Another year, another cake. Another life, another notch.

And yet again I celebrate my birthday by going to work.This year without the obligatory drinking session the night before..to be replaced by yet another crazed attempt to make me into a fatso. One thing I’m glad though, the past two years I have celebrated my birthday with a very dear friend, and I will be doing it again this year..just right smack between both our birthdays as usual.

Me & Stanly turning 24 at Ascott KL

It’s hard,this growing up thing. All I want to do is remain a child forever, as I still remember my 5th birthday cake of humpty dumpty. I go through friendster, and some people whom I went to kindergarten with are still living a happy student life of bumming and living with their parents complete with home cooked food..whilst I have a home loan, a car loan, a cat to feed and other bills to pay.Not to mention a husband to regularly poke just to ensure he’s still alive.

Reflections of the past year

Gone through a tremendous amount of pain
Crashed my car
Bought a new car in the UK
Nearly ceased my incessant need to travel – lack of time & money
Got hitched
From happening drunken chick to lame-o gardening freak
Started making jewelry
Left my job,which by now I could’ve climbed up yet another ring of the corporate ladder
Became jobless = depressed
Found a new job in a brand new field starting as a underling
Found what treasures friends are
Quit my pack-a-day obsession with Kent & Malboros (yes folks, this is new!)
Blog regularly – I am now allowed to put BLOGGING as a hobby

And every year around this time, I run away. Rather, I get on a plane and fly. Some things never change – I am celebrating my birthday on the plane with a solidary champers.Or two.

I hate adulthood and all that responsibilities that come with it. The only thing I probably enjoy is the freedom to shop and the right to turn into an alcoholic.So have a drink with me tonight…and here’s to being a child at heart always.

Seeing that Bacon is so into football we could’ve move into a football shaped house,my postings have been suprising lacking in terms of football updates and the amount of games I’ve been forced to watch.I’ve been in denial since Team USA lost, and I still refuse to support Team England (don’t sound right)…joining the ranks of the Scottish supporting all teams but England. Sales of mangoes had even soared in Scotland due to an unprecedented amount of Carriben-themed parties held in conjunction to support teams like trinidad & tobago when they played against England

Anyway…back to what I originally wanted to post about.

About 0.01% of us will ever get a chance to do this…Michelle had embraced this football widow thing with joy and even amazingly got tix to watch a world cup match. And she didn’t even sway when offered 1000 euros for the tix..imagine the shopping that can be done with that.

See her pix of the cute tyre shaped stadium here

Every country has it’s own version to feed it’s starving college students and the occasional junk addict.Call it Ramen, call it Maggi Mee Goreng or whatever, we’ve all been there done that, irregardless of flavour

Britain’s version is an amusing combination of the east (noodles) and the west (flavourless curry flavour). I keep a spare sweet and sour pot noodle at work – because I like to tease myself looking at it whilst blindlessly slurping down the mush I call cereal. Even though nothing can beat my Maggi Szechuan flavoured Mee in my Mug, it’s actually quite nice the sweet and sour pot noodle..reminds me of commercialized american chinese food that me and dreydrey used to eat nearly weekly…Orange Chicken anyone?

Anyway…I love watching ads (yes, one of the crazies) and my current fav advert just so happens to be the Pot Noodle one. Over the years they had been quite controversial in their marketing tactics..heck, there is only so many starving students living on a diet of Pot Noodles.
“The advert shows miners going down the mines to get the precious Noodles that make Pot Noodles (because everybody knows that pot noodles grow underground in mines), and different miners are shown working in the Beef & Tomato mines and Curry mines and as the miners are shown hard at work the miners are shown singing a welsh song.”
Watch it here.

In a completely non-racist way; I’ve always loved the Welsh..I think they speak in a hilariously sing-songy way..the way they speak is like listening to a nursery rhyme I can almost fall asleep.Somewhat like Malaysians with our Lahs at the end of all sentences. Its so funny to see them mine for noodles in such a serious way; one of the series of ads even had the miners recount when his grandfather, as one of the first PotNoodle miner, found the noodles in the mine.

