Be right back

While writing this particular blog post, i am wasting precious minutes and seconds. With every click of the mouse, another minute went flushing down the toilet.

Recently, i do not have the luxury to sit back, relax and think about new ideas for my blog. Although i enjoy writing blogs more than writing pharmaco and microb reports, but obligation always triumphs over leisure and i have no choice but give up the former... for the time being.

I'll be right back!

Why so jam?

Why so jam everyday? Erroneous roadsigns is undoubtly one of the culprits in the city's flawed road transport. This is one of the signs which might have misled road users towards wrong directions and eventually into massive traffic jams.


Ipoh... so left or right?
A motorist dilemma.

I would rather follow my instincts instead of roadsigns sometimes. So left or right? Confused?
This is real message the sign conveys....



So if you turn left, you would not need to pay toll but there will definitely be a jam at peak hours. If you take the route on the right, it will lead you to the highway in which you need to pay RM 2.50 extra. And if you are not travelling during the peak hours, you would be wasting your money to pay the RM 2.50 toll.

But still, the best way to Ipoh is neither left or right! The fastest and cheapest way to Ipoh from this junction in front of the Kuala Lumpur mosques is to go backwards to where you came from towards north to Sg. Buloh through Segambut. Road signs are all but helping motorists.

It's like you are in a scenario when you are right in front of a toilet when you ask a stranger for directions to a toilet. Instead of telling you that the toilet is right behind you, the stranger gave you two options, two toilets which are located 2 miles away from where you are. And by the time you reach one of the toilets, you probably wet your pants already.

Stress snowballing

The Winter Olympics was long over. But yet there's still something going down the icy slopes, with growing velocity and momentum. That is my snowball of stress.

Hike in petrol prices and the frail transports system have caused some uproars of emotions and affected the livelyhood of many, and i'm one of them. The traffic on roads all over KL was nonsensical.

Traffic reports on radio programmes might as well be deemed useless when nearly all roads are either busy or slow-moving or non-moving.
No need to report la like this!
Everyone also know everywhere also jam mah!
Or just say everywhere also jam!
No need to mention Jln Bkt. Bintang or Jln Kuching or Penang Bridge la!
Sure got jam one!

Sometimes i really felt like pulling over to the emergency lane and have a nap since its just a waste of time and petrol to crawl inches by inches on multimillion ringgit highways.

I'm even more frustrated at LDP where we pay to be in a traffic jam. It jams from the LDP Kepong Toll station to Sri Damansara everyday since the closure of MRR2. I would be lucky to get back home in 45 minutes at the 2km stretch!

Enough of the jams and jams. And addition to that there are more and more of assignments, homeworks, reports and essays to finish. Class tests and class tests are just right the corner and i was hardly able to grasp any idea of the chemical structures, the -prazoles, the -tolols, the -naline etc....

The worst of all is that i have less and less time to write my blog. Sh*t

Uma Rani

Those who lives at Sentul and along Jalan Ipoh should be very familiar with the name. I used to visit this indian (not mamak, they do not sell beef) restaurant during my schoolboy days when i had my tuition nearby. It used to be an ordinary restaurant which offers normal teh tariks and roti's. After 2 years, i went back to the same shop. I was greeted by an alien new restaurant. I thought Uma Rani had ceased operation and taken over by a new tenant. But upon closer inspection, its the same old Uma Rani!


The new Uma Rani

They rented the level above the ground floor and renovated it into an air-conditioned to accommodate more seats. I heard from my friend that they renovated it for 1 year already. Its kinda late for me to talk about it. anyway....


Wide window for better view

The decoration on the first floor is lavish. It has a bar and also chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.


Chandelier. Too much for a mamak stall ok!


a bar

The mamak stall looks more like a cafe now. I ordered roti planta and tosai. The food was not as good as it used to be. And i was disappointed the the nasi lemak was sold out.



I gulped down a cup of neslo and there goes my Sunday breakfast. I heard that they had a projector TV on Saturday and Sunday nights to show live football matches. Uma Rani would be packed with people until the wee hours in the morning.

Saman

I got a letter from the Royal Malaysian Police Department today.


Addressed to the owner of my car

I got a feeling that what's inside will be nothing good....


Yes... a saman! or fine!




I was caught by a speedtrap. I was found to be speeding, about 19km/j over the limit on Lebuhraya Mahameru. I never knew there's speedtrap there. I learnt my lesson and i won't drive fast anymore. RM 150 was quite expensive for a lesson.

Weather causing havoc

Areas around the Klang Valley had been hit hard by storm for the past few days. Today, the storm grew stronger and hit Subang Jaya badly, causing a havoc at the area. The strong wind brought by the storm swept through the town, uprooting trees and also destroying road signs, banners and billboards. There were leaves and rubbish littered all around like it was hit by a hurricane.


unfortunate car pinned down by fallen tree

Some houses even have their roof blown away. Another house was seen having its roofing for its veranda totally destroyed by the strong wind. Fortunately it did not happen back here at home.

For a better future

I am sitting right in IMU Computer Aided Learning Lab (CAL) writing this post. Hardly find any words to describe my surrounding now, but what i see beyond this room is the picture of the interior of an abandoned building project. Aluminium frames/supporters were set up to support the roof of the alledged additional floor and corridors are now badly lit with flickering bulbs and failing lightings. Every inlet for sunlight was either sealed off or blocked, deluding me into the thought that its after working hours when i should be heading back home onto my cozy bed. And this added to my early morning blues which stressed my eyelids more. They were trying hard to prevent me from dozing into a hibernation.

