Chatter Of The Squirrel

So Where Is The Line

Braininess is sexy.

Except when standing next to a moronic hunk.

Old Acquaintances

Met up with a bunch of old classmates.

Really old classmates.

Like, from the mid 80’s.

The year. Not the age.

Faces I never thought I would ever see again, if it were’t for MSN and FaceBook. Faces from my primary school in Brunei.

Dinner at this HK restaurant at One Utama, specialising in Cantonese roasted meats.

And VERY good roasted pork. It’s simply the BEST char siew I’ve EVER eaten!! Instead of using lean meat, it uses a special cut from either the flank or somewhere near the belly. Cos there’s a fair bit of fat in the meat that makes it deliciously sweet. So what if we paid RM30 per person. It was worth it.

That was followed by hours of chit-chat at the nearest Starbucks.

Catching up on who’s married. How many kids. When we saw each other last. Etc. I didn’t have much to contribute cos I left Chung Hwa after 88. Have only been back to that old alma mater once in 1991, representing another school, and thrashed my old school very soundly at the district level finals of the national science quiz.

Good times…

Talk also wandered to the state of our country. One fella is in the construction business, and he had a LOT to add. Being in a business that makes a lot of money very visibly, he has to deal with a LOT of gangsters.

Just about every project, in any area, there will be a local triad that he has to pay tribute to. It’s actually a necessary service and an unavoidable expense. Instead of being hassled daily by the schools of random shrimps who might cause trouble, it’s more convenient, and there’s more accountability, if one just pays off one big shark. And this is on top of the various ‘legitimate’ harrassment from health inspectors, safety inspectors, etc.

This doesn’t stop at construction projects. Another friend who’s in the renovation business, also has to deal with these unpleasant societies when his company gets the renovation deal for a project. To the point that the company practically supports a small army of characters to ‘police’ what’s theirs.

The stories got more troubling when we started talking about robberies. Cases that never made it into the papers.

Guns are available in the black market for about a grand. And that’s an investment that can reap good dividends. Stories of friends of friends who got robbed at gun-point. They don’t take just the cash. They’ll also get your ATM cards and your PIN number. And don’t be smart and give them a fake PIN. Did you think you’ll be released before they attempt to make a withdrawal with your PIN? Heaven help you if you tried to be clever.

Another story of 3 friends who made a large withdrawal at a bank. Too often, you just need to make certain payments with no paper trail, thus such cash withdrawals are unavoidable it seems. So, the 3 guys split their money before leaving the bank. 2 guys got on the same car and was held up. The robber counted the cash and said, “I know you took out 190k, where’s the missing 50 thousand ?”

He obviously had spies in the bank. He then proceeded to drive the 2 victims to a highway, left them off by the roadside, and told them to catch up on foot. The 2 guys found their vehicle parked by the roadside 2-3km ahead.

That’s the cool thing about Chinese robbers. They’ll only go after the big fish. And are only sensibly interested in your money, and nothing more.

Another incident that happened to this friend: big withdrawal, 3 persons went in 3 separate cars. While a colleague was filling out the withdrawal slip (for a big amount), he noted another bank ‘customer’ beside him that was glancing his way. When he picked up a queue number, this customer did the same.

When they’ve done their transaction and left the bank, the customer followed, despite the counter calling out his number next. That colleague is an old salt, so he was very alert. When he stopped mid-walk and turned around, the ‘customer’ averted eye contact suspiciously. Further confirming that they’ve been marked.

So all 3 of them piled into one car and waited. They watched the customer go behind a tree to make a phone call. Likely to give the description of the car to his accomplices waiting in ambush somewhere. They waited till the customer walked away, before they quickly left the car and piled into another car and drove off.

Then more stories of car-jackers, that made me glad that I’m driving a clunky little Charade.

What happens when the economy slows down? More will take to crime.

Malaysia has so much to look forward to.

Malaysiakini Problems?

On the night that the votes are being counted, there’s a media blackout. Sketchy TV and radio reports on the results that were coming in.

But everyone could check results via Malaysiakini.

Until this happened last night:

What’s going on? The Domain Name Server is lying to me… Requests to the Malaysiakini website is returning 127.0.0.1 at the IP.

It’s telling the request to look at my own computer for the Malaysiakini website.

If I use a different DNS server, (one that isn’t TM-Net’s 202.188.0.133 or 202.188.1.5), the correct IP for Malaysiakini is 122.0.17.30.

And using that IP address, it works PERFECTLY fine. There isn’t a bandwidth problem on their server or anything!

Is TM getting flooded by constant page refresh requests for Malaysiakini from the millions of Malaysians who want the real dirt, and being swamped, they messed around with their DNS servers to tell everyone to screw 127.0.0.1 (which is geek metaphor for : “Go Screw Yourself!”).

Or maybe it’s some nonsense glitch on my own system… I highly doubt that. Others in Malaysia, and in Malaysia only, are having this ‘glitch’.

Eitherway…. Look to http://122.0.17.30  to reach the Malaysiakini site in the mean time. Or one of their mirrors like : http://malaysiakini.aizuikmal.com/

Comedy Court - funny $h1t

See more funny music at Comedy Court.

A Constitutional Amendment??!!

Why the hell is there a constitutional amendment proposed to raise the retirement age of Election Commission members by one year to 66??

They’re actually proposing a constitutional amendment just to give the b@$t@rd Election Commission chairman Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman to work another year??

Is the Malaysian constitution written on toilet paper?

Just cos the ruling party needs a butt-load of phantom votes next year, they can rewrite the constitution and keep their lap-dog there?

What! The! Frack!