etc.etera

We were having dinner at that Chinese place across campus. She looked classy in her coat. It was still light out but you could feel the cold seeping into restaurant. She was speaking when she picked up the tea. She looked classy doing that too.

When she talked she pitched and curled her sentences like no one else I knew. We talked about the movies, about food, about how her first boyfriend changed her life after they broke up. I liked that story. He broke her heart so she wrecked his Audi. She even said that the break up made her into a woman. Or rather, it made her want to start dressing up as a woman.

"I'm still the same person. I just look better now. Don't you think?"

I loved how she played it cool when she said that. I used to think that if I could get a girl to open up it meant that I was doing something right. The more stories she told me the more I wanted to be part of her life.

It was getting colder out but we kept talking. I didn't want to leave. Night comes early a few weeks before it turns to winter. She had to leave. We said our good byes and she walked through the maze of stairs behind the restaurant.

It's a small town, I'll see her again. I imagine then we'll have a great time again. Maybe then I'll tell her that she has the most beautiful fake green eyes I've ever seen. I had a thousand other things I'd like to say to her. I wish I knew then that months later we'd spend hours on the phone. I wish I knew then that I'd only see her again 5 years later in Jakarta. I wished I knew then that I'd miss her.

But that was in the future. When you're young it's easy to think that good things come by so easily. I wanted to thank you for giving me that lesson.

"Selecting A Reader" 

 First, I would have her be beautiful, 

 and walking carefully up on my poetry 

 at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, 

 her hair still damp at the neck 

 from washing it. She should be wearing 

 a raincoat, an old one, dirty 

 from not having money enough for the cleaners. 

 She will take out her glasses, and there 

 in the bookstore, she will thumb 

 over my poems, then put the book back 

 up on its shelf. She will say to herself, 

 "For that kind of money, I can get 

 my raincoat cleaned." And she will. 

   -- Ted Kooser

Ms Groovy Olives was herding ideas for her finance & economics dissertation so I gave some suggestions. Which were all quickly rejected. Why do people keep coming to me for suggestions when they don't listen to me anyways? I think they were pretty interesting ideas don't you?

• Colonial Venture Capitalists. How England and Spain managed high cost high risk ventures in the high seas of the 17th century.
• How much should I bribe my traffic cop? Figuring out the incentives and costs of corruption in Malaysia OR Why getting away with a RM5 bribe means no one gives a shit about fighting corruption.
• The pasar malam index. How to predict an impending recession by tracking the relative popularity of night markets.
• Coffee and productivity. Linking office productivity to coffee consumption OR Why giving away coffee in the office always pays for itself.
• A case study of corruption in Malaysia and how its affected business.
• Happiness and productivity. Does having a happy employee make sense? How do we measure it?

I used to hate being stereotyped. As soon as someone pegged me as a type I would just as soon do the opposite of what they expected. I love getting stereotyped nowadays. Just last week I read that Ingrid Michaelson (who I dig) got pegged as 'stereotypical Grey's Anatomy Music'. Great! Now I know where find more music I like so I went and got the soundtrack right away (I didn't dig it though). I used to hate getting called an intellectual snob. Now I reply with "Great! You know any girls like that too?". Love it when I get stereotypes to work for me.

Twitter's pretty lame without SMS notifications. Here are some stuff to try out if it still doesn't work after you've gone through the verification process.

1. Send 'on' to +447624801423
2. If you don't get a reply, log in to twitter and check to see if http://twitter.com/devices looks like this. If you see a weird ass 5 letter code instead it means you didn't finish the verification process.
   

   Device
3. Make sure you've turned on device updates on for your contacts.
   

   Sexay
4. Check to see that you have device updates set to phone. You can find this on the right side of http://twitter.com/home .
   

   D_updates

You're dead now so I don't think you're gonna mind. It was a great year for you. First there was the job offer from Santa Clara. That's like what, a 10x raise from your Penang salary? Not to mention all the cool stuff you'd be working on. You were going to move the rest of your family over to the states, start a new life, fresh beginnings and all that. Then there was the girl. You've been going after her for so long now and she finally said yes. All this was right before they called to tell you that your cancer had recurred.

You know what's tough about life? Getting blind sided like this. While all you're seeing are blue skies and bunny rabbits out of nowhere a semi comes and mows you out of the freeway. So of course you had to turn down the job offer. And while you're going through this grief the girl calls to tell you that she's leaving you for another guy.

