"I'm Lovin' It!"

This is Nazrol. He’s my dear friend cum my karaoke buddy cum my former Boss. That’s right people! I used to work for him. I was his crew back in the days where I was scrapping grease at the back of oil filter. (Sob! Don’t ask!)

He’s also Hasmiron’s second cousin and interestingly we share the same passion – KARAOKE! Yes, though he probably "familiars" with a few more musical notes than I do, but I am still the champ in the ‘performance’ department (still unbeatable!). I guess that’s why we just clicked right away. We have such a deep admiration for each other.

So this is where he works - Equine Park Store. He’s been managing this store for quite while now - I just don’t have any freaking idea how long. For those of you who are not familiar with this area – tough luck guys, neither do I! Just Google Earth it, will ya! (But I swear it’s somewhere between Sri Kembangan dan Putrajaya

A couple of weeks ago, Nazrol called me asking for my favor and my first reaction was “u-oh!” - forgivable since he hasn’t called me for anything else except for karaoke. But as I found out later, his store was competing for Drive Through Challenge and he needed me to help him out to win the RM10,000 for the first prize.

“So what exactly do I do?”

“Use our Drive-Thru’, pay using the coupon I’ll be given to you and EAT!”

“ Just like that?”

“ Yes, and O, repeat the order until you collapsed out of dehydration and overeating“

“Cool, bring it on!”

“Bring as many friends as you can”

So I dutifully agreed - out of friendship and free lunch. And at the prospect of collapsing alone, I invited a few other friends to come over and support this event for a ‘good cause’. Guess how many came?

This hungry-looking dude is Faizal. He’s probably my most loyal and dependable friend ever!

Reena and her ‘soldiers’ looking very, very hungry

Eja and um um um her sister , or was it her cousin?

Flag off. The is the moment that we have been waiting for…

Ermmm..wearing a red wig at 12 in the afternoon is not my idea of fun afternoon. errgghh..

Things I’d do for free lunch and soft toys…arghhh…traffic jam…obviously I am not the only sucker here.



Awww...don't you think they are adorable? Of coure they are, they are free and they are MINE!

I am a sucker for free things....so back off!!

If you think this is Ground Zero, you should see my bed…NOT!

Thanks Nazrol for the free lunch and soft toys. I had a helluva time. If there was anything at all I get from this Saturday-McD-Merry-Go-Round is that I have a lot of respect for you now. Participating in this nationwide-big-deal Drive-Thru’ contest on the top of running a big, 24 hours store like that is by no mean an easy feat. Not everyone could pull it off.

Even though we lost (yes, we lost!)You should be proud of your store and the supports you get. Sometime there’s more to winning that RM10,000 prize (I really have to come back to you on that ‘what’s it?’)

And you know what, I’ll come again sometimes and next time I am paying.

I just need time to shake those 5 McChickens and 3 McFlurrys off my guts first.

Love Machine

There is something you simply can’t understand – human are not the only thing capable of love, apparently robots are too. They, surprisingly, understand the true meaning of one of the human's most prized emotions. And as weird as it sounds, that’s the whole premise of this movie.

But human’s definition of love is a little bit showy don’t u think? We need to hear those words everyday. It doesn’t matter if we mean it or even bother to really show it, we’d be just as pleased so long as we hear them all the times. ‘I love you’ is as cheap as your next sentence.

Not with robots. Wall-E and Eve (Wall-E’s crush) are not programmed to talk, well save maybe for a couple of words, like their own names or in case of Eve – ‘directive’. So it was endearing (funny even) to watch them work the odds to show their affection on each other. (aw, come on, who wouldn’t at least get misty eyes watching Wall-E flew across the universe just to be with Eve). No ‘I love you’, no ‘you complete me’ cheapos. It was so sweet and tender and yet so much believable than say, snore fest – Sembilu. Tsk!

