sixthseal.com

Boo fucking hoo and cry me a river of tears

I'm blogging from one of the net access centers at the C terminal at KLIA which costs RM 1 per minute. Yes, I'm going back to Melbourne already. :( Unfortunately, I get to spend my New Years Eve on a plane. Anyway, I'm pretty bummed about all of this coz I had hoped for a 3 or 4 month holiday in Sibu. I knew it wasn't possible though coz I still have to do my Industrial Experience and I'm taking a summer course in 6 days. Oh well, too bad, coz I had wanted to spend more time in Sibu. Now I can't even spend Chinese New Year in Sibu! I had heaps of fun during my one month break though. Anyway, I didn't get to blog yesterday because my hard disk decided to die on me so I couldn't use my computer at all. Have a happy new year everyone...

Posted in by Huai Bin at 08:31 PM Permalink | Comments (2)

Pop Pop

Anyone remember these things? I came across a box today and had fun reliving my childhood. I remember playing with these when I was 5 or 6 years old, that was all I was allowed to have during Chinese New Year. I think I only got to play with the big firecrackers and fireworks when I reached Primary 4.

Posted in Interesting by Huai Bin at 06:50 PM Permalink | Comments (6)

Wherever I May Roam...

Something happened this afternoon at about 3 pm in Jalan Channel in front of the market. I don’t know exactly what, but there were a lot of gawkers staring as paramedics pushed someone into the ambulance. As I stopped to take a photo, a swarm (swarm = about 10 policemen on 5 motorbikes) of policemen descended upon my illegally parked car and made “move along now, nothing to see here” gestures so I had to leave. It’s probably an accident, but if it’s anything more interesting, it would make the papers tomorrow anyway.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 08:01 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Tasik Biru

I went to this lake yesterday but didn’t have time to write it up until today. It’s this natural (that’s what I heard) lake a couple of minutes down the road from the Sibu Hospital. There aren’t any signs pointing to this lake and it seems to be a word of mouth thing. You have to turn down an unmarked dirt road until you pass a wooden house and the lake is to the right of the house. It’s the only house down that dirt road, so you won’t miss it. The lake looks greenish to me (Tasik Hijau?) but it really is quite pretty and peaceful.

There are a lot of interesting formations near the lake, and several hills made of clay. I went with a couple of friends and we just sat on a hill overlooking the lake, singing songs as loud as we could. Nice place to go to if you want to just chill out or something.

Posted in Travel by Huai Bin at 07:59 PM Permalink | Comments (2)

Christmas Present!

I got a belated Christmas present from my girlfriend today. :) It's a box of Ferrero Rocher and a card.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 05:24 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Shoo

My poor, worn out shoes. I've been wearing this pair almost exclusively ever since I went to Melbourne (about two years ago) and sadly, it appears to be reaching the end of it's lifespan. A significant chuck of my left shoe decided to detach itself from the main sole as I was playing snooker today. Less than 10 minutes later, the detached part completely fell off. Fortunately, there is still a thin sole underneath so I wasn't exactly walking with just my socks. Still...it's high time to go shopping for a new pair of shoes. This one has served me well, I had walked many, many kilometers with this pair. Goodbye, orange sneakers and take care.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 05:20 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Rantau Panjang, haircuts and Lan Lan

Rantau Panjang. A place 30 minutes from Sibu with a river, a row of long houses beside the river, driftwood accumulating on the river bank and erm…and that’s basically it. What is there to see there? Nothing basically, but there is a wooden bridge leading to a hut where there are seats and I hear watching the sun set over there is pretty good. I went there this evening with a couple of friends to just chill out and talk for a while.

Anyway, I got my haircut tonight at Alan’s Hair Salon (the branch at Pulau Babi) and it’s a pretty good place actually. They even have a courtesy cup of tea for you (complete with a top to avoid hair falling in, no less) and a haircut only comes to RM 10 so that’s pretty good value for money. After the haircut, we had a late supper at the Sibu Jaya food court (I didn’t even know there was one there) and then went to the Sibu airport for a while to use the toilet. The next itinerary was the hospital where we saw a couple of guys in very bad shape (visible cuts with congealed blood and all) being stretchered out by an overworked warden who had to push a guy in a wheelchair with one hand and pull a guy on a stretcher with another. I also saw a lot of people setting out rattan mattresses and sleeping on the floors of the hospital. State funded hospitals are depressing. I had a very bizarre day though, what a range of places we went to.

Posted in Travel by Huai Bin at 03:27 AM Permalink | Comments (7)

"Carry On"

Heh. My friend told me an anecdote about what happened to him last night. The time was 2 am, and there he was, making out with his girlfriend in her car at the abandoned old Sibu airport opposite the Stadium. That is one of the three most popular make out spots in Sibu. The other two are Bukit Aup and the Stadium carpark. Anyway, the thing that happened was: In the middle of their make out session, his girlfriend noticed someone or something outside the car. The scenario at this point: He was kissing and hugging his girlfriend, with both the front car seats down and he was on top of her. I don’t know why he felt compelled to provide me with all these details, but oh well. Anyway, his girlfriend stopped suddenly and said there was someone outside the car and he/she has been there for quite a while. My friend and his girlfriend then sat up and immediately, the guy outside shined a flashlight into the car and motioned for them to roll down the windows. The guy outside didn’t introduce himself and just asked my friend for hic I.C. (Identity Card – everyone in Malaysia has one).

My friend asked the guy outside whether he was a policeman and asked to see some ID coz he didn’t look like a policeman with a casual jacket and no uniform. The guy outside replied with “tengok kereta itu” which translates to “look at the car behind you”. Sure enough, there was a authentic police car there, sirens and yellow stripes and big white POLIS fonts stenciled to both sides. Anyway, my friend produced his I.C. and the policeman squinted at it for a while and asked for his girlfriend’s I.C. The policeman squinted at it for another second and passed both the I.C.s back and said “Carry On”. Hahaha! I laughed myself to tears when he told me that story. I would have thought that it would violate some law to make out in a parked car at an abandoned airport. Disturbing the peace or something, but apparently there is no such law in Malaysia. It’s funny that the police car sneaked up upon them without him realizing. Apparently, policemen frequent these spots coz he said he saw the same police car pulling in again as they left soon afterwards. Oh man. The funniest thing was what he said the policeman had said – “Carry On” (in English no less!). Heh. I’m still laughing as I type this…it soooo funny for some reason. Carry on indeed. LOL.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 07:20 PM Permalink | Comments (5)

Christmas Eve 2002

My night out started with a bang so to speak. I headed out at around 8 pm with Johnny, Ting Chuan and Christopher in search of something to eat. As we were nearing town, we saw this big plume of smoke near the town center. We headed over to investigate and was caught in a terrible traffic jam that took us damn near an hour to get out of. There was a big fire at Tong Sang Road and there was a lot of gawkers and the police blocked off one stretch of road, resulting in the traffic jam. Actually a traffic jam doesn’t do the situation justice, a better word would be gridlock. I didn’t get near enough to get a good photo, this is the best one I could get:

The final toll was 20 houses burned down in the blaze, they were all wooden so the fire spread fast and hard. The papers said 180 people were left homeless by this. What bad luck to have this happen on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, we headed to McDonalds after that for our Christmas Eve dinner coz it was pretty late by that time already. I had Bubur Ikan McD, a coke float and a toffee sundae. This is my Christmas Dinner:

Grand, ain’t it? ;) We went to 1 Q after that to play a couple of games of snooker and then Christopher had to go home so we sent him home and we arranged to meet Thai Ling, Alan and Ku Ling at Liquid where Diana and the rest are. Unfortunately, the tickets were all sold out and they couldn’t let any more people in coz the place was full. We then decided to go to the Paramount disco (Happy Valley) instead coz it was closer and the countdown was about to start. I saw my cousin there, apparently he’s now working in the Paramount kitchen. I also saw Wan Wen and her friend. We met Chew Yieng (her dad is one of the major shareholders of Paramount) inside the disco and she bought us all a round of brandy. I had a couple of beers too and we stayed there until well past midnight. There was this old guy on the dance floor who was really going hard out. Heh. Everyone cheered for him, you go dude!

Part of the original group

Anyway, we headed to Pool House after that, but the ambience was not really conducive to a Christmas Eve party (they were singing karaoke there), so we headed over to Liquid again and found out that the crowd has thinned out a bit so we went in. We met Diana and I also saw Jane, who was there with her group of friends. The music there was pretty good and I met a lot of people who I used to know but have since lost touch with. There also was this girl who was dancing and offered everyone her glass of water. Thanks! That was great for ambience. It made things more like an MDMA-fuelled rave. :) Alan or Thai Ling (forgot who) bought us another round of drinks and we stayed there till the venue slowly emptied.

The rest of the guys wanted to head home, and I had another bunch of friends who were at Heaven and I thought about joining them, but it was late at that time and so we decided to call it a night. We had a late supper at Taman Selera (it was still open) and then headed home. All in all, it was a great night. Good friends, alcohol and the festive season goes nicely together. :) Merry Christmas!

Posted in by Huai Bin at 04:05 PM Permalink | Comments (10)

Pill review - Orange AK47s

Pill Review: Orange AK47 circa December 2002

Availability: Malaysia
Pill color: Light orange with white blotches
Pill appearance: AK47 imprinted on one side/raised dome on the other side
Beveled?: Beveled edge on the dome side/none on the imprinted side
Other: Seems to be a nicely pressed pill, packed tightly
Price: RM 45
Substance: Not tested (I don't have reagents here)
Probable substance: Ketamine

Forgive the poor quality of the side and back shots. It’s very time consuming to get sharp close-up pictures without a scanner, so I only bothered with the front (imprinted side) coz that’s where the detail is anyway.

