Chatter Of The Squirrel

Autopsy of Engine Tuning Project

Maybe it’s psychological, but the ride definitely feels heaps better after the tuning.

I can hit the same travelling speed on less rpms, and I only need to touch the gas pedal ever so lightly. The engine purrs sweeter. And I can power up slopes better on every gear. My Charade now tops out at 138km/h. Can’t do better than that without gravity assist.

There is also a slight improvement in fuel consumption, which is really the main thing, isn’t it? But I was kinda hoping for more. But that’s probably cos the engine runs so much better now, that it’s hard to hold it back at the optimal fuel economy speed of 80-90km/h. Travelling much faster than this, and air resistance becomes significantly greater and you burn more fuel. So I’ve been travelling at least 10-20km/h faster on highways. And I’m still getting an improvement to my fuel economy.

Sweet…

Another test is load.

My steed carries me around just fine most of the time. But like a woman, it becomes rather cranky when I invite other men inside her. And just as unforgiving too, cos even several days after driving a heavy load, she’ll still be sluggish and unresponsive.

Well, Saturday, I went to Klang for Bak Kut Teh with a friend. That’s an estimated load of 85kg there… The car did very well. We had a good breakfast. Then I drove around Jln Kapar and pop into every half-cut shop along the road.

A half-cut shop is a 2nd hand car parts store. They buy condemned vehicles, chop it in half, and refurbish & sell the engines and other parts.

I’m looking for the little metal door that covers my petrol intake. It had snapped off, and I was looking for a replacement. Had checked out 3 half-cut shops before this. Checked out another 8 this day. All no luck. Sad.

And on the way back, I missed a turn and ended up in a malay kampung. It’s a very idyllic place, with tall trees shading the road. And at the end of the road, I came upon a surprise.

Wide open skies, undulating hills, and concrete monuments to the dead.

Stumbled onto a chinese graveyard quite by chance. Burial plots as far as the eyes can see. Drove in to explore, top a hill, and even more graves, and more hills, and the same again over the next hill.

It’s a pretty cool discovery.

This may be strange, but I find graveyards very peaceful. Well maintained ones anyway. I also had a good time walking around the WWII monument in Labuan many years ago.

But the day was too hot this day to properly explore this place. I really wonder how far this graveyard goes.

Basking in the Warm Glow of Accomplishment, the First

This brag should have been written a couple of weeks ago.

A story of my kitchen…

I bought my apartment new. Well, it’s a sub-sale, but what completed property isn’t a sub-sale in Malaysia? We just can’t get the idea of ‘build then sell’ through the heads of greedy developers.

Anyway, the apartment came bare. I had to put up lights, ceiling fan, and curtain rods in all the rooms by myself. And the kitchen finishing was disgusting.

They just slammed two lead pipes into the wall, and used that as the support to put on a lousy tin sink. There’s no space to work, and makes the kitchen very uninspiring.

So Ikea comes into the picture.

Saw some interesting choices for kitchen counter-tops there. Either a cheap particle-board with a tough heat-proof laminate; or an elegant solid hardwood counter-top. Both will run perfectly across the 8ft kitchen area that I’ve got.

The laminate is easy to clean. Does not need maintenance. But if you’re unfortunate to drop something on it hard enough to crack the laminate, you’ll never be able to repair that. Also, particle wood is difficult to cut a neat hole in, and you’re likely to get a jagged edge where you cut it.

The hardwood is more expensive. And looks very elegant. But being wood, it needs some love or water will damage or warp the wood.

The decision was made for me when I saw a solid hardwood board at the AS-IS corner. Marked down 30% cos there’s small dent in one corner. Used a wood oil and saturated the wood with a protective sheen. Bought a jig-saw and cut a nice hole for the sink. (Bought the sink outside Ikea. Those Ikea sinks are overpriced.)

Important note when you buy sinks: make sure that it comes with all the necessary fittings to clamp the sink to the counter-top. Some of the discount sinks I saw don’t come with these fittings. And it may be quite difficult to buy these fittings separately. I’ve not seen any in the hardware shops I’ve been to…

So I’ve got the counter-top, a hole, a sink. I bought just one kitchen cabinet to support the counter-top. Didn’t want to get a full set. Expensive. I’ll just wait for discount cabinets and grab them then.

Joy:
-I’ve got a solid hardwood kitchen top with 8ft of working space! Nice.

Disappointments:
-The bloody kitchen wall is slightly concave, so there’s a lousy gap between the middle part of the kitchen top and the wall.

