page conversion and fixing bugs but everything is finally settling down. It’s been a long process and I am starting to see how the new design will helps shapes the university web presence in both the academia and recruitment fronts.

Finally, I just want to take this chance to thank my colleagues – Aaron Grauer (you can blame him if you don’t like the design), Brett Bieber and Ned Hummel (I can take all the blame for the CSS/XHTML but these two are more than willing to share the blame for the javascript codes), Aaron Coleman (blame him if you find spelling errors or broken links in one of the top level pages content), Bob - my boss (blame him if you don’t agree with just about anything ;P) and everyone in WDN.

Shameless plug: UNL has a very talented web team in place and we are very excited about some of the projects we are currently working on. Hopefully they will see more sunlight over the next few months. Stay tune!

There had been some debates about Malaysian oversea students not coming back to work in their motherland upon graduation. Being one of those who fit such demographic profile, I think I can offer some insights in regards to the issue. Well there’s actually only one point that is worth pondering.

It’s not about the money, seriously.
If it was really about the money, then it wouldn’t be that hard, would it? To offer a prelude to my point, people need to aware of the fact that living in other countries is never like living in your own. For some of us, it’s not even close. There’s a lot of things to miss and at times you feel that a significant parts of your life is missing. It is after all the place where most of us are born in, have our first puppy love, high school mud-soccer game, first sex, friends, families and let’s not forgetting the roti kahwin and ba kut teh. But why all these nostalgic recollections coupled with a few thousands bucks per month (or more) still take a preceding backseat when it comes to deciding whether we should go back and serve our country? Well I can’t really speak for everyone but on top of my head, it’s because we love what we do for a living.

I love what I do so much that I just won’t settle for a higher salary back home doing nothing but rest my ass in that executive chair. It’s the same reason why I would go back for half the salary I am currently earning if Malaysia is the place where I want to build my career on. Why is Malaysia not such a place? A dive into my career will probably offers a clearer picture.

I’m a web consultant. Web is a constantly evolving field (as with any other professional fields, I believe). I develop web applications, design UI, information architecture and bla bla bla. As more people are transitioning their desktop-based application to web services, the web is turning into a very exciting place. New technologies are being created every day, new ideas waiting to be developed. I have the privilege to attend web conferences, discussion groups, and talks and learn from various networks of really bright and helpful peers. There’re get-togethers among web developers in many parts of US cities. Research papers are easily accessible and funding are, ahem, more easily and equally distributable, regardless of your skin color. Peer reviews and collaborations are happening in constant frequency. All of these are where it starts to make going back to Malaysia a less attractive proposition.

We don’t have the fundamental infrastructure and professional community in place. One might say, this is exactly why we need you to come back for! Well, does Malaysia, in all honesty, give us the necessary resources and environment to start working on that? The simple answer would be no. I do have Malaysian friends who would go back if they’re being offered competitive salary. In fact, that’s their only concern. But I really believe in doing what you love and had in fact in more than one occasion turn down higher salary offers in favor of lesser one but with the prospect of working on more exciting projects. It’s not very uncommon. And it’s almost an insult to people like us when money is seen as solely the main reason why we won’t go back.

I’m not trying to be an elitist, but merely trying to enjoy my 8 hours everyday to the fullest extend possible. It’s almost a double income when you love your job.

People read about issues like these and somehow make up their own impression on how there’s a shit load of Malaysian surgeons and lawyers working for big ass companies in foreign countries earning big bucks. Well, there’re two big misconceptions in that sentence alone. First, there’s not a shit load of us. Second, it’s not as easy as you think and getting a foreign degree definitely does not guarantee you a 50k or more per year pay check. I would like to believe most of us work very hard to come this far. And for those of us who make it big time, we want to keep doing the thing we love, keep pushing the envelopes and leading the pack, to innovate and work on exciting projects without having many strings attached, to manage a team of brilliant engineers and being able to attend professional conferences and other collaboratory forums. We would love to come back even for half the salary, if Malaysia can offer such a platform. Why? Remember the nostalgic recollections? :-)

So maybe it’s time for the politicians to stop looking for reasons on why we are reluctant go back and serve our beloved nation (it makes a good political campaign’s speech, I know), but to focus more on how to improve our country, both socially and economically. Everything sort of goes along once you get the very fundamental structures well taken care of.