Its a real shame that there’s been complaints that the advert is racist towards the Welsh and will probably be removed from the airwaves soon…I dont’ get this overdrive of political correctness gone wrong

It just reminds me of a BBC show in the 60s which, on april’s fool, had decided to make a spoof documentary that explained spaghetti grow on trees, complete with footage of spaghetti farmers in Italy plucking strands of spaghetti from trees….and believe or not, the nation actually believed it! And got really mad when they were told otherwise

And the countdown starts…at day 3.

I can’t wait to land.Not really looking forward to the journey from home to KLIA..I am extremely prone to being stopped by pervy ole custom officers.Grr. I don’t get it. I don’t look like a terrorist, I don’t look like a drug addict…do I look like I’m smuggling something? The only times I dont get stopped by Malaysian custom officers is when:

1) I wait for a bunch of cheena package tours tourists comming from shopping places like Thailand/HK/Singapore to land and let them face the customs first.I will then whizz through due to lack of due dilligence. Once it failed, because there was 3 female students from china in front of me…they thought we were all friends so they stopped me..grr.
2) I wait for someone with bigger bags than me to go first.Usually works.
3) I travel with Bacon and hold his hands whilst going through customs. SOmehow they seem to think that if I’m with a gwailou I’ll be too rich to smuggle 10 packs of Jacobs Cream Crackers through customs (which is what I’m actually doing this time..apparently my grandmother loves em’)
4) I smuggle two other bottles of alcohol in my luggage…all the time displaying those that I had just purchased from the duty free in a transparent carrier bag.
5) I slap on the makeup and pretty up before leaving the plane..if I look like I’ve just stepped out of a cover of a magazine instead of a 14hour flight, somehow they think I wont be carrying the 400 sticks of cigarettes in my luggage.

Ah well. I have a two hour transfer time in Heathrow…which is hopefully enough time for me to disembark my first flight, run to another terminal and start shopping.Mmmm…shopping.

Arrive in KL at 5.30pm Sat just in time to start the weekend’s partying.Anyone wanna be my welcome party in KLIA?

Warning: This post is just a mindless, irrational rant.I needed an outlet…regular programming should be back shortly

Even after deaths of millions, the government of the world is still leading us down the treacherous road of nuclear energy.

Case 1:
Malaysia. The land of rich Petronas oil = gas = burn = electricity. Energy (or electricity) powerstations are run mostly by gas as we have more than enough of it..Malaysia exports liqueified natural gas(LNG) to the States and Europe. Well, rich enough to enable Petronas to sponsor an F-1 team. Now, the less we use the gas, the more we have to export, therefore driving down the prices as the rules of economy applies here ; the more available it is in the market, the lower the price will be.

And in stepped Big Brother, the American government.Where the brilliant president comes from the land rich in oil (correct me skippy if I’m wrong). They had ”invited” the Malaysian government to visit the states to ‘learn from them’ and will go all out to help us create a new energy source. And what might that be, oh almighty? NUCLEAR ENERGY.Which one wrong step will probably wipe out the whole of our ubi kayu (cassava) shaped peninsula. Whilst we are happily burning our own gas to light up KLCC…not good enough, it needs to be nuclear I tell ya! POWER! (whilst bringing down the prices of oil and gas for Big Brother)

Like I said,nothing comes free.The US uses so much gas and petrol that with every hike in prices the whole country sits in suspense watching their economy crumble. Not to mention that they are the highest carbon-emmiting country in the world; surpassing China which relies heavily on coal because they have no choice. They contribute heavily to the hole in the sky we now call the ozone layer and the fact that it’s not been cold enough in the antartica that the ice is melting causing all sorts of damage to sealife.

Case 2
The UK. The government had assigned a feasibility study to be done to explore energy options. Before the report comes out, Mr Blair has kindly shouted out loud that they are looking very positively into nuclear energy. But no studies have been done to ensure proper safety measures are in place to ensure that Cheronbyl does not repeat itself.All other renewable energy (wind,biomass ect) are not further explored.

Energy companies are required to have about 20% of their energy comming from a renewable source by 2015.This is to ensure that our hole in the sky does not expand in an alarming rate, causing all sorts of havoc with the weather.

Why nuclear?
It is cheap, it runs for ages, it does not pollute the environment like a coal-fired generator or gas-fired generator does (no carbon is emmited). It is not intermittent like wind farms or hydroelectric plants.

But there is no point saving the planet if one wrong move means the end of the country.