Roaming the lonely planet

For those of my good friends who had been sending messages and phone calls asking for my quietness for not replying to your query - I am now sending this special message from the other part of the globe especially for you my precious friends to say that I am really sorry and please forgive me for my unintentional unpoliteness. Now I am missing nasi lemak and all the Raya invitations. Jeles...jeles...

I will be salivating over nasi lemak for the next 2 weeks, stuck somewhere on the other part of the continent. Have a good and enjoyable life friends.

Have I missed the boat?

As the previous year and many-many years before, the most anticipated guest of honor is leaving us one more time. Many who welcome this guest with utmost expectation and diligence will weep and sob in sorrow for this special guest is now returning to the Almighty delivering confidential reports upon our hospitality for the duration of the visit. This exceptional guest named Shahrul Ramadhan is blissfully sent by Allah S.W.T to us, the true believer to grasp all the special offerings this holy creation has to offer. Within this mysterious month, there are many secrets within the secrets for us to uncover.

For this humble mortal being, this year's Ramadhan has being so meaningful as many revelations upon revelations unraveled unwittingly and consciously to ponder upon, and yet many more are still elusively well obscured even some are staring right before the naked eyes. Perhaps the other basiroh is still clouded with the past sins thus requires more self-cleansing. and self reflection. I hope to those who are sincerely seeking for the barokah and all the rahmah from Allah S.W.T, have fullfiled Ramadhan's and their own personal KPI with flying colors. Ma'assalama...

I, being the lesser creation am humbly hoping to stand strong next year in order to welcome this special guest again with an open heart. Insyaallah.

Having said that and not to miss the festive bandwagon and the current merry mood of the blogosphere mainstream, I am taking this opportunity to seek forgiveness for all the wrongdoing and any mischievous conduct while roaming this cyberspace.

Travel safely to your beloved ones and deep from my heart I am wishing all my Muslim friends

EID MUBARAK

Time and tide wait for no man

This axiom is becoming more and more real each passing day. Each day passes by, without even glancing at us and move away with lightning speed, faster than anybody can imagine before. Yes...Time and tide wait for no man. No men so powerful to stop the flow of time. Not even to match it speed.

I am not too sure whether I am the only one who feel or notice that each passing day is becoming shorter and shorter in time. There are so much thing to do, but so little time available at hand. There is not much leftover in between the space for me to have any leisure moment at will. Not like the ole days. Nowadays, I have to really and literally 'watch' the time and pay much attention to its flow so that I can fit in every single task into the void it left behind. But time seems never to pay much attention to me.

Now Ramadan al-Mubarak is just around the corner. It seems like yesterday I celebrated the joy of Ramadhan, rejoicing and hoping for all the barokah the holy months has to offer. Once again the feeling is flushing and filling deep inside me. Welcome back Ramadan.

Wishing all of you my blogger friends, a blessing month of Ramadan ahead.

I-City...the city of illusion.

Really, I think this place is great. It is even better because it's free and you don't have to pay a single cent to enjoy yourself except for the parking (and the petrol or your vehicle of course). This is one great place to be mesmerized by the splendor display of LEDs in full psychedelic varieties. It was hard not to be amazed so much so I wasn't dare to blink my eyes even for a second. It was really a feast to the eyes.

Actually, I first stumbled upon this place, to be exact while blog-hopping and circumnavigating the colorful-borderless Blogosphere. Some Bloggers even managed to fool me into believing that alien has already invaded our earth and set up their base in the Bolehland. Others illustrated it as some romantic place in the far land - Winter Sonata. Later I thought it was probably a different dimension far from our reality or perhaps somebody else's dreamland. But it is not. This place is for real.

So one fine cloudless night, I decided to gatecrash this place in order to see it with my own eyes. I brought along my family and it took us almost 40 minutes from our home near Subang to reach this place. Where is I-city? To be frank I was clueless as well, and could not possibly point out the exact coordinate for your GPS gadget. Google map does not recognize this as a significant place to even highlight it in their map - just like my beautiful kampung. I know it is somewhere in Shah Alam. If you know where Jakel is (the new textile shopping heaven in section 7) and the back (?) entrance of UiTM, you are less than 5 minutes away from this splendid place. At night, you couldn't miss this place as you should be able to see the magnificent glow of light from the traffic light junction of this two landmarks.

The place is still in its infancy. If properly developed and correctly tuned this place can beat any theme park in the surrounding area, anytime. This place have vast land for future development and creative innovation. One word of caution though (at least for the time being). It may not be advisable to visit this place if it is raining or during the rainy season as the place will turn into a big swampy paddy field. You may have to bring along your Wellington boot to wade through the wet-barren soil. There are a few good eateries in this place, but many shop lots are still ghostly vacant. The elevated car park is so dusty with flying minuscule clay particles so don't bother to wash your trusty jalopy prior visiting this place. It will surely get a new evenly-coated surface with a rustic but stylish soil color by the time you get to your home.

