When I close my eyes

Have you ever go to sleep at night and wish that you are somewhere else? Anywhere but here? Maybe a nice island with white sands and nice smelling breeze? Where the only sound you can hear is the waves crashing on the beach, and the only sight you can see is the never-ending vastness of the sea, all the way up to the horizon. And the colour you can see is blue, in front of you, and blue, above you, and white, on both sides. And you can feel the touch of the wind on your face, and you can feel your hair being caressed by the soft breeze, and you lick your lips and you can taste the salt in the air.

And you opened your eyes and it's the ceiling you're staring at, and it's your bed with the light green and heart-shapes bedcover you're sleeping on, and the window with the soft green curtains on your right and a whole bunch of stuffs on your left.

Welcome to reality.

But I do not wish for all that. I do not wish for the white sands and the soft breeze. I do not wish for blue skies and the vast ocean.

I don't mind being in bed. I don't mind being in my own cozy room with the soft green curtains and the hardwood floor. I don't mind being here with the computer next to me and the TV just in front of me.

I don't mind that at all, as long as I have her with me.

Good love is on the way

I'm sure some of you have seen this, but I would love to share this with everyone.



If you're having trouble to see it from here, you can watch it on YouTube here.

I always believe in love, and I will keep on believing. Good things come to those who wait. Wait and seek. And never lose faith.

Happy Valentine's Day!

V is for Valentine

Call me a romantic fool, but I always look forward to Valentine's Day. Not that I celebrate it, since I've been single for as long as I can remember, but it's heartening to read and hear about those lucky ones who have someone to celebrate it with.

Which reminds me, The Imam at the mosque I went to for Friday's prayer last week did a sermon about how celebrating Valentine's Day is haram, since the day originated from a Christian martyr with the same name. But then again, so is celebrating Deepavali, Christmas and other festivities, come to think of it. Well, that's what they said anyway.

Nowadays, Valentine's Day has more commercial values rather than what it is supposed to mean. It's a day when the price of flowers goes up like a rocket being launched, and expensive restaurants become more expensive, and are only accessible through reservations. Flowers and expensive candlelight dinner. I guess it doesn't take much to win a girl's heart nowadays. Oh yes, don't forget that perfect gift (a diamond ring, or a diamond pendant, perhaps) to totally sweep her off her feet.

My first Valentine's experience was a little comical. I think I was only 9 at that time, and it wasn't like I have a girlfriend at that time. But I happened to befriended this sweet little girl who lived behind my house, and we were sort of dating (well, more like playmates). But I would love to imagine that we were dating, since most of the time we were playing house and we always imagine ourselves as husband and wife.

Anyway, come Valentine's Day that year, I gave her some flowers, but since I couldn't afford to buy any, and I couldn't find any pretty enough that I could pluck, I did the next best thing that was possible. I cut pictures of flowers from magazines, and pasted them on cardboards which I then cut into the appropriate shape. And I remember sharing with her a bar of chocolate, which I smuggled out from the fridge in my house. And what did I get in return? Well, I think I'll keep that to myself (get that thought out of your mind, we were only 9 years old at that time!)

Fast forward a few years, when I was in secondary school, the value of Valentine's Day sort of diminished, most probably because I was in a boarding school and we were warned by those righteous brothers not to celebrate it in any way. But being quite popular with the opposite sex, I was showered with the occasional gift, and love letters, although most of them came anonymously.

Anyway, my last Valentine was quite a success. I cooked dinner for my girlfriend at that time (yes, I finally had one, and we were a couple, not playmates). I managed to coaxed my housemates to leave the house for the night (it involved an exchanged of cash) and did quite a romantic setting, with candles and flowers and nice music in the background. My spaghetti turned up well, and she was totally taken by the whole thing. My reward, well, needless to say, it was definitely better than the one I received when I was 9 years old.

So do I have any plans for this year's Valentine? Most probably not. But you'll never know. I might change my mind at the very last minute. But wait a minute, I'm missing an important ingredient for the whole thing to take place. I don't have a girlfriend.

Monday teaser

I think the answers to the previous teaser have not been published yet, so here they are. But first, congratulations to Bakawali and Najibest yet again, for getting all the answers correct. Prizes should be in your mailbox in two weeks time.

1. She is a liar. No liar would would claim to be a liar, therefore she is not telling the truth.

2. 40 miles per hour.
   

3. The chance it will come up heads is 1 in 2. A coin has no memory.

4. Small (meter is also accepted).

5. Patty, because all of the others usually either beat her or beat somebody else who beats her.

Now here are today's teasers:

1. A man wants to grow a tree very quickly. He buys some special tree seeds that double in height every day. On the tenth day, the tree is twenty feet high. On what day was it five feet high?

2. A man moors his boat in a harbor at high tide. A ladder is fastened to the boat, with three rungs showing. The rungs are twelve inches apart. At low tide the water level sinks twenty feet. How many rungs of ladder are now showing?

3. You have two pencils, a good one and a cheap one. The good one cost $1.00 more than the cheap one. You spent $1.10 for both. How much did the cheap one cost?

4. A very fast train runs from A to B in an hour and a quarter, but on the return trip it takes 75 minutes under identical conditions. Why?

5. Robert and Rose went shopping for presents together. They had a total of $264 between them. Rose had $24 more to begin with but spent twice as much as Robert and ended up with two-thirds as much money as Robert. How much did Robert spend?

