Escaping the Heat

Before that, way to go, Lee Chong Wei. All the nation’s hopes on our mercurial boy, hopes he doesn’t wilt in the pressure at the finals.

Anyways, i’ll be watching the final on Sunday in Cameron Highlands, going there for a long weekend. KL is so hot and hazy these fews, one or two degrees of cooler weather will help a bit, seeing that the hilltop will probably be suffering from this heat wave.

Haven’t been there for like 5 years, so it’ll be the usual round of cactus farms, rose gardens, honeybee farms, drive up Gunong Brinchang, visit some tea plantations, etc. The usual gawking touristy stuff ler, cuti-cuti Malaysia ma (meaning no money to go overseas).

By the way, if anyone of you guys have any good recommendation for a decent place to eat (that isn’t steamboat or overpriced scones), feel free to recommend ah? I’ll be online there with my phone (or at the hotel’s internet station if they have one) so i’ll be connected.

Ben Johnson and the 100m

The Seoul Olympics in the summer of 1988 will mostly be remember for one person - Ben Johnson. Yes, the man who won the gold medal in the 100 metre dash finals, broke the Olympic record, beat his bitter rival Carl Lewis, and later was tested positive for drugs, and three days later stripped of his medal and record.

Most of us don’t follow athletics these days, I doubt many would even know who holds the current world record, but in 1988, everyone knew. We were in school, and with nothing else to do except watch the one decent TV channel, we followed the Olympics daily.

Ben Johnson had earlier broken the world record at the World Championships at 9.83seconds, and everyone was watching the showdown between Ben Johnson, the Jamaican turned Canadian, against Carl Lewis. Carl Lewis was the always the all-American hero who had won 4 gold medals in the previous Olympics in Los Angeles.

I remember seeing Ben Johnson at the semifinals - he looked buff with muscles, something uncommon for sprinters.

In the final, Ben Johnson won the gold with a new world record of 9.79s,Carl Lewis come in second at 9.92s. I remember the scene vividly, it was replayed countless times that day and the days following that. Johnson surged ahead in the second half of the race, towards the end, the turned to his left to see Lewis behind him, raised his right hand in victory, and slowed a little towards the finishing line.

Three days later, everything was turned upside down when he tested positive for stanozolol. Lewis was awarded the gold, and the whole drug scandal started to unravel.

That was 20 years ago. In the interim, many sprinters have come and gone, whittling down the world record one hundredth of a second at a time. Later this month, Usain Bolt will defend his world record of 9.72s against Tyson Gay from the US, but even their recent rivalry is nothing compared to that great race in Seoul.

Technorati Tags: Seoul Olympics, Ben Johnson, Olympic, Carl Lewis, stanozolol, Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay

Kung Fu Oil! (and My Sprained Wrist)

I sprained my forearm muscle just below my left wrist on Monday at the gym. It’s a little better today but i still can’t supinate it both ways, looks like i’ll laying off dumbbells for sometime. Darn.

Usually i don’t treat bruises and sores, but i had a bad feeling about this one, so my wife whipped out this for me…

You’ve heard of Kung Fu Mee, Kung Fu Fighting, Kung Fu Hustle, and even Kung Fu Panda, but you’ve probably not seen…

KUNG FU OIL!!!

Nope, I’ve never heard of it, either. My mother-in-law bought it when she went to Australia. Just in case you missed the name of the product, it’s repeated twice at the bottom of the box in red.

And check out the sifu’s nonchalant face, man. Doesn’t look much like a sinseh to me. He looks like the guy selling chicken rice near my office.

This is unexpected. There’s no Engrish mistakes here. I’m actually quite disappointed.

The bottle looks like those little bottles of gin you find at cheap hotels.

Bilingual massage instructions.

Yeah, I know, it’s a slow blog day :). Can’t really type with my wrist like that, lah…

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

One day in college circa mid-90’s, i turned on the radio and this evocative song by a strangely lilting (yet familiar) voice sang the words:

Are you goin’ to scarborough fair? parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine

i was really into this heavy metal and progressive rock thing back then (still am) and was surprised to hear that it was by Queensryche and the DJ mentioned that it was a cover of an old Simon & Garfunkel song (me and my pal Ray became fans of the band Queensryche after that, we even named our assignment groups after the band).