-The wood oil does shit. Water from the tap drips onto the wood, and after a while, it gets mildewy. One time a housemate toss a wet rag onto the wood, and that spot becomes permanently warped. Ikea sells a different kind of wood treatment oil, which makes the whole surface sticky, and is no protection against the mildew stains either.

I made do with the situation for the time being.

Then comes Christmas. Ikea redecorates the show rooms and discard some used stuff. I started dropping in everyday when I can. (Living across the road from Ikea is kinda cool.)

Eventually, I got 3 more cabinets, with doors, and drawers!!

Managed to get the whole thing installed when my dad dropped in after Melbourne. He bought an electric planer in Melbourne. We used that and trimmed the countertop edge until it fits into the concave wall.

Put legs on the 3 new cabinets and put them in.

I took out the sink and did some more work on the kitchen top. Used an orbital sander that I bought from Bunnings, and tried hard to get rid of the gunky oil from the surface. Then bought a can of Minwax Wood Finish & Stain.

Painted the whole piece of wood a deep mahogany colour.

Piece of advice when using this wood finish… The first coat is EVERYTHING! I thought I could just slop on the first coat, then be more careful with the second and third. But it was difficult to cover up my laziness with the first coat.

The first coat is EVERYTHING. Make it count.

But it still looks great. And the surface is now waterproof and everything. But I added a layer of Minwax polyurethane just to be sure.

Yeah, the cabinet doors don’t match. I’ve got two panels biege, two panels mahogany, and two panels steel. But it doesn’t look too bad. Full price of one mahogany colour door is RM150. So, I’ll deal with the mismatched doors. It’s not worth enough to make them look all matching and pretty.

And see how the drawers come all the way out. They can come 95% out without falling off. That’s what’s cool about Ikea drawers. They’re pricey as heck, but the price after the AS-IS discount is more acceptable.

Then I get a plastic tray, and I’ve got a neat little cutlery drawer. How cool is that. Um… it does seem like an inordinate number of knives, doesn’t it? But I don’t think I even got ALL my knives together in this shot either. I’ve enough blades here to dispose of a corpse. Bone knife, de-jointing knife, serrated, non-serrated, even a couple of good stab-bey ones…

Yea… I’m probably disturbed… But we all know that already…

I almost wanted to add a Global to my collection. Saw a couple in Melbourne. It’s the Hattori Hanzo, of chef knives…

But I’ll end the blog here before my blood lust manifests itself in a socially disturbing manner…

Y - The Last Man

A friend told me she was reading Y - The Last Man. She likes Life of Pi, so her tastes carry a lot of street-cred with me.

Took me one night to rustle up 41 issues of this DC/Vertigo comic. (I might teach you how one day, but not here.) And I’ve not been able to stop reading it.

Premise of the story: A plague has killed off every male on earth. Everything with a Y-chromosome just puked up blood and died. All at the same time. Like rapture, that took all the men and left the women behind.

All, save Yorick, the last man, and his chimp, Ampersand.

The story immediately reminded me of The White Plague, by Frank Herbert. (You know, the Dune guy? That movie with Sting? The giant phallus that plows through the desert planet of Arrakis and shitting out melange?)

In The White Plague, a bitter geneticist created a virus that killed women. Don’t remember liking the story much, since I generally enjoy stories with a good protagonist. And one of the main character in the book is just a random dude who managed to crawl inside a decompression chamber with his girlfriend when news of the plague came out. But you’ve got to respect Herbert for writing about genetic terrors years before Koontz or Chricton did.

But the writers probably took more inspiration from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. (You know, the Frankenstein lady? The one that got no respect for writing sci-fi in a male dominated literary arena in the early 1800’s.)

Anyways, Y…

Despite what the title of the graphic novel might suggest, this isn’t some shounen shtick. Nor does the character wear leisure suits. The last man is an unsuccessful magician with a painful sense of humor.

Add a geneticist, a name-less agent from a secret government agency (like Agent 99, you know… but this one is agent 355), a post-holocaustal Mad Maxine world, and the adventure begins.

What’s fun about the story is that it’s unpredictable. And very well written. The dialogue is intelligent, and thoughtful. It’s no coincidence that one character is an English lit major, one a theology major, and one a doctor. It allows the writer to go nuts, and let the dialogue communicate all the messages that the story has to tell.

Imagine a world without men… Asides from the extinction, it’s almost utopian, when you think about a world without religious leaders, war-mongers, nuclear sub crew, etc. Architecture will certainly be more attractive. Yet, it’s also sad that there’ll be art such a world will fail to create, or maintain.

