BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Tuesday, February 24, 2009
DEEP FRIED CARBS

Second only to deep fried animals.

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Genusfrog [ 10:01 am ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
LIKE MY DAD

Now i know why i like pulasan so much - my dad likes the big version!

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Genusfrog [ 7:19 pm ] | 3 comments

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
THE COFFEE TYPE

Pete Martell: How do you like your coffee?
Agent Cooper: Blacker than midnight on a moonless night.
-Twin Peaks

I remember having one of those church committee meetings and someone had one of those Jesus mugs that said "What wakes you up in the morning?" (the correct answer is not coffee).

for the last maybe five years, i've been self-diagnosed allergic to coffee. when i drink it, it makes me want to throw up. my heart beats funny and i go completely wonky. i've been quite happy to be a tea-drinker, up until recently, when ironically a batch of very nice bangladeshi tea landed on my table and i wondered what it would be like to be one of those other people.

those coffee-drinking people.

drinking tea is becoming more in. just like how eating salmon and salads is attracting even liam gallagher these days. but i've always been fascinated with coffee-drinking. i just couldn't touch it.

don't get me wrong, i don't like the tall mochachino with skinny milk idea of drinking coffee. coffee for me is no more romantic if the beans came from honduras. coffee for me is romantic because it's the non-smoking tortured artist's drug. it's romantic for its late nights, lonely thoughts, isolation, piles of work and, from a cinematic perspective, a nice waitress and cigarette smoke.

and so, i've reattacked the wanky black beverage one last time and i've decided to make it a good one. one big hurrah of a go before i concede defeat and return to my south-asian leafy alternative. i made a cup the other day and took about five sips across one hour. a whole hour. just to acclimitise.

i didn't like, die. far from it.

i woke up. a bit more. sip. and a bit more. sip.

the next day, repeat. then the next day, repeat. then repeat. every day now, i've had a coffee, sipped slow to death, but sipped nonetheless. maybe i've overcome the allergy. maybe it was never there to begin with. maybe i just made my coffees too damn black for the love of its romance. maybe now i can really drink coffee. like all the cool people. nice.

so i ask myself. what the heck am i doing, at 28, drinking coffee for image sake? or better yet, let me ask you something. me and coffee is just one example. do you think we'll ever reach an age in our lives where we effectively stop doing things in the name of projecting an image?

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Genusfrog [ 12:12 pm ] | 1 comments

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
ITALY AND WILLIAMS

To understand the following conversation, it helps if you know three things: (1) the food at williams, (2) italian football and its players, and (3) how committed we can be to being stupid sometimes.

the context is that this morning, my gtalk signature read "Forza Del Piero! Forza Grosso! Forza Italia!"

theyap: what lah. forza del piero somemore ah
del piero eating carbonara yesterday lah

Fergus: nolah
he eat marinara

theyap: i tot butter prawn penne?

Fergus: no... he ate the beef medallion
special

theyap: eh?
not nasi goreng ketam?

Fergus: no, no... allessandro is allergic to ketam

theyap: oh
then nasi goreng salami lah

Fergus: that one quagliarella ordered. he said not nice.

theyap: oh is it?
I heard pirlo ordered the chicken kiev
said too hard

Fergus: that pirlo hard to please wan lah.
donadoni had the bihun goreng special
cannot finish

theyap: yeah
got some scallops stuck to his beard
but grosso ate the indo mee goreng. the fella lau sai

fergusong: ohhh no wonder la look like that last nite

theyap: yeah
lau sai until his hair also messy

fergusong: ohhh i see
no wonder daniele de rossi kept telling me indo indo dunno what the fella saying
he had the seabass rissotto
he said it was "inspiring"

theyap: yeah
and toni drank the drain water, that's why couldn't score

fergusong: stupid idiot. i told him "ribena longan. but don't order from that uncle"
he must have gotten the limau version of ribena longan

theyap: i ran out items on the menu already

fergusong: eh that means you left early
you didn't see materazzi order the smoke duck pasta
fella ate two servings
sommore he called the duck's sister "a whore"
kena marah from ambrosini
who didn't like the food, so he went to murni's and ate loh shee fun

theyap: eh
i thought williams head butted materazzi

fergusong: oh is it?
i followed ambrosini to murni
must've missed it
but i got to chat with massimo. heart to heart. quite good sharing
he said he's been trying very hard to eclipse guardiola as the world's most boring midfielder and he needed prayer
i encouraged him lor
at least he liked the loh shee fun

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Genusfrog [ 11:05 am ] | 0 comments

Saturday, May 17, 2008
AL DANTE MORNING

Sleeping in on saturdays is like frying something on a big fire. stay in your slumberland wok too long and the rest of your day is sluggish. haul yourself out too quick and you won't really recover from the week that has just gone by.

today was my al dante morning. i got up at just the right time.