I hope you will like it as much as I do. :)

Download Wonderwall (alpha)

This post is my little response in regards to the latest Malaysia political fiasco surrounding MP Loh Seng Kok’s parliament speech.

I’m not even going to comment about the content of that speech, nor will I try to justify the validity of MP Loh’s point of views. Anyone who read the news coverage on Malaysiakini and other local dailies would’ve easily noticed that that’s not the real issue here.

I am just plainly dumbfounded by the fact that EVERY SINGLE FREAKING time someone ever as much as try to bring up these sensitive issues, the various Islamic party fractions venomously slam and shoot down that poor lad faster than he could ever say ‘hear me out’. And this time, according to the press,

some 50 Umno Youth members, led by Kelana Jaya division chief Abdul Halim Samad, paid Loh a surprise visit at his Subang Jaya service centre at about 9.30pm. Loh was handed a protest letter. According to Malaysiakini, Abdul Halim told him, “We don’t want to hear any explanation now; this is our letter, you read and answer it.”

You can almost picture the scenario vividly: a swarm of Vikings accompanied by deafening war thrums and barbaric roars, launching a scathing blitzkrieg towards a small group of peasants living on the countryside. Of course, to those Vikings, they are not just ordinary peasants, they are troublesome whistleblowers, so called nation destablizer, rats that stir negative sentiments among the people of the nation.

The issue is just too sensitive. It’s better if everyone just shut their big ass mouth. Why talk about it when our founding fathers already agreed upon the terms and inked it in the constitution like 40+ years ago? Constitution is opened to fair and unbiased interpretation and should be reopened for intellectual digestion as the nation progress along? What? No no, you can’t talk like that - it is a very sensitive(again) and provoking topic. After all, “The country’s harmony is based on the nation’s history, where there was a consensus reached by the different ethnic groups… we shouldn’t just look at superficial issues.” (Mohamed Aziz (BN-Sri Gading)). Moreover, it could lead to a rift between the different races. (Salahuddin Ayub (PAS-Kubang Kerian)).

Superficial issues? Rift between different ethnic groups? Oh puhhh leeeezzzzzzz.

It just amaze me that these people really think that by not discussing these issues, they can actually suppress the voice and slip those issues under the rug and make it as if they are divine laws that you and I should ever so voluntarily conform to. I mean, seriously? All those meritocracy bullshit in our educational system, new prayer recital guidelines, disputable history books, corporate/govermental hirings and promotionals, so called special rights. I mean don’t get me wrong, I am not even saying ‘fuck this, why can’t we be equal’ or that sort of thing. I have no problem whatsoever with preferential treatment. In fact if you are willing to discuss this in a more open way, you will find out that actually the majority of the ethnic minorities agree to some extend that preferential treatment is of multitude importance to the stability of this nation.

But why can’t we be more transparent in drafting such laws or discuss it in more open terms? Why it has to be secretive and talk-and-you-get-jailed-under-ISA sort of thing? Is it so wrong and vile to try and find some common grounds here, figuring out the best way to offer such preferential treatments without discriminating other ethnic minorities? Is it really that sentiment-stirring to have an open forum or some sort so that everyone can understand why there’s such a vital need for us to be slightly unequal to be equal?

Why react as if I’d just massacred your entire family when such issues are being brought upon? Those 40 and 50 years old Ah pek and Ah sam in Chi Chiong Kai are not as well informed as Mr Loh and I might be, you know. They don’t know how to look at the bigger picture. We understand why it is vital to preserve preferential treatment laws but they don’t see it that way. The only thing they see is why their sons and daughters were rejected from well-recognized medical school even after they all scored 12 A1s in their SPM. or why their husbands were passed on for promotions after serving more than 25 years for the government. Do they not deserve even a simple, proper and polite dialogue, if not for anything else, to calm souls and for the sake of maintaining the harmony of our nation? You tell me.

