Firestarter - The Rants of a Pyrophile

-The Nature Trail-

1. Gunung Brinchang (highest peak on the highlands)

2. Mossy Forest (Yep, it was mossy and kinda moldy as well)



3. Tea Factory (Not too sure how this is considered 'nature' but it was still fun)

You know that saying 'Blood is thicker than water'? Well, I'm not sure what 'thick' means in this case. Maybe they should change it to 'Blood is more viscous than water'. Although that might not be entirely correct. I can't be sure. In fact, I'm not even sure whether you can compare blood and water. Sure they're both fluid but blood is non-Newtonian and doesn't follow all sorts of rules. Sort of like ketchup. Guess we should just stick with 'thick' after all eh?

Anyhow, that old saying just wants to point out that family ties are stronger than others. Which means that the relationship that I have with my big sister, Along (aka Dude) could only be described as the blood that's been put in water with high salt content where osmosis happens and all the water comes out of the blood and into the solution and the blood cells go shrivelly. Yep, that sounds about right.

Our relationship started when I was born. She was only 3 years old. She was a good big sister. She looked out for me in a way only big sisters can. She even raised the alarm when I fell out of a moving car. Apparently she said 'Ma, adik jatuh'.

As you can see from the photo, I've always wanted to be like her when I was younger. I always did what Dude did. I wanted to dress up like her, get my hair done the same way. I'm not sure whether it was because I really adored her, or because I haven't got the imagination to think of something else.

One of my early childhood memories is of me constantly changing the way I address her. When it was just the two of us, I called her 'Kakak' but when my younger sister came along and ruined my 'youngest child' status, I was taught to call her 'Along'. And during the transition period, I remember not being able to make up my mind on what to call her. Since then I've settled on 'Dude'.

Growing up, I didn't feel the need to emulate her every move anymore. But I doubt the feeling of admiration and idolization ever went away. She is my big sister after all. My payung, payung, payung (to the tune of Rihanna's Umbrella, ella, ella). So, after all that, I would just like to say....

The Laws of Haemodynamics are strongly related to the Laws of Stressodynamics. In order to fully understand Haemodynamics, we first need to look at Stressodynamics.

The first (and so far only) Law of Stressodynamics states that,

"Stress can never be created nor destroyed"

Explanation - Stress is comparable to energy in a sense that you can't ever create stress and you can't make it go away either. The only difference is the magnitude of the stress. Some days you're more stressed out than other days.

Back to Haemodynamics. Stress plays a major factor in determining any Haemodynamic parameter. Its similar to how the change in velocity affects the force of an object. The most famous haemodynamic parameter, the BLOOD PRESSURE, is very much influenced by the stress level. Athough there are several factors that affect the blood pressure, the general rule of thumb is that stress contributes 80% towards this value.

As you can clearly see, stress has gotten to me lately. So much so that I dedicated a whole entry to it. The first guess many people make as to why I might be stressed out is my job. Let me tell you now, its not. I actually like my job. Its nice to be able to apply what I learnt in uni and then learn some more.

The thing that really gets my blood pressure up is the 45minute travel between home and office. Its so frustrating, as a lot of you might know. How is it possible that a 20minute drive become a 45minute torture-ride I hear you ask. Simple, its the DUKE's (Duta-Ulu Kelang Expressway) fault. Where's the sense in dumping the people from Jalan Duta, and Keramat all on the already saturated MRR2? I do wonder sometimes whether these people checked things out before they started to make it all happen. Sure, 7 minutes to Jalan Duta from Ampang sounds really enticing but even I could tell you that this whole project would cause a massive, daily traffic congestion.

To make matters worse, a lot of Malaysian drivers belong in this one species. The Selfishica Motoristum. Those that are categorized in this species share the same traits. They have no regard for other drivers and they think its okay to use the emergency lane if it means they could reach their destination 5 minutes earlier. They also think its fun to switch lanes all the time and cutting queue is definitely their favourite pastime. They dislike giving signals because it would make their fingers ache.

Wow, just talking (or rather, typing) about it made my heartbeat increase. Despite all the complaints, I always count my blessings. I'm grateful that I have a job to be stressed about, I'm grateful that I can get stressed in a car instead of getting stressed on the LRT, and I'm also grateful that AKLEH (Ampang-KL Elevated Highway) was built. Its like it was made especially for me (10-12 minutes to KLCC from home with little traffic).

So the next time one of you think about braving the MRR2 on a weekday morning, think again. You might find yourself in the car pulling your hair out and making obscene gestures at other motorists.

Disclaimer: The Laws of Haemodynamics and Stressodynamics may or may not be true. I have found that the rule of thumb applies to me but do not quote me as reference if your GP tells you otherwise.

I've always been fascinated with language. how some languages are similar that when you know one, you can pretty much figure out the other. and the way some languages have similar words for the same thing even though you might think that the two languages are completely unrelated (ie: the spanish word for fireman is bombero, in malay its bomba). or how some languages have the same words which means completely different things (ie: seronok in malay is fun whilst seronok in bahasa indonesia has a negative connotation, leaning towards slutty).

its also interesting to note that animals speak differently too! dont believe me? check this out.

see what I mean?

onto more serious matters. have you seen these type of things floating around newspapers and billboards?

i'm pretty sure you have. gross isnt it? disturbing isnt it? gives you nightmares doesnt it? i reckon the new packaging did a great job in grossing people out. but does it really work? i dont think so. apart from traumatising the faint hearted non-smokers like me, the campaign isnt doing much. how do i know?

