The moral of the story is...

I stumbled upon the folk tales section in the library a few days ago. Up till today, I’ve read 2 books from that shelve, and I find the Canadian Inuit folk tales to be completely weird. Now, a normal story, especially a folk tale would carry a moral lesson in it, or at least a story line or something. But these Copper Eskimos, I don’t know, their stories are simply weird!

Take for example, the story of The Deceitful Raven. It is less than a page long and tells of a story of this bird who told the people of a settlement that visitors are coming and they should make way down the foot of the cliff to meet them. So they set out and when they reached the foot of the cliff, they took shelter there. Seeing this, the raven flew to the top of the cliff and when everyone was asleep he jumped and danced and caused an avalanche, burying everyone beneath it. The raven waited in eager anticipation for spring to come and the snow to disappear because he liked to peck out the eyes of the victims. The end.

Yeeeerrr~ Did you just feel a cold gush of wind? Creepy… All the tales are like that. Either kill someone, or take revenge, or no storyline at all. The Ghost Hunter is an example of one that has no purpose. It started off with this guy fearing ghosts, but he ends up living with them, and then the story changes on to his hunting trips, completely abandoning the idea of ghosts in its theme, and finally he disappeared in a bowl of water. Uh…okayyy…

And then there’s this one, Kidnapped by Wolves, talking about two wolves trying to steal a couple’s baby. The male wolf took of his skin and thus looked like a man. He walked over to the couple working in the fields and invited them to dance. Coincidentally, the couple loved dancing so they agreed. The wolf started singing magic chants and soon the couple was under his spell. Seeing their trance-like state, the female wolf sneaked into their house and ran away with the baby. Soon the couple woke up and chased after the wolves. When they found the wolves’ den, they waited till night fall to kill the wolves. When the wolves were asleep they emerged from their hiding place and ‘let their arrows fly’ killing the wolves instantly. But the female wolf had been holding their baby to her chest so (let me quote) “The arrow that pierced her chest killed the child at the same moment.” And that’s it. The end. Whoa. Award winning story. Perhaps this story does have a moral. Never dance when a wolf invites you to.

I have to say, reading what I’m blabbing here, or reading someone’s blog about what he had for dinner yesterday and the rest of the days before that, would definitely have made more sense. So the moral of the story is, don’t live in an igloo if you don’t want you brain to be frozen.

Everyone's invited to a drink in my spaceship

But since no such spaceship exists, you’ll just have to make do with your imagination. Imaginations are so useful aren’t they?

So why is Runawaycat treating you to a drink in your dreams? She’s happy. She’s elated. She feels like she’s 16. No, it’s not a guy, thanks for the opinion.

Perhaps it’s classes? Weird huh? But that’s what it is. When I have a responsibility at hand (and that is to be a good student, yuck, I almost puked) I tend to sway into other areas, doing things that make me feel elated or 16 or so not related to school. I’m such a dependable person. My parents must be proud. Seriously. A daughter that can concentrate in multiple areas that have absolutely no relation to one another whatsoever. Any parent would kill for a daughter like me. I love myself.

Hmm writing this is beginning to rob my euphoria away. But what should I do? I have too much free time. (knock on wood a million times!) I think I’ll go pop an ecstasy pill now. Bye guys. Love me, kay?

Malaysians love the library

They love it so much they go there in their dreams. Yes, while they’re happily taking an afternoon nap in their room. Don’t tell me this is another library closing early rant? FORTUNATELY for everyone, YES it is.

What is this, the 11^th time!? They used to open till night on Saturdays, and till 4.30pm on Sundays. Sundays didn’t even make sense to me. Now they close at 4pm on both days?! Oh that makes sense. That makes so much sense I’m pissing my head off.

You guessed right. I just came back from there, pissed. The papers talked about Malaysians not going to the libraries, not reading books, yada yada yada, but look who’s so encouraging us to go. Closing early is a real encouragement. Oh thank you, now I love the library so much I’ll bring my pillow there so when they FINALLY open I can be the first to embrace all its books.

The story doesn’t end there. Let’s talk about the general majority of the government servants. (I so wanna make this a racist slur, but I’ll only get my butt toasted so nevermind). I thought I was smart enough to have brought the bills there. The post office is just opposite the library so if that damned place is really closed, I could go pay bills instead. Makes my effort driving there not going to waste right?

Now, the post office closes at 4.30pm, at least that’s what I’m aware of. Its doors were WIDE opened so I walked in, passed the guy at the postal counter (so surprised to see him there; he’s usually hiding inside doing god knows what. I was going to say jerking himself, but I’m a polite person) to the 4 counters where you can pay your bills. The first counter says ‘Next counter please’, and so did the second…and the third….and the fourth! I innocently asked the postal guy if it’s closed and he said “Yea yea semua tutup.” (all closed) Grrr…

So postal guy can’t do my bills. He can’t go close to those 4 counters or he’ll literally melt. He also didn’t smell the fire under my breath. Coz if he did, he would really have melted.

And by the way, this is how the Malaysian system works. If there are 10 counters, 7 are just for display only. Just like the 4 counters in that damned post office, 3 are for display purposes only. I went there the other day and the line was freaking long yet only 1 counter was opened. It’s not like there are no staffs around. I thought I saw another woman loitering around stroking every corner of the office with her Midas’ touch.