Pick any given day on any venue, I will be more than happy to participate in an open forums with any of these UMNO Youth’s mafia wing fraction and talk about issues they feel so strongly about that go as far as justifying their marching-to-your-office-to-show-you-our-power action. I bet on my own life that I will end up being the one sounding more sensible (both intellectually and common sense wise) than the 50 of them combined. Hell they should feel lucky they get me instead of our nation’s fairness-peace loving-equality princess - Miss Su Ann. (no, I’m not trying to be funny)

Malaysia - a progressive and democratic nation that promotes freedom on speech and religious practice and all that harmony bla bla bla? Excuse my french but you can kiss my ass.

Until we all learn to lick the notion that the very fundamental ingredient to a tolerable, understanding and harmonic society comes from the way we communicate with each other everyday and our willingness to listen, we are steadily heading towards a very real and serious racial brouhaha, conscious or subconciously. If you think I tried to sound threatening, you obviously haven’t been paying attention to those bloggers, your aunties and my uncles kopitiam talks, friends, the press and well, the history itself.

I have a lot of muslim friends. Most of them are anything but the 50 Umno-nians - tolerable, witty, charming, polite with a deep sense of respect for each other, muslims or non-muslims. After reading this latest news, one of them caught me with this carefully worded question: Do you think we (muslims and other ethnics in Malaysia) will ever cross sword like the Serbs and the Albanians if things are to continue like this? I called him crazy, not because I don’t think we will ever fall that deep, but more of a fact that I am hoping such question will never ever have to pop up in any of our head.

I love Malaysia more than any other country in this world; and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

It was almost one year ago I posted about starting my new job at Knowledge Marketing. This was my first job after getting my degree and the experience had been immensely valuable. The people I work with here are super cool and over the last couple of months, the company had started to put together what I think is a very talented web team.

But I believe it is time for me to look for new and fresh challenges in my career. It has always been my interest in learning and understanding user-centric web development. I love the web and in some ways that has been one of the few main reasons why I decided to look elsewhere.
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A lof of stuff happens around the world today. In Europe you have the whole Islam caricatures thingie and it is spreading fast across the globe. Then in middle east you have the Iran’s nuclear crisis and as always, the Israel and Palestine and of course, the oil. Turn to Asia you will see China dominates all the headlines from Google censorship to their currency floatation value. And then in US you have President Bush and Pat Robertson. A lot of discussions generated in coffee shops, heated preaches in mosques and churches, intelligent discourses here and there, some people get angry, some people burn things and some people demonstate. People are becoming more socially conscious about the things happening around them - civil rights, war, ethical views and everything from Hollywood to Beirut. It feels like 1970’s again.
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I’ve wanted to write about my madz cooking skill for a while but all these stupid web thingies and movie reviews keep filling my posting space. Part of it is also due to the fact that I can almost never remember my cooking ingredients right after I finish eating. Weird but true. The doctor said it has something to do with how my digestive system reacts to an over consumption of sodium, resulting a short circuit in my neuron nerves prompting an instant but critical short term memory lost of what had happened 30 minutes prior to this whole chain-reacted syndrome.

Anyway, even a hardcore hacker has to stuff that empty tummy. So today is the day I want to document my program cooking and release the source code ingredient and API recipe so that everyone out there can build, develop and redistribute it back to the community. Without much delay, I hereby present to you the first of 4 series from ‘Alvin’s da cook funk yo yo yo bah bah bah’. Instructions are shown in caption under the following images.
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So the new DM’s design went for a soft launch today. I hope the latest design will stay in my Wordpress’s theme folder for a longer period this time. But then I’d probably said the exact same thing for you-know how many times. As some of you might have noticed, Daily Misery has gone through more changes than i would have liked and I would love to maintain a sense of consistency within the element of design starting now. Besides, I highly doubt I would have as much free time to work on personal project comes 2006 and would be fairly happy if the constant flow of content in DM can be maintained.

I am really looking forward for next year. It would be the year, I hope, for things to settle down. A point in life where I can finally say ‘let’s stop looking around. Let’s start from here.’ This year has been sort of like a ’startup’ year for me. I got my degree, got my first real job, my first car, my first one bedroom apartment and founded my first studio. I was exhausted to a point where it would be really nice if everything just stops for a short while. (more…)

Ok, maybe I exaggerated a little bit.

