In Times Like These...

Today is my birthday. 27 years of seeing the beauty of the world. 324 months of hearing the wonders of sound and voices. 9855 days of breathing. Goodness me, sometimes we do take this things lightly. Some say I am still young. Some say I am already old. Whatever it is, I pray to God how thankful I am to be alive and to still be able to use my five senses. Hmm.. five senses.

I have seen, through my eyes, the good and the bad images of people and places in this world. I have heard, through my ears, from the serenity of voices to the crying voices of people in this world. I have touched, through my hands, both the beautiful and rotten things people lay on my hands in this world. I have smelled, through my nose, both pleasant and unpleasant things that I have came across in this world. I have tasted, through my mouth, from the wonders to the disgusting things that I can put my mouth to in this world.

And I asked myself, "Have I put all that to good use?"

It's hard to say coz we humans, will and always make mistakes. Time and time again we will make mistakes. Time and time again we will ask for forgiveness. Time and time again we will promise ourselves to repent. And... the cycle starts again.

Its fair enough to say that whenever tragedy strucks, we will reflect on ourselves first. What can we do? What can we learn? What can we contribute? What can we do....in times like these?

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Taken from Foo Fighters' "Times Like These"

I am a one way motorway

I'm the one that drives away

then follows you back home

I am a street light shining

I'm a wild light blinding bright burning off alone

It's times like these you learn to live again

It's times like these you give and give again

It's times like these you learn to love again

It's times like these time and time again

I am a new day rising

I'm a brand new sky to hang the stars upon tonight

I am a little divided

do I stay or run away

and leave it all behind?

It's times like these you learn to live again

it's times like these you give and give again

it's times like these you learn to love again

it's times like these time and time again

After reading the above, we started to think. Think. And think. That's the other thing that I forgot to say thankful to God. For giving us the beautiful mind to think. For whenever we want to use any of our five senses, we can think before we do it. For it's the mind that operates the five senses. The beautiful mind. A gift from God.

Shut Your Eyes, There Are No Lies...

Lately, I was thinking about how every person you will ever know will disappoint you. People will make bad decisions. They can be so stupid(that includes me as well). They can get so involved in themselves they don't have anything left over. People will hurt your feelings, not meet your expectations or disappoint you. At times, a person will not be thoughtful. Over and over again, each person we know does something that we won't like. Over and over again, we make bad friends or keep old baggage around. Over and over again, we will continue to make new friends or lovers.

No matter how long they are around, something will happen not to your liking.Yet we will always allow opportunity in our life and we don't want to shut down everything because of past experiences. Sometimes we take a step away from entertaining certain relationships to develop in our life for a while but eventually, time heals wounds and we will be ready to try again. Often times we try again only to come up short again.

Then, I realised… that’s the beauty of life. There can never be perfect. Perfect is mend for fairytales. But individually, it is others that dissapoint you will help us to grow, to learn and to enjoy life to a fuller extent. Pain will surely come again with a different face at some point in life. And it will temporarily make any joy in life less full. But once we move on, the joy rebounds to the fullness it once was and we are glad for it.

This world we are living is not perfect and same goes to people. One of my best friends ever asked me before, “What attracts me to a lady?” I honestly didn’t like to answer questions like that. I probably just reply some cheeky answers.

She ended her message with “How about true beauty?” I didn’t reply.

I,myself, would be hard pressed to name the unique thing about me that makes me beautiful. I think that is part of the deal- someone has to discover it in us. Someday someone will discover that a guy likes to lay outside in the rain fully dressed just to let everything wash away. That will be beautiful. Someday a guy will see a lady dancing when she thinks no one is looking and she will become another dimension of beautiful. I am sure, maybe you, will get caught doing a good deed soon and someone will be completely smitten with you.

The beauty we have isn't what the weighing machine reads, what product label is on the jar or in our clothes, the shoes we wear or the size of our, ahem, adulthood. It is about who we naturally are inside, the way we were made.

When we can be who we were made to be, that is when the true beauty shines through.

Tuesday Food For Thought

People tend to notice things first and foremost if they correlate to the things they think about, and it is very common for the things people think about to fascinate them. It is also common for people to assume the things that fascinate them are the same things that fascinate others, which in turn leads people to believe that others notice the same things they do. Follow?

See, I'm obsessed with various people's thinking, because in general they're just so... bad at it. It's easy to make mistakes because we tend to form opinions based on reactions, as opposed to, ooh I don't know, thinking first and then forming conclusions later? For example, this is what always gets me. We live in a world where, for example, a malay was heard saying, “Eh dok, lu asal sak?” and some other people heard that and saying how mat/minah he or she is. But this is what we do, we make sweeping generalizings about the things people stand for to make things nice and tidy and hate that thing. The truth of the matter is we all just think differently. Liberals have a different way of thinking than conservatives, and even though conservatives can be annoying at times, they still have some valid things to say. But it's so much more soothing to the ego to think that our intellectual strengths define what intelligence is, while others are just good in certain areas. This is actually quite profound, I guess you could say, because we all think this and it's precisely what keeps us from appreciating others.

It's only natural, though, to want to hear things that fall within the context of our pre-existing base of knowledge. We like to deal with the fringe of what is known and unknown. If I pointed out that the sky is blue, nobody would care, because everyone knows that. If I started reading from Einstein's journal of mathematical equations, nobody would care, because none of it would make sense. The only way for me to get anyone's pulse going, is to speak on the fringe of what is known and unknown, to expand the parameters of what people know. But people think they know alot so its hard to find someone willing to hear it. I think it's a beautiful thing when you find two people who are completely willing to learn from each other. Pretentiousness is a bitch though, ain't it? Once you think you have all the answers you’ll stop looking for them. I guess its only natural that we tend to believe our personal experiences make us wiser, while the experiences of others make them bias. I'll wrap things up though.