Front view - has “AK47” imprinted

Side view - kinda looks like a bullet with its dome on one side

Back view - has a dome with a beveled edge

Trip report:
I crunched up the pill at 10:20 pm before heading to a Christmas Eve countdown party with a couple of friends. The pill was only slightly bitter with a strange salty undertang that made me retch more than a couple of times. Ugh. I had a light meal about two hours ago and didn't feel the pill until about 45 minutes later. I didn't even feel it particularly strongly, I was still feeling slightly tired then. I didn't really feel speeded up, but had enhanced confidence and didn't feel like talking. I supplemented the pill with some alcohol and felt really good after that. Danced for long time but didn't feel particularly speeded up (got tired easily) and by the end of the night felt rather exhausted but I still danced anyway. It might have been a bunk pill (had good company and alcohol so I would have had fun anyway) or a weak ketamine pill. Another thing worthy of note is that I could sleep about 6 hours after I dropped, so this is definitely not (meth)amphetamines. The sleep was fitful, but restful. Sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. :) By the way, this pill was sold as a "can sleep pill" (usually ketamine) as opposed to a "cannot sleep pill" (amphetamines). Is it worth the money? I paid RM 45 (RM 40 - RM 50 seems to be standard for single pills around my part of town) for it so I don't think so. If it was a strong speed pill like the legendary green apples (ching ping guo) circa 1997 it would have been worth it. I would not have chosen a ketamine pill for a big night out. Had I know it was ketamine, I would have insufflated (snorted) it for better returns. Nevertheless, I had a great night anyway - the company of good friends and a great party atmosphere, and that's all that counts right? Merry Christmas everyone.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 11:04 AM Permalink | Comments (5)

Good tidings we bring...

I'll be heading out tonight for dinner and then I'll be at the UCA disco till the wee hours of the morning. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and party safe.

Link:
The Erimin-5 clarification post

Posted in by Huai Bin at 06:19 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Eureka!

I made a trip report not long ago about Kai Sing Guo (Fruit of Happiness) [sixthseal.com] but I did not know what it was then. I've since found out that it is Nimetazepam, a benzodiazepine. I had suspected it was a benzo then. Heh. The tablet I got is the brand name Erimin tablets, otherwise known as Erimin-5 which contains 5 mg of Nimetazepam. How did I find this out? I have been reading the news lately and saw a lot of drug busts involving methamphetamines, ketamine and Erimin-5 tablets. Puzzled as to what this Erimin-5 thingy was, I did a Google search and found out that it is Nimetazepam. Put this URL:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/SweetHome/3509/drugs/minzai/erimin.html

thru the Bablefish [altavista.com] to translate from Japanese -> English and you get this tidbit of information:

Characteristic condition
Color * medicine shape
Element lock of light orange
Size
Diameter approximately 8mm
Identification code
@ 028/5
General name
ニメタゼパム
Nimetazepam

If you look at my pictures, that is exactly the same imprint code (028/5) and color. This is further supported by the fact that there has been a lot of busts of these pills in the Singapore/Malaysia region lately (indicating supply). What I'm puzzled about is why people would want to pay RM 15 for one of these when you can get 5 mg of Xanax (alprazolam) for the same price? However, Nimetazepam does seem to be slightly more euphoric. I'm glad I took it though, coz Nimetazepam is one of the rarer benzodiazepines. Okay, mystery solved. :)

Updates:

More Erimin (nimetazepam) posts and pictures on castitas.com

Another experience report on Erimin 5 [castitas.com]

Nimetazepam vs nitrazepam qualitative dosage equivalency [castitas.com]

The misguided beliefs surrounding Erimin, also contains photos of slabs (10 packs) of Erimin-5 [castitas.com]

Posted in by Huai Bin at 04:05 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Victor/Nicky Chung Concert @ KDU

I arrived at KDU for the Victor/Nicky Chung (both Malaysian artists) concert at around 7:15 pm to find the car park full, cars circling around and yet more cars streaming in. I saw a small space at one side and pulled into the spot, wondering why no one had parked there. Upon opening the door, I found the reason - alighting would be a problem since both sides of the cars were surrounded by very deep water due to the heavy rain.

Oh well, after circling some more, I finally squeezed into a spot near the main gates. I went into the auditorium and sat near the front waiting for the show to start. The auditorium was pretty full at the time I arrived and there was a stand selling flowers meant to be given to the artists. I found that strange and rather disturbing.

Well, there ware a couple of speeches and some ribbon cutting at the beginning. This was a charity concert which was meant to raise money for two churches. I think a total of RM 75,000 was raised. Anyway, after the ribbon was cut, there was an explosion of graffiti. I was sitting there thinking that this would be a very nice place for a rave should there be a speaker farm like the ones at the front every 5 meters.

Anyway, the show started with a performance by some KDU students. It was a choreographed dance, and it was pretty good actually. I moved right to the front of the stage where the VIPs and press were, and camped straight in front of the stage for the rest of the concert. Heh. No one stopped me.

After the 3 minute performance, Nicky Chung was introduced and he belted out a couple of songs with several costume change in between. There was some audience participation after that, with three audience members invited to come on stage for a bit of fun and games. That involved getting the three to attempt to speak clearly while having their mouths filled with mineral water. I know the first girl said "Nicky Chung, ni hen suai". Heh.

The crowd was then to judge which participant was the best by cheering loudly. The first girl and the third guy all got good cheers but the second one got a lot of boos for some reason. Nevertheless, all of them left with the same prize.

In the middle of the third song, Nicky Chung got out a stack of postcards and started giving them away. Now, this prompted a swarm of cheering fans to the front of the stage in an effort to get one. I was camped right in front of the stage so I got trampled a couple of times. Ouch.

The RELA members (RELA = a local crowd control/bouncer group) was slightly panicked by this apparent breach of security and immediately started pulling people away from Nicky and herded them back to the seats. I told them I was the KDU magazine photographer (you gotta do what you gotta do) and no one asked me to go behind the barrier after that. Heh.

Anyway, after Nicky Chung did his 3 (4?) songs, the KDU dance group came out again and did another performance. This one was nicely choreographed as well and the girls and guys all looked pretty good. I had a *cough* good vantage point since I was still camped out in front of the stage. I didn't have a seat so I was kinda kneeling on the floor and I had an…ah, pretty low vantage point. ;) I actually enjoyed the choreographed dances more than the two singers coz I don't listen to Nicky Chung or Victor.

Anyway, Victor came out after that to plenty of cheers and he sang a couple of songs. I didn't stay till the end of the set though. I left early and went to watch LOTR: The Two Towers with a couple of my buddies. Now that movie was amazing, I loved every part of it. The scene where the elves came to help defend the keep was a personal favorite. I'm a sucker for scenes like that. However, I found the massive (epic!) battle at Helm’s Deep the highlight of the show. I almost wetted my pants, it was that damn good.

Posted in Events by Huai Bin at 06:18 PM Permalink | Comments (2)

Faster than a speeding bullet

I was driving to KDU's campus to see the Victor/N Chung concert when this fuckwit in a green Proton Iswara decided that I had superhuman reflexes that allows me to go from 70 kmph to 0 kmph in 2 seconds flat on a rainy day when the roads are slippery. Luckily, unbeknownst to me, I really DID have that ability even though it was dusk at that time and the rain made visibility really poor. Hurray for me.

This scene happened on a stretch of road with a gap in the road divider for U turns, and the driver of the green Iswara was planning to do just that, but he/she stopped suddenly instead of slowing down and using the signal lights, which is what non-fuckwits do. Anyway, I managed to avoid colliding into the car, so all is well right? On any other day, that statement would hold true, but on a rainy day, these things have a way of compounding and affecting other drivers on the road.

As I was liberally applying my horn to voice my displeasure at the driver's fuckwitted-ness, I heard a very particular screeching of tyres which could only mean a certain collision or a very near miss. With some trepidation, I looked into my rear view mirror and saw this Land Cruiser careening towards me at a speed which could not possibly stop before it hit me. No fucking way in hell.

It was getting bigger and bigger in my rear view window and it still wasn't slowing down anywhere near enough to avoid a collision. I'm glad I had another superpower - Thinking Really Fast. Okay, maybe that's not really a superpower but still... The fuckwit in the green Iswara has still not made the U turn due to heavy traffic on the opposite side, so I twisted my steering wheel to the left as far as it would go and really stepped on the accelerator. I figured, if I hit the green Iswara, it would just be on the side of the bumper, but if that Land Cruiser hit me, it sure would not have been pretty.

Miraculously (there wasn’t enough space), I squeezed by the Iswara without hitting its bumper and the Land Cruiser screeched to a halt wayyyyy past the Iswara (the driver must have swerved as well). That meant the Land Cruiser would have hit me (and not lightly at that) had I not made the gamble to hit the gas and squeeze by at that crucial moment. Oh well, disaster averted. I'll write up the concert tomorrow, feeling really blah now. Release serotonin please.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 03:06 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Annual Christmas Procession 2002

Did I die and go to heaven? ;)

Our town has a history of having a Christmas street parade every year. This year's had a praise and worship thing going on before the actual parade and was held at the Sibu town square. I went there at around 7 pm with Ting Chuan.

Silent night, holy night.

There weren't many floats around this year though, there used to be heaps and there was a competition to see which one was the best. I don't know if they still have that competition going on, but there wasn't a lot of floats around.

The drivers of the floats actually need guides to navigate.

The crowd watching the procession.

Anyway, after the church service was over, the procession started with a float followed by several walking groups and then another float and so on.

Cherubic mascots on a boat float.

A float mounted on a trishaw.

The back of a float.

Ghetto.

A float with a nativity scene.

There were groups of various denominations and churches. There were a lot of bands which are affiliated with church groups too like the Boys Brigade and the Girls Brigade, to name a few.

A very satanic looking Santa Claus with huge heart shaped testicles giving everyone the finger.

I also stumbled upon my church's (Wesley Methodist Church) group and one of the lay leaders invited me to join their entourage. I didn't feel like walking though, just wanted to take a couple of photos, so I declined. I also saw my ex-college's group who was also part of the procession. I saw Remy, someone I haven't seen in several years. We used to talk a lot in college and it's good to see her again.