My apology for all the video postings. It was one of those serene nights where I had one hand on keyboard and another holding a beer while the melancholic melodies blasting on background covering every inches of my rational senses.

I just realized I’ve always wanted to certain things before I reach 40.

1.) Go to the Wellsfargo Bank at 12.00 noon on Monday (busiest bank at the busiest hour). Line up like all other nice citizens and when its your turn at the counter (normally it takes 45 minutes to get to the front line), take out a dollar bill and ask for 25 cents change. Look at the facial expression of the banker, say thank you and leave with a smile.

2.) Holding a huge sign saying ‘you pigs are killing the environment!’ in front of SUV dealerships.

3.) Run around the university area naked. So gonna do that.

4.) Throw eggs at cars who keep to the left even though they are going like 10 miles per hour.

5.) Open for an Oasis’s concert singing ‘we will rock you’ by Queens.

Dont ask why, i got an ‘INSIST‘ bounty on my head.

SEVEN THINGS….

Seven things that scare me.
1. chiwawa
2. spiders
3. horror movies
4. headless object
5. President Bush
6. boy band
7. sissy girls

Seven things I like (this is easy, i just cut and paste from my ‘about‘ page
1. cheesecake with raspberry toppings
2. watermelon
3. dark beer
4. Jessica Simpson’s breasts
5. ultra-silent keyboard
6. Rachel McAdams
7. weekends

Seven important things in my room
1. Noel the teddy bear
2. queen size bed with 5 inch thick of khakis comforter set.
3. photos
4. personal safe
5. this poster
6. wool scarf (sewed stitch by stitch by my ex gf)
7. boxers

Seven random facts about me
1. I have a really, really bad sense of direction.
2. When I was 12, I sat in front of the TV and watched Malcolm X - the movie (they showed it in TV2, i still remember!). After 11 years, his poster hangs proudly in front of my living room wall right now. I’d read all of his speeches.
3. I have a teddy bear
4. i have a cureless weak spot for girls with gorgeous, oh-so-godly sweet smiles.
5. I’m a pacifist at heart.
6. I’d won awards for my poems (cash!!!). Got some nasty emails from the not-so-open-minded people on some of the poems too.
7. I am very easily amused when I’m deprived of sleeps.

Seven things I plan to do before I die
1. laugh at babies who are slow-walker.
2. write a book
3. try not to make my next gf cries as much as those previous ones did.
4. have kids to kiss goodnight to.
5. start a web media development company
6. buy a huge house for my parent.
7. meet pinkpau (see, its not only you. hem!)

Seven things I can do
1. curse at my PC monitor
2. play soccer, tennis, table tennis, basketball, bowling and volleyball. Not really good in all of them
3. walk 20 blocks just to get someone I really like a cup of her favourite coffee
4. build up my belly
5. play with my belly hair
6. cry while watching movies
7. have girl best friends.

Seven things I can’t do
1. work under constant pressure
2. say ‘I love you’ when I dont really mean it
3. eat tomato just like that
4. hit a girl.
5. tell my parents I am not doing well ( i’ve tried )
6. put on a fake smile
7. not feel bad if i just walk pass a beggar without giving him any money.

Seven things I say the most
1. hehe
2. hungry~~
3. sccchleeeeepieee
4. Ooookay
5. wtf
6. God, I am such a genius.

Seven people who will have to do this:
Memes are meanie. It ends right here. Now everyone loves me ^_^.

So not going to do anymore of this anytime soon. Not even when you ask a half naked Jessica Simpson to serve me a cheesecake with raspberry topping that comes with a Fat Tire on every weekends. No way.