It's a naive reality we live in, when three-fourths of our thoughts are wasted on meaningless trivial things, and the other one-fourth wasted on telling ourselves how smart we are - you really wonder if what we tell ourselves is true. If you ask me, we're just good at what we're good at. Smart is too broad of a word. But let us all go ahead and keep thinking we're geniuses. After all, we are the ones who dictate the reality of our own thoughts, and who wants to question the thoughts that make us feel better? ;-)

Fallen with Grace

"My mind is big when I look at you and talk to you." -- Anonymous



I've spent a lot of my free time with my close friends. We’ve known each other well and a few of us known each other since we were six years old. We’ve grown so fast and become adults in no time. And as we look to the past when we were kids, we were immortal. I mean, I felt immortal.

I duly observed stay-home mommies and aunties tend to talk about "lots of togetherness" - a catch phrase for "the kids are on my nerves." But as I look at kids, my small cousins and my friends’ kids, they aren't really on my nerves. I mean, true, I don’t have a family of my own yet. How would I know? But to look at them right through their eyes, sometimes I wish being a kid back. I used to dream a lot. As kids, we were allowed to dream as far as we can coz we didn’t really know how big the obstacles lying ahead of us. And yes, of course, being mischievous and always know that my loving parents are behind my back no matter how bad I am back then. Oh, I had my moments. And to look at them(kids) now in general, even though the giving is mostly mine, they don't wear on me. They build me up.

I think any kid would say the above about their parents. We make them feel big. It's our job. But I say that about them. If I have my family of my own in future, and I can create a human being then what's so great about the endeavour of writing a book, which I have been wanting to do lately? My mind feels big when I look at kids, and their heart, and their confidence.

This evening, as I was about to play soccer with my friends, I was in a lift with a probably three-year-old cute little girl holding a balloon with her mum. Her face looked gloomy, possibly, disappointed by her balloon. The helium had gone to wherever helium goes to die, and the balloon lay limp on the lift floor, the string fallen in perfect loops. I expected tears –coz I got a sneaky suspicion that she will look even more adorable when she cry-but she gave a smile instead to her mum and said, “I’ll lift it up and it will stay up.”


I smiled at her reply and wanted to say, "No, you know they only last a day or so..."

But I wisely stopped myself. After all, I'd just read this wonderful essay by someone:

"The progress of man is based on disbelief of the commonly accepted."

Who am I to say that she won't find the cure for cancer or the common cold? Maybe she'll discover and name the thing that binds us to each other and to the world. Or maybe her life will be filled with ordinary, wonderful things like marrying someone she loves, having kids, and liking her job. But she surely can't and won't do much of anything if I dissuade her from testing the most basic of rules.

A teacher I once knew worked with students who thought that the only possible means to financial success were through the more common practice of selling and taking drugs and being in a secret society. He used to tell them one important thing.


"You have to know what the rules are in order to break them." (Hardly original, I know, but cliches are cliche for a reason.)


There's always been a raging war between convention and the use of our intelligence. He actually meant to encourage their unconventionality in order to bolster that use. And it often worked too. I know, coz I was one of his students.

I got a reminder today, a million thanks to my caring parents for spending their time talking with me. It's a simple thing, but something I'd forgotten. God is in the details, but grace comes from recognizing which ones need to be questioned. Look at everything and think how it can be deconstructed and then rebuilt into something bigger.The balloon fell today, but who am I to say that it will fall tomorrow?

(This post was taken and edited from my defunct blog.)

Monday Food For Thought

Have you ever known anyone who constantly, compulsively seeks attention from an outward source? Who always speaks in definitives; aye, beyond definitives but into infinitives? Who must always be the expert in every known malady, situation, and opportunity? Someone who interrupts tales of woe to report their own dire tales of more devastating woe? Who cannot be told anything new? Who, when not receiving attention, uses past instances of attention to seek it? Have you ever known anyone who seems to be a fathomless well of the worst and the best of everything which the human race is guilty or capable?

These people are best taken in small doses, followed by cleansing, blessed loneliness.

F1 2009 - No Doubt about it...They Rock!!!!

F1 Rocks 2009

Last Friday, my friends and I went to the F1 Rocks and watched No Doubt performed and gosh... they still kick ass! The band played their old and new hits and oh yes... we enjoyed ourselves!

Entering the F1 Rocks... Noticed that we were all dry but later after the show....

Opening with 1995's Spiderwebs, the band was tight and amped, decked out in white and hopping and bopping around. Gwen Stefani, in particular, was top notch! I thought after she became a solo starlet and a fashion designer and a celebrity mom, she mellowed down but oh boy, I was wrong! The platinum-topped singer pulled off the princess heels and put on the old tank tops and gave a stellar performance, together with rest of the band.

Gwen: Left us wanting for more...

Fueled by mohawked drummer Adrian Young, and backed by extra horns and keyboards, they spent 70 ska-strong minutes uncorking chart-toppers: Sunday Morning, Hey Baby, Don't Speak and etc. We enjoyed the performance that we continued singing No Doubt hits in the car on the way back home... satisfied of course!

Exiting the F1 Rocks, we were all drenched but happy!

Then on Sunday, I did watch the F1 race. It was an experience as well and I truly enjoyed the weekend and to top it off, I took a pic with Travis' frontman, Fran Healy. One wonders what will happen if I get to take a pic with Gwen Stefani! ;)

Welcome!! :)

First of all, thank you people for the time to browse thru my blog. With the help of my cousin (Thank u Dee Dee!), I managed to set up this blog and hopefully, it can be a place for me to share my thoughts and upcoming events. Do get a copy of Manja Oct issue yah! Hope its not too late to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya!!!