At home i dugged up my brother’s CD collection, i knew he was a fan and had some Simon & Garfunkel albums kept under the bed. After listening to the original acoustic version, i liked it even more than Queensryche’s metal interpretation, but they both have their own charm.

This was years ago, and last week, i was searching about something else about thyme seasoning for cooking fish and found a wikipedia entry on the song. Apparently, , i found out that neither Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel wrote it, it was 400 year old traditional ballad about an actual English fair! All this, after listening to it for years!

I also learnt the actual meaning of the original verse, it actually is about young man, who

“tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.”

(source)

Wow, talk about deeping meaning, man. This is the short version of the song, taken from the Simon & Garfunkel version… Still have no idea about the “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” bit, though.

Are you goin’ to scarborough fair? parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine

Are you goin’ to scarborough fair? parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine

About A Girl

Let’s go back a few years.

I became a dad at quite a young age, younger than most of my friends and peers. I pretty much learnt about the job on my own, my own dad was never around for most of my growing up years and when he was around in my teen years, i had already grown distant from my family.

But young as i was, i think was pretty prepared, i had always known what kind of dad i would be, even before i had gotten married.

Digressing. First kid came some years back, she was a mature looking baby, but very sweet, everyone said she will grow up pretty (so she doesn’t look like me lah ahaha). In her mannerism, she’s a lot like me, she’s a lot like her mother, although my wife may not agree. The second kid, now that’s a different story…

***

But anyways. It’s her birthday today. Happy Birthday, kid.

Bon Odori 2008

Went to my first Bon Odori Festival on Saturday. I’ve reading it for years, mainly through Silencer’s blog, so when i heard about it on the radio on Friday, i made sure i didn’t miss it this time round. Bon Odori is actually the Japanese Hungry Ghost Festival, but here in Malaysia it’s more of a cultural festival to expose all thing Japanese to Malaysians. This is the 32nd Bon Odori held in KL.

We reached Matsushita Stadium quite early but already we had to park far away.

The crowd there was still in but streaming in at about 4.30pm. Everyone gets a plastic fan, sponsored by various Japanese corporations. Very useful.

The one side of the field was lined with stalls selling Japanese foodstuff (and local stuff passed off as Japanese). These are some of the stalls - that Yokomoni is an excellent tasting ice-cream from a cute dispenser.

We bought one - chocolate of course. RM5. Very refreshing.

We went through all the stalls… lots of variety. Like chocolate strawberries…

Something that looked like kaya balls…

Sushi King even brought their conveyor belt here. Note the sponsor on my kid’s fan…

Assortment of fried snacks. I thought they were mostly quite expensive, but my wife insisted that they were selling at cost price (!).

Of course, no running away from sushi. Quite a few stalls were selling it.

We bought this fried chicken meat on a stick for RM3. Very tasty.

My kids loved this mushroom cheese sausage from the Jusco stall. RM5. They also had jalapeno flavor. Very Japanese…?

Of all people to meet there, we bumped into Pat’s sister, Patricia. Boyfriend works for some Jap company.

This stall was quite popular with a long line of folks. They had lots of imported ice-cream flavors.

We bought the Hershey’s cookies and cream…

(mmm… yummy)

…and the Ghana black choc one…

Taste almost the same as the regular Ghana choc bars we bought.

Walking around i kinda notice there are a lot of Japanese expats here in Malaysia. You can see lots of them here, especially the girls in their yukatas.

It’s easy to tell Japanese girls from the non-Japanese ones. These are Japanese…

So are these…

These two NOT Japanese. They were speaking Cantonese.

I’m not so sure about these though…

After eating, we walked across the field to the grandstand, this is the stage for the performances.

After waiting for a bit, the performances were about to start. These are the drummers…

and here comes the dancers!

The stage was a bit far to capture the dance on our camera, but they were very good.

By now the field was packed like a political rally (!). It was quite a sight to see almost everyone on the field dancing and moving together with the performers.

This was the guest performers by local students doing some fan dance. At first they were quite organized, but after like 5 minutes, they started to get kelam kabut… good try tho

We didn’t stay for the 3 other performances, so we left about 8.30pm. We’ll be back next year…

Technorati Tags: bon odori, malaysia, japan, japanese

Original Sin by Elton John

Studying Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (some time back) reminded me of this song which i absolutely loved some years back.