Remy and myself.

Anyway, going back to the floats, there was two in particular that stood out. One had a giant TV screen showing Christmas carol movies complete with karaoke style lyrics at the bottom. The other had several girls dressed as angels standing on the float, which we all agreed were aesthetically pleasing. Hmm…am I talking about the float or the angels?

A closer look at one of the angels.

There was also a massive police presence to provide crowd control and several streets were closed off to traffic to make way for the procession. There was this group with children carrying balloons. On a whim, I stopped one cute little girl who didn't look more than 6 years old who had two balloons and asked her for one, and she gave one of hers to me. hehehe Thanks dear!

Well, we were standing near the exit of the town square so we managed to see the procession first. It wasn't really long, perhaps the whole parade took 25 minutes.

Cute.

Frilly.

There was something nice that happened though. A pretty girl dressed as an angel who was giving out sweets gave me one. I was pretty surprised as they only gave those to children so I looked up and who did I see but Alice Lim! She's from my high school, I was in Form 5 when she was in Form 1, but I know her from seeing her pass by my father's office every day to get the record attendance book (she was the class monitor). It's good to see her again and I'm glad she still recognizes me.

Alice in the parade.

Anyway, after the procession, we walked around Wisma Sanyan for a while and came out the other side only to find the procession winding up there. We joined and walked with the procession for a while and I gave my balloon to a balloon-less little girl standing in the crowd. She was shy and her mom told her to say “thank you”. Heh. That’s my good deed for the day. My car was blocked by the procession, so we had to wait for a while until all the groups have finished. I did see Alice again though when the parade came back around and snapped a pic, and she said Merry Christmas. :)

This is a clearer picture of Alice taken 6 months ago.

Posted in Events by Huai Bin at 05:32 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Setting the record straight

Okay, I’m so fucking pissed off right now it’s not even funny. I happened to chat with someone in IRC (identity withheld for privacy reasons) and she told me that she has heard a lot of bad things about me. I seem to be a popular topic of discussion among the locals here last time due to the fact that my father is the principal of one of the biggest schools in town and God knows there was a lot of juicy gossip going around when I came back from New Zealand during 1996/1997 to do my Form 5. Happens a lot in small towns. I usually don’t mind, but this particularly nasty rumor is so untrue and unlike my nature that I feel compelled to write about it.

MPI = Methodist Pilley Institute (my ex-college)

Snippet of an edited (removed off topic stuff) IRC chat log with nick removed:

< > u study at mpi b4?

yeah i was in mpi before
you too?

<> mpi student complain about u

complain about wat?

< > u copy their assign
< > hehehehe
< > u realy nakal ho

eh
i didn't copy
that girl gave it to me willingly
its different
:p

< > they say u smart in pc.. can hang in other pc.. then copy their assign..

okay now that is really not true
i never copied anyone's assignment before
but a girl did give me her project

< > now i know the answer..
< > they lie..

but i know a lot of mpi ppl hate me
coz i easily pass the imis exam
but they had to take it a lot of times

< > luckily 2nite the god let us meet here... and u explain .. the true..

and i was quite arrogant, saying it was easy etc
so i know a lot of ppl dun like it

Here’s the thing that happened. (referring to the part where I said the girl gave it to me willingly). There is an exam called IMIS which has 6 modules and one of them is a project which is graded internally (ie by MPI instead of the UK IMIS body). The project module only has 6 different types of questions. One of the 3rd year girls which I know did the same one two years ago and she offered her past project. She said it’s okay if I modified the code and passed me the diskette the next day. I couldn’t make sense of the code and the girl spent a lot of time helping me to modify it, including once on the day before it was due where she had to drive to a cyber café in Wisma Sanyan to finish everything for me. I feel really bad about never getting to thank her properly (what an asshole I am) but I don’t consider this cheating. I wanted to buy her dinner at least, but she won’t hear of it, saying that she’ll accept only when I pass, but by the time the results were out, she has graduated. If you happen to read this, you know who you are. THANK YOU! I mean it.

Now moving on to the cheating issue, I have never cheated or "copied anyone’s assignment". I don’t need to. I don’t mean to be an arrogant fuck but EVERYONE was worse that me in my batch. I would have failed my sorry ass if I were to copy their assignment (which I wouldn’t do for moral reasons). I didn’t even care about the internal exams, ask any lecturer who had taught me. I didn’t care about failing the internal exams and didn’t do any work besides disrupting the class because all I needed was the IMIS external exam to apply to Monash University. A lot of people resent me because I passed everything with only one try with Credits and Distinctions. On the other hand, a lot of the people in my batch had problems with English and while they could rote memorize the textbook, they just couldn’t express themselves and couldn’t answer questions that even slightly deviated from textbook examples. I admit I went around swinging my dick and talking about how easy the IMIS exams were and how I got good grades without even studying (I actually only studied the day before the exams) and it’s easy to see how people can resent that considering they had to put in a lot of work plus they have the language barrier to overcome.

I know I shouldn’t let it get under my hair like that, but I can’t help it.

People can say that:

1. I used to take drugs (but I’m NOT saying that I still do).

2. I got kicked out of high school in New Zealand for truancy and disciplinary issues.

3. I hung out with "congregations" of people who wouldn't be considered model citizens in NZ and Kuching.

because those are true

People can’t say that:

I cheat

I’ll never do that, I’ll rather take a fail than cheat. The two times I’ve cheated on exams in my life was:

1. Changing the spelling of Paleolitic to Paleolithic in my Form 1 history test which the teacher asked us to correct ourselves by exchanging it with the person beside us. I asked my neighbour to give it back discretely and rubbed off the wrong spelling and corrected it. The guy behind me (forgot whether it was Raymond or Xavier) immediately said "hor cikgu, Huai Bin tukar jawapan" which translates to "teacher, Huai Bin is changing his answer". The teacher didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I was so scared she would tell my parents. That was the first day of our prefect duty and we needed to stand in front of the other students during assembly. I can still remember a guy commenting that I looked scared and he thought I had stage fright but it was really because of the exam answer thing. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind (no kidding) for several years. I would think about it and get depressed and go outside and make myself fall down to scrape my knee to get my mind off it. Oh, and I used to stuff my whole fist into my mouth when I got anxious about the teacher telling my parents. It hurts because you need to really open up your jaw to do that, but it gets your mind off things. There was one time when I was with my father to get some groceres and I met my Form 1 history teacher and I soooooo wanted to get away I nearly cried and made up an excuse that I had a really bad stomachache. Thinking back, it was stupid to get so anxious and depressed over something like this, but my parental upbringing tells me this is a Very Serious Offence TM and I was afraid of what my parents would do when they found out.

2. This was in Form 3 and we had another History test. I had a crush on this girl called Winnie and she didn’t study the 4 chapters that would be in the exam today. So she made up a plan where she would study one chapter, Sing Ling would study another, Raymond would study another and myself would study another so effectively the four hive minds would know every answer to the questions. I didn’t want to do it, but I was infatuated with her at that time so I agreed. How did we cheat? We were sitting together and we used a mixture of hand signals and feet tapping and outright lip synching to communicate. :)

I just got off the phone with a friend and she told me that being angry about something like this is rather immature coz it’s not worth getting your panties all in a twist over something you can’t control - like what other people say. Perhaps that’s true. However I did spend a lot of time typing this so I’m going to post it anyway. Thank you, loyal reader, for reading this rant and have a nice day.

Oh, because of this rant, I haven't finished the annual Sibu Christmas parade write-up + pics that happened today. I'll do that when I when I wake up tomorrow. Damn those fuckwits for spreading those rumors and taking up so much of my time to write this instead of the parade write-up.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 05:54 AM Permalink | Comments (2)

Scattered as fuck

Oh man I haven't laughed this hard about something for ages. :) I was driving my car and got a cigarette out and opened my window. I searched around my pockets for my lighter, lit the cigarette and threw the lighter out of the window (!). It was sooooooooooo funny I had a laughing fit for 2 full minutes, complete with tears and real belly laughs. hahaha! My friend, who didn't see the incident, was puzzled by my apparently unprovoked mirth. It might not be funny to everyone, but it cracked me up to no end coz it reminded me of the last time a similar thing happened. That was a couple of years back, I had bought a new pack of Marlboros, got one out and offered the pack to my companion. She took one, and threw the nearly full pack out of the window! hahaha! That was so funny, and we had laughed so hard I nearly crashed into a lamp post. She didn't know what possessed her to do that, but thought it was because her mind suddenly thought that the pack was already empty. I didn't know what I thought when I threw the lighter out today, but I'm glad it happened coz I haven't laughed so hard while not on cannabis for a long time. It sure feels good to REALLY laugh. :)

BTW, I've noticed myself making silly mistakes like typing "I'm" instead of "I've" and "anyway" instead of "anyone". Possible brain damage or just scattered as fuck? I wasn't like that before.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 12:37 AM Permalink | Comments (2)

The Bell Curve Cocktail

OMG I did a very, very stupid thing this morning. I went to my usual pharmacy to get some diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax) and incidentally asked if they happen to have Phensedyl, GHB or worst of all, ketamine (!!!). Oh, the stupidity. The pharmacist really looked at me ONE KIND when I asked about ketamine. I felt like kicking myself for asking about ketamine. I hope this doesn't change our relationship. It would be too bad if I lost my only benzo source.

Anyway 50 mg of diazepam (Valium) + 600 mg of caffeine + 2.5 mg alprazolam (Xanax) seems pretty fun. It was taken in that order (diazepam, caffeine, alprazolam). Perhaps it could be a cheap alternative for a bit of fun if funds happen to run low.

Veritas's el-cheapo recipe for getting high:

Recipe name: The Bell Curve cocktail (TM)

Ingredients:
50 mg diazepam (Valium)
600 mg caffeine
2.5 mg alprazolam (Xanax)

Cost:
Diazepam (Valium) @ 50 cents for every 5 mg tablet = RM 5
Caffeine pills (No-Doz) comes to about 25 cents each 100 mg = RM 1.50
Alprazolam (Xanax) @ RM 7.50 for a 2.5 mg blister pack = RM 7.50

Total cost: RM 14 or A$ 7

Modify dosage according to personal tolerance.