OK. I know I might irk somebody again if I say 'this is the best movie I've seen this year so far' (like many other movies I watched before and posted my 'opinion' here) but, come on, guys, is it anyone fault if I like to check out a couple of good reviews first before I even decided to watch ANY movie at all?

Well, you know what, I LOVE this movie. In fact, it is so much more than a movie to me - it's a breath-of-fresh-air entertainment cum education. It deals with a lot of other important (and dear to my heart) issues too like recycling and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And on the top of that it really warms the cockle of my heart. So what's not to like about it?

Call me a hopeless romantic but I do believe in love. I don’t mind hearing ‘I love you’ once in a while, but to have somebody who could fly me across the universe is soo much better!

…and O, somebody who doesn’t litter too!

I Hope

We, Malaysians have long accepted the fact that we are no sporting giant – not now and probably never in the next 10 years at least. But that is not saying that we have stopped hoping. If there’s one thing I know about us is that we are just being realistic (after years of disappointments). We hardly believe in miracles but we believe in hopes. We like to dream.

The dream that someday our country will be.



Last Sunday night, I, like many other "realistic" Malaysian, watched our “golden boy” Lee Chong Wei tried to take on the giant – China’s Lin Dan. It was an emotional moment for me. There was a surge of overwhelmingly feeling of hopes and dreams. The chance has finally come by. I was ecstatic.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Our only hope for the first Olympic gold is still remained…a hope. It still pierces through my heart to think about it but I concur the time is not now. It has not come yet.

I won’t go over technical ground on why we lost - other sport pundits have already covered that - but still I think props should be given to Chong Wei. He managed to ignite a little spark of hope inside all of our hearts. After two Olympics and eight years, we finally got something more to be proud of. A silver is still a medal. A recognition of sport supremacy. There’s still a glimmer of hope.

I wish I would live long enough to witness our national anthem - Negaraku being played at an Olympic venue, as the Jalur Gemilang begins its journey up into the Heaven.

That would be the most remarkable thing I could have ever witnessed.

I can only hope.

Micheal And I

Who is Micheal Phelps?

Dumb question, I know - unless you were trapped in some time continuum, more people in the world know him by now than let's just say, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan (and I bet Micheal didn't even try 'that' hard to be in the news)

Yes, that Michael, the one who swims like a fish (a really fast one!) and collects Olympic gold medals like anyone who collects stamps!

Being an avid swimmer myself, I couldn't help but wondering what could he be doing more than I do, that I could never be as good as him. It's hurtful to watch him on the podium 8 times, while I just get to watch him on TV at home, wearing nothing but my XXL swimming trunks.

What was his motivation? Was it fame he after? His love for his country? Million dollars reward promised by US government? Or was he simply loves collecting metal things?

You know what, I should be in that podium too. I want to make my country proud. I want to prove my sceptics wrong and live up to to the true meaning of the cliche' "God has plan for everybody but you have time to change it".

OK. now I know what I really want and why I want it, but you think I still have time?



I think I do. I bet Micheal would think so too.

Cursed

Lately I have had the strangest feeling that I was cursed. I couldn’t do anything right. Everything seemed like they were about to jump on me anytime soon. It annoyed the hell out of me and it bugged me to know there’s nothing I could do about it.

Just the other day, for some unexplained, cosmic reasons I accidentally smashed my favorite bottle of perfume - by golly, I bought it just weeks ago. I was in a state of shock as I let it evaporated (both my tears and the perfume). I don’t know what did I do wrong to deserve this heart-tugging misfortune, well except for having an extremely gigantic elbow. (There, not that ‘unexplained’ after all!)

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse than that, life has its funny way to prove me wrong.

In less than 5 hours after the 'tragedy', I punctured my tire (the car!). Not terribly original, I know. I punctured my tires several times before but this, this really takes the cake - I just spent close to a small country’s GDP on all those tires less than two months ago. (Breath Mus, breath) But I think I try to be cool about it, and since my mommy told me money doesn’t grow on trees, I think I should be allowed to go nuts over this, can’t I?