I know you loved her and I know you tell me not to think of her this way but what type of girl would monkey swing a guy right before he dies? Bitch! I know the love hurt because you weren't even thinking about the cancer once she told you she was leaving. You were too lovelorned to even care when the doctors told you that there wasn't any point in operating because it already spread to your lungs. I couldn't forgive her but you did. Because you were that type of guy. The guy who saw things the wiser way.

The guy who saw things the funny way.

You remember that story you used to tell us about your appendicitis? You were howling with pain when they told you that you had to wait for hours before a doctor could see you. You shut up when you saw this other guy who was waiting while chewing a stack of gauze. Because all his teeth were bashed in. And that story where they had to stick a tube up your nose. Twice. Only you could tell that story.

You were always a Richard Hawkins fan but you stopped short of being an atheist because you might need some help in case the chemo didn't work. Or how about this? You had it all planned out. Once you passed away, you'd seed your best friend from high school into the next reunion.

You'd get him to ask around, "Hey do you guys remember Choen Hoe? I haven't heard from him for a while now."

"Yeah that's true, what happened to him?"

"He died!"

I laughed like hell when you told me that one. Yeah I miss you man. I miss you because I can't stop thinking of you right now. Wish the good souls were the last to go.

I'm preparing to do a map on KL highways and thought I'd share the information I've gathered so far. Experienced KLites will balk at me for not already having this information in my head, but the idea is to be able to produce an easy to read map so I don't have to think about this crap any more. Please let me know if I missed out on your favorite highway. Watch this space for more information on individual highways in the future.

KL Highways

• [2] Federal Highway (Seputeh ↔ Klang)
• [28] MRR2 (Sungai Buloh ↔ Sungai Besih)
• [E1] NKVE (Jalan Duta ↔ Klang)
• [E6] Elite (Shah Alam ↔ USJ)
• [E10] NPE (Bangsar ↔ Subang Jaya)
• [E11] LDP (Damansara ↔ Puchong)
• [E20] KL-Putrajaya Expressway (KL ↔ Putrajaya)
• [E23] Sprint (Damansara Utama ↔ Jalan Duta)
• [E37] Seremban Highway (KL ↔ Seremban)
• [E38] SMART Tunnel (Jalan Tun Razak ↔ Sungai Besi)

All information courtesy of Wikipedia.

Some notes on Murakami, since I'm too lazy to write an actual piece.

1. His protagonist is always the same guy (kinda like how Woody Allen always plays the same character). Loner, drinker, jazz and book lover. For lack of a better word I'm gonna call him the dude.
2. Although I have to admit that he makes up for it by putting the dude in pretty diverse settings. There's the dude in the future. The dude in a fantasy world. The dude owning a bar and settling down with his wife. The dude having supernatural powers in the real world.
3. The dude is almost always looking for a lost lover. Though he appears normal, he just can't find that connection with people. Whenever he does bad things tend to happen.
4. He loves to write about women. Or more specifically, he loves to write about encounters with women. I'm pretty sure I'm hooked on him because this.
5. A girlfriend introduced him to me via South of the Border, West of the Sun because I was bored in her tiny bedroom. I've been hooked ever since.
6. In another relationship, we split up in a book store to get our own books. When we met up at the cashier we discovered that I'd bought the English version of Sputnik Sweetheart while she bought the Chinese version of Kafka on the Shore.
7. You could say that I've only dated Murakami lovers.
8. Norwegian Wood made me depressed for an entire month.
9. I can still picture all the endings. They were all memorable and left a big impression. They were also pretty depressing.
10. Random stuff that's managed to stay in my mind (years after I've read them): The dude shadowing a girl he thinks is his true love. The dude finding out that a girl he dumped ended up as a cat lady. The girl finishing up a huge meal that the dude cooked up. The girl and the dude chatting in a day bar. The dude getting aroused by the cut and the form of the girls uniform. I think I should stop now, this could go on forever.
11. I don't think its possible to make a good movie out of his books. I'm glad I haven't had a chance to see one yet.
12. Weirdest reference to Murakami I found was in a graphic novel called The Aviary. The hooker there talks about shoveling pornographic snow. A pretty vague reference (I admit) to something the dude said in Dance, Dance, Dance

Update 12/5/2008: Added a few more notes, shown in italics.
Update 22/5/2008: Added #12