It's pretty fun if you have nothing better lying around. It's like feeling mellow at the beginning, stimulated and pumped up at the middle, and nice and nodding off towards the end. The best aspects the benzo and caffeine shines through. It starts out really mellow and after the caffeine kicks in it feels very stimulating and the euphoria comes in waves and yet there is no "caffeine fatigue" and there is no anxiety which can happen with larger doses of caffeine. After a while, you start popping a 0.25 mg Xanax pills every 10 minutes or so after you've enjoyed the stimulating caffeine. I think it feels better that way instead of eating all the Xanax all at once. I'm eating them like candy. Mmm...very funny feeling. Started out relaxed and anxiety free and chilled out, then peaked on a caffeine high and then slowly progressed to a pleasant nodding off stage. I had a feeling of being slightly drunk, felt heavy and uncoordinated (stumbling), but in a pleasant euphoric sense, during the trip. Highly recommended (and won’t damage your wallet too much) if you don't have any alternatives.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 09:22 AM Permalink | Comments (8)

Ramly Burger

I love the Ramly Burger stalls that makes those homemade burgers. Well, the patties are obviously not homemade, the burgers just tastes that way. After eating the usual McDonalds/Burger King in Melbourne, it's good to have one of these again. Mmm...it just tastes so homely. Burger ayam special satu!

Posted in by Huai Bin at 02:12 AM Permalink | Comments (4)

China Seas and China Candy

I woke up really early today and got some breakfast and went to Bukit Aup with my girlfriend to walk around before she took the afternoon flight to KL.

This is a picture of us making sad faces at the digicam.

Anyway, she’s currently on a plane flying over the South China Sea (if I got my geography right). I love you dear and take care in KL. Me? I’m sitting in my room, eating candy my parents got from their trip to China that looks like it has been wrapped in intricate colored wrappings but is actually peanut candy coated with a shiny sugar layer which makes it look like a wrapper, but is actually not.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 02:58 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Of mice and men...

I woke up feeling rather bummed, and the cat, sensing my less than stellar mood, made a motherly sounding meow and produced a dead mouse (sans head) and put it in front of me. Perhaps it thought I was hungry and wanted to share her personal stash of food. I apologize for saying "bad cat". Force of habit. Thanks for sharing.

My girlfriend will be heading to KL tomorrow afternoon. She's going to continue her course there. 11771554.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 09:46 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Pavlova Magic

I made a Pavlova [users.bigpond.net.au] today from one of those egg shaped instant mixes called Pavlova Magic. A Pavlova is a dessert popular in Australia and New Zealand. I got it from Melbourne before I came back and finally got around to baking it with my girlfriend today. It was pretty easy and fool proof to make, there was a packet with the Pavlova mix in the egg and an instruction sheet. Basically, I just filled the bottom part of the shell with luke warm water and the top part of the shell with caster suger and mixed it all together. The instruction sheet has a lot of strange instructions in BOLD like “turn the cake mixer to full speed for ONE MINUTE ONLY” and “put the resulting mix into the oven and TURN THE HEAT DOWN TO 110 c IMMEDIETLY”. Whatever.

We didn’t have a cake tray so we just dumped the mix into a baking tray and shoved it into the oven. The Pavlova turned out pretty good though. It was crispy-ly sweet at the bottom and nicely aerated in the middle and wonderfully sweet and creamy at the top. However, there was a lot of sugar syrup at the bottom of the Pavlova. I wonder if that’s meant to be?

Wow, am I domesticated or what? ;)

Posted in Food by Huai Bin at 01:02 AM Permalink | Comments (10)

An ode to my dear friend Johnnie

My poor dying brain cells
Deprived of oxygen, they starve
I can't breath, they scream
Distilled, blended and bottled in Scotland

Posted in by Huai Bin at 12:41 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Together Tea House

I went out with the guys today to Together Tea House. It's the one behind Methodist High School (my alma mater). It has been open for a couple of months, but I haven't been there before. You have to take off your shoes before entering the place and you sit around a very low Japanese style table.

Interestingly, there is a pit under the table, so you can sit normally and put your feet into the pit if you want, or you can just sit cross legged on cushions.

The food was okay, but nothing to write home about. I had the Heng Hua fried bee hoon (rice vermicelli). I'm Heng Hua but puzzlingly, this is the first time I've heard of a Heng Hua style fried bee hoon. :) Anyway, we also had some kind of sushi which was alright. I had a fried ice cream for dessert too, it was pretty good, but people don't come here for the food anyway.

The main business of the day would be tea, and we also ordered a pot of some kind of tea, but I forgot what it was called. People come to the Together Tea House because they have a traditional tea ceremony thing going. We didn't know how to make the tea though, and the only waitress seemed more interested in talking to the other staff instead of serving the customers. However, we got another waitress to do the ceremony for us, and it was pretty interesting. The tea was good too.

Anyway, the most interesting thing in this place is the toilets. It's so gaily (gayly?) decorated that taking care of business becomes a pleasure. ;) I was apprehensive at first at the logistics involved in going to a public toilet when I didn't have any shoes on (we left our shoes at the door), but my concerns turned out to be unfounded because they have a courtesy pair of slippers inside the toilet, which was thankfully dry.

Posted in Food reviews by Huai Bin at 05:40 AM Permalink | Comments (2)

Renewal MMORPG

I got this from Daniel:

Thanks buddy! It’s a MMORPG public beta test he got from Singapore. There is a User Guide and an Installation CD, and I bet it would be pure fun to play on a server in Singapore on a 56 kbps modem (I’m still on dial-up in Sibu) which usually only produces around 28.8 kbps at the best of times. It sure would be interesting to try. :)

Posted in by Huai Bin at 11:36 PM Permalink | Comments (1)

Archoo!

I have been having sneezing fits and a runny nose every time I pick up the new kitten. The cat has recently given birth to a brown kitten (she's champagne colored herself) and I have an allergic reaction to the kitten. I'll sneeze and sneeze everytime I pick the kitten up and it's so small and nice that I still want to pick it up regardless. Anyway, I don't know much about the reproductive systems of cats, but the mother is still lactating even after all this while. I know because:
1. I get milk on my hands when I touch the mother's nipples
2. The kitten is still breast feeding (it stops when I'm looking though)

Anyway, my parents are coming back from their Beijing (China) trip the day after, so tomorrow will be the last day I have the house to myself.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 10:04 PM Permalink | Comments (1)

Kai Sing Guo (Fruit of happiness)

Afternote: Kai Sing Guo = Nimetazepam (a benzodiazepine). The pills are brand name Erimin-5 pills. Read this [sixthseal.com] for more info.

What exactly is this thing? I acquired one of this tonight for RM 15 (A$ 7.50). The local street name here is "kai sing guo" which literally translates to "fruit of happiness". It's definitely a pharmaceutical of some sort, but I didn't get it from a pharmacy if you get what I mean. It's mainly used here to ease the come down from methamphetamines (people use it to sleep after taking meth pills). A search of rxlist.com returned two probable matches - Phenobarbital (a barbiturate) and Clonazepam (a benzodiazepine). If anyone could shed some light on what exactly this is, I'll be very appreciative. Educated guesses will do. I took several pictures of it:

This is the front of the wrapping. It has perforated edges, which suggests it's part of a larger set of similar pills. The color of the front is red and there is a "5", the logo that looks like a four leaved clover/square cross, and "028" in BLACK font near the bottom of the wrapping. It's not visible in this picture.

The back of the wrapping is silver in color with the "5", the logo that looks like a four leaved clover/square cross, and "028" in RED font.

The front of the pill has a "5" imprinted and is a pink-ish color. The pill has beveled edges and no score.

The back of the pill has the logo that looks like a four leaved clover/square cross and "028" imprinted. The pill has beveled edges and no score.

Trip report

Time: 1:50 am
Method of ingestion: Crunched up on a fairly empty stomach
Taste: The pill tasted sweet (?) with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

1:55 am
a slight benzo feeling...numb fingers, blood rushing to the head/face region

1:28 am
sweaty palms, average loss on inhibition as if i've had a couple of drinks

2:05 am
hmm...feeling mildly drunk and rather much loss of inhibition. didn't have to think about anything if i didn't want to, much like benzos. slightly floaty.

2:09 am
eh, a mild hallucinogen effect when in partial darkness. face morphed slightly and there were mild tracers when i moved my head. higher level cognition is still intact. sounds sound better too, more 3d?

2:14 am
palms and feet sweaty. sounds sounds much louder than in real life. starting to feel somewhat drunk.

2:18 am
am i reading too much into it? feels very mildly hallucinogic in relative darkness

2:23 am
feeling very warm - definite rise in body temperature.

2:36 am
smoking felt reallly good. mesmerized by the smoke tendrils from the cigarette. hypnotized by my feet when i took a bath. noticed more attention to detail, like a roll of used toilet paper that was under the door of my toilet. my eyes kept on going to it. brushing my teeth made me notice my hands and toothbrush. closed eyes has a reddish tint. not sure if my pupils are dilated - did look in the mirror, maybe only slightly dilated. afterimages slightly prominent, like when i looked at the monitor and then covered my face with a towel, the afterimage is still there. is that also true when sober? i'll try tomorrow.

3:00 am
feeling rather introspective. quite easily spooked too. :)

3:20 am
return to baseline? feeling slightly drowsy now. should be able to fall asleep if i want to

4:36 am
sorry for the infrequent updates, i could not update as frequently as i wanted due to reasons i won't explain (not drug related). my higher level cognitive skills were intact. i am not at liberty to divulge information too much information but something could have happened and i choose for it not to. btw, this substance started out slightly stimulating and ended up being a downer. feeling sleepy now. my guess is that it's some sort of short acting benzo, but i can't be sure coz there were some interesting qualities that were not benzo like.