Well, good luck! You might need it this time.

I'm pathetic

I'm pathetic, because I bought the perfume that she uses, and when I miss her terribly, I'll smell the perfume and think of her.

I'm pathetic, because I'll type a text message for her, but never sends it out to her.

I'm pathetic, because every night before I go to sleep, I'll think of her and let myself cry sometimes.

I'm pathetic, because I'll dial her number on my phone, but I never press the dial button.

I'm pathetic, because I'll drive to her place sometimes, so that I could catch a glimpse of her car.

I'm pathetic, because everytime when I see her (which is very seldom), I can feel my heartbeat racing to get to her before I do.

I'm pathetic, because everytime I kiss, I feel her lips.

I'm pathetic, because everytime when I'm with another woman, I close myself up because I'm afraid I might cheat on her.

I'm pathetic, because I'm still in love with her.

I'm pathetic, because I watched Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King last night, and I cried at the ending.

Okay, that is irrelevant, but don't mind me. I'm just feeling worthless, and pathetic.

Digging for gold

You can get a lot of things done while driving on the roads in Malaysia. I think it is due to the fact that you spent a lot of time stuck on the road trying to get from one point to another point. And not only do you have to work 8 hours a day on a normal shift, but you also have to spend 3-4 hours on the road getting to work and going home from work.

Fortunately, I do not fall under that category. Staying just 5 minutes away from the office, I hardly had any problem getting there. However, I do get into the occasional crawl after work, when I'm heading to somewhere else instead, and also on weekends.

Of course, it can get very irritated and frustrating crawling at 10km/h on a long stretch of road. You know that without the traffic, you could get to your destination in less than 20 minutes. Instead, for that same period of time, the distance that you managed to cover is only 100m. And at the end of it, the reason for the long crawl was because an accident happened on the opposite lane. Yes, you heard me right. The accident happened on the other side of the road. But somehow, through some unexplained magical reasons, your lane was as slow as a tortoise taking an afternoon stroll.

Now, no reason to be angry, because you know it will not solve anything. You have just wasted 1 hours or so to cover 20 minutes of distance, and no amount of anger and swearing could return you the lost time.

That is why I am always prepared. Stuck in a jam? No worries, I have my green beans to munch on, the newspaper to read, and the music to keep me company. And if you've seen that car fragrance commercial on TV where the guy got stuck in traffic and he switched on his fragrance and suddenly he was in another place, well, that is all bullshit. No amount of fragrance, doesn't matter if it smells like the forest or strawberry delight can keep your mind away from a slow crawl.

So forget about Ambi-Purr or whatever the name is. Instead, read the newspaper, call your friends (make sure you're on hands-free), eat something, or better still, groom yourself. I once saw a young lady plucking the hair off her armpits during a long crawl. She would pluck one, sniff it and then blow it away. And so on until her armpit was hairless, I assume. The amazing part was she had to sniff every single hair. How weird was that? Well, at least it kept me occupied and entertained for a good 30 minutes.

My favourite thing to do has to be cleaning my nose. Stuck in a jam, ah, time to give the old nose a good poke and nibble. Maybe I'll find something big enough in it to turn into a nice small bouncy ball. Of course, I'm not the only one doing it. All I need to do is look around, and there is surely someone else doing it.

Suddenly I don't feel alone anymore.

So what do you do when you get stuck in a long crazy crawl?

The oranges strike back

The problem with February is it's oranges season. Everywhere you go, you see oranges. Everywhere you turn to, there are those round orange fruit lying on the shelves, on the car seat, in the fridges, and in boxes on the floor.

So you grabbed one, peel off the skin, and start eating those sweet little thing. And spit out the seeds all over the place.

Yes, that's the way I do it anyway.

For over a week now, I've been eating oranges. And plenty of oranges. It's like 3 oranges after lunch, another 3 in the evenings, and then another 5 after dinner. Then of course there's the one before bed. Come to think of it, there was one night where my dinner consisted of oranges and oranges only. Suddenly, from a fruit, it has turned into an obsession. I just can't get enough of them. To me, they no more look round and orange. They are anything I wanted them to be. They can be a a double cheeseburger, or a hot chicken soup. And they definitely taste better than oatmeal.

That's the problem. There is an abundance of oranges in my life. I keep getting them for free. I went to the mechanic the other day and he gave me a handful of oranges. I went to the friendly neighbourhood Mamak for a late supper and they gave me an orange. But the source of my endless supply of oranges is my office. There are boxes and boxes of them, lying around just to be taken and eaten. And since I can't see free food lying around waiting to be taken and eaten, I found it as my duty to do justice to the oranges. And so the feasting begins.

Of course, another problem of an overdose of oranges is you keep on going to the toilet. It's like ethnic cleansing for my bowels, they are getting sick of the oranges and they just wanted them out of the system. So, it's orange comes in, orange goes out. The weird part is, now my waste product smells like oranges. It looks like oranges too. And all I know, it might even taste like one too. But of course I wouldn't go that far to proof that!

And people keep telling me that I should stop eating them since they are making my cough gets even worse. Even my mechanic is now acting as my doctor, telling me about how oranges are cold based food, and how they irritate the throat. I guess I should listen to him, since he did a good job fixing my car. Maybe he knows what he was talking about.

So I won't be touching, or eating any oranges from now on.