All in all, the place didn't let us down and live up to our expectation. My family enjoyed the outing very much, except they missed my attention as I was so busy trying to capture those beautiful glowing subjects with my camera. Even though it was not a weekend, the crowd was considerably big. They were not hallucinating but ecstatically joyful.

No viagra please!

Imagine one fine day, our chubby boy or our luvly-jubbly-fully-blossom daughter come back from school after having their first session of yet-to-be finalized sex education syllabus, sit on our lap with sparkling eyes and suddenly start to probe us with these million dollar questions:

"does size matter dad - I mean with bigger power-tool my baby will become more chubby?"

"will I get pregnant if I share a swimming pool with boys mom?"

"If I borrow and wear my friend's underwear last night, would I contract STD next week dad?"

"When I grow up, can I raise my baby in a test-tube mom?

The unthinkable list of confusion can goes on and on. Those sort of innocent questions one way or another might some day haunt the unsuspecting parents. However, it is probably better be caught off guard rather than to be caught with our pants down... for sure. Like it or not, we just have to accept the fact that sex is not the subject whispered in the kelambu anymore.

Youngsters these days are more informed and well educated than us when we were at their juvenile age. Information is easily available over a cup of tea-tarik in a wifi-free kopitiam or in the comfort of their room. They are not easily contented with shooting aliens on their PlayStation anymore. Kids by nature are very curious and curiosity normally kills the cat. Internet explosion has given them abundance of choices and its all free, so much so they become very confused and disillusioned.

Sex education in a classroom is like eating satay and dip them with cencalok as the sauce. Or even worst - eating satay with cencalok and flush it down with a jug of tea boosted with super-potent tongkat ali. A total mismatch. By bringing this sensitive subject into the classroom and lifting the veil of this big taboo subject the schools are now facing with a totally new set of game to deal with. I remember during my early exposure with this subject at school, blushing teachers occasionally skimmed over reproductive system in class. Thus leaving us even more curious.

The intention is noble - to curb social ills, Internet pornography, abstaining from pre-marital sex, sanctity of marriage, incest, sexual abuses and harassment, unwed mothers, unwanted babies, be more respectful of gender and sexuality, to respect our bodies and one another, and probably at the end en masse castration of pupils at school. This subject if poorly implemented with no proper syllabus or well structured course ( and monitoring) this will backfire. Students for example armed with the knowledge of contraceptive might be more daring and confidence in experimenting with each other thus committing immoral activities freely. With the popular love-birds' motto 'if you love me, let's do it', thing could even get much nastier than one's thought .

When everything in place, teachers might have to take liability insurance just to cover themselves from being sued by horny parents who could not possibly think with their head anymore and believe that their kids are now turned into a celibate. That is another issue.

You know what. I got a brilliant idea. In addition to teaching sex education in school, why not teach parents too. Teach parents to teach their children at home. I would love to go back to school and learn this exciting subject. It can be a very refreshing experience indeed.

Personally I believed the best way for us, the mortals to handle this prickly issue is by going back to the basic. Our religion. Sex education has been readily discussed and taught in Islam (sleep separately when children baligh reaching the age of 7, women should properly covered etc.) Strengthening the family institution as the core value is also some thing that need to be addressed as well. Most parents neglect this responsibility and left the school to handle.

I genuinely do have concerns over this whole kinky scenario, none of which have anything to do with sex education in our court regarding sodo-mee or semen tainted love-bed of which Bolehland reporters faithfully reported in such lurid details usually reserved in specialty magazines abroad. My main worry is that our kids will be overdosed with pheromone and not knowing how to deal with it. This could be a potentially dangerous predicament.

As the sign of judgement day becomes clearer, you don't be surprised one day not far in the future you might find some parents named their kid with Mat Siphilis or Mek skrotum.

Hancussss....

no bother mates, my cuppa tastes better without sugar

The least, lets stop worrying for a moment. We, the nasi-lemak eating nation had being worrying too much for thousand of years, so much so this is becoming a trendy lifestyle in today's Bolehland. When the Portuguese stumbled upon Malacca en-route their ship joyride across the ocean for example, our forefathers worried they would steal our cencaluk and left us with nothing except a few Mamaks. We almost forgot that we still had the heavenly budu and tempoyak of which can also blast some of us into a palatable oblivion. The Dutch did the same. For all that we know, they left us with a stretch of street in the Malacca town if not pronounced or spelled properly will make some goes bonkers.