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Genusfrog [ 10:30 am ] | 0 comments

Thursday, June 28, 2007
COMFORT (THE KIND THAT DOESN'T HANG AROUND)

Comfort. that bitch of an illusion. it’s a rare commodity these days, this thing called comfort. if you have it, don’t ever lose it. if you don’t know if you have it, you probably don’t.

this isn’t the comfort of a warm bed, fluffy pillows and the heavenly marriage between air-conditioning and a very thick blanket. sure, if you’re numbered among those who can’t afford ten-dollar coffees then these might be some of the joys that avoid you like the plague. but there’s a more insidious brand of soothing that’s just so much harder to hold on to.

sometimes, it’s almost convincing – that life, in all its plurality and richness, pulls all its resources together to perform that one monumental task of picking apart your heart. like a contraption, it gets prised, hammered at, unscrewed and ultimately dismantled. and it’s almost as easy to do as it is to be done to. walk down any street and there is enough fragility around you to shatter if you so much as sigh. don’t believe me? befriend someone and see how easy it is to break their heart.

today, i just want to run into someone’s arms and stay there, never to be lured back out into a world of perpetually regenerating false sense of security. but today, there are no arms to run into, so i’ve run to the next best thing: nangka chips.

comfort food does little in the larger scheme of things. sure, they certainly do make the scheme of some things larger, but no, they generally do not work. like how richard ashcroft said, the drugs don’t work. neither do nangka chips. half an hour and half a bag of chips later, this elusive sadist that is comfort still hasn’t showed up. on some days, i don’t know if it ever plans to.

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Genusfrog [ 8:45 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, April 23, 2007
THE WEEKEND OF PARTICULAR GLUTTONY

Every once in sometime, i end up going on a gluttonneous spree. like an uncontrollable spate of eating frenzy. it would therefore have been befitting that somewhere in the middle of this weekend of liberal eating, that i sat around with some good friends and watched mr creosote of monty python's meaning of life stuff down everything and a wafer thin mint, exceeding the point of explosion, as he would.

but unlike mr creosote, i am not a fictitious character in a black comedy, and so while he gets away with obesity, the only comedy facing me at the end of the day is the sheer ridiculous amount of food i eat that i don't need to. take this, for example, for a weekend's menu.

Thursday dinner: The Rib Shop. Three hunks of barbequeued pork ribs, mashed potatoes and wine.
Friday dinner: Seafood restaurant. Steamed fish, fried sotong, crabs, buttered prawns, and la la.
Friday supper: Over a movie. Raisins.
Saturday brunch: Breakfast cookout at vernon's. About 5 rashes of bacon, 3 sausages, scrambled eggs, mushrooms and toast.
Saturday tea: Cell harvest tea. Scones, jelly, chicken wing (singular), english breakfast tea.
Saturday dinner: Carnaval, Brazillian buffet. Tons and tons and tons of beef and lamb cuts, chicken ham, fish, prawns and one bite of gizzard.
Sunday lunch: Chinese hawker in Seapark. Har min, chee cheong fun.
Sunday dinner: Restoran OK, taman tun. Guiness pork, fish curry and two bowls of rice.
Sunday supper: Wow Wow Cafe, plaza damas. Earl grey tea.

if nothing else, such indiscriminate gorging is gonna leave me fat and broke with a hospital situation to stare at well before i turn 35. and don't count on me being thick-skinned enough to go for healing rallies then. i know my limits.

so tonight, adrian and i are gonna cash out and plonk our moneys into gym memberships.

god bless us all.

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Genusfrog [ 2:18 pm ] | 0 comments

Saturday, April 21, 2007
THE WRONG SONG

Waiters should be banned from touching cd players.

or at least, mood-deaf, atmosphere-ignorant, ambiencically challenged waiters, should be banned from touching cd players. because there are few things worse than having a good setting jarred by contextually inappropriate music.

take this thursday evening for example. mel and i are in Rib Shop in damansara heights, scooping in swine ribs and what should have been at least decent red wine. there was no occasion, except perhaps the occasion of the surprise out of the blue. so they got the warm lights right. the food is alright. but something's amiss... that something that's amiss is reggae music in a rib joint.