P/S - Any help in identifying this pill from someone who has tried it will be very much appreciated.

Posted in Pharmaceuticals by Huai Bin at 05:42 AM Permalink | Comments (41)

R.I.P. curl

My new leather wallet

I have a new wallet, courtesy of my girlfriend. We went out for lunch today at the Valentine's Cafe in Paramount. I had intended to order a la carte, but they were having a buffet, so we decided to go for that instead. My apologies for the lack of photos from there, my girlfriend banned me from taking photos because it generates too much attention. :P

Anyway, there were not many dishes, only about 8, but they were all very good. The vegies were full of garlic (just the way I like it), the noodles were salty (mmm) and the fish is smothered with Thai chili sauce. All in all, the food was very tasty although there wasn’t much variety. There were only 8 main dishes, a porridge (or maybe it was soup), two cakes and two fruits. However, in my opinion, it was worth the price of admission. I don't know how much the service charge was, and whether they charge different prices for males and females (yes, they do that here), but the bill for the both of us came to RM 20.70 (around A$10).

After eating, we headed to Wisma Sanyan to go shopping for a new wallet. I've been using my old wallet for 7 (!) years, coz I love it. There were a lot of memories associated with it. I still remember the place I bought the wallet and whom I was with at that time. I was at Riccarton Mall, Christchurch (forgot the store name - it was Amazon or Jungle something) with Sam Ashton and Eito, we were getting some beer for a house party later on and I happened to see this particular wallet and bought it on the spot. I didn't remember much of the party (too many "scene missings") but I do remember leaning out of Victoria (Sam's girlfriend's) car and throwing up when I was headed home. She told me the next day that I had gotten vomit all over the side of the car and she had to go to a petrol station to clean it up before she went home. Oops!

My old nylon wallet

Since then, the wallet has seen currency of six different nations (Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, United States, Singapore and Indonesia) and has also been drowned, burned and mutilated countless times. It has been lost twice and returned both times (once with all the cash missing). The first time it was lost was at a rave at Ministry (Christchurch, NZ), where two blotters impregnated with a certain lysergic acid created by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Labs was consumed for the first time. It was returned to me the next day by a friend who was also at the rave with everything intact. Thanks Jack! The next time I lost it was in school, it turned up at the Lost and Found with everything NOT intact but at least it turned up. :)

Thus ends the life of this wallet and the beginning of a new wallet era. I will miss you and the times we had together. The wallet is tattered and old and feels strangely thin and impotent without its previous contents. Rest in peace, dear friend and brother, in the third drawer of my room's desk.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 12:01 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

A reunion of sorts...

From left: Christopher, Johnny, Ming Tze, Huai Bin (me), Ting Chuan, Thai Ling, Boyd, Daniel.
On the right hand side: Siew Ting, who doesn’t like to be photographed but ended up in the frame anyway :)
Not shown (left early): May Ling, Susie

I went out for supper today with a couple of my ex-classmates. It was good to catch up with the happenings of everyone. The juiciest gossip of the day is the apparent fact that KATHERINE LAW and ALVIN TOH is going out! Heh. The were two confirmed sightings (one by Boyd and the other by Ming Tze) of them holding hands while walking around in Wisma Sanyan. Both of the sightings resulted in a subsequent loss of physical contact between their hands when they saw the sightees. I thought I saw Katherine last time I went to Parkson too, but I wasn't sure. Anyway, apparently this is a bit of a hush hush thing (for reasons unknown). Boyd, who lives together with Alvin in KL didn't even know about it until recently, although he did report a suspicious increase in communications via SMSs and ICQ msgs between Alvin and Katherine. It's interesting that the two ended up together, you'll be as surprised as everyone was if you knew them. :)

Anyway, tonight started with Daniel picking Johnny and myself up at around 8:30 pm. We went to Christopher's house, and man, is that house sound-proof! Horns were useless in summoning anyone, so I went down and knocked on the door, with no results. I could clearly see 4 people talking in the living room but despite my (loud) calls of "Auntie!" no one could hear me. I did knock on the door a couple of times, but it took 2 full minutes before anyone could hear me (!).

Well, we got Christopher and headed over to Ting Chuan's house. We had planned to meet up with Thai Ling and Boyd, and May Ling and Susie were also going to join us. Ting Chuan had made plans with Ming Tze and Siew Ting and were going to pick them up and join us at Taman Selera Muhibbah in Pedada later on. Anyway, I'm going into way too much detail here. The bump on my head must have affected me in strange ways. ;) (more about that later)

Anyway, we all met up at Taman Selera Muhibbah and talked until 11:30 pm. Why am I going into so much detail? I ask myself. Hmm...anyway I had two cups of my favorite drink - Shi Ta Tien Wang/Shi Ta Kai Sing (literally: four great heavenly kings/four great happiness). It's an ice blended drink containing coffee, horlicks, milo and tea (thus the name). There are two names for it partly because of the competition for customers over there. It's absolutely insane. Every stall will send a representative to swarm you the moment you sit down and show you their menu. Not only that, if they see you ordering from a competiting store, they will saunter over and whisper conspirationally that the particular store's stuff is not fresh and they make better stuff. Heh.

Anyway, moving on, I bumped my head very hard on this outcropping of stairs in my store room while trying to extract my cat from the store room. I think I forgot my name for a couple of minutes. :(

Posted in People by Huai Bin at 04:29 AM Permalink | Comments (3)

How to make a hanky bra

I just re-learnt how to make a bra out of a handkerchief today. :) We used to do this all the time in primary school, and it was an endless source of laughter and fun. Now that I think of it, most people in my class in primary carried a hanky. I used to carry one too, until about Primary 4, when I couldn't be bothered anymore. Anyway, here's how you make a bra out of a handkerchief. Origami with cloth, if you like.

Get a square-ish handkerchief. This is the same one I actually used in primary school (!). I found it in one of the drawers at my house. It's a wonder it's survived all these years. Ah...memories.

Establish a center line in the middle of the hanky and fold the handkerchief vertically (towards the center line), making sure that both folds are of approximately equal size.

Turn the hanky over, making sure that the folds on the opposite side are not disturbed in any way.

Approximate another center and fold the sides horizontally. You should now have about four equally sized 'squares' making up a larger square.

Grip the two top squares with one hand and grip the bottom two squares with your other hand. Apply force as needed. Pull.

You now have a bra made out of a handkerchief. Har har. I'm so juvenile. :)

Posted in Hmm... by Huai Bin at 12:23 AM Permalink | Comments (12)

Benzo bliss

I had visited the friendly neighborhood pharmacy again in search for some flunitrazepam (Rohypnol). Unfortunately, that pharmacy only has diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax). I have never taken diazepam recreationally before, so I decided to go for this instead. On a related note, only one pharmacy is willing to sell me this stuff. Others claim they don't carry it or didn't want to sell it without a prescription. The guy operating this particular pharmacy is a really nice dude, I chatted with him for 20 minutes coz I sincerely liked the guy. It also goes to show that being friendly never hurt anyone.

He recognized me from my alprazolam adventures [sixthseal.com] and mentioned that he noticed I liked a lot of strange (that's the word he used) pharmaceuticals. Heh. We had a good chat regarding oxycodone (apparently its availability is very limited in Malaysia) and we did a bit of poking around in the cabinets to see if there are any other meds with recreational value as well. The diazepam came from a container about the size of a fist, it has a blue lettered font with "diazepam" on it.

The pharmacy has 2 mg and 5 mg pills in the fridge and 10 mg pills at the stock room, but I opted not to wait and just got 5 x 5 mg for a total of 25 mg which will be a good recreational dose. The 5 mg diazepam pills cost me 50 cents each (25 cents Australian). I also got another blister pack of alprazolam (Xanax) for good measure (RM 7).

Substance: Diazepam (Valium) (also alcohol and alprazolam later - read the trip report)
Dosage: 25 mg (5 x 5 mg tablets)
Pills: The tablets has a stylized "SP" and "D5" on one side. The "SP" looks like the Slayer band logo. There is a single score on the back. The pill has beveled edges. They are yellow.
Ingestion method: Taken orally, chewed up and then swallowed with a bit of water
Taste: Musty and only slightly bitter
Time: 12:03 am

12:10 am
starting to feel a little not-sober. :) mild numbness of the face and a feeling of blood rushing to the head. nice.
12:15 am
proceeding to feel slightly drunk, like i've downed a couple of beers really fast on an empty stomach. i'll say this is a 3 beers on an empty stomach feeling.
12:17 am
yeah i'm definately feeling more spaced out than on my xanax adventures.
12:20 am
ahhh...the effects of benzodiazepines might not be for everyone, but for those of us who has a lot of anxiety and stress in our daily lives, its a bit of a welcome vacation from all that. it's good to not have to worry about anything for a while, agreed? :)
12:25 am
i'm feeling the same sort of intoxication as several beers - the disinhibition and the pleasent mellowness. however, my higher level thought processes are not effected as on alcohol though. not feeling particularly clumsy althought i haven't moved from my chair so i can't really telll i'm going to walk around a bit now.
12:28 am
yup, walking feels particularly heavy like there is a lot of gravity drag, but i'm not feeling clumsy at all. other than that, the feeling is somewhat similar to being drunk, but still being able to think well.
12:30 am
i'm tempted to eat the 2.5 mg of xanax i also got today, but i'm going to refrain. it's not that i'm worried about overdosing (its almost impossible to overdose on benzos alone), but i want to save that for another occation.
12:35 am
feeling super chill. :) gonna have a beer now. i better hide the xanax just in case i get the bright idea to down all of them. hah! there you go. i get that a lot while drunk as well. being drunk makes my already impulsive nature magnified by 10
12:40 am
okay, i'm just gonna take 2 xanax. only 2 for a total of 0.5 mg of alprazolam. they are 0.25 mg each/ just two, gotta have some self control here. ;)
12:41 am
ingested two xanax tablets (0.25 mg each)
12:42 am
i'm gonna hide the rest of the xanax tablets and watch a movie. idle hands are the devil's work. ;) this raises the question of how i'm going to HIDE something from MYSELF, but i'll leave this debate to someone else. btw, i'm expereiceing some nice euphoria now. not very euphoric, but a nice chilled out euphoria. nice.
12:44 am
i am in danger of ingesting the rest of the xanax tablets. someone stop me. =D
12:45 am
okay, i talked myself out of it. really going to watch a movie now so i dun get any more funny ideas.
12:48 am
okay, i'm just going to take two more for a total of 1 mg but THATS IT. listen to me my impulsive brain. hmph.
12:49 am
ingested an additional 0.5 mg of alprazolam (0.25 x 2).
12:50 am
i'm a menace to myself. i should have hidden that stuff away. i'm going to do that now.
12:51 am
okay i hid the rest of the xanax. lets hope i forget where i put it when the "memory blackouts" from the xanax happens. :)
12:53 am
ALRIGHT@!!! here's what i'm going to do. i'm going to take the rest of the xanax and then never touch benzos again for a long time.
12:55 am

