Holidays in Penang

I never had much interest in vacations. I always believed that home was the best place to spend holidays. After being away from for so long, and nearly dying from want of homecooked and Penang food, I finally got to spend 3 whole weeks at home. Wahahahahahahaha.

As anyone from outside Cyberjaya will tell you, Cyber's a hellhole. There's a degeneration aura in the area that wanes the culinary skills of any who ventures in (no offense to all chefs in Cyber, but I think plenty will still be taken XD). Lacking a car, I am reduced to eating from the same few shops every single day. Delivery from McDonalds? Don't even think about it, there isn't one here. There is a Dominoes though. But seriously, someone should correct the common misconception that teens live on burgers and pizzas. The staples for us students here in Cyberjaya are nasi lemak, a million variations of nasi goreng which ALL taste the same, and nasi campur. No wonder a lily reed like me could lose weight. T.T

Therefore, for my brief sojourn in Penang, my parents spoiled me lavishly. Roasted chicken with rosemary, and Teochew steamed fish to boot? Asam prawns, homemade chawamushi, and seafood spaghetti? Shit, excuse me, have to wipe the drool off my chin. Of course, there was the occasional dinner at Kuntai, a Thai style open air restaurant that serves excellent seafood; or dinner at my parent's favorite Teochew restaurant in Chai Leng Park, which serves sumptuous platters of Chinese- and Teochew-style dishes. The loh bak there isn't bad. XD And lots of Japanese restaurant visits. Sushi's not really my thing, though I enjoy all the other options.

Of course, food wasn't all that was happening with me in Penang. During the first week of my holidays we had some relatives from my mother's side come over for Christmas. My icky cousin from KL, Chun Liang, who's from my father's side, too came to join in the revelry. He's a year younger than me and having completed his SAM (South Australian Matriculation) in Taylor's Sri Hartamas, he's leaving for Australia before CNY this year. He did pretty well I think, topped everyone in his campus. I invited him over so we might catch up a bit before he goes off for his actuarial science course at the Australian National University (ANU). Of course, all cousinly reconciliatory affairs set aside, I wanted to try out the new games on his spanking new laptop. Intel i7 core and everything. Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2 ran smoothly without a hitch. My Veteran Special Ops missions didn't. T.T

Two other icky cousins came over from Singapore too. Bright young fellas, both of them. Benjamin is a year younger than me and Brandon is three years younger. Both were enrolled in the Raffles Institution in Singapore. The younger brother is actually still taking Junior College there. Ben is waiting for his national service induction, a compulsory 2-year program where all the BOYS get drafted (thats male chauvinism to you). Altogether that made four guys, and Benjamin brought his pretty high-end laptop over too. So our nights were pretty full of games and... games. The two brothers did teach us to play a 'Singaporean' version of bridge though, which is a considerably more complex card game than the ever popular 'Big Two' we frequent here in Malaysia.

My two sisters were at home too. A rare occasion for the whole family to actually be at home at any time of the year, since my big sister's academic year doesn't coincide with mine, and she's always off to some racecourse or chicken farm or clinic doing her veterinary practical work during her holidays. She did get me a fantastic statement T-shirt that read "Sorry Girls, I'm Taken" during her training at the Dinding Broilers Breeder Farm. The farm produces 2.3 million chickens every 60 days, most of which goes to McDonalds. But I love the T-shirt, and I know Yen would too. Hehe. My little sis has just completed her SPMs, and I try to give her good brotherly advice on her future choice of careers, but she prefers to spend her days watching Korean dramas on PPS. Haha.

Of course, I would never pass up the chance to spend time with my good old friends from high school. =D I have a kind of a 'brotherhood' with a few bitchies I've known for pretty long. We call ourselves, oh shit, the DS. Stands for Dragon Society (Ding's fabulous idea XD). We comprise of Ding, Shyang Bin, Me, Kian Joo (currently doing med in Czech) and Jin Jiang. I won't go into the details, but we're each named some kind of dragon except for JJ, who's a frog (again, Ding's idea).