WHO LISTENS TO REGGAE MUSIC IN A RIB JOINT?

it's just counterintuitive! it's absurd. it's... preposterous! reggae music is for beaches and eating fish while watching the sunset. reggae music is for drinking in the outdoors at night as the seabreeze swoops in. reggae music is not for 48 ringgit per bang dim light western restaurants that adjoin wineries. what's wrong with these people? haven't they grasped some sort of basic constraints, that they can't just play their favourite music anywhere they go just because they like it?

vernon was telling me about how Chef And Brew, this western eatery - also in damansara heights - plays thai music during dinner time. that's pretty bad too. how do you eat expensive steak while listening to thai songs? and there's more. my cell brought fuyee out for his birthday lunch at Modesto's in hartamas. i had rissotto, the rest were digging on some really fine pasta and there were a few pizzas to share. all the waiters were indian and so you won't win a prize for guessing who popped on the bollywood soundtrack.

i mean, can you dig that? bollywood music at an italian restaurant? granted i'm a fan of bollywood and that its sudden appearance didn't jar me as it might someone more culturally puristic. still, i swear, waiters who do not display the least bit of ability to determine the suitability of some musics in relation to the house in which they work should have restraining orders slapped over their heads over the cd player.

because it absolutely doesn't add up. say all you want about globalisation and the cross-cultural experience. i say that when i go to a western joint, just play me something that somewhat locates me within the appropriate context of the goob i'm chucking into my mouth. it's only fair. especially when we pay skips of money to embed ourselves in a conducive, meaningful atmosphere. yeah, so this reads like a rant. actually, it's not. it's just my way of saying that sometimes, in some restaurants, i wish i had one of these:

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Genusfrog [ 10:28 am ] | 0 comments

Thursday, December 28, 2006
Fergus: Nasi lemak, biasa, satu.
Makcik: Nasi lemak biasa...
Fergus: Ada kacang?
Makcik: Kacang takde.
Fergus: Oh. Kacang takde ke habis?
Makcik: Takde. Kacang mahal lah.
Fergus: Oh...

(silence)

Fergus: Kalau mahal, makcik pun patut naik harga lah.
Makcik: Tak boleh. Orang complain.
Fergus: Eh, mana boleh complain.
Makcik: Skarang, telur pun dah naik harga! Dulu blah blah blah, skarang 7 ringgit.
Fergus: Kerana...
Makcik: Dan blah blah blah blah blah pun dah naik, skarang 5 ringgit. Dan blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...

(So i wait for her to finish grumbling)

Fergus: Tapi makcik, kalau naik, you memang patut naik harga. Semua orang pun macam tu. Kalau I makan nasi lemak, makan kacang.
Makcik: Kacang sedap kan?
Fergus: Ya. Kalau takde kacang, orang tak mau beli. Macam I, kalau takde kacang, saya memang akan cari tempat lain beli. Tapi tak bes lah... kerana nasi lemak makcik bes.
Makcik: Ohh.. hehehe...
Fergus: Kalau mahal, makcik boleh simpan sikit. Kalau orang mintak, makcik ada kan? Ah. Bukannye kacang mudah rosak, boleh simpan.
Makcik: Ya eh...
Fergus: Ya. Macam tu, orang yang suka kacang tu, ha tak payah kena pergi tempat lain. Boleh beli dari makcik lagi.
Makcik: Ah... simpan sikit eh. Ah.

*


She wasn't convinced. I know by tomorrow or the next day, she would still have no kacang to add for the requesting customer.

Where's the problem with her situation? There's one glaring problem with this makcik's business model. Answer? She doesn't account for the cost of each condiment that goes into her nasi lemak. Her nasi lemak is not a constituent of a 10 cent quarter egg, 30 cents of rice and 50 cents of sambal, etc - her nasi lemak is just a generic glob of nasi lemak to her. Hence, to her, that generic glob of RM1 nasi lemak cannot afford to have kacang. It costs too much, and rightly so.

She needs to account for each item including packaging, aggregate it, add her profit and service charge to it and then sell it, right? Right? I'm not a keen business mind, but I'm quite sure this is how you run a nasi lemak stall. I'm so enraged, no, irritated by her simplicity! Lots of other nasi lemak stalls do this, it's the ABC of her trade! Add item A, charge more, add item B, charge even more. Gosh!

But worse than her poor billing system, I am saddened by her contentment with mediocrity. I mean, seriously, this makcik makes some damn fine nasi lemak if she only knew it. When I was talking to her, she said "ada kacang sedap, kan?" and then sighed as if to surrender to the forces of inflation. She's got such a victim's mentality. But it shouldn't be like that! Her nasi lemak should not be mediocre, as it was today - cheap as hell for a dollar but it had no kacang, no ikan bilis and a measly piece of egg. Charlotte , from her desk opposite mine said "but smells very nice wor". Yes, smells very nice. She's damn good at this. She just needs to be brave and up the stakes. We all have to raise the blinds sometimes.