ingested the rest of the xanax - 1.5 mg (6x0.25)
12:57 am
total substances ingested today:
25 mg diazepam
2.5 mg alprazolam
two beers (alcohol)
12.58 am
i would hate myself for my lack of self control, but the benzos won't let me. i'm still feeling mellow. note to self: don't buy more stuff that you're planning to take in a night, dumbass. you know your lack of self control.
1:00 am
the worst thing is i've been crawling about under my desk to look for bits of alprazolam i dropped. the tablets were crumbly and even though i broke the blister pack over my mouth, a few pieces dropped down. i think i've picked all of them up and ate them though. :/ man thats so ghetto i'll hate myself if it weren't for the benzos. they won't let me. :)
1:05 am
hey, i don't even have to think if i don't want to. i can just sit here and totally zone out, not having to think about anything. pretty good euphoria here too. nice.
1:12 am
feeling very chilled out now, bordering on slight drunkenness. benzos do potentiate alchodol quite nicely. i have a feelig i'm gonna regret it tomorrow though. benzo comedowns are harsh for me coz i'm already experiencing a lot of anxiety and stress in my life. but who cares when you're feeling this good now. :) heh
1:16 am
note to self: quit yawning, its not time for bed yet.
1:26 am
i know i'm feeeling eveyrting now. :) major clumsiness and slight disorentatiom. hehehe. but it's all good. i feel great and happy. happy happy happy chinese new year.
1:31 am
clumsiness, but in a pleasent way. significant muscle relaxation. i'm typing this rite now with my head slanted 90 degrees to the left and it still felt good. hahhaa! man thats so funny
1:33 am
wow, even though i've only had two beers, i felt like i've drunk a 6 pack. i have a pretty high alocohol tolerance so this is strange for me. HAIL ALMIGHLTY BENZODIAZEPINES THE GREAT POTENTIATEOR!!! if only this stuff has less harsh come downs, that would be great. the other substabce i have a love hate relationship with is ecstasy (MDMA). i love to roll, but the comedown gives me a helluva depression and occational anxeity attacks. I find myself debating more and more whetehr rolling is worth is, so it's something i prefer to do on special occations.
1:39 am
balance and coordination is off. had a bit of a scare when i nearly fell off the railing. :) being scared while on benzos is something like thinking hmm...that was rather close and leaving it at that without any anxiety or fear or even anyt further thought. like i said it,s a nice holiday from everyday stress _ anxiety.
1:44 am
wanted to turn off the lights and i was standing there for a full minute trying to think of what i was supposed to do. was it to turn down the air conditioning? i took the air con remote and though they, that wasn't right and then remembered i intendedto switch of the light. heh.
1:49 am
i'll open up my web browser with the full intention of doing something ad i promptly forgot what i wanted to do.
1:58 am
i'm feeling rather sedated now. it's a nice feeling but not something that should be done frequently. i'm feeling rather drunk too, but my higher level reasoning is stll very much intant. i'm going to cook some instant noodles now.
2:00 am
that might not be a good idea coz i nearly fell flat on my face when i attempted to stand up. :) but i dun care coz i feel like fried eggs now. strange thing is, i can still type properly. the clumsiness is apparently only isolated to movement.
2:04 am
interestng observation: my body feels drunk, stumbling a bit and all that, but my mind is functioanlling normally
2:52 am
I'VE BEEN expereicnging significant decrease in motor control. found myself stumbling around and generally had to latch on to something solid to avoid falling. :) the food did me good though.
3:00 am
whoa i caught myseklf nodding off on a music video and realiase d that i zoned out for no good results, perheps ins time for bed. i'll sruf around a bit till then
3:01 am
okay i'm just nodding out so badly now i'm going to sleep or i'm just going to crash face down into the keyboard

Aftermath:
I'm feeling slightly scattered the next day but still slightly sedated. I didn't have the "valium hangover" some people have, and still felt most of the positive effects (decrease in anxiety, sedation) slightly today. I had really weird dreams last night too, all of them about things falling on me - like the ceiling falling on me, ladders falling on me, grates falling on me when I'm in the sewers stuff like that. Overall, it was a positive experience. Benzodiazepines and alcohol go well together. I would not take as much benzos next time, because of the extreme drowsiness that happened when the last batch of Xanax hit me. That was too much for me. I would moderate my consumption next time so that I'll actually be awake to enjoy it. :)

Posted in by Huai Bin at 12:14 AM Permalink | Comments (18)

MAN - The Powerstation Concert

Powerstation

The Powerstation concert was good. I arrived there at around 7:10 pm and there were still heaps of parking spaces left. The center wasn't really full either, there were about a hundred people already in there, but they were spread out so I got within 3 meters of the stage.

Powerstation with the MC

Anyway, Powerstation only came on stage at 7:30 pm and they did 6 tracks and 1 encore. I don't know the track names because I've only heard two of their albums (Legend and UPS). There was an SMS competition thing at the beginning, the MC gave out a phrase - "psman" and a cell phone number and the first two people to send an SMS with that phrase to that particular number got a plane ticket to “I don't know where”. I must have zoned out or something coz I really didn't catch where the plane ticket was to. I did have a go, but the others were inhuman, they already sent the SMS before I finished typing. :)

One half of Powerstation (I don’t know their names)

Another half of Powerstation (I don’t know their names)

Anyway, the MC introduced Powerstation after that and they did 3 songs followed by an intermission. There was a yellow shirted girl in front of me who was VERY enthusiastic. Nice, she added much needed ambience to the dreary crowd. Well, at the intermission, they asked six people to come onstage to sing any Powerstation song and the best person will get a ticket to "I don't know where" too. I don't remember much, but there were two who got the most applause (a guy and a girl). The girl finally got the ticket from a game of rock-paper-scissors to break the tie because both of them got equally enthusiastic applause.

The six audience members who rendered Powerstation songs for a plane ticket

After that, there was another 3 songs and Powerstation left the stage. They actually have a pretty good stage presence, really game and the MC got them to speak several phrases in Bahasa Malaysia which I can't remember. Hmm...my memory is failing me. Moving on, they came out for an encore and that was the end of the show. There was an autograph signing session after that, but I didn't stay on. Overall, it was a good show and well worth the RM 10 (A$ 5) I spent. Highlights were the enthusiastic yellow shirted girl and the 6 audience members who rendered Powerstation songs.

Last song

Posted in Events by Huai Bin at 04:03 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Valentine's Cafe Review

This is the Valentine's Cafe Pan Fried Prawn Noodles from Valentine's Cafe in Paramount Hotel. I had dinner there with my buddies Christopher and Ting Chuan. Christopher is also studying in Melbourne and lives near me (both in Melbourne and in Sibu). He just came back yesterday but he's going to stay until the end of February. On the other hand, I have to head back to Melbourne soon to finish my Industrial Experience. :( I love Sibu, there are people who prefer it over in Melbourne, but for me my hometown is the best place.

Anyway, back to Valentine's Cafe, it's a pretty good place to eat. It's at the Paramount Hotel opposite Taman Selera. If you're from Sibu you should know where it is, it's the newly opened hotel. Nice ambience and the service is pretty good too. You don't feel pressured to leave as soon as you finish your meal, unlike other hotel attached restaurants. We stayed there for a while to catch up on stuff after finishing our meal. The prawn noodles is pretty good at RM 9.50 (A$ 4.75) and there were 5 (!) king prawns in the plate. The portion is not very large, but it's quite delicious and I love seafood so it's pretty good value for money.

Posted in Local food by Huai Bin at 02:14 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Kinetic power doesn't deplete natural resources

I'm going to Powerstation's concert/autographing session tonight at the Sibu Civic Center. See Hua (a local Chinese newspaper) had an advertisement running the whole week on their front page, where you can cut out the ad and pay another RM10 (A$5) to redeem a ticket at their headquarters. Powerstation is a Hong Kong band which mostly plays cover songs with a twist but I like their sound. They're actually called Dong Li Huo Cher (direct translation: kinetic powered train) but their official English moniker is Powerstation. Go figure.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 06:27 PM Permalink | Comments (2)

Behold! I draw

I just came back from watching a 10:45 pm movie at Star Cineplex. Before that I had pork liver noodles. Mmm... I neglected to bring along my digicam so here's a sketch I drew in Microsoft Paint depicting the pork liver noodle scene. Items in the sketch are: table, chopsticks, bowl of pork liver soup, plate of noodles, me, and a drink (kopi peng) with straw. Please say that the sketch is nice or I'll be sad and cry. ;)

Posted in by Huai Bin at 02:03 AM Permalink | Comments (4)

My kingdom for a thigh

I went to the KFC in Wisma Sanyan today to get some chicken for dinner. I wanted a 3-piece set with ALL THIGHS, but apparently, that would be a problem:

Me: Hello, I'll like the 3-piece set, all thighs please
Cashier: I'm sorry sir, we're not allowed to give the customers so many thighs during peak hours. You can have drums, breast meat or wings though.
Me: Hmm...then I'll take 2 thighs and a drumstick
Cashier: Er...actually we're only supposed to give out one thigh per order
Me: Oh alright, I'll just have a thigh, a drumstick and a wing

I didn't even have any problems getting all thighs from that particular branch before. They must be having a backlog of breast meat today to do that. I'll rate my preference as thigh, drums, wings in that order. I don't even like breast meat. It's just too dry and tough.

