Typings of a wayward hand

hmmmmmmmm…. this is probably the last blog i’ll post from brunei… i guess i’ll post some pics. havent posted any pics in my blogs yet, so i guess this is a first! woo hoo! havent been too bz over here, only go out with parents. and i confirmed something! mechanics over here kinda suck! i mean my dad sent his car to two mechanics for servicing, and both shops suck! the first shop adjusted the vacuum until the idle rpm is around 2k! normally only 0.8 nia. and the second shop, just sent today. he serviced the brakes. my dad was concerned over the front brakes coz the disc wasnt worn evenly and makes low screeching sounds when braking. well the mechanic decided to check the rear brakes too. and i dunno what the hell he did (well i guess i do, i’m a semitrained mechanic too). on the drive back from the workshop the rear brakes were abit jammed. so by the time my dad reached home, it smelled of burnt fibre and metal. i have 2 theories on what happened. one was that the brake shoes werent adjusted properly and was in constant contact with the drum thus causing nonstop friction. the other theory is that the handbrake cable was pulled too tight while servicing and causing the same thing. and i dont think they bled the hydraulic piping coz the brake pedal felt mushy. had to pump on it to get brake response. pretty fucked up. and the smell is worse than burnt rubber.

havent been doing too much travelling since i came here, and brunei isnt much of a tourism oriented country. went to tasik merimbun, a big lake which had an island in the middle. well the bridge leading to the island had a warning sign saying it wasnt safe, and the planted flowers around the hiking trail had grown wild. so my parents didnt dare cross the bridge to the island, so we just walked around a quarter of the lake. at least until the end of the trail. after such a dissapointment, we headed on to kuala belait, a town at the other end of the country. but as isolated as it was, it was brunei’s main economic resource. almost all of the oil the country mines is from here, which is a quarter million barrels of crude oil per day. o.O over here some of the oil wasnt found under the sea like malaysian oil. some of the oil was located underground and was mine using ‘nodding donkeys’. these are electrically powered heavy machinery that pumps out oil. the oil here is all owned by BSP (Brunei Shell Petroleum) and all the gas stations are shell. and the gas is cheap! B$15 can full tank (equivalent around rm33) the suzuki ignis or the nissan sunny (over here its nissan sunny, no sentra, but its essentially the same). damn i cant get over how many cool cars are here compared to malaysia. and they are all affordable! a 97 mitsubishi lancer B$6.7k (around rm 14k!), a 96′nissan skyline 2 door (got 2 door and 4 door versions) B$23.5k (around rm50k)!!!! and new cars cost B$15 and above! a toyota vios B$15k only! my dad’s friend got a C200 kompressor (mercedes benz) for B$70k! damn i feel like migrating…. i guess brunei is a pleasant place, and seafood and petrol is cheap, but i still cant get over the fact that there is only one; read, ONE cinema in all of brunei. the censorship board is kinda strict, so the only movies available are from astro or pirated vcds. and to my knowledge their aint much pirated vcd places around here. another thing is the quality of service at fastfood places. i went to mcd’s and the service was terrible. the dude ( i think he’s phillipino) forgot my drink. and from the receipt the way they totaled the orders was abit haywire. it regards a meal as just food, and the drinks as addons, while on the menu it was part of the meal. the mcd’s here has spaghetti! the kfc popcorn chicken was wierd coz it was too round and the breaded crust was too soft. like they used some kinda cucur flour. as to go on with the gastronomy lesson, i made and ate fish fingers with parmesan cheese and chicken pastrami toast. it kinda went down well, until i drank some milo+nescafe+chopped almond drink (another rasyidi original recipe!)… that was when the trouble started. i had to go out immediately to pick my dad up from his office since the other car was at the workshop. after that we went shopping and i had to swallow my vomit 3 times at the shopping mall to avoid embarresment. fuck this eosophigitis. cant keep a good meal down. =.=" i also had lamb leg steak last night. which was full of fat. thick fat. the steak was around 400grams (which is heavy). and the fat was so plentiful i had heartburn! lucky i have a high metabolism rate or else i would have dropped dead with a heart attack. tonight i’m planning on making some lamb shoulder steak. about the same weight as the leg, but with less fat. just now went to eat at a semi fancy restaurant serving malay food (groan), and i fell for the plain water and peanuts trick. before the food arrived i had downed a glass of water and a fistfull of peanuts. which was about 2 hours after i was vomiting around. and i was kinda full too at that time. so the honey BBQ chicken, fried squid tempura, crab and corn soup and gado gado wasnt really enjoyed to the fullest. heck i wanted to go home and watch wimbledon!