Tons and tons of yuppies drive down the ldp in the morning. I've bumped into three different sets of colleagues at her stall before. Does she actually think these yuppies are gonna grumble over an extra fifty cent charge on her nasi lemak? Who does she think her clientelle is? Peasants? No! Her stall is by a big highway. Where are all these people going? Not to the river to fish for lunch, to offices! Offices where they make enough money to splash on ipods, gym memberships and 12 dollar lattes at starbucks.

What saddens me is that this makcik has completely failed to understand what opportunity lies before her: a sea of people to whom RM1.50 means nothing and a damn fine nasi lemak waiting to happen.

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Genusfrog [ 9:24 am ] | 0 comments

Friday, November 24, 2006
My new craving is half-boiled eggs.

I bought a dozen eggs and brought them to work last week, hellbent on reproducing them at the comforts of my desk. But it's not so easy.

First, my assumption that the hot water from the water cooler was hot enough was horrendously misplaced. That water couldn't have half-cooked an egg if you let it sit for an hour.

Secondly, if you boil your water once and you let your eggs sit in a mug at office air cond temperature, what should be a 20 minute job too will fail. I have little clue if it would ever have worked, but one cup of boiling water is not enough to work the magic here.

And so it turns out that in order to successfully make half-boiled eggs in the icy climate of my workspace, you'll need to boil the water once, dump the eggs in for about ten minutes, then swap the water for new boiling water at about the halfway point. It was only in my attempts where i boiled the water twice that i succeeded in reproducing a breakfast that remotely resembled half-boiled egg.

In one of my attempts, i ended up with one egg that was overcooked and one egg that was undercooked. contrary to what i hope you're not thinking, mixing them together does not necessarily balance textures out. they just kinda hang out together. on another occassion, i had undercooked an egg via conventional means, and so i stuffed it into the microwave to finish up. tricky one - what the microwave does for your half-boiled eggs is that the yolks cook really fast (in a matter of a few seconds, they were pretty much well done) while the whites took forever. granted that you won't want to spend your entire morning labouring over a couple of bloody eggs, i've deduced that a decent half-boiled egg can potentially be cooked entirely with the microwave, first by separate the yolk from the white, then by cooking the whites till they're almost done, then by dumping in the yolk for the last lap.

But all this is just crap if you don't actually have the rippling passion for a couple of eggs in the morning. which left me with only one ultimate conclusion: nasi lemak. yes, stick with the good old fashioned nasi lemak and everyone and their makcik will be happy. until i buy myself one of those yellow and white container/half-boilers for the eggs, i'll have to concede that half-boiled eggs is my obscure object of desire.

And as for today, i came in at 4am so it's now 7.10 and i'm ready for a meal break in the next hour. a drive down to the mamak, where they make half-boiled eggs to perfection, would be real sweet.

and then what? and then, not so obscure anymore.

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Genusfrog [ 2:43 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, August 18, 2006
I've been using this place to mouth off about a lot of my gripes recently, and it's not been really nice. I know. It actually doesn't mean that I'm necessarily becoming more unpleasant or less Christianny. Or godforbid a ranter blogger. I have ideas for some pieces i wanna write here, about... you know... epistemology and God's immanence or some other pretentious topic like that, but i've had no time to dig into that stuff, so i've been reduced to unpacking my much pent up anger in little packs here. Not completely unlike the pack of nasi lemak you see here. But i ought to remember. It's all about the ideas. Ideas.

So i insist you humour me in one more rant, and i swear, i'll work some vague semblance of an "idea" into this. My rant is this: i hate it when nasi lemak sellers don't listen to your instructions. Ah... mundane angst. It's true though. I asked for extra kacang today and that damned fellow just dropped like a few more in. I asked for more extra some more and he dropped a small teaspoonful in.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Just pour three big spoonsfull of kacang in and bill me for it! Jack it up by fifty cents, do i look like i care? i just want more kacang!

What my gripe is really about is this: this kid was probably trying to stinge on giving me extra kacang cos he thought i was pushing my luck over a 2.50 breakfast. but that's not true. i don't care if it's 2.50 or 2.80 or 2.99, he can bill me for the extra kacang all he wants. Just follow the instructions because CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

And the idea underneath all this is this: that some people can be so stoneheaded and provincial in the way they run business, even in a big city. It's very small towned to think that everyone's trying to get more out of you than what you're charging them. But even nasi lemak sellers have to modernise the way they think. Just give your customers everything they ask for and charge them for it. It's really that simple to man a roadside stall.

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Genusfrog [ 10:16 am ] | 2 comments

Tuesday, February 08, 2005
CNY CHILLY SAUCE

There are few things i like doing in the kitchen as much as making chilly s...

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Genusfrog [ 2:17 pm ] | 0 comments