The day when my eldest younger sister, Karen found out I broke up with my ex-gf, she sent me a two DIY cards and a little note with article clipping. Today I received it, still warm and well.
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I swear if she ever wants to get into the custom-cards-designing business, hallmark would have to start closing their Gifts and Cards franchise. She has always painted the life of others with such combination of vibrant colors that sometimes it is so easy to overlook the subtleness of the way she applies the brushes and sketches. Despite being the eldest among all siblings, I am the one who always screw things up, yet she would gently pick me up from behind, without ever making me feel its something I should be ashamed of. Yeah I know, I have no idea how lucky I am. And here’s the aching part - I dont think I ever really be there for her, for the goods and bads. This is as sad as it sounds as a truth.
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She gives totally-out-of-the-world advices - she started by wishing me ‘hi, 分手快樂’ in her latest cards. I had always wanted a llittle brother when I was little. Having 4 younger sisters can sometimes makes you go ARGGGGHHHHHHHH (in font size 72 pixels). Think 4 sopranos singing at the exact same time.
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Yet they are all angels in my heart and it didnt take me long to realize that.
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So this time I am going to take these few words from her and keep them inside the little pocket of my rotten heart so try not to forget how to apply it on my next painting. Which is how I’ve been painting all this while, only with a little bit more of her subtleness the next time.

All about the weirdness

I woke up this morning and felt the need to shave. After applied the cream, I realized I ran out of Gillette. So instead of saying ’shit’ and proceed to wash off the cream from my face, I went to take my camera and took this shot. Maybe it was the nightmare I had last night, or maybe it was just one of those Saturday morning hangover.
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Something is wrong with me.
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Sooli + mills + hot choco + farewell

Sooli is going back to Malaysia on Monday. Friends come and go. But friends who take the effort to make a full rounded cheesecake (three times!) just because she knows you love em’ shouldnt be allowed to leave. The way I’ve walked through my life for the last three months has, to some extend shielded me away from the people I am very comfortable hanging out with. Someday, ‘too much work, no time’ is going to be one of those words I regret saying for one too many times.
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*New refrigerator sticker to myself - cherish friends, cherish friends. *

It’s 6.31 pm and so here I am, in this little town called Beatrice, working and prophesizing my way of life to Kiki Lala. All these while staring at the walls looking out for spiders (we do have lots of them here, besides from raccoons). Tired and bored, my fingers somehow brought me back to my centuries old yahoo’s gallery and I found this cutesy threesome picture. There we were, Keat Siang, Meng Hok and I, still innocent and raw, enjoying our first year at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Oh it was all about the mixture of fun and stress back then. Keat Siang (who later switched his major to finance and is my current roomie), Meng Hok (coming back to do his master this fall) and I were on the verge of admitting ourselves into the nearest local psychiatric center due to the stress load in CS program (its not that the program is super hard, it is just dumb). We managed to come out in one piece, insyahallah.

And now here I am, working and talking to a dying plant. Bought my first car not so long ago and going to move to a single room apartment next week and starting to take care of my own life. I love my job. Supposedly life is good.

Yet I want something different. Something is missing.

It’s 6.58 pm. Its getting murky out there. And I am back talking to my dying plant.

This is not another one of my ‘misery entries’. Everyone calms down.

I always know that someday I’m going to write an entry about her. Turns out that day arrives earlier than I would expect.

3 years, 4 months and 6 days. That’s how long we’ll be together during this time of writing, if we didnt break up back then. We managed 3 years 1 month and 2 days. We spent almost 3 quarter of that time being apart from each other. It wasnt a healthy relationship, but it was something worth keeping hold onto, at least for me.

Before we started dating back in the 60’s, we had both developed a unique sense of liking towards each other for very odd reasons. For me, I love having meals with her. No sneaky motives, no love feeling (yet), no nothing - just for the love of eating. Boy she can eat! I mean this girl would literally run all over the city on a sacred mission to try as much variety of foods as possible in a single day and I would gladly run behind her. Night market’s junk food, Jln Padungan pau and jerky meat, high class Japanese buffet, westerns, easterns, homecooking… you name it, we ate it. We had so much fun stuffing those foods into our big-ass mouth but you know what the best part was? - we never got fat. Ha! Alvin just loves to rub it in. ^_^

Those moments I shared with her had somewhat developed into a feeling I very much look forward to every single day.

For her, I think she got her ultimate satisfaction from constantly pinching and punching my arms until their senses went absolutely numb and skins went as red as those volcanic lavas can be, for totally no reasons at all. (Here’s the hint guys, the harder girl punches, the more likely she’ll likes you)

We basically ended up being a couple. Life couldnt have been better. The laughters were definitely there, along with the tears, fights and all the other must-have ingredients one can find in the love book.