Anyway, the road running parallel to the 4-storey SMC car park is so hard to navigate now. Who had the bright idea to put so many barriers to streamline the traffic? It's just 4 lanes and 3 of them turn right, so there is no need for so many of those things. It was implemented recently too, and I drove over one of them inadvertently while driving to Wisma Sanyan. Sheesh...luckily I swerved in time to avoid hitting the "Turn Left" sign.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 11:07 PM Permalink | Comments (1)

The game of snooker

I went to 1 cue (a local snooker center) with a friend tonight to play a couple of games. I haven't touched a cue in 2 years, so it's good to play again. This was the snooker center we used to frequent back in the days, the tables are relatively good and the air conditioning is cold so it was a favourite haunt of ours back in the days. Unfortunately, my snooker skillz have atrophied during my two years of non-practise. I managed to hold my own, but lost both games. :) I really liked this placing though:

Dangerous.

Posted in by Huai Bin at 10:30 PM Permalink | Comments (5)

You either love it or hate it...

I ate so much durians today I think I'm gonna be sick. :) Mmm...durians.

Posted in Food by Huai Bin at 11:11 PM Permalink | Comments (7)

Why is this man naked?

Spotted @ Jalan Bako, Sibu

Hmm...that's a good question. I was out having lunch with a friend when this old man sauntered up and peered at our food. I could see his patch of pubic hair (it was grey if you want to know), which couldn't be covered by that miniscule piece of cloth he wound around himself. I looked at him questioningly, and he turned away and walked to another table. The view of his back showed that the piece of cloth was not sufficient to cover his anus as well. In fact, it left it wide open (it was black-ish, if you're interested in the color). :) Very strange guy, he's harmless but yet he disrupted the rest of the customers due to his near nudity. Two families promptly got up and left the moment he came by them. He was indifferent though, he just stood there and TOOK OFF HIS CLOTH. I won't go into details regarding his anatomy, but I could see everything. He then wound the cloth around himself again and sat down and ordered some food to eat. He was around 70 by the looks of it...poor guy, I think he's trying to make a fashion statement. That, or he's mentally deranged.

Posted in Best of sixthseal.com by Huai Bin at 12:50 PM Permalink | Comments (16)

Korean BBQ House

I went to the Korean BBQ House today with a couple of my buddies. We had wanted to go to Shabu Shabu at first but it was totally full. Our next choice was the Paramount buffet, but we saw that it only happens in the weekends. Since the Korean BBQ House is right beside Paramount, we went for that instead. There were four of us - Daniel, Ting Chuan, Johnny and myself so we had the meat platter thingy. None of us have been here before, it had only opened recently. This is the same place that Vivien [blogspot.com] went to on Wednesday.

BBQ

Anyway, the meat platter was really nice, it had beef, lamb (mmm) and chicken and it tasted really good. The meat was put in the middle of the bbq platter and there was some chicken soup poured over it. There was a small moat thing surrounding the platter to catch the soup. The meat tasted really good, it was probably marinated well and the resulting soup + meat drippings on the side of the platter was divine. I imagine it had a lot of calories though.

Sinful

I also had this ABC special, they called it a BBQ special bowl or something, I couldn't remember. The bowl was huge and it had a scoop of ice cream in it too. However, the best thing about this place is the service. The service was excellent. There was a waitress to pour the drinks, cook the meat and serve it, all with a smile. I was pleasantly surprised at this level of service and I would have no problems recommending this place to anyone.

Our waitress

Hmm...I just realised that we did have a group photo taken, but one of the guys was partially cut off from the frame, so I'm not going to post it.

Posted in Food reviews by Huai Bin at 12:06 AM Permalink | Comments (3)

:)? :(? :| (Exam results)

I'm in a state of limbo here. I don't know whether I should be happy or sad so I'll just be emotionally neutral for the time being. :) I got my exam results today:

CSE2203
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Pass (56)

Hmm...at least I passed since I didn't do well in the first unit test and the final exam. This is the same mark I expected [sixthseal.com] after I finished the exam. I wish I got a Credit though. Anyway, score one for my prediction.

Prediction: Credit
Actual: Credit

CSE3002
DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SYSTEMS
Distinction (75)

Ah...just 5 more marks to a High Distinction. What a waste. :) I expected to get only a Credit [sixthseal.com] after I did my exam, but I got a Distinction instead. Good.

Prediction: Credit
Actual: Distinction

CSE3153
NETWORK ADMINISTRATION
Withheld (WH)

WTF? Why did my results get withheld? I tried calling the lecturer but the receptionist said that he's away until Monday. Bummer...now I don't know whether I passed or failed this subject. I'm pretty sure I did pass, I had expected a Credit [sixthseal.com], but this Withheld business has got me all worried and shit.

Prediction: Credit
Actual: Withheld

Posted in by Huai Bin at 06:16 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

Melancholy, my bride

This was taken while driving this evening in a thunderstorm. The black thingy is the windscreen wiper.

It was absolutely pouring with rain when I was driving home this evening. You just don't get this kind of rain in Melbourne. It was a fierce sort of rain, relentless and loud and making visibility near zero. There were thunderstorms and lightning and what not and you'll get drenched in a second if you're not under some sort of cover. I have loved storms like this ever since I was in Form One. Form One - Form Two were afternoon classes in my high school and it usually finishes by either 5:45 pm or 6:25 pm. It would be getting dark by then and I used to wish for heavy rain at the end of a Friday. I had to walk quite a distance to wait for my mom to pick me up in front of a bakery and when it rained, it was lovely to walk along the long stretch of road leading to the bakery. It would be getting dark and the rain would be pouring down, soaking my uniform and I'll walk slowly and happily, savoring the fact that there was a weekend ahead of me. I loved the feeling of rain soaking me and getting me thoroughly wet. I think the combination of dusk + rain gave the whole thing a melancholic tone, which I really liked. That was one of my strongest memories of Form One (age 13).

Posted in by Huai Bin at 01:25 AM Permalink | Comments (0)

Xany Xanax

Mmm…Xanax

I’ve always wanted to try Xanax coz the 2mg bars just looks so sexy. Thus, I decided to go shopping for some Xanax today. It’s a relatively short acting benzodiazepine. Xanax is the same drug that Noelle Bush (the niece of the current United States president George Bush) was arrested for because she tried to pass off a fraudulent prescription [cnn.com]. The first pharmacy I went to regarded me with suspicion when I asked for Xanax. They didn't want to sell it without a prescription and told me to get some at the clinic instead. I got a general feeling of not being welcome the moment I mentioned Xanax.

The second pharmacy I went to was more accommodating. They didn't know what Xanax was and asked me to write down the name of a piece of paper. I wrote down Xanax, Alzoram (the Malaysian generic brand name) and Alprazolam (the chemical name). The old lady there asked his son to read the paper and he instantly recognized Alprazolam. He told the old lady it's sleeping pills (?) asked where it's kept.

She said they have some at the back and he went over to rummage about under a cabinet. I was feeling hopeful at this point, I didn't even get asked for my prescription script. He didn't find any at the back and rummaged about some more in a box of Handiplast (the st bandage). He came out with a stack of blister packs tied together with a rubber band from the box of Handiplast. Don't ask me why it was kept there, I was puzzled too.

Xanax/alprazolam/0.25mg

The old lady asked me who the medication was for and I made up a cock and bull story about doing an exhibition about benzodiazepines for my university and I was going to stick one pill on a piece of manila card. I don't know if she actually believed that story (I had the feeling she didn't from the look on her face) but there was not questions asked after that. I got the impression that this is a "no questions asked" pharmacy if you catch my drift. The guy came back at this point and asked me how many blister packs I wanted. I examined one of the blister pack and saw that it’s brand name Xanax pills with each tablet containing 0.25 mg of alprazolam. I was hoping that they carry the beautiful 2 mg pills, but oh well, this will work perfectly well too. There were 10 tablets in the blister pack, which comes to 2.5 mg.

I decided to just go for one blister pack and it was sold to me, for RM7 (A$3.50). This is the brand name Xanax (alprazolam) marketed by Upjohn pharmaceuticals (the old name, they have since merged with Pharmacia). On a side note, I’ve read in the newspapers that being caught with possession of Xanax pills without a prescription carries a RM2000 fine and/or a 2 year jail. Someone who was caught with 24 pills got that sentence recently. They were credited as "upjohn" pills though, which further illustrates that mainstream journalism has their heads planted firmly up their ass when reporting on technical or drug issues. Upjohn is a pharmaceuticals company, not a drug name.

Upjohn 29/single score at back

Trip Report

Substance name: Alprazolam (Xanax)
Street names: Z-bars, bars, Upjohn (in Malaysia)
Dosage: 2.5 mg (10 x 0.25 mg) taken orally in a mixture of powder, broken off bits and whole pills. The pills seem rather crumbly and some broke into pieces as soon as I pressed it from the blister pack. I do not have any tolerance to benzodiazepines.
Usual recreational dosage for people with no benzodiazepine tolerance: 1-2 mg
Pills: White oval pills with Upjohn 29 imprinted on one side and a single score on the other side. The pills have beveled edges. Each pill contains 0.25 mg of alprazolam. They come in a blister pack containing 10 pills for a total of 2.5 mg, if you eat them all.