my time spent here was most used on gardening and helping around the house. ceiling is high, and so were the windows and curtains. so i was given the task of unhooking the curtains and hanging it up again after it was washed. i was short, so i got blisters from standing on the grill and grabbing on to it with one hand while the other hand was desperately grabbing at the hooks and trying to remove them from the rings. after doing a window i gave up and tried using the garden ladder. this ladder was constructed from wood and weighed above 50kgs. and my body weight was 49 kgs. trying to pick it up and hold it with the hands was beyond my physical limit so i carried it on my back. after swaying around and hitting some trees and the door arch, i managed to get it in the house. that made the curtain unhooking and rehanging easier (no muscle strain). i also had to clean the window panes, wash the car and weed the garden. with my bare hands. that really sucks, especially if u have long nails. which i did. got dirt into the farthest reaches of my underfingernail world. so i resorted to using gloves and ripping up the earth whenever i found that the weed roots were deep. which worked. but created big holes in the ground. i was also  ordered to burn the dried grass/leaves/branches. which reminded me why i’m a pyromaniac. yes, i have a fascination with fires. i started up the fire and just stared at it until my face became black. i used to play with the insecticide spray and a candle. which caused scorch marks all around the house in penang and some serius burn marks on my ears (from being pulled by my mom and the lasermouth scolding she gave).

a relative of mine passed away yesterday morning. she used to be my sitter in primary school . i used to go to her house after school since my mom was teaching in the afternoon session and my dad was at his office. she wasnt in the best of health (had high blood pressure and diabetes). her daughter said that she ate too many durians (almost everyday) which caused her blood pressure to spike and caused a heart attack. i’m kinda sad because i kind of drifted further away from her house after primary school. and i didnt go to her house during the university holidays unless my aunt brought me along (i’m her driver whenever i go back penang). the last time i saw her was 3 weeks ago, (i went with my aunt, duh), and she was having trouble seeing. plus her foot hasnt healed after a fall last year. i never said thanks for taking care of me for 2 years…. damn i feel like an ungrateful bastard (which i think i am sometimes)…. so makcik gemuk (seriusly thats what every1 calls her), may Allah bless your soul.

i’m kinda out of words after that last topic, so i think i’ll stop at that. and to every1 i’m going back to KL on friday! i’m not even sure of where i’m planning on staying (either my aunt’s in keramat, my aunt’s in putrajaya, or my grandma’s mosquito farm in perak. or…. at a friend’s house). i might even go back to penang but if i did i would be taking a bus. so if any1 from KL wants to go to my place in penang, tell me! that’s all i guess….

this dialup is too slow, too lazy to wait for uploading of pics. maybe later…………..

