do not feed the zombies

you hear the door slam and realize there’s nowhere left to run
you feel the cold hand and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun
you close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination

useful information: how to made a zombie blood stained shirt

if you have not yet heard of the record breaking thrill the world dance tribute to michael jackson, then SHAME ON YOU. you know what to do now, right? go and google it up lar. duh. and make sure you see the youtube vids. they rock.

so anyway, i spent a day digging up this number from the dungeons of my old closet. it is an old shirt that accidentally went into the washing machine with a red shirt months ago and got ruined like that. and so i thought i’d pimp it up for the dance tribute. here are the results:

not bad, kan? nampak macam horror, kan? and here’s the best part: it don’t cost a thing, people. here is what you need to do to create your own zombie blood stained shirt:

• best thing is to do what i did. find a bright red shirt that bleeds. pop it in the washing machine with the shirt you want to pimp. now here’s the trick, after the spin cycle, don’t go and dry the clothes immediately. leave it in the machine overnight with all the clothes jumbled up together. depending on how bright your original red shirt is and how strong your washing detergent is, memang cofirm your baju will turn out all patchy.

• the thing is, sometimes, you don’t get the red patches where you want it to be, so resort then to plan-B. take a basin or a shallow bucket and line the bottom using the bleeding red shirt. next, pour in boiling hot water, just enough to thinly cover the shirt. then, dab parts of the shirt you want to zombi-fy into the hot water. it gets darker when you dab it longer. warning: don’t dip your whole zombie shirt in! you will simply get a pink shirt if you buat macam tu.

• to make the runny blood lines, follow plan-B. after dabbing the shirt, lift it by the collar and let the water run to the edge of the shirt. be careful at this part. you can also pour the water from the bucket onto the shirt but again, be careful. this is also an effective method to end up with a pink shirt. you want to look like a zombie. not a ballerina. a ballerina zombie – now that would be something!

• blood lines should run vertical. not horizontal. unless your zombie is… wait… hm… i got nothing. there is no reason at all for the lines to run horizontal. seriously.

• thing about using another shirt to bleed into another is that the colour tends to get slightly lighter as it dries. so you’ll have to do it several times to get dark effects. good news is, you’ll be left with layers of colours. testimony to your long and prosperous career as a zombie.

• important tip if you suddenly end yourself with a pink shirt: soak in pure hot water immediately. cross your fingers.

i will be experimenting on how to make wound marks on the shirt. will let you know how it goes. i’m thinking coffee stains. those are pretty vicious, right?

update: here’s a formula for fake blood: custard powder + the cheapest rose syrup you can find at the kedai runcit + kicap. no kidding.

i kinda like watching paint dry =)

my studio room is now a skidzoid. i just painted it, you see. the paint colour is on the purple palette when i got it mixed at the hardware shop. it came out of the can in a creamy shade of violet. that’s also how it went onto the wall. so dear friends, can someone tell me what on earth, now that the paint is dry, does it look BLUE?!

J thinks i am delusional colour blind. he tells me that the colour is clearly purple. is it just me or really does it look so distinctly blue to me? it is BLUE la, dammit!

neurolinguistic concerns

i have been detecting some phonological flaws in my speech lately. and i am not sure why. i have been detecting slur and syntax condensation especially at the end of sentences. completely unintentional. i have also been detecting some auxiliary construction errors which is kinda irritating because my grammar is perfect.

the problem is speech and not written. motor functions are okay. the linguist in me has this gut feeling that it may be neurological. i am a little worried.

it’s getting hot in here. so take off all your clothes!

i used to be able to tell for sure that malaysia has two well defined seasons: one that is wet, and one that is wetter. this was the reality for this sun-kissed country right on the equator (because i also have people asking me where malaysia is). that’s how you used to describe a tropical south east asian country – by the rain.

but things really are not the way they used to be. you have no idea how saying that makes me feel so old. but it is just a few years ago when i can say that the first half of the year is hot and the second half of the year is monsoon. and i really should not feel old about it because crazy weather changes are not supposed to happen in just a few years, right? i mean, it is one of those millions and millions of years kinda evolution kinda thing or something like that. rite?

and so, people ask me what i become concerned about the weather and the environment and carbon these past few years. and it is not something that happened over night. but suddenly, i find that if i want to go diving in july, it might rain at the east coast islands. and then there are times when i want to go to the islands in september, the corals are experiencing bleaching and so they turn white. and die. and here i am trying not to get my feet torn to shreads by broken corals.