Despite the fact that the school had promised us that the construction/renovation would not interfere with our lectures and studies, the first thing that welcomed me when i stepped into the Lecture Theatre (LT1) for class yesterday was the noise of heavy drilling from above. The incessant perturbing sound of the drills was really testing our patience. At some point during the lectures, the voice of the lecturers became only mere whispers. I wished i knew how to lip-read. And now, there's an orchestra of pilling and machinery works above. I never knew the school has a collaboration with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra with Phua Chu Kang as the conductor. I doubt that the contractors adhered to the Indoor Noise Pollution Index.

I wished that the authorities would be more considerate and inform the contractors that they should only carry out the noisy works during the evening or night. Eventhough the works are done for better facilities for us in the future, i would rather not have them if it compromise the quality of our studies.

Brokeback Mountain

Congrats to Ang Lee for the Best Director accolade he received during the 78th annual Academy Awards. Too bad it can't have a clean sweep of awards when "Crash" stole the Best Film. Brokeback Mountain, the movie in which Ang Lee directed was a story of 2 cowboys who fell in love with each other at the wrong place and the wrong time. Looking beyond the homosexuality, it's a great love story. "We could have had a great life together," Jack Twist the cowboy said. Perhaps they could have a great life if they were not born within the social constraints of the conservative countryside of the 1960's. In the end, the only place they had for themselves was the fictitious Brokeback Mountain.


Brokeback Mountain, the only place for them to love..... and make love =P
Poor Ernis and Jack.

Fortunately, we have our own...







Brokeback Fountain!




*I'm not gay. Neither does Wei Meng. Thanks WMeng for the pose, and also thanks SuMin for the shot.

How to start a fire

Starting a fire is rather an art than skill. Especially when we are living in a world where gas stoves are easily available and the use of charcoal combustion fire is seeping away from our society. It's not hard to start a fire nowadays, but it is how you start it that matters. And whenever there's a need for charcoal fire for BBQ, that's when i find how hard it is to start a nice fire. With much practice and some past experiences, i finally found the trick.

Rule 1: Use charcoal fragments instead of big blocks. If there are none in the pack, break them into pieces to the sizes of syillings.

Rule 2: Pile them up and leave a space at the centre for the fire starter.

Rule 3: Do not fan when the fire starter was lit. Wait until the fire starter was all burnt out.

Rule 4: Cover the fire starter with bigger blocks of charcoal from above but allow some room for oxygen.

Rule 5: Patience.

When the small fragments of charcoals are red hot and burning, fan it vigorously. A fire would soon appear. And again, be patient and add more charcoal to burn. If u are in a hurry, you can skip all the steps above. Dip your charcoal in petrol and lit it with a lighter. But then your chicken wings might smell like your car exhaust.


nice fire

When all the charcoals turn white, u can spread it over your bbq stove and start your BBQ! I recommend slow fire which is easier to control and your food would not turn into ashes the instant you glance away from the bbq fire. Yesterday i started a fire and bbq-ed the leftover lamb shoulders from a party the day before. They was charcoal-cooked to perfection with a spread of butter. The mutton sizzled under the slow fire and melted fat and juice dripped onto the fire making 'hisses' sound. When they were done, it was eaten with mint sauce bought from hypermarket days ago. YUM! The best lamb-steak i ever had!

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday is my bro's bday. So our family threw a party for him.
It's a steamboat + bbq party but it ended up everyone opting for steamboat and there's only a few of us left around the bbq stove. The food was enough to cater for almost 40 ppl but there's about 20++ of us. We even bought 2 cakes in which one remained untouched. The purchase of the cake took me one full hour to reach home at the jam at LDP near the MRR2 interchange. Cars avoided the stretch of road at MRR2 and thus clogging up the stretch after the toll on LDP. To make matter worse it rained so heavily that i was worried that it might affect the party afterwards. Fortunately the weather gave way and there was no rain in Kepong until midnight. When i reached home, all the guest arrived and the food was all prepared. I did not even have to start up the bbq stove. It was all done skillfully by kak who had been setting up charcoal stoves to boil soup every single day. Then there was the steamboat. There were all kind of balls, fishballs, porkballs, sotongballs, salmon balls to choose from. There were also dumplings, sui gao, fish noodles just to name a few. We didn't manage to finish everything so tonight, we will also have steamboat for dinner tonight. =)

Happy Birthday to BRO!

Refuel

I went to refuel my car today. My calculation was right.


RM63.20 for one full tank of Primax!

It's so hard to maintain a car nowadays with fuel price sky-rocketing. But yet I am grateful that i am driving a Myvi which is quite fuel-economic. For my parent's car with larger fuel tanks twice the size of mine, one refuel would cost up to RM 120. It's an eye-sore to sign off that sum on ccard for petrol alone. Let say if the government decided not to subsidise anymore, 60L tank of a 2000cc car would cost RM 150 at RM 2.50/L. Imagine this newly graduate accountant with a salary of RM1k needs to pump his car 3 times a month. 3x150=RM450! RM1000-RM450 = RM 550. Half of his salary went to petrol! How about house rent? How about food? How about the money to hang out with friends? How about dates? How about household expenditure? How about Astro? How about gym? Haih.. No need drive liao la. Take bicycle only.

When will the age of electric cars and fuel cells come by? Please, let it be tomorrow!