Journal

It is a strange world that we are living in. What is even stranger is human behavior. I mean, really, people do the silliest, most absurd things; and the best part is that we know it is stupid, but we do it anyway.

Take this for example: you would have probably heard this line before from a movie or a TV series, or you might have even uttered it yourself: "I don't care if you don't listen, but..."

That, my friends, is an oxymoron, more to the moron side. You have already acknowledged that the listener is not, well, listening; but you are going to say what you want to say anyway.

So tell me, do you think that it will be a great idea if we go jump off an airplane at an altitude of twenty thousand feet above sea level with nothing but a huge piece of canvas to break our fall? Well, millions would love to do that, the rest have already done it. It is called parachuting.

We go and watch horror films to scare ourselves silly; we experiment and invent weapons of mass destruction while promoting peace on all mankind; we yell and curse at inanimate objects and we like to look at the sky and ask for a sign, then walk away not expecting one at all.

It would be really cool, though, if one day a huge billboard drops out of the sky with words printed on it: "Well, you DID ask for a sign," quoth God.

Then we will slap ourselves and laugh ourselves silly while some will run naked on the streets declaring that the end has come upon us.

God, give us a sign.

I think that Malaysia is a really interesting place to live in; and no, I am not hinting at its politics, though that is an interesting topic all on its own.

I was eating at this Indian vegetarian restaurant just a few weeks back, and I decided to go for something familiar: a rawang dosa (slightly spiced Indian pancake), and for the gravy, I asked the waiter for dahl (peanut-based curry).

However, what arrived in a little silver bowl neither looked nor tasted like the dahl I knew. My dad, who was sitting across the table read the confused look on my face.

"That," He pointed at the curry, "Is the real dahl. The one that you normally eat is called samar with green mustard and chili, which originated from South India"

This took me a while to digest. So food is not really what it seems to be here in Kuala Lumpur. I recall eating a dish in a Chinese restaurant that looked like chicken, felt like chicken, tasted like chicken; but to my horror I discovered that I had just ingested a toad, steamed with ginger and herbs.

If that is the case, what other nonsense are we Malaysians eating? Is our lamb chop really made of lamb as the Americans know it, or is it (gasp) marinated beef in special sauce? I rushed to a Vietnamese friend of mine to share this shocking discovery. He treated me to a disk of pork to calm down. However as I ate the meat, I noticed that he was grinning like an idiot.

"What's up?" I asked, mouth full of meat.

"That," he pointed at the meat, "Is dog meat."

I am penning this down as I sit at the checkered round table at Starbucks, enjoying (choking down) a cup of nice hot (lukewarm) latte with the rain falling outside.

I have read somewhere that a cup of coffee or tea in the morning actually provides the body with more antioxidants than any other super pill is able to. A cup of black coffee gives three times the amount of antioxidants in a hundred grams of lettuce, it claims.

The article was sponsored by The Coffee Bean; no surprise there. Elder sister would have loved it though - she is one of the most avid (fanatical) coffee drinkers I have ever known in the past eighteen years of my life here on earth.

I saw her coming down the stairs at half past noon. "Good morning," I greeted her. She grunted in reply and disappeared into the kitchen, then emerged a minute later with a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

At half past one I felt my stomach grumbling. "Hey," I turned to her, "Wanna go for lunch?"

She looked at me as though I just asked her, "Hey, what do you think if we storm into NASA headquarters and declare that the earth is not only flat, it is actually yellow in color!" (as hinted by a Beatles' song about a submarine)

"I'm drinking my coffee," she said, as though she was telling me the meaning of life and all existence on earth.

Which, knowing her, could have been the truth as far as she is concerned.

Choices, choices, choices... I am wondering now which one of five topics should I use for my first writing assignment. Considered flipping a coin earlier, but it did not take long before I realized that it just does not work that way.

I looked at the topics given. "Name one thing that I would like to change in my country," the first one read. Sounds attractive (because then I will have more than enough to fill up the compulsory five pages), but it will gravitate towards a melancholic tone. Decided that it is not good.

Called up my friend on the phone. "Hey man, pick a number at random," I said, "Anywhere from one to five." "Okay, uhh," He starts, "But my lucky number is twenty six!"

"Just pick one," I said, impatient.

"Hmm," He said, "Okay, I take ten."

I sighed. "It's okay," I said, "Thanks."

"No problem, glad to help. You owe me lunch for that by the way," He said as he hung up.

