Smoke on the water, license to grill

Despite the blazing heat these past weeks and a thought on whether the rain was going to put off the fire for challenging the wrath of the raging sun, we still decided to have our annual firework ritual - BBQuing. Having checked the published API (Air pollution index) in my area earlier, it was very comforting to know that our annual fire ritual won't contribute much in causing harm to the environment.

Air pollution index was considered good (below the 50 mark) , except in Keropoklekorland (which slightly surpassed the green mark) . This confirmed my long suspicion that my native folks had been ignoring the sorry-state of our planet and kept burning our fossil fuels excessively (in Kerteh) for the past millennium. Even wang ehsan could not possibly stop this catastrophic cause to the mother earth.

I started the fire just after the Asar prayer and waited for the full corum to arrive as planned. The sky however had different idea and retaliated by pouring heavy shower and gruesome thunders as if discontented with me - This happened the very minute fire started to engulf the charcoal briquettes. I had to switch to my plan C, which was to shoulder and move the whole BBQ set up under the porch. This act was a bit tricky and you you can imagine how hard it was to juggle the burning charcoals while controlling my balance (and anxiety) at the same time. If you want to know what my plan A and B were - Plan A was to cancel our firework ritual and dumped all foods to slowly cooked in a microwave oven, while my plan B was to just go and have our nice gathering at any fast food restaurant nearby. Luckily, the porch did give ample space and enough cover from the heavy rain for us to proceed with our original plan.

After many calls and numerous 'still on my way' response from my colleagues, the corum had finally managed to arrived safely to my house. We had not done this gathering with a full membership from our regular 'makan-makan, kecek-kecek' members for quite some time now. Last year was a busy year for everybody and I was not well myself. The fiery sun and thundery rain turned out to do some wonders to our small gathering it seemed.

Thank you everybody!

This special charcoal briquettes was proclaimed to be environmental friendly. While it was quite obvious this charcoal somehow managed to defy the law of physics (smokeless) it somehow gave our barbecued food a special taste as well. Especially toward the end of its lifespan.

Thirty years of friendship was strengthen with a sacred peace accord by gathering around this smokeless BBQ and inhaling the special aroma from burning foods.

A league of fairer sex was making themselves busy with arranging the menu while at the same time catching some tips among others on how to keep their body slim and yet adorable after passing their 40th milestone.

Some never had enough with smoke. The smoke was not however came from the smokeless charcoals (I have to point this out of course) but from the burning fish or lamb parts due to our negligence looking after the fire. Our deep indulgence over talking and catching up with each other caused the burning foods later became the charcoal themselves.

The air was a bit clearer as opposed to the previous one as our chief BBQ officers has by this time taking charge looking and controlling the fire. Yours truly was nowhere seen in these photos as I was too busy helping myself with the vast amount of foods and having to come out with a plan on how to finish BBQuing our food and our sacred ritual before the clock strike twelve in the midnight.

This was how irresistibly good and photogenic the chickens looked like when yours truly at ground zero and took the helm of controlling the command center.

This was the last photo known to exist before these poor squid and some of the lambs transformed themselves into an inedible but combustible matter.

Temporarily out of touch

During one of my soul searching endeavors many years ago I found out, good ideas don't come everyday and readily plucked out from nowhere. It may suddenly fall, pouring down from the sky in the middle of whatever imaginable we are doing. The idea may comes while we are sitting on a deserted beach, under a palm tree watching the vast horizon, or while cooking our favorite meals in the newly renovated kitchen or even in the middle of heated discussion with our boss on on just a trivial matter. Or we may digest the whole volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica and try to swallow every single word written on it, and the only creative idea flashing in our mind was how to shut somebody's really big mouth while at the same time trying to save ours from doing the same.

Incidentally, I have also developed a rather peculiar self-preference since the first time I was introduced to a 386 and WordStar4.0 many years back. I don't know about you guys, I found my ideas flow flawlessly and faster if I type rather than trying to scribble them on a piece of paper. It seems the microprocessor inside my brain (most probably yours too) works super duper fast, at a fraction of milliseconds presumably, the muscle and quick reflexes of my hand is relatively a mere sloth and just could not match with the speedy flow of brain nerves.

In ordinary and normal folk like us, fortunately this brain-muscle type of relationship works with harmony. Obviously we don't want this complicated balance become disrupted. As I also noticed quite a few of our own kind, which in most cases is quite rare, seem to suffer from the speech-abnormality syndrome - you talk first then only you think. The muscle and reflexes work faster than the brain. In a layman term this would fit into a term called 'mulut tempayan'. Luckily it is quite curable. If this unlucky individual live during the legendary Megat Panji Alam era, a hard slap on the face would easily do.

After some heavy raining for the past few days and upon checking that the Air Pollution index in Shah Alam reported to be of a moderate scale and quite tolerable by the sun seekers, I decided to invite my staffs and few colleagues to join me having a BBQ. It has been a while since the last time we had a BBQ and the students' last day of which attached to my place since a couple of months ago seems a good reason to unpack the BBQ set and set it on fire.

I have no idea whatever they are thinking but it seems everybody, big and small are enjoying their simple dishes. With a striking pose that resemble a praying mantis in one of his favourite Kung Fu film, Brother Jon (wearing the compulsary Thursday-batik attire) looks like he had just hit a bright idea and ready to share with other. Voila!

Despite the many calling to this service provider calling center and following the instruction from the different operators each time we called them, the problem could never being solved. No harm and no heart feeling of course. That is what the call center is for in the first place- a center for you to call and get acquaintance with or having intimate chat with a stranger at the other end of the line (obviously this has nothing to do with a blogger friend who live in Bandar Utama :). Luckily this good samaritan, an IT genius who knows precisely the different between the LAN and the WAN, had saved our days and got us hooked back into the cyberworld. Thanks a zillion mate!