damn the time here hasnt synchronized with my brain yet. woke up at 6am, can see dawn edi… in w.m’sia 7++ only see sun. and since i usually sleep at around 2-4am, waking up at dawn isnt something that i look forward to. and now i become the handyman around the house. gardening, cleaning, carwashing, some cooking (heck i cook an hour after my family has dinner… i’m cooking right now actually. nope i’m not i just finished, now eating mozarella toast with fish fillet. yummy.) its been a long time since i bought anything without the cash coming out of my own pockets. so being here with my parents kinda liberated me. bought a few stuff use parents’ money. heck the most i spent on myself is to buy ‘the star’ and go to the cybercafe. most of my money goes to petrol or food. back to what i bought. i went hiking up bukit bendera recently, and considering this season rainfall is heavy, the soil was wet and kinda dangerous up there. and i went hiking with my reebok tennis sneakers. yes, tennis sneakers. as smooth outsole as you can get other than skateboard or basketball shoes. so i suggested to my mom for me to get a hiking shoe/boot for me. so to the shop we went. after browsing around, i chose a high cut hiking shoe. then my mom decided to put in her two cents. she started on about getting shoes than can be worn for everday purposes and that hiking shoes arent good for walking. bla bla bla. since i am not the argueing type of person, i cimplied. the purpose of getting hiking shoes is to hike, not daily walking. and i was having plans on going to templer park at the start of the next semester. so i ended getting low cut BASKETBALL SHOES. i realised the shoe type after reaching home. it deceptively looked like running shoes. hurm. running is/was also a hobby of mine. until an incident near my house freaked me out. to those uninitiated, i used to jog from telok kumbar (my town) to gertak sanggul (nearby town). it took around 8 km and 40minutes (at my peak, which was around 4 years ago.) one day i went jogging kinda late, coz it rained before that. and the route i take is a scenic one, with one side of the road at the seaside while the other one is a hillside. so if i was on my way to gertak sanggul, the beach was at my left and the hill to my right. it just so happens that (generally in penang, this is a rule) where there is a hill, there is a chinese cemetary. on that particular day, on my way back, near the cemetary area, i felt rustling in the trees above me, but when i looked up there was nothing, not even wind. and when i continued running, the thing in the trees kept following me. and when i neared the cemetary, my feet felt heavy. very heavy. and i wasnt even tired yet. so i walked kinda subconciously. and i found myself wandering towards the middle of the road. after hurrying back to the roadside, i continued walking before coming to in the middle of the road. could something have influenced my feet to walk to the middle of the road? after this happened 3 times, i sensed something was going on and my feet felt lighter. so i jogged back home. havent gone jogging alone there ever since. took a walk there, but never alone. lucky the road was at the furthest area of Penang, and not many vehicles pass through. and 2 weeks ago i went swimming at lata hijau in kedah. i found out that my freestyle swimming sucks due to lack of practice. my breaststroke and backstroke is still good, while the butterfly is too strenious on the shoulders. damn my physical health is getting worse. and a lot of my pants cant be worn coz my waist size has increased. and my weight is 49 kgs. hmmmm…. and now i have running shoes, basketball shoes, and tennis shoes. the last time i played basketball without looking like an idiot was when i was in primary school in the US. and since i was a kid, every1 looked like an idiot. heck over there i played contact football (american), baseball and volleyball. damn i miss 3 breaks in a day during school.

The Suzuki Experience

now that i think of it, since i came to brunei, the number of nissan skylines i’ve seen are more than protons! mitsubishis and toyotas are particularly popular around these parts. but there are a lot of many different cars around here and are quite balanced out. saw a SEAT, skoda, a nissan 350z. about the rarest around here. my dad has a suzuki ignis (1.3, twin cam, fuel injection). the last time i came here (raya puasa last year), there werent many of these on the road. i thought they sucked or something. well now after staying here for the second time, i can say that this model is considerably popular. but the handling is kinda wierd. it has power steering, but it oversteers a lot. and the suspension is a bit like a van. its not hard, but it feels like some kinda delayed response thingy. maybe coz its a tall hatchback and has long spring coils. but the auto is wierd. if u press the throttle (tekan minyak), the rpm meter would rise around 1thousand rpm before you actually start accelerating. at first i thought it was caused by overdrive, but it still happens with overdrive off. this means the response to acceleration is very sucky. trying to overtake a car travelling at the same speed would require at least 20 meters of space to accelerate to reach a comfortable speed to overtake. which kinda sux. oh and btw i just serviced my iswara, on the drive from penang-kl i managed to do 170km/h. heck i didnt even think it was possible with a 1.3 car. 10 km/h short of the speedometer limit. the fastest i ever did was 180 with the old 1.8 wira, but the speedometer went til 240.

omg i saw happy tree friends on mtv! i didnt even know they had it here! o.O

this has got to be the most boring post ever.