That was forty cents of talk time and possibly another ten ringgit gone, and I am still heading nowhere. "Should it be made compulsory for children to learn a foreign language," I read one of the topics out loud.

It was like magic: neurons started firing impulses everywhere. I swear that my eyes went glowing white like Batman's for a while. This is good - really good - I will set myself to work immediately!

That is, right after I finish this round of Mafia Wars.

The H1N1 scare has just escalated into a whole new dimension. So much, in fact, that the World Health Organization (WHO) has pushed its status up from "Global Pandemic" to "Annoying". Gone are the days of them sitting around doing nothing while fooling the world into believing that they were searching for a cure for AIDS.

It was a cold afternoon, and I had to walk to the bus stop in the middle of a hurricane (okay, a light drizzle. In Malaysia, they are almost the same thing). I went into the bus and it did not take me long to notice that the bus driver has set the air conditioning at "arctic" level.

I could not take it. My nose twitched; I sucked in a deep breath and let out a mighty sneeze. It was as though the earth has stood still - the passengers in the bus went silent and stared at me in utter horror. I suddenly had a very disturbing image of me burning at the stake.

Then I started to wonder: why pigs? Nature could have evolved a simple crocodile into a monstrous, flesh-consuming, scaly, mighty beast (also known as a crocodile), but no! The deadliest phenomenon of the new millennium since SARS had to come from pigs! I can imagine the angels in the Deadly Pandemic Department in heaven giving each other a high-five, saying, "Yes! We did it again!"

Just think about it: The deadly incurable virus called HIV was transferred through sex; and more recently, the bird flu, has sent civilians running away in terror in all directions from a dead, harmless, skinless chicken in the wet market.

You know, I can come up with a few more suggestions for the angels up on high: cotton candy; anchovies; coconuts; traffic cones; designer label clothes and credit cards.

The credit card cut pandemic. Be afraid; be very afraid.

Lame is the new cool; believe it! The dictionary's definition of the word "lame" is 'to make a person or an animal unable to walk properly', and the world "cool" is defined as 'a temperature that is comfortably cold'.

The formality aside, the new-and-improved 21st century teenagers' revised dictionary defines "lame" as 'appalingly, irritably, immensely unfunny' while "cool" is defined as 'extremely crude, vulgar and insensitive; but I love it!'

Yes, try it! Tell a joke to any teenager; you will get three possible responses: "lame", "cool"; or he will simply stare at you with eyes and mouth half open, back hunched a little and arms hanging lazily at his sides, the new sign language for, "Go shoot yourself and spare the world of some lameness, if your intelligence allows you to do so"

It is true, as crazy as it sounds. I was telling this joke to a class once, "What did the cow say to her daughter?" I paused, waiting for them to give a wild guess. Then one of them pipped in, " 'Moo'? "

This sent the class into a full minute of self-slapping, uncontrollable laughter. "Incorrect," I said when the class has finally calmed down, "The cow said, 'Have more milk - You'll need it!' "

They looked at me, waiting for the punchline. The problem was that I have already said it.

Now I had better wrap up this writing and go into hiding before the class finds me and sets me on fire, or give me the "shoot yourself" look; whichever kills me faster.

You have no idea what I had to go through just to create a name for this blog.

Obviously it would be quite strange (not to mention confusing) if I were to name this blog jelly.chia or jellychia or chiajelly or cheahjanli (sorry, couldn't resist) because it sounds too much like the other one I have, so I decided to go with something more professional: my own name.

So I tried one that has worked for me all this while: zhenyee; and to my surprise, it was already taken! I opened a new window to check out who is that person who has taken my oh-so-original name, and it turned out to be some person who only had ONE post, and that was back in 2006. Waste of space; geez.

Then I tried going conventional and using my Chinese name: zhenye; and the results came out: "sorry, this username is unavailable."

Outrageous! Preposterous! Absolutely unthinkable! Which dim-witted vermin has taken even my Chinese name as a username?! I typed in the url, and it led me to a blog that was totally in Japanese. Grumbling, I went back to the "Create a blog" page and tried one final resort, to my utmost embarrassment, the name Jozy (Jo-zhenye; geddit?).

Well guess what? This time, the person who so casually took that username did not even have a single post on the blog! Cursing the stars, cows, and just about anything, I typed in my next suggestion without thinking: "Zyng (sounds a lot like Zing; well...)". And even THAT one was taken!

...

Finally I settled with something easy to remember and to understand; at the same time saying all that it needs to say. I tell you this, I WILL hurt the next person who takes my identity away.