Friday, February 25, 2005

Movies Of Myself
Rufus Wainwright

Stop me falling down, stop me making movies of myself
Put that old dog down, stop me making movies of myself
Bring that carriage round, get me to the garden of sleep
Make that high gate speak, Perrier out of a paper bag
Looking like a hag
And start giving me something
A love that is longer than a day
Start making my heart sing something that it doesn't want to
say
I'm handing it over, I'm saying that you're the only one
Don't run for the border, turn that corner
Already you've run in movies of myself
Darling don't you ever let me go
Wrap your loving arms around me
While the cold winds blow
Tell me what I really want to know
'Cause I'm looking for a reason, a person, a painting
A Saturday Evening Post Edition by Jesus
An old piece of bacon never eaten by Elvis
So I'll say start giving me something
A love that is longer than a day
Start making my heart say something it doesn't want to say
I'm handing it over, I'm singing that you're the only one
Don't run for the border, turn that corner
In movies of myself
Oh I've seen it all before in movies of myself

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Talk Shows/Old Songs/Wankers

Well it's been a little more than a month since I got back. I've been having a pretty good time here, I'm glad to say, though I do think I miss Knoxville sometimes. It's not so much the place (though I do pine for Borders... how sad). But I do think about the folks I knew back there that I can't just call up or meet at church. I suppose that's normal when you spend seven years of your life in one place.

I went to a Youth group do at SIB (Sidang Injil Borneo) church last week. They did it up kinda like a talk show, with cushions up on stage for the interviewers and interviewees to sit, live jazz music, and video clips produced just for the occasion. I kinda wished they'd just keep it simple, but maybe "AWE-some!!!!!" productions are par for the course at this church :p.

The theme of the night was 'There And Back Again' (ack! LOTR!), and they interviewed three folks about their experience coming home and adjusting after having been overseas for a while. Apparently some folks have a rough time of it, which I understand. There's a tangible difference between the way we do things here in good ol' Malaysia and the way things are overseas, and I suppose you could get pretty wound up thinking about those differences. Then again, I spoke to a couple of folks at cell group last night who didn't have any problems adjusting at all after coming home. There's all kinds.

I'm guessing right now I'm not having too hard a time settling in. I don't spend the whole day pining for this or that. There's a lot of stuff here to take joy in and be grateful for (The food's better!). But like I said, it does hurt sometimes to think about stuff I've left behind. The other day I caught myself talking to my Toyota Tercel from afar, sending it luv and best wishes. I hope Ruby's topping up the oil levels like she's supposed to :(. It's mostly small things like that, but it's enough to put me in a quiet place for a bit.

These days I mostly work or game. I've also been spending a lot of time learning the worship songs I used to sing at Fellowship Church and with the Navigators. I think maybe that's a piece of my life in Knoxville that I've got with me wherever I go, so I may as well learn the songs by heart. I do a little church stuff... cell group on Wednesdays, church on Sundays (either SIB, which is where Jessy goes, or Full Gospel Assembly, which is where Jason and Jeevan go), but nothing too committal yet. I feel like I got license to float a little, so I may as well use it :D.

I guess now's a good time as any to say I'm kinda using a new email account. The old Netlearning account still works, but folks can now contact me also at greyhoundbng@gmail.com. I guess once I'm done with Netlearning, that'll become my main email addy. There's the old Hotmail addy... but I think it was established here long ago that that's my wankers email, so don't bother with it.

Unless you're a wanker.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Disease of Conceit
Bob Dylan


There's a whole lot of people suffering tonight
From the disease of conceit.
Whole lot of people struggling tonight
From the disease of conceit.
Comes right down the highway,
Straight down the line,
Rips into your senses
Through your body and your mind.
Nothing about it that's sweet,
The disease of conceit.

There's a whole lot of hearts breaking tonight
From the disease of conceit,
Whole lot of hearts shaking tonight
From the disease of conceit.
Steps into your room,
Eats your soul,
Over your senses
You have no control.
Ain't nothing too discreet
About of disease of conceit.

There's a whole lot of people dying tonight
From the disease of conceit,
Whole lot of people crying tonight
From the disease of conceit,
Comes right out of nowhere
And you're down for the count
From the outside world,
The pressure will mount,
Turn you into a piece of meat,
The disease of conceit.

Conceit is a disease
That the doctors got no cure
They've done a lot of research on it
But what it is, they're still not sure

There's a whole lot of people in trouble tonight
From the disease of conceit,
Whole lot of people seeing double tonight
From the disease of conceit,
Give ya delusions of grandeur
And an evil eye
Give you the idea that
You're too good to die,
Then they bury you from your head to your feet
From the disease of conceit.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

There's More Haitians Here Than I Remembered

Well it's been a while since I posted anything, and to everyone who checks in regularly, semi-regularly, or at all... I apologize. I've been meaning to change the look of the blog before I started blogging again, and I thought I'd get round to last week, but my latest gaming habits have kept me from doing so. Between 'W40k:Dawn of War' and work, there really isn't time to figure out how Blogger's tags work and revisit all my buried CSS knowledge. So for now, the site's going to retain it's pastel flavor.

Nothing has changed much in Malaysia since I last left it two years ago. There's a couple of new shopping malls, to which the Ah Beng (those of you unfamiliar with the term, this Singaporean definition kinda works) population congregate. Couldn't be bothered much with those, though Berjaya Times Square does have a cool-looking indoor rollercoaster to suck in the Ah Beng's ringgit. I went to good ol' Sungei Wang Plaza with my old secondary school friend Mr Jason a/l Jaganathan a few weeks back, and was taken aback by the massive numbers of Ah Bengs and Ah Lians cramped shoulder-to-shoulder in between pirated DVD shops and Levis outlets. We theorized that a missile attack on Sungei Wang on a Sunday would effectively take out a tenth of Malaysia's Ah Beng population.

A lot of afternoons (and evenings on weekends) are taken up playing Dawn Of War at Adrian's house. We don't have LAN parties, we have LAN-Round-The-Clock. I think my mom still misses me and wonders when I'm coming home. We call our gaming sessions 'foam' sessions, and there's a point during the game when you need to start 'foaming'. There's a bit of history in that terminology I won't go into right now, but most initial etymological theories would most probably be close enough.

I'm having a lot of fun with culture shock jokes right now... basically it's just fun to pronounce things in a painfully fake and heavy American accent, so that place names like Subang Jaya and Kuala Lumpur come out just a little bit wrong. Okay a lot wrong. It's more fun telling people you live in "Sue-BANG Jay-uh" though, as opposed to plain ol' Subang Jaya. It's a little mean, but I also make it point to tell everyone what stuff costs in USD :p, and then say "hey, I'll pay for it, it's only X USD!" That one's gonna bite me in the butt soon, I'm sure.

I also wonder a lot to folks about where all these Haitians in Malaysia are, since there are all these signboards with the word "Perhatian" on em. Like where are all these Haitians and why do we need to deal with them on a Per-Haitian basis?

On that note, I think I'll stop and get back to work.

Happy Chinese New Year!