Say what you want about post 70’s Elton John, but he writes great songs.

Oh, it’s carnival night
And they’re stringing the lights around you
Hanging paper angels
Painting little devils on the roof

Oh the furnace wind
Is a flickering of wings about your face
In a cloud of incense
Yea, it smells like Heaven in this place

That’s not-quite-popular pop princess Mandy Moore in the vid, also featuring Elizabeth Taylor.

Was never much a fan of Elton when i was growing up in the 80’s, coinciding with the lull in his career in that decade. But when in 1994 when i was staying with my cousin’s place in SS2, and he was quite a hi-fi freak, with loads of CDs he brought back from his days in the US. i was re-introduced to Elton through him, and great songs like Crocodile Rock, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Candle in the Wind (I still prefer the Monroe version).

I doubt Augustine would like the idea of me associating Elton John with original sin, but hey…

New Look For My Blog

Amacam? Okay ah? Better than the old one la.

That one was supposed to be a temporary theme, but it lasted for a few years. Ouch.

But anyway, i’m back to 2 columns, so that my pics can fit nicely on the post area. Don’t ask me what’s the significance of the dying trees and orange / black fruits, i’m just pretty tired of browsing Wordpress themes and this is the one i like best.

***

I’ve got 2 months break from my PT classes, so i’m taking time off to do the stuff i’ve left behind these few months, like reading my books, watching movies and TV shows on my PC and generally bumming around. I’m enjoying it as much as I can.

I’m currently halfway through season 3 of Family Guy. Its gets better as it goes along, i think (but of course not as brilliant as The Simpsons). Brian is by far my favorite character. After i finish all 5 seasons, I’m gonna start on season 2 of Sledge Hammer!. Remember that one? It was probably one of the funniest sitcoms of 80’s. Really.

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

***

Today also happens to be the 3rd birthday for my OTHER blog. Yeah, that one that is never mentioned here (and the one that never mentions this one either, haha). So hop on over there and wish me a happy 3rd blog birthday. And have some cake.

Black Ghana Japanese Chocolate

These pics were from some time back, thought of posting up on a Monday morning. Nothing like starting off the week with some productive work.

We were at this Japanese food fair in One Utama a few weeks back, they had this large selection of snacks and dried food for sale, like ramen noodles (made in Hong Kong, surprisingly), loads of strangely named seaweed snacks, cute little animal biscuits and lots more. They also had cultural dances and drum presentation, and the all important Japanese tradition of nissin noodle eating competition.

We bought some delicious chocolate panda biscuits (do I feel guilty about eating a biscuit shaped like an endangered species?) and this little surprise.

Its Lotte Black Ghana, subtitled ‘the authentic rich flavor of cacao’. Cacao?! At first i thought it was an Engrish corruption of ‘cocoa’, but thanks to wikipedia, cacao is actually another name for cocoa.

The back of the box, for those interested in the ingredients. Sorry, my Japan not powderful. I can only read the barcode numbers.

This is how the packaging looks like…

… and inside. Tastes delicious, a bit of bitter and sweet taste. Cost about RM12 per box, there were a few other variant flavors.

Must try the other types the next time i’m at a japanese supermarket…

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1

Had some free time today so i did something i’ve been wanting to do for sometime - upgrade my blog to Wordpress 2.5.1.

There had been some problems ever since i upgraded from 1.5.2 to 2.3 (in December i think) so i decided to do it.

As usual the installation went pretty smoothly, and so did the housekeeping after that. But apparently the ‘Related Post‘ plugin isn’t working in WP2.5.1. There’s a new version of it, but after installing it i still haven’t got time to get it working properly yet. Maybe tonight.

While i was running FileZilla (which i also need to upgrade) and on a roll, i decided to tackle my plugins which are woefully outdated. First i updated some of the ones i had like Sociable, Akismet (one of the most useful ones you’ll ever find) Sitemaps and WP-PageNavi. Then i also installed some new ones when were pretty long overdue like All in One SEO Pack. Tonight I’ll have time to dig for more useful plugins.

Next on the agenda - change my theme! It’s been to long with this one, and i need a widget friendly one. So i’ll be busy browsing thousands of templates these days. I like the clean, minimalist look. If you have any good website listing new templates, please let me know k?

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, FileZilla, Sociable, Akismet, Sitemaps, theme