T+ 0:00
I took all 10 pills at 11:00 pm sharp. The pills are in a mixture of powder, bits of tablets and whole tablets. This was because the pills are either very brittle or this is old stock so they break easily. The tablets tasted like powdered mint (without any hint of sweetness) at first and very bitter when i washed it down with water.
T+ 0:05
noticed some clumsiness and a heaviness in the head and a general feeling of being mildly stoned only 5 minutes later (!!!)
T+ 0:08
a feeling of not being very sober, but i can't put my finger on what exactly gave me this feeling of non-sobriety. i just feel not very sober. the medical term for this is derealisation i believe.
T+ 0:14
mild nausea. a feeling of numbness in my extremities, especially the fingers, very much like the feeling you get when you're starting to get drunk. Heaviness of the head is present all throughout the time.
T+ 0:18
feeling a kind of "super enhanced sight". its like i can see every movement i make is in full frame and with a high framerate. don't really know how to explain it besides this. it feels like the start of a LSD trip visually, everything looks enhanced, colors stand out etc, but this is very mild. clumsiness did not get any worse. numbness in extremities still present.
T+ 0:20
a mild euphoria. not like ecstasy euphoria but more like codeine euphoria. aka stupid euphoria. :) a better word will be contentment. palms are feeling sweaty, which is peculiar for me since i seldom get sweaty palms
T+ 0:22
pupils VERY dilated (?!?!?!) even in bright light. looking at myself in the mirror feels wierd. uneven dilation. my left pupil is more dilated than the right one.
T+ 0:30
feeling contented and relaxed. not much progression other than that. feeling slightly disappointed due to high expectations. i'm more of a fan of "fuck me up" drugs like LSD which provides cool visuals and wierd trains of thoughts.
T+ 0:40
hmm...feeling slightly sleepy now.
T+ 0:43
er...i'm trying to fight this feeling of being sleepy. it's getting stronger. heh.
T+ 0:50
i caught myself staring at a half eaten chocolate bar with a bit of chocolate sticking out in an interesting manner. stop hypnotizing me dammit.
T+ 1:00
yawn. i'm trying to keep an open mind but it seems that this is all Xanax has to offer. a feeling of being (very) mildly drunk and admittedly quite significant relaxation. not much euphoria to speak of. valium (another benzodiazepine) provides much more euphoria compared to this.
T+ 1:10
wtf? i feel myself returning to baseline already. baseline = normal (sober) state
T+ 1:15
i still felt slightly clumsy and my body feels heavier than usual when walking. not much more numbness in the fingers and i'm still feeling sleepy.
T+ 1:20
noticed some problems with memory. i dropped my cell phone to the floor earlier and didn't remember to retrieve it until 30 minutes later.
T+ 1:26
hehehe
walking arond in the dark with my arms swinging freaked me out considerably. and i thought Xanax was supposed to be prescribed for anxiety and panic attacks. =D
T+ 1:30
feeling close to baseline now. i suspect i'll have a nice deep sleep later tonight too. :)
T+ 1:40
a nice afterglow can be felt. still feeling contended and happy. walking still feels a bit strange, but nice. i just noticed that time passes pretty damn fast on Xanax. i didn't even notice that nearly 2 hours have passed since i took the pills. hmm...i wonder what i did in those two hours since it didn't felt like i did much at all. :)
T+ 2:20
i did another time jump. don't ask me where the past 40 minutes went, coz i seriously don't know. i wasn't even doing anything.

Afternotes:
I don't see the appeal in taking Xanax by itself. It’s basically just a chill pill, and I’m not into this particular class of drugs. I can see its value in helping with meth/coke/other stimulant comedowns, but when taken on its own, it doesn't have very much to offer. Possible good combos will be Xanax + alcohol (be careful, a lot of deaths has been attributed to this combination) and Xanax + cannabis (the sedative effects will probably provide a nice synergy). Personally, I feel Valium (diazepam) would be a much better alternative if you like benzodiazepines. Valium actually gives pretty good euphoria when taken in recreational doses. An interesting thing with Xanax is time seems to go much faster. It’s almost as if time jumps forward. One minute you look at the clock and it’s 2:15 am. You feel that only a minute has passed but next time you look, the time is already 2:45 am and you’re left scratching your head about what happened during the last 30 minutes coz you don’t remember doing anything at all. Huh? It happened a lot of times during the trip too. Very bizarre.

Caution:
Being in possession of prescription drugs without a prescription could be against the law in your country.

Posted in Pharmaceuticals by Huai Bin at 02:46 AM Permalink | Comments (87)

Hello from Malaysia

Tullamarine Airport (Melbourne)

I'm absolutely beat. I only got 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night to make time for packing my stuff and I moved 12 (!) bags of stuff to the common room for storage on Sunday morning. I took the Skybus to the airport and got there 1 hour before the departure time. I quickly checked in my bag (I only had one) and grabbed a bite to eat at Burger King before going to the gate just as the last few stragglers were boarding the plane. Phew.

The flight to KL was okay but my ass felt like...well, ass. My tail bone area was really sore from sitting too much. Does anyone else have this problem on long flights? I wonder if it's my bad posture (I slouch too much) or coz my ass padding is too thin. Perhaps it's because I can't seem to relax my ass muscles? Perhaps the word ass is used too much in this post too. Moving on.
Anyway, I got a window seat and there was this 50 year old guy beside me who played Bejeweled! on the personal screen all through the flight! Seriously, it was a 10 hour flight and he was playing it all the while. Man, that's so hardcore. What an OG. He only stopped for toilet breaks and when food was served. Whoa...that's pretty impressive.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

Another thing of note is that MAS's food budget seems to have been increased. There are chocolates served with every meal now. This seems to be the standard in all meal serving MAS flights because I got a chocolate on my KL - Kuching flight too. The chocolate on the Melbourne - KL is a Top Deck bar and the KL - Kuching one is a Kit Kat. They were also serving big ass bars of ice cream (!) on the Melbourne - KL flight too. Not with the meals though, it was served the way they serve peanuts - passed around in a tray. When I say big ass, it really is big. It was a 750 mL bar, if I'm not mistaken. Nice. Being the greedy sort, I had two, but I nearly couldn't finish the second one. Apparently, there is such a thing as too much ice cream.

Oh, and I spilled 7-up on myself during the flight too. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll have remembered me spilling orange juice on the guy next to me [monash.edu.au] on the KL – Melbourne flight last semester. :) Now I know how that felt. Heh. I was holding a cup filled with 7-up when I decided that now was good idea to drift off to sleep. Next thing I knew, I was holding an empty cup and I had a not entirely pleasant dampness near my groin area. I tried to do some damage control by attempting to soak up the 7-up with the wool blanket they provide, but as you know, wool is not known for its absorbency. The cabin crew was oblivious to my pages too, there was only 1 working this entire aisle and he was preparing food. In a fit of improvisation, I used the pillow they provide to soak the 7-up up. That worked nicely, but I won’t go into the looks I got from people watching me rubbing my genital area with a woolen blanket. I’m not sure what they were thinking, but I didn’t think they saw me spill my drink from the looks on their faces. My apologies to anyone who got a pillow smelling vaguely of 7-up these couple of days. I don’t think they wash those things before reusing them.

Anyway, I got a shock towards the end of the flight when I checked Channel 12 (the real time flight update channel) and saw that we had only just passed Alice Springs and still had nearly 6 hours to go! My jaw literally dropped and my ass cried at the thought of having to endure another 6 hours. It was a total WTF?!?!? moment. I reckon we just had another 2 hours max to go. Luckily one of the cabin crew caught my totally flabbergasted look and told me that the channel is not working. Man, what a relief! Not just for my ass, for me too, I was beat from only getting 4 hours of sleep the previous night and having to move 12 heavy luggage’s to the common room (about 400 meters and 4 flights of stairs from my room).

For some reason, those seats smell like ass

Anyway, I arrived at KLIA at around 8:30 pm and went to the domestic terminal to catch my Kuching flight. The flight was delayed, but it didn't matter to me coz I didn't have a connecting flight to catch until the next morning. Anyway, I reached Kuching at 12:45 am and wanted to get some sleep in the air conditioned boarding lounge. Unfortunately, Kuching airport is not a 24 hour affair and the lounge was closed for the night. I had to make do at the open air waiting terminal instead. I pushed two long sets of chairs together and tried to go to sleep. I couldn't even use my bag for a pillow coz I had stuff inside that won't appreciate the weight of my head. Furthermore, there are grooves bordering every chair, which dug into my back the whole night. I finally settled into a weird 'S' shaped position to avoid most of the grooves and got a fitful 2 hours of sleep.

I didn't even need my cell phone alarm to wake me up, several passengers took it upon themselves to do that by walking around and talking animatedly in an unacceptable volume before it was even dawn. Anyway, I arrived in Sibu at around 8:25 am and was out the whole day with my girlfriend. It’s 10:40 pm now and I'm so looking forward to a 12 hour sleep later. Mmm...sleep.

Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink

Interesting fact: The flash from cameras sets off the infrared automatic flushers in toilets. I took a photo of a urinal at KLIA, I was intending to talk about how they have an LCD panel showing the time in those things now. The flash set off ALL of the flushers in the toilet. I tried it again, and sure enough, it worked like magic. FLASH went my digicam. FLUSH went all 10 urinals. FLASH went my digicam again. FLUSH went all 10 urinals like clockwork.

P/S - I do not have an obsession with toilets, but I do seem to find myself thinking about them a lot. :)

Posted in by Huai Bin at 10:49 PM Permalink | Comments (2)

Going home for the holidays

That's my trash. All of it. It's amazing how much rubbish one can accumulate in a semester. There are notices and newsletters slipped under my door frequently, newspapers that I got before my commute and inevitably ends up on the floor of my room and general food wrappings. I had trouble fitting my stuff into luggages too and found out the bulk of my stuff are CDR cases. Thus, I've moved all my CDRs to a spindle and thrown away the bulky cases. Now everything is packed and ready to go. I'll be taking my computer offline soon to store away. My flight is at 3:40 pm today and I'll arrive in Sibu on Monday morning. It would be nice to be home again. :) Later folks!

Posted in by Huai Bin at 07:16 AM Permalink | Comments (6)