This is the second time I wrote this fucking post. My dad’s laptop is bugged with dunno how many unwanted stuff. So my original fucking post was mysteriously gone because internet explorer closed suddenly. And that post took 3 hours to write. Now I’m writing in word and copying over to the blog. Punkass spyware and virus/worm/Trojan creaters. So now I have to rewrite about what happened in the last 3 weeks.

On Thursday, after the exams, hanaffi came by and we cut each other’s hairs. Using the shearing machine. With not much prior experience. So we emerged as 2 almost bald dudes, with him going to work later that day. On Saturday me hizami and irman departed to penang. After the last stop I let hizami drive to his house. Big mistake. He almost ran us off the road. Too paranoid about the vehicles in the other lane. Went home, picked some young coconuts and drank. Irman crashed until Monday, in which we went to his old school to pick up his SPM certs, then sent him to the sg. Nibong bus station where he went back to KL. Spent the next 2 days alone, then on Wednesday hizami came to my house. Not before he decided to go sightseeing and bypassed my house and ended up at Balik Pulau half an hour around the freaking island past my house. Later on we went with my aunt to the flower festival being held at the penang botanical gardens. After that went to floating mosque at tanjung bungah, then relatives’ house. Later that night went to gurney plaza to watch star wars ep3. arrived at 10.30, the next screening was at midnight, so we ate at gurney drive hawker center (penang’s most popular hangout nowadays), then lepak at the seaside watching chicks until 11.35. got called on by some chicks while walking alone to the car, but ignored them. Around 4 girls, malay, wearing tudung, quite hot, but any chick regardless what they are wearing that is around gurney at midnight isn’t worth knowing. Watched star wars, staggered out of the cinema half frozen at 2.30 am. Next morning picked some more coconuts from front of house. Then hizami went back home. 2 days later my sis came back for her holidays. Went bowling that same day with a friend. Spent the next week watching stuff from my sister’s 120gig hard drive. 4 seasons of that 70’s show, 2 of arrested development, house, full house (a Korean drama+comedy), the 4400, and around 30 full movies. Went hiking up bukit bendera, took wrong route, ended up wasting half an hour going around the whole town. But exercise is always good, and it beats rotting away in front of the pc. It also made me aware that my fitness lvls are lower than during school. Watched

Madagascar

too at bukit jambul complex. Drove my dad’s old 1973 Mini clubman around, then somehow the door handle broke off. Had to open from outside….. went to bukit jambul again, bought dungeon keeper 2 and fallout 2, games I have been searching for since form 3, which is around 5 years ago. Coincidently met with 5 friends, even though there were 3 groupes. Somehow all came out on the same day without planning on meeting up. After walking around with them, exchanging phone numbers, went separate ways.

Was planning on coming back to KL on Monday so that I could make an appointment with the specialist, but my finances were withheld by my sis. So I drove back, alone, on Wednesday, stopped by at my grandma’s at Slim River Perak, and after confirmation that I couldn’t make the appointment, stayed there. Another mistake I guess. Was sacrificed to the mosquitoes and barely survived the onslaught. The next morning went to the market with my grandma, then was absorbed in reading a novel (Atlantis Found) until I forgot that I should have gone to KL already. So I left at around 5.15, and took the old highway (preserving the touch n go card :p)… continuing the journey, I arrived at my dad’s friend’s house at gombak to pick up a 60gig 2.5inch portable hard disk. Then went on to putrajaya to my uncle’s house. Got a called from and unknown number, which meant my mom. Got scolded for driving at night. Took a different road than usual, took the exit at puchong. So I arrived at a different part of putrajaya than the one I was used to taking. Then I forgot which precinct my uncle stayed at, either the 9th or the 11^th. after wandering around, somehow recognized a road and reach his house. Slept at 12.00 midnight, woke up at 5. drove off to KLIA half asleep with uncle, had no problems with check in, left my car with my uncle. Arrived at miri at 9.45, had brunch, went shopping, had Friday prayers. Still haven’t got used to the different times. Then at 4.00 pm started towards

Brunei

. Miri is near the border but our house was around 2 hours from miri. Had dinner before reaching house, and straight go online. Testing out new HDD and cooling pad right now. ~~~~~~ that’s it I guess. Whoah…