They're my brothers in almost every way, and its great going out and just hanging out with them. I met up with my other schoolmates and bandmates too, but the outings are too numerous to recount, so I'll just attach some photos below and provide some commentary. =D

My new trimester begins tomorrow, so I'll probably not be posting unless I find something of interest to you readers. You know, if i nick myself or something, and the cut gets infected and pus forms and a passing snake happens to spit on the wound, and I use my roommate's Grand Line Map to make a tourniquet and the pillowcase (the map) actually infects the laceration and I wind up in heaven and heaven has internet access, I'll blog about it. Otherwise, I'll be focusing on my studies for the time being. I wanna be a respectable engineer. Hope I won't be too lazy this sem.

Till next time!

From left: Cousin Chun Liang, my mom, my dad, cousins Benjamin and Brandon in Haagen Daz. Chun Liang is dumping chocolate syrup on his chocolate ice cream and brownies. 0.0

The DS Family Shot

Front from left: Ding Choon Ken (Chan Dai Long), Wong Shyang Bin (Wong Zhong Long)

Back from left: Phuah Jin Jiang (Froggie), and Brian Lee (Lei Siew Long)

Old Bandmates at Winter Warmers

From left: Sim Sim (Flute Section Leader), Tze Ying (Uniforms In-Charge), Me,

Hooi Ying (Nobody XD), Yee Ying (Vice Chairman), Ming Hui (Treasurer),

Kam Choy (General Affairs), Jiunn Ter (Drum Major)

BBQ at JJ's Place

From left: Me, Ko Seng, Mei Min and Tun Xian

I didn't take most of the pictures, and there is still more I would like to add, so I will upload more as soon as I can get them from my friends.

Cheers,

Brian

Cooking Hazards

I was cooking some Japanese instant noodles at 1 in the morning just now when I scalded my finger. Hurt like hell for a while, but more interestingly, the skin at the inflamed part of my finger turned a pretty white colour after a few minutes. Ooooo.......

Putting my analytical mind to the test, I tried to figure out why my finger turned white. Several reasonings popped into my head:

• My finger was part chameleon
• My finger was part heat-sensitive chameleon
  
• I'm a cha- (SM: "**** you.")
• The heat accelerated the aging of my red blood cells until they became old and white
• The heat burned my red corpuscles away, leaving the white blood cells (which then multiplied disproportionately), simultaneously sealing the skin area off from further entry of red blood cells
• My finger went white in terror
• Red + Heat = White

Sadly, a search on Google proved all my postulations to be unfounded. The white patch is either a scab or plaque of dead skin, or a very flat blister. Shit.

Brian

The First Piece

Hey reader! Since this is my very first post of my very first blog, I'm a bit at loss at what to say. Thought I might start off with an introductory post. :)

My name is Brian, and my friends call me Brian. (Well, sometimes they just address me as 'b*tch', but I guess its my fault for popularizing its usage. >.<) I'm currently pursuing a degree in electronics engineering. I would tell you where I live and such, but just in case someone I've pissed off decides to hire a hitman to do me in, they won't be getting anything here. Though I guess they could always check my Facebook profile.

You could say that I'm a pretty typical guy. I enjoy games, reading, going out with friends, and the occasional exaggerated banter we teens seem to enjoy nowadays. I rarely have time for movies, and I don't follow any TV series, though a few seasons of 24 I've watched were nice. My taste in music and movies are pretty mainstream: I enjoy what most people would enjoy.

I can play the drums, and I've recently picked up another instrument in the varsity's chinese orchestra: the yang qing. I used to be able to play some good licks on the drumset, but that was 2 years ago, and I've barely touched my electronic set at home since. I was in a marching/concert band during high school, and conducted there in my final year. It was there where I also met my sweetheart Yen :), who's furthering her studies in music in Taiwan. We've been together for more than 3 years now, and I'm thankful all that she has shown and given to me.

I am still mulling over what this blog should be about. Well, it'll be about me of course, but what do I post? I'm aware that most bloggers post experiences they had, or post special messages to friends, voice their opinions, lalala. The problem with me is that I don't go out much, I rarely do anything special for friends and I keep a lot of my opinions to myself (See? I'm a bitch. Haha).

Maybe I'm hoping this blog will change that.

I regard myself as a person with a... shifting personality. In short, I haven't decided what kind of person I wanna be yet, how my attitude towards other people should be. I suppose I'll have to settle on a character one day, but for now, I am content with stepping on other people and making them smile at the same time.

I think I've made my introduction lengthy enough. If you managed to reach the ending here, thanks a lot for reading. You just saw the first piece in my process of assembling me.

Cheers,

Brian