But men do not have a monopoly on stupidity. In a world of women, stupid shit can happen as well. A sobering reminder that it’s people that makes people miserable.

Anyway, in just two nights, I’ve caught up with all 41 issues, and looking forward for more. The writers are good, and I trust that they’ll be able to maintain the quality of their writing. They’re matured enough that they didn’t put in a gratuitious lesbian scene until issue 32… But I also wonder at the childishness of throwing in the random ninja into the story.

There are a lot of laugh out loud moments in the story. I particularly enjoy several of the more obscure pop culture references.

Yorick has a lighter with “FUCK COMMUNISM” engraved on it. That’s the lighter John Wayne gave to Jesse Custer’s father in Preacher.

Y’s girlfriend dressed up in a hot magician’s costume, and Y made a reference to Zatanna.

And I just love the dialogue…. My choice favourites:

“I told you, I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with–”

“Are…are you crying? What’d I say? The ladies usually love my enlightened view of pronouns.”

“I’m a reporter for the Monthly Visitor.”
“A perfect name for that rag.”

“My name’s Toyota. Yeah, yeah, I know. ‘Like the car?’ You think that’s what the Japanese said every time Harrison Ford came over to our country? I swear, you bigoted American men are all the same.”

“Rose, anyone who finds my g-spot on the first try is allowed to call me Allison.”

And:

“My dad says getting dumped was the closest thing he ever had to a bar mitzvah. He doesn’t think he was even part of the human race until a girl broke his heart.”

Order of the Stick #268

If anyone’s hunting for the latest cryptogram, I don’t think I can help much.

Too few words. My best guess from context is:

“Ohhh, swell.”

Conan The Vegetarian

I’m sure we all have some fond memories of Arnold.

The Conan saga is still one of the better fantasy movies pre-LOTR. In the last millenium, when one thinks fantasy, the few movies that will always come up are almost invariably: Willow, Labyrinth, Conan the Barbarian, and maybe DragonHeart.

Austrian accent and all, the Californian governor had few greater successes than Conan.

But my favourite is still the movie where he went all soft, and N.A.G. (New Age Guy), and didn’t eat meat.

You know, the one where he muttered the immemorable, “I know now why you cry. But it is something I can never do.”

. . . . . .

Full marks if you answered T2: Judgment Day

I just watched this movie again last night.

I think this movie was one of my best memory of the early 90’s. Growing up in boring Bandar Seri Begawan, the number of times I’ve been to the cinema, I can count off one hand. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of those…)

I read multiple movie reviews on T2. Long write-ups in the Straits Times. Interviews with Arnold, Linda, James Cameron etc. The technology that made the movie possible. I used to be able to tell you how much this movie costed, and how much Arnie was paid.

I knew this movie well. It was incredible because it was groundbreaking. They created the most unbelieveable effects with the technology available at the time. And even in these times when computers are developing at a geometrical pace, those effects were not surpassed until The Matrix.

I just watched the Director’s Cut of T2. I think I know the theatre cut well enough to tell which parts are new. In general opinion, the parts that sucked were the ones in the director’s cut.

Sarah Connor got a wet dream sequence where she got to snog Kyle, her epic one night stand from before.

John got to teach the T-800 to smile.

Then in the scene where Sarah was picking out bullets from Arnie, they pried open the CPU of the T-800 to switch it to write-mode so that the T800 can learn. Sarah tried to destroy said CPU, and John stopped her with, “Look, Mom, if I’m supposed to ever be this great leader, you should start listening to my leadership ideas once in a while.”

Then a boring family scene of the Skynet programmer. And we see how he switches off his computer by pressing on the [ENTER] key. Without saving his super important work.

Just goes to show that sometimes, the Director’s Cut makes the movie worse. The original cut was awesome enough on its own. Cameron just wanted to make a few more bucks with extra footage that really deserved to remain on the cutting room floor.

And asides from the memorable N.A.G. quote, there’s a piece of narration that Sarah said that’s very thought provoking as well…

“Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him; never Shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there, and it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one who measured up.

“In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.”

It’s interesting when you think about this in a biological, Darwinian aspect… A machine makes the perfect step-father.

Think how natural selection has favoured the gene that favoured women who go weak-kneed at dashing rogue pirates, but instead marry the boring man with financial security. There are research that has postulated this to be a significant survival trait. Think about it.

Similar research has also vindicated men who obsess about large bosoms and round hips. It’s a survival trait.

ANYHOO…. I also discovered that there is an alternate ending for T2. Managed to dig up the script.