Then I had to leave for US to finish my degree.

Months went by and we pretty much did everything two persons can possibly do through this little wonderful thing called - the telephone. I went back for summer holiday after almost two years in the states. She looked a lot more like a woman than a girl and I had pimples. That was the only thing that changed. Then we went to eat like how we used to eat, went to beach, fights, shopping, theme parks and more fights. She documented everything we did in that two weeks little time space of ours here.

I went back to States. Another one year went by. I missed her a lot.

Then we decided, or rather I decided, to let go. Reason? To be honest I’m not even sure what that is right now.

This is not an entry about regrets or what-ifs because I believe we’d long passed that point of uncertainty. This is an entry about a girl and a boy, with their fairy-tale like sequence of story events, minus the happy ending.

*untitled*
Along the mellow tones you dance,
through the sparkling sand under the wind,
an opening worth of a thunder kind,
every moves decorates every minds,
with the finale a wonder shine

Captivating stares fill the room
under the dark ceiling beneath the hall
yet all are good in home
aint fair to spare anymore of this doom
just waiting for years for the sword to fall.
and to spend eternity enthralled*
trading curiosity for a lifetime of gloom*

Update: * by Kristof

Since I had came across quite a few child abuse cases in the news recently, I think it would be appropriate to repost the poem I had wrote about a year ago, for which it generated quite a hype back then. I dont know why i would want to repost it, maybe its just that I am too tired of this beautiful world.

Butterfly scent, muddy pool,
Barbie doll and strawberry lollipop,
Sinful lust, teary eyes,
Bruised arm and tainted sheet.

Other kids have their daddy’s sing lullaby,
I have my daddy touching me and my baby,
It starts in a room so gloomy,
And ends with tears and oh, “I am so sorry’
It’s ok, daddy loves me,
He pushed me, hit me, curse me and r*** me,
It’s ok, daddy just has a bad day,
Then he did it again and again,
It’s ok, it’s really ok.
My panty is painted with blood,
And yet everything still has to be ok.

Neither those who knows cares,
Mommy would just turn away and close the door,
I beg him to stop,
I beg her for help,
I said ‘Please daddy, dont’ so many times,
That my tougue starts to bleed and melt,
Yet I was left starving for hope,
Too much shame were left to be felt,

I have always said to myself,
Maybe he will stop when I grow up,
He did, when he found Brenda,
She was just 6, my daughter,
Just like me, blue eyes blue,
Still too innocent to understand,
what her daddy was doing to her is wrong,
My daughter father is my father,
And my mother is my mother and her stepmother,
Even Einstein would be confused by the relativity,
and I am close to the edge of lunaticity,
For the love of God, she’s already a sick child
Born with homogenous genes from an incentous sin,
And now she is a sick child with post-traumatic disorder,
Brought down to earth into the hands of savage perversion,

I have to kill him,
I want to kill him,
I want to kill them all,
41 stabs, daddy laid on the floor,
Then I slit mom’s throat,
Standing upon the pool of blood,
I laughed,
then I cried.

Flower scent, grass playground,
4 white walls and countless stares,
Crime scene, 155 years,
Tired eyes and tainted sheet.

I dream of a home,
Where daddy sings lullaby,
and mommy makes pancakes,
A home where,
Daddy’s hand is to wipe my tears,
A home where,
I can never be too afraid to keep my room unlock,
A home where,
Daddy only comes into my room late at night to make sure I put my blanket on,
A home where,
The love of parenthood doesnt bend so far.
A home I can only dream of behind the bar.

© Alvin Woon
Crafted on 15th February 2004

*Inspired by a true story. Subject’s name has been changed

“Alvin, are you ready yet?”

“Yes mom…”

“Now be a good boy today, dont cry like last time. Its embarassing.”

“But I dont want to go….. I hate piano. I just want to play my LEGO.”

“Its only for an hour, your sister is going too.”

“Allright…”

I started attending piano lessons at a very young age (8 maybe?). Back then, my sister, Karen (not to be mistaken with my gf - Karen also) who is one year younger than me, took it together with me. I dropped out after one month but she carried on until recently when she got her 14th grade piano distinction.