But it’s not like I could do anything so I waited patiently. When it was finally my turn I saw what the major fucking problem was. The woman operating the counter was on drugs. She was moving like a VCR on 0.25x slow speed. I could see her slowly taking the money from me, slowly opening the drawer, slowly dropping the notes one by one in there as she counts, slowly giving out a loud sigh, slowly counting my change, and slowly saying that she’s TIRED (omfg tired sitting down counting money while getting paid by your loving government?).

Now I’m motivated to write my love letter to Astro after procrastinating for 2 months. It’s amazing how laziness can make you endure crap for so long.

Old house, memories, flour, end of the world

My mom and I were just talking about making lanterns for the Chinese New Year when I suddenly remembered the atmosphere in my old house. I can even smell the altar right now. Hmm…brings back memories.

I would always rummage through the altar closet to look at the lamps, vases, lanterns, and especially the red cloth you’d hang on your door when new year is around the corner. For some reason I always do that at night. (Actually I rummage through a lot of stuff in the house just about anytime of the year because I was always too free). We had a few of those red cloths, embroidered ones and plain ones. I like the embroidered ones but my mom was always rooting for the plain one. We would argue on which to use and of course, every time, she won.

And then there’s that morning feeling in the living room. I wake up, go down the stairs to the sofa in the living room and continue my sleep. Then I’d start to sweat because I forgot to turn the fan on. But sometimes the cool breeze would blow in through the window and you’d hear people coming back from the market. I would only get up to turn on the fan when the heat was getting unbearable or if the postman just dropped by. There’s also the smell of the joss stick burning. Once my mom bought the wrong ones and they made tears well in my eyes.

And when mom returns from the market I would grab her bags to see what food she bought me :P Food in Pulau Tikus is always good. I haven’t had a decent breakfast since I stayed here up on the hill surrounded by uh, hills. And there’s also the famous pork satay sold by the uncle who parks his cart on our street. Now I’m starting to wonder, why our street?

Oh there’s also our back door. Our favourite back door. When you have nothing to do, you open the back door and stare out at the alley. When your dog needs to pee, you open the back door. When you wanna throw food out, you open the back door and the cats would come. When you need to fag, you open the back door. Of course I don’t fag. I still remember how it feels like sitting with your butt on the brick outside the back door. My back door!

And then there’s the balcony. And the door that opens to the compound. And the cool floor of the washing area. And the time when I was 5 when I shit in the potty in the living room. Okay we don’t need to go there do we? Sigh, all the memories are there. I wonder if these feelings and memories would soon fade away with time.

On the side note, the country is now short of flour. Next week onwards, no more roti canai for everyone. The mamaks can finally register a loss in their account. Yay! I’m so excited that the world is ending.

P.S. I hate having 2 blogs. I had to crack my head just to think of where this entry should go. Sheesh. This one? That one? Finally this one. I should put another entry full of pics in the other blog. Yes I think I will. Yay! Problem solved.

No burning midnight oils please

Did I say I was going to tell you all about my New Year’s Eve family dinner? Well, I found that my cousin had already posted up the video on YouTube so that entry will have to go in another blog. In SpaceParade, Runawaycat is of course, a cat. If I were to put up that video with me looking like human, although it’s just like 2 seconds of me in it, it would have defeat all purpose.

So instead, Runawaycat will talk about cooking oil here. The nation is in a frenzy to grab all available cooking oil off the shelves. In fact, they already did so days ago. Try going to any supermarket or sundry shop and see if you can find any. The only oils left would be corn oils, lamp oils, baby oils, massage oils, hair oils, Evening Primrose oils; hmm did I miss out any other oil?

I don’t know what’s with this cooking oil thing. One day I woke up to a new year and rumours are going around that prices of oil are gonna sky rocket and supply is running short. And now the news say that each person (or was it each family?) can only buy up to a maximum of 5kg of cooking oil.

My mom is mad because she can’t buy any peanut oil; it has to be peanut coz she wants to make peanut cookies. And I’m excited because this feels like the end of the world. That's how boring my life is. Brace yourselves! Food supply is running short! Woa…wait. Food running short? That’s a scary thought. Imagine no more cheese for the rest of your life. Or no more fast food because health terrorists bombed every fast food chain on the planet. Or no more char siew because Muslim terrorists bombed every pig farm in the world. Oh I’m making another racist slur.

Oh my god! Oh my god! State of panic! I think we should all go grab all cheese, chocolates, burgers, and every other junk food you can think of off the shelves! Go! Go!

Who owns the fish?

I saw this riddle in someone's profile:

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.

2. In each house lives a person of different nationality.

3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS:

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

ALBERT EINSTEIN WROTE THIS RIDDLE EARLY DURING THE 19th CENTURY. HE SAID THAT 98% OF THE WORLD POPULATION WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SOLVE IT.

I think I just solved it. So I'm the world's 2%? Maybe in 1899 haha. You try to solve it. I'm not going to tell you the answer just yet. And oh, please don't Google for the answer. Google doesn't give you answers. Neko-chan does. (Damn generator)

HAPPY 2008

HAPPY 2008!!!

Do I look like I’m overdoing it with all the exclamations? I’ll offset it with a *sigh*. What the heck am I saying? Whatever.

I missed the chance to tell my friends “see you next year” today. And before I know it, it was already 2008. Now I have to wait a whole year. Great. Then I thought, there are still many other countries that are still in 2007. Imagine yourself looking at Earth from space, you would see balls of colourful lights moving from one side of Earth to another as people start to countdown to the new year. No? Shut up.

So…for the fun of saying it, See you next year!

(I could edit the time of this post to make it 2007 but…never mind)

P.S. Next year, read all about my family dinner and my new year eve!