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For those who's forever complaining about how difficult it is to get stuff done with Government departments in Malaysia, there is a solution.

Go to myeg.com.my.

It's a portal that helps you with stuff from renewing your driving licence, checking for traffic violations to getting a new MyCard.

*lovingly caress my new driving licence that is good for another 5 years*

Oh, if you're interested, I applied for a new one just yesterday afternoon and today they've couriered it over. Really fast, hassle free.

Go on. Check it out.

In celebration of violence

Violence is bad. But it can also make for great fun.

Nothing a little C4 couldn't cure.

New meaning to killing me softly.

He learnt this from Emily Post.

A kick in the nuts is always funny. Just ask anyone who
enjoy the Three Stooges.

Auditory input is important *nods*

This is why animes are so much fun.

Cuteness kills. Literally.

Provoke a hormonal woman at your own peril.

In preparation for the weekend

My niece's dream ride.

Gender equality for the millennium.

Geek humour.

And just about as industrious.

Preparing for the zombiecalypse ... you are doing it right.

It's a quarter after one ...

It has been ages since I fell in love with a song at the first listen. But the sheer emotional poetry of this song?

I am gone.

Enjoy Lady Antebellum's Need You Now.

More than plugging the leaks

Platelets.

No, they are not small dishes for food. Dengue patients often proclaim proudly how low their platelet count was and still they didn't die.

"Mine was only 9*, you know? I'm lucky to be alive!"

So what do platelets do?

They are tiny cell fragments that circulate in your blood and stop you from bleeding to death.

Don't look so tiny now, eh?

And apparently, they do more than that.

This is the reason why people should stop believing that just because something is a scientific fact, it is immutable. Science evolves, people. As we develop more new toys to look at tinier things, calculate bigger numbers, the more we learn how little we know.

* 9 X 10⁹
The normal range for platelets is 150-400 x 10⁹ per litre. (Wikipedia)

We are all the heroes of our own story

Sometimes, we don't realise that we are no longer teenagers and the world doesn't revolve around us. It never had. Which is why, I love stories like this.

Keep your feet grounded, sugar. Most of the time the shit that happens to you is not personal.

Peace.

Too much television will do this to you

"Did you study overseas? Your English is very good."

I get this a lot from people who met me for the first time. No, I'd gently correct them, I am a local product. No, I have never lived overseas in English-speaking countries. Short tour visits do not count, dammit.

Today, an American commented that I sounded, well, like an American.

This is particularly hilarious considering how I could barely read, much less speak English till I was 11. It helped to have a sadistic sister who took away all of my Malay storybooks one school holiday and made me read Nancy Drew in English. When she got tired of telling what the words mean (which was every five words and everything more than 4 alphabets), she tossed a dictionary in the general direction of my head and went into hiding.

My sister is this cute.

There were no shortcuts, no amazing linguistic talent, unlike said sadistic sister who learned English by watching Sesame Street. I would watch the same thing she did and anything that didn't have subtitles (e.g. Fawlty Towers) was of no interest to me. But force me to read she did and lo, and behold! After three books, I could hobble along well enough sans dictionary. I proceeded to devour every Carolyn Keen, Trixie Belden and Enid Blyton books in my school library, disdaining the translated version.

You may think; why would I slog through the Nancy Drew when I could just give it up? It was so hard (though nowhere near the pain of passing a gallstone). Truth is, I could give up reading the way a smoker/alcoholic/drug addict would foreswear their poison of choice. It is a compulsion, an addiction that has gotten me into trouble numerous times, but still, stop I cannot.

How badly am I hooked? The next time you're stuck in traffic in Klang Valley, if you see a demented woman in the next car who is angling her book to get maximum light for reading? That is probably me.

You might wish you have one of this during said possible encounter. *snerk*

But I digress.

Sounding American? That is a first for me. A close pal, whose first encounter with me was watching me give my honours thesis presentation, once said that her first impression of me was that I was a Singaporean; she wondered what was this Singaporean girl doing studying in Malaysia. Another schoolmate actually inquired if I was from Thailand; she said that I did not sound like a Malaysian when I speak Malay.

I will, reluctantly, acknowledge that I do have an accent; and it varies depending on how nervous I am. I could sound like I went to public school in England or like a German newscaster (beautifully accentless). What not many people know, is that the more nervous I am, the more foreign I sound. So yeah, that pseudo-Oxford whatsit? Usually comes out during interviews. :p


Really, if you have a small talent at mimicry, imitating people on tv shows aren't that hard. Especially when you know how the words are spelt.

*grin*