We worry about the greedy inflation that will eat our bank account faster than hungry termites ingested our house. Urban folks worry too much on keeping the belly flat with the same intensity the cat-walkers worry about bulimia and anorexia. Rural folks on the other hand worry their sons and daughters do not fancy to stay in the kampung anymore and migrate to the more exciting and livelier city and later turn into mat rempit or minah bohsia. The fear has been encoded in our gene ever since our ancestors roamed this earth more than 6000 years ago.

From time to time, we had been bombarded with countless issues that led us to become so worry. Fast forward into this new millennium, last week exactly on the same auspicious Friday night many of us succumbed to that disease and invoked the ancient gene one more time. On that auspicious night many barang suddenly unceremoniously naik of which the term Barang Naik was coined. Some worried too much to the extend it affected the other barang as well. It was a chain reaction. Once naik it is hard to turun. This is quite worrying for some. This pandemic spread across the Bolehland and we can already seen the multiplying effect took place.

Ever since that pandemic spread, I spent and wasted many agonizing hours staring at the displayed menus in many kedai Mamak looking for the sign of the price hike. We kept being told that Mamaks will absorb the cost due to the price hike of sugar and not to simply allow most of their barang to naik. But there is some evident to suggest that isn't the case. I realized my teh tarik kurang manis tastes the same but the price in some of the kedais is not. However this is not the cause for me to be alarmed. Lets do not miss the plot altogether. This kind of naik is good of all the humankind. It is for the sake of our health. That was what we have been told and the nasi-lemak eating nation contented.

Even when the fossil fuel of which is not a renewable resource in million of years saw the price made to climb the stairways to heaven gradually and elegantly, that should not stir us a bit. We should look at this positively. Perhaps it is the right time to dump our cars and start to cycle like the Dutch and becoming healthy thus live longer, enough to see our grandchildren got roasted by the UV light that leak through the ozone holes eroded by constant air pollution - caused by the fuel combustion. Perhaps we should start to seriously thinking into utilizing the solar energy or other renewable resources like the bio-fuel from the cow dung. It is a challenge and this is suppose to make us more creative, innovative and progressive, ideally speaking.

Yet while I was sipping my cuppa I could not help but start to worry about all the debris floating in the outer space which at anytime can land onto our head. This can happen if for example one of our satellites become haywire, poked by the floating sate sticks left in the orbit by the astro-nut at the International Space Station. Or it could be banana skin left by some clumsy experimental monkeys way back in the 60s, jammed it navigation system and exit the orbit headed straight to our homeland.

Step backward almost 30 years ago, I had another harrowing experience which was even more worrying. Once I experienced having excessive blood in my urine after a break from intensive training and prolong exposure to the cosmic ray in the school sport field. Upon checking by the doctor, the remedy was simply to drink more liquid. That was really a big relief. I could only utter to myself...

"Thank God, luckily I am not menstruating!"

What can I say...

Putting aside the beaches story and onto the football front, the fate of some favorite teams in this year's football world tournament have already been decided. French has been kicked-out from the tournament and even as the president of the French football association resigned, that doesn't stop the team to become Les Miserables. So does the glory of the British empire crumbling down before the mightier Germany and befall the disgrace of a whooping four.

It may looks a bit puzzling at first. Both French and England look like a great side, full of club pedigree but on the pitch they were a shambles. I don't blame them for those disgraceful defeat, as inadvertently both share the same passion in almost similar diet. I would prefer to blame the sluggish French fries and overcooked fish and chips for that really.

While the storm from the South Africa is still looming, the shameful fiasco on Argentina, one of my favourite teams is still hard to digest. Thrashed by the same team that sent the British to pack early was really a harsh reality. This on a second thought, made Engand looks less bad. Perhaps the players had become so overconfident after beating Mexico or having a joyful night karaokeing 'don't cry for me Argentina" the night earlier. Just perhaps....

But what really took my strenght from continuing keeping up with the tournament was the unexpected defeat of Brazil by the cheese-eating people of the Netherlands. Even thought the magnitude of heartbreak was not as bad as the 1982 defeat by Paolo Rossi's hatrick, still I don't really have the mood anymore to sit on my potato couch, rooting for ages waiting for my heroes to make me jump in joys with spectacular goals.

But in the end, that is the reality in football and it is quite unpredictable sometimes. Say this to the hardcore punters though, they will laugh at you without mercy. Since the heat is still on, I would say South Africa will experience the sausage blitzkrieg or the orange tsunami for the first time in their football history. Probably it is the right time for all the losers to ditch their boots for a while and pamper themselves in paradise beaches while at the same time learning one or two tricks from the kakiayam FC on how to play the real football.

Didn't I say I've had enough of the beaches?