Last week I got a pink birthday card from AIG, the USD$700 billion bailed out insurance company. Actually it their wholly owned subsidiary, AIA. Slightly different initials, but same same. Think financial meltdown, federal reserve bailout. But I’m digressing. Actually last week i had already nicely worded letter from AIA telling me “everything is fine” and “don’t worry, your money is secure with us”… yadda yadda yadda. But this one is actually a birthday card for my daughter because I bought a policy from them many eons ago. You know what? Maybe AIA Malaysia might want to use a smaller font for that “An AIG Company” line… just a suggestion…

It was my first semester of life in university for me, and it didn’t take me long to settle in, but I never really clicked with most of my classmates, partly because I was not Chinese educated nor very interested in studying. But i found a few good friends like Dave and Ray, who shared a lot of my interests – music, PC games, you know, the important stuff. One day Dave came to my room and told me that another pal of his, Jedi, had problems getting past a certain PC game (I think it was Ultima VIII:Pagan) and needed help from someone who completed it before. So I…

My friend once told me a modern day adage that I found to be very true: these days everybody needs to know 3 people – a doctor, a lawyer and a mechanic. Without any of the services of these three professional, be prepared to lose lots of money when something goes wrong, ESPECIALLY the last one. I have an excellent family doctor, a young lady who, thankfully had to inject me on the backside only once so far. I know many lawyers who are good friends, but thankfully I haven’t had any reason to need their professional help, and hopefully don’t ever need to. As for the mechanic, i’m pretty…

Let me just wish all my Muslim friends a belated Eid Mubarak, Selamat Hari Raya. hope you guys had a good holiday. *** Some time ago, I wrote a blog posting about the Alleycats (you can read it here). That was in April 2006. As most of you know, on June 4, 2007, Loganathan Arumugam, or Loga, passed on after a battle with lung cancer. Since then, in addition to the comments offering condolences to the family appearing on that blog post, I have received numerous e-mails from their fans (from as far as the UK) asking me if how to get in contact with the David Arumugam and band.…

There have many touching tributes to the great Paul Newman over the last 2 days, but i had to pay my tribute to an actor which i held in high regard. Newman was an immensely talented actor, actor in over 60 films from 1954 until last year, that’s more than half a decade. But for me, there are two roles he played that really stand out in my memory. One is The Color of Money, which I watched in the age of grainy VHS video tape rentals back when i was a kid in the 80’s. The other, and by far my favorite, was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.…

Talking about healthy living, I saw this pic in the Star today, about our Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar commenting on RPK while visiting our troops on the border… OMG, look at that gut! A little too many buka puasa ceremonies, eh? I thought no one could beat Dato’ Seri “I’m-pleading-for-Hindraf” Samy Vellu (when i saw him recently), but the Home Minister has just pipped him… That pic above has just made me give up late afternoon snacks, so I guess it’s not all bad.

And so yesterday my wife and I went to the preview screening at the Movie ‘Mamma Mia!’ at GSC One Utama. This probably be the only blog you’ll read today about it, since there was like, 200 bloggers there, too… The movie was great, we really enjoyed it, probably more than everyone there, being the huge ABBA fan that my wife and I are. We were singing along to most of the songs. Colin Firth was funny as he always is, but c’mon, it had to be Pierce Brosnan, hasn’t it? Dude is 55, and still looks buff, man! But anyway, for those interested in some older movies associated with…

Or, as you would be more familiar with – Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah. 1810 – Independence for Chile. The country, not the hot red vegetable. 1934 – USSR admitted to League of Nations. Free vodka all around the Security Council. 1970 – Jimi Hendrix dies after choking on his own vomit. Obviously, not the highlight of his short career. 1971 – Lance Armstrong, the cyclist formerly known as Sheryl Crow’s boyfriend, is born. 1976 – Mao Zedong’s funeral takes place in Beijing. 2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution. Hey wait, this was just last year. And, oh yeah, it’s also…

IF I had not agreed to follow my friend to the Dean Sherman seminar in FGA, I would not have met my wife. IF the genetic dice were rolled another way, I would have lived my brother’s life, and he mine. This is something I think about a lot, not that I have supplanted God’s divine will with the Fates, but an exploration of John Calvin’s predestination. IF I hadn’t decided to change jobs last year, I’d probably be still working in the office now. IF I had not met my good friend Dave the Slayer in the first week of university, those five years there would have been a…

There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica In light of the current state of affairs, I can’t help but be reminded by Adama words above, I believe rockybru quoted it in his blog before, too. Anyone who follows the reimagined Battlestar Galactica will know Bill Adama as leader who is fearless, fiercely loyal, and unflinchingly moral. But sadly for us in the real life here, we do not have a commander anything like…