I’ve always think the sexiest man on earth is the male pianist. I still do. Its funny how I’ve never came to terms with myself about why I would be so unhappy on attending piano lessons back then. Maybe it was because of the classroom smell, maybe the instructor is a very fierce looking creepy woman, or maybe I just want to play my LEGO and not do anything else but keep building my little pirate island of the block paradise within my own imaginary utopia.

I love piano. I love piano music and I love Keane. I also love classical music that has piano as their main concerto. I love when my sister practices her piano although it can be very irritating at times when the sound totally fills up the space of the house and drowns my 3d gaming sound. Thinking back, I wish my mom had been more dictactoring on me regarding this matter. I wish she would see me through those lessons and leaved me alone in the cold dark room crying by myself. But nah, my crying was probably loud enough to make her ears bleed - it was that bad. Besides, she did let me take taekwondo classes instead, which too didnt last very long after I was kicked right in my face during a district level competition back then. Oh yeah, I cried like a baby right on the spot and my coach couldnt do nothing but to throw the white towel (signalling surrender) into the ring. Apparently I do not have many fond memories I can be proud of when I was little.

Now, I can only stand by Karen’s side and watch her fingers dance through the blocks of black and white wooden nodes, guided by the melody notes of Gerard Hengeveld, Hélène Grimaud, Yundi Li, Hans Richter-Haaser and many others. All with such a soft, mellow flow and she obviously did it with such an apparent ease.

If you cant be a pianist, you might as well have one in your family.

Many girls talk about their teddy bears all the time, but not boys. Its more like the taboo thing where you dont say ‘I love you’ to your girlfriend in front of your guy friends. As stupid as some of these subculture, outdated thinkings might sound, those actions still remain as one of the few unforgiven acts within the manhood fellowship. And I am placing my future, career and my existing circle of friends in huge risk by writing this entry - that I have a teddy bear. For those who had already passed out when I made the first exclusive disclosure, good for you. For those who survived it, here’s another one - my teddy has a name. Its a HE and his name is NOEL (No·ël).

*I would assume everyone’s dead by now, either by laughing to death or shocked to death or simply by dont-know-how-to-react to death*

Wokay, now that we’ve smashed the taboo into infinite pieces of uh…little broken taboos, let me introduce you to Noel - the great egoistic bear. Karen made me adopted him when we were celebrating my 20th birthday 3 years back. Little I could do back then since I badly wanted our first kiss that night, so I promptly complied. He has been with me ever since, crossing tens of thousands of miles from Malaysia to US, sleeping in the same bed with me and take care of my well being . In fact, he is solely responsible for many of my sweet dream sleeps. Whenever I have a deja-vu in my dream that some ugly looking, blood-sucking demons with oversized boobs are going to turn my cozy night into a nightmare, Noel will appears in my dream with his rusted Excalibur and protects me in anyway he can possibly think of. I am serious.

Here’s a few random facts about Noel.

• » He always sleeps at the top right side of my shoulder.
• » He wears a Rosary around his neck. He’s not that holy; I caught him watching Playboy one time! Wait, that was actually me..
• » Karen loves to spray her favourite perfume onto his sweater. He doesnt complain. I cant complain. Sometimes I really think we are not that different.
• » Noel was humping male dolls quite a lot lately. I never judge him. Karen and I had promised to love him no matter what’s his choice of sexual orientation might be. We will also stand right behind him should he decides to join the military or anti-globalization rally.
• » Noel rarely smiles. He has always wanted to quash the stereotype that all teddy bears are cute and adorable.
• » I didnt pack him into one of those sad looking postal box when Karen and I had a ‘temporary break-up’ a while back. He and I have so much history. Besides, he told me he was scared of dark.
• » I’ve never said ‘thank you’ to him when he chased away those demons. I never say ‘Good Morning’ to him either when i wake up every morning. I never say anything nice to him. Yet he is always there.

While i was digging through my stacks of cd-back up data, i found this rather interesting piece of art performed by none other than me myself during my first semester here in UNL. This is a classic face-switching snapshots, i can guarantee!

See i was trying to emulate this magnet sticker back then:

And here’s my version. Well sort of, give or take a couple emotions.

Pheuwww…that was hell lot of images to upload.