exhibit 1 - the carton of cigarettes in the picture above is my dad's
exhibit 2 - dude's bf continues to smoke albeit the gross pictures on the packs
exhibit 3 - patron of the mamak store: mamak! kotak rokok lain takde ke? yang ni geli la.

i think smokers are completely missing the point here. the pictures are meant to deter you from smoking, not make you ask for a different pack. seriously. i wonder what it takes.

this year's kamen rider is decade.

this time round its special since decade travels to other heisei riders' universes. in the first episode this dude came up to decade/tsukasa kadoya amidst his crumbling world and told him that in order to save his world, he has to go and destroy the other worlds. or something. we're up to the 9th episode now and we've gone through:

kuuga (from the year 2000)



kiva (2008)

ryuki (2002)

and blade (2004)

at first i thought they were gonna go about this chronologically since kuuga is the first rider from the heisei era. but then they jumped to kiva's world so that theory basically went down the drain. and they made changes to the characters and storyline as well. i didnt know this when they went through kuuga's world since i've only seen 5 out of the 9 previous rider series (ryuki, hibiki, kabuto, den-o, kiva). so when they arrived at kiva's world, i expected to see seto koji as kurenai wataru but instead got this little kid who played the small kandou jan in gekiranger. its interesting to see how things unfold in this whole alternate universe thing.

moving on, decade henshins using this card system and he can henshin into other riders as well using these cards that he has.

speaking of stimulations, have you ever felt the need to touch something after you've taken a look at it? case in point. went to my cousin's house warming on saturday. they took out their wedding photos (they got married on the 31st of January this year). and the photo paper of the, well, photos, looked textured and i just had to touch it to see whether the feel of the thing matches what i'm seeing. same goes for all of the albums that they took out. awesome isnt it? Multisensory Aesthetic Experience (mae).

mae is a band i've been listening to for quite a while. their music is really pretty. why are they multisensory? because they have these little pictures in their cd booklet and you're supposed to look at the pictures while you listen to the songs. cool huh? although i never really do that whole multisensory thing because lets face it, how long can you stare at a non-moving picture. my attention span just wont permit it.

isnt it just an awesome concept though? imagine if you could capture not just the sights and sounds, but the smell, taste, and basically the feel of a moment. wouldnt it be awesome, if years down the road, you'd be able to let your kids smell the rain at your wedding, or have a taste of your wedding cake? hmm, fancy that.

on to the subject of cakes and the like. i'm off to bake a pudding. apparently my sister dreamt i made queens pudding a few nights ago which is her brain telling her i havent been making anything sweet for tea in a while now. my grandad seems to like it to so i should definitely bring some round for lunch.

oh, before i go. earth hour! have you signed up? switch off all your electrical appliances (lights, fans, pcs and the like) this saturday (28th March) from 8.30pm for a whole hour in support of Earth Hour. if KL Tower can join in why not us? it'll be nice to be engulfed in complete darkness once in a while eh? oh, and make sure you guys are somewhere familiar when you're in the dark or you'd probably bump into all sorts of things.

after 42 days, i finally found the energy to rant. that surely is a sign that i'm getting old right? before, i had so much life in me that i'd blog/rant about pretty much anything. nowadays, i could full well have met the prime minister and still manage to skip the blogging/ranting.

another, very obvious sign of getting old is when you put different shoes on. which was exactly what happened to me 2 days ago. we (me, mum, and sisters) were supposed to catch Puteri Gunung Ledang the Musical when i decided to wear my sister's shoes which went so well with my outfit (that and i cant be bothered to look for my own shoes). obviously, my size 8/9 feet (huge arent they?) felt really uncomfortable in my sister's size 6 shoes (how i manage to even fit in them is really a mystery in itself). so i decided to take them off during the ride there.

when we got to istana budaya, dude dropped off me and mum near the entrance so she could go look for parking with the other 2 girls. i quickly put my (or rather, my sister's) shoes on, and got out the car. here's how it went after dude drove off and i took 2 steps:


the car stopped and after about a minute of all out running, i got to the car, put the correct shoe on amidst the 'you joker' and the 'how did you manage to pakai the wrong kasut?', and walked back, very uncomfortably, to where mum was. the 3 hours that i had to spend in those shoes resulted in blisters which hurt up till now.

so, moral of the story, you cant avoid getting old. but what you can avoid is, wearing shoes that are too small for your feet, no matter how well they go with your outfit.

onto the real blog worthy part. puteri gunung ledang the musical!! i was pleasantly surprised during the show. lets face it though, the only musical theatre experience that i have are the school musical i was involved in (lighting crew, christmas production of Oliver Twist) and the tonnes of anime derived musicals (Prince of Tennis Musicals and Bleach Musicals). it really didnt take much to pleasantly surprise me. to tell you the truth, i fell in love with the show right at the beginning when the announcer said that there'll be pyrotechnics involved.

aside the awesome fireworks, i have never seen (or heard) a man hold a note for what must've been a full minute or possibly more. that man is stephen rahman-hughes (the dude who plays hang tuah). 2 words. massive lungs. naturally, when i got home, i just had to google him. turns out, he's actually 1 and a half a person, being, according to wikipedia, "half english, half pakistani and half malaysian". bwahaha. he's awesome. anyone who's made of three halves is a tick in my book.

eeyaa~ thats enough for now. told you i'm getting old. its 1.40am and i can hardly keep my eyes open. back when i was younger, i could stay up all night and still manage to concentrate in class.

he's an imagin.

i had a dream about him two days ago.

the two of us went to some kind of matsuri and the entire dream was in japanese.

i think he was my boyfriend.

weird huh?

anyway, minna-sama,

あけましておめでとうございます <-- HAPPY NEW YEAR

v(^-^)