Azril and Izal, the twosome saviours of my doomed 'party'.

Lately I feel terribly lonely too. I love having private moments with people that are real. I am not the social-whore kind but I believe spending quality time with friends is good for your mental health so I invited some friends over my place last weekend. It was nothing fancy but alas, embarrassingly enough, only two people showed up. Well it does say something about me does it?

Sigh.

I guess, I am indeed cursed, so instead keeping a dead body under my sofa I may just need to sit out in the dark in my dingy living room watching, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Moody doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel at this moment.

So don’t push your luck!

Unity, Respect And Patriotism

Here’s a cold hard fact: I am not a sport fan - I don’t support any sport team nor I get teary eyes every time sport legend retires. (Well, unless if you considered flipping through TV channel is a sport) So rightfully, my housemate had an X-files-type experience last Friday night when he saw me watching a ‘sporting event’.



Yeap, you guessed it, I watched Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.



OK OK I admit, I watched it for the fireworks and for the really ‘fierce’, fancy costumes but mostly because I care so much about my country – yeap, to check out those bunch of people in orange baju melayu (Not that it was hip, cool and stylish. It patently was not!)

Anyhow, the 3½ hours bonanza was awesome. And I guess few people would disagree with me if I said China deserves a pat on its back for putting such a spectacular display of their national heritage, culture and pride all for the world to see. What a grand way to gloat!

As I said before I rarely watched sport events, not really a fan, but having watched Beijing Games on TV recently really made me realized on how proud and united Chinese people in this height of the world adulation or coming-out-party-of-a-great-nation like this. Now I understand why it was such a big deal for them. They very well know that the Games will unite its people the same way it’d distract them from their every day pains. Their differences and arguments they have to deal with before in their life on a daily basis were quickly disappears as did the fireworks in the sky on the opening night. They care about their country so much to let other people outside to notice that.

That’s exactly what our country needs. Especially given our current political situation right now. The Games actually brings a new level of patriotism and national unity to its people.

Having said that, I think Malaysia should emulate China in developing their sport talents, make our athletes a world class (let them drink turtle’s blood if we must) so that we can command respect from the world over, or even, heck, bring the Olympic here in Bolehland. Yes, bid for the Games!

Gaining respect we deserve via sport from the world over is not really a bad thing. It’s better than sending our people to space or building another Twin Towers.......and a million times better than, err…letting our athletes wearing garish, striking, poke-in-the-eyes color traditional costume just to get noticed!

There I said it! Ooopsie, I may not be the biggest fan of sport but I do have eyes.

Things That Are Rare

I love Sundays ‘cause it means I got to hang out with my friends. It’s probably the only day in a week that people really spend for their loved ones and friends. And since I gave ‘Sex in the City’ a miss in my weekly weekend movies marathon, I decided to re-live my very own ‘Carrie Bradshaw’s Circle’. So we had breakfast.

It has been a while since the last time I saw Heman dan Amir so I was really looking forward to see them again yesterday.

Whenever I meet them, I can’t help comparing myself to them - gaining or losing points on that private little scoring system we all have to measure ourselves against the rest of the world. I know I shouldn’t do this. It is so often ends with my self-esteem spread in a thin layer all over the floor.

There are so many great things going-on in their life lately that I could not help but being a little jealous (I am creeping off humbled to the core but I am really happy for them). We talked about a lot of things but it wasn’t so much of what have been talked (gossiped) about but it was the time that we spent together. Times like these are rare.



People said when you had a big fight with one friend, you’d unintentionally ‘break up’ with everyone else around him as well. No matter how well you got on with the other friends it’s rare to be able to keep in touch with them after that because there are too many loaded silences and divided loyalties.

But not with Heman and Amir. They never come in between with anything like that. They are the real friends who know what loyalty is all about and that’s what I love about them.

Friends like these are rare. Really.