and then there are flash floods in kuala lumpur. which means traffic jam. and i know that a lot of people blame city planning, but i bet the city planners did not count on it raining so heavily all of a sudden all year round.

but that’s what’s happening. it’s raining like crazy all year round now.

i was in europe a few months back. it was supposed to be spring. by calculation, the middle of spring to be exact. and paris rained on me. like three days straight. so much for seeing anything from the effiel tower.

and from there, i travelled to barcelona, which is just south of france and got seriously baked in the sun. it was so hot, i have not seen so many sun burnt people walking in a single town in my life. i was burnt and peeling. someone tells me that there is something weird in the weather. it is not supposed to be so hot in spring. it is summer come early. people are already heading out to the beaches. dude, if this is spring, i cannot imagine how hot it would be in the summer.

the weird weather is not easy for the traveller. it affects the nature of the entire trip. when to go. what to do. what to pack. oh my god, you have no idea how hard it is for the poor backpacker, especially, when you don’t pack the right stuff.

and so i am hosting a series of events come the end of the month. and my delegates are already asking me what the weather will be like in KL. and i would like to say that it will rain and pack your ponchos and brollys. but is it just me or has it just been ridiculously hot in KL these days? like the kind of heat that makes you want to take a shower four times a day kinda heat.

hello? rain?

so here’s the deal. even if you don’t care about the environment, you got to face the reality that all this crazy weather that we’re having is something that is so totally menyusahkan. i cannot function as well. i want to travel but all my travel plans can be washed out just like that because it is too wet or too rainy when it is not supposed to.

and i know people out there that say that it is one of those things that we cannot significantly do anything about. well friends, i would go down fighting, man. i refuse to sit here not doing anything. even if i don’t achieve anything, and really, what can one girl do to save the world, i would sleep better at night knowing that i did something. anything. and i did all i could.

and one day when my children’s children ask me what i did, i will have stories to tell them. i am a writer, see? :) stories about the places i have been and people i met. stories about all the crazy adventures i had and experiences of growing up in the 80s and living it up in the new millennium. most of all, i would be able to tell them that i tried to save the world. and i really do.

i am trying to save the world. ain’t that something.

there is enough for everybody’s need. there is not enough for everybody’s greed. ~ gandhi

in my social circles, i have been listening for months now how badly our economy has been crippled. how bad times are. how people got to tighten their belts. how companies are retrenching and jobs are hard to hang on to. bla bla bla.

and here’s what i say about it: all of you saying that the world has gone bad just don’t know what bad is. and i have a very easy way of proving this to you. go to any gerai makan or mamak or food stall or even fancy restaurant. that is how you can tell for sure. because as long as people don’t finish their food on their plates, that is as long as we are NOT in some sort of crisis.

people say times are bad, but we still put more food on our plates than we can finish. we still put too much rice. we are still greedy with our food portions. we still push away plates of half eaten food when we are done. and we continue to do this over and over again day by day by day.

seriously, man. you know how much you can handle. if you are not able to finish, then don’t take so much in the first place.

and i am not saying there is anything wrong with eating a lot. as long as you know that you can finish the food, go ahead and heap it up. nothing wrong there. i have an ex that ate rice by the mountains. i am serious. but he always finished his food. because he knew he could.

and don’t give me that crap about dah kenyang so cannot makan any more. then don’t take so much in the first place, DUH! and don’t give me that bull that you can’t help the portion. everywhere i go, i can tell the mamak or the makcik at the gerai to kurang nasi. or bagi nasi setengah. and they are too happy to oblige.

you want to know the biggest nonsense i have ever heard? when someone takes a big portion of food and claims that they nak rasa saja. just to taste? you need to take a heap of the thing and all you want to do is nibble a taste of it?!

there are one billion people going hungry in the world everyday this year. i bet you did not know that. i bet you don’t think of them when you are pushing away your half eaten plate of rice and half eaten piece of fried fish and the vegetables that you say don’t taste so nice so you won’t eat them. i bet you don’t know that more than half of the one billion hungry people in the world everyday are asians. our neighbours.

so here’s some food for thought on this rainy tuesday morning. lunch is in about two and a half hours (for some of us, anyway). think about this on your way to the cafeteria this afternoon.

i know what you did in ipoh

was away for the weekend on one of those trips you wish you did not have to come home from. good friends that i’ve known forever. good food. a car. a pool. a sauna. a freak detour to kuala kangsar. and a pit stop in gopeng.

i feel obliged to provide an explanation for the photos. but come to think about it, a lot of this pictures either cannot be explained, or i myself have not figured an explanation for yet.