I'm sending stuff to HL's house a few minutes. Hopefully, it increases my karma just in time for my national exams results release tmr. Been too lazy to go to the post office the last few days.

I hope HL doesn't see this. ;-)

Costing just RM12 for 6 packets of OOMPH sour-spicy rawksauce stuff, I think it's so cheapo, the postman doesn't even want to send my tomyum paste to Bukit Timah lor. Wah lao. Not forgetting that I have absolutely nothing to do right now, other than

1) fixing the casing of my brother's computer
2) completing NFSMW (I'm Blacklist No 2!!)
3) cleaning the mess on my desk
4) getting rid of that pile of sand on my computer desk which has somehow mysteriously appeared
5) Dusting my room, and finding that bug which bite me, giving me tons of itchy mosquito-looking bites
6) Keeping the NFSMW account on my computer up-to-date
7) calming the shit out of me for my exam results tmr
8) Talking about shit, go shit the remaining stuffs from my bowel in a minute
9) Fixing the GRUB problem which somehow refuses to see my Debian partition
10) revise a lil' bit for my advance theory test which I havent' even booked for yet

Perfect 10! OOps. Was supposed to shower and move my ass, then.

You saw the advertisement for IKEA Singapore today? The first page (usually owned by Shop'N'Save or Courts) had me laughing. The second page had me excited. They're opening one more outlet in Tampines! Old news, actually, cos I heard of this looooong time ago. The new store is HUGE-MUNGOUS!

Bigger store natually means they need more to employ more people, right? Too bad for me, cos though I'd do anything to work in IKEA, I'll be wearing my greens at the end of the year. Most involved I can be is to haunt IKEA Tampines everyday! It's quite near, actually!

Boo-hoo!

The dreaded! A-level results on 1st March!

This sounds weird. I've been in touch with pop culture since it's the new black. There's also people, friends, cousins who took on pop same time as me. However, most are what we call n00bs. Or newbies for short (did I ever mentioned I detest the word "n00b"?) They see, they hear, they kpo, but they don't take to heart and sort or memorise what flashed past their eyes, despite it being flashed millions of times on the TV. Sounds familiar on our local free-to-air channels, hor?

So anyway, Mother and I were argueing over whether the host of Amazing Race, and American Idol is the same person. Of course I say NO, not the same person. But she insist that they are the same person.



Obviously different. You see, old aunties assume that show business people are the same if you have the same hair, same chin, same smiley eyes. In this case, both are blond and caucasion, of course.

Nah. The "Self-Declared King of Police Car Chase" has decided to step aside. He's got his PDL (provisional driving license)! Now he can practise his mad lack-of-culture-ed driving skills on the public roads, either in Malaysia or in Singapore!

I doubt it's safe in Singapore to drive. A simple misjudgement leading to jumping the traffic light on red will award you $200 in debt of the Singapore gahmen. (See here for latest updates from your most favourite organization in the world)

You want the story? Not much. Go there on time, preferbably 15 minutes before your test. Be prepared before that, just make sure you know most of the rules, sign boards that you see on Singapore roads. Most of the signs apply elsewhere as well. Kills many birds with one stone if you know the entire story. I stepped into the AMK driving centre at 11.25am, settled down with Kelly Clarkson screaming into my ears, and queued up to enter the room with over 45 touch screen computers.

At first, I couldn't quite get used to the touch screen thingy. It's weird. Sorry man, I use the mouse and keyboard. Touchy-feely isn't exactly my type. I had to press, almost on the verge of punching the bloody screen. You know, the kind when you create small water puddles on the screen? So I raised my hand.

"Err, the computer isn't responding to my...."

I broke off mid sentence, expecting the balding old man in one inch thick glasses to say something like:

"You hold on. I'll get you a mouse."

Instead, he said:

"NARBEH CCB! GIVE YOU SCREEN TO PRESS ALSO DUNNO HOW. I KNOW MY COMPUTERS MUCH SLOWER THAN THOSE YOU HAVE AT HOME. SHEESH...CANNOT WAIT IZZIT?? You have to wait a while."



-.-"



I meant to say, you shiny head, your screen and my dry hands don't communicate. I WANTED you to say: Spit on your hands. Wet hands' signals will be picked up better, asswipe-good-for-zilt.

Anyway, I'm not exactly happy. It's not the end lor! Have to pay $25 for that small piece of cyan-coloured paper as my license, then if I don't get my QDL (qualified driving license) witin 6months, I have to extend the PDL for another $42.

Driving is so expensive. Learning to drive is even more expensive lor !

As promised, pictures:





Yay! I did it!



I'm not very expensive, am I?

OK. Enough of narcism.


The kitten that thinks it's a tiger


My old faithful, which I might retire soon


She's ok. Just a bit light on the backsides


If I have a real car like this, girls will fall infront of me! =)


She's fast, though I haven't put much muscle into her. C4's fav car =)


By far the most reliable and fastest on her feets wheels


I can't believe the Police Chief drives this piece of crap

I'm done. 7 cars in my secret hideout. Only one out in the roads waiting to smash mata cia (dialect for police cars). I'm not good, but getting there!

I'm a pro. Please get down on your knees and worship me instead of XX, thank yew! =)

At least in the computer world. After almost 10 hours of trying to crack at the particular milestone of NFSMW, the self-declared king of police chase dodged the most road blocks, though he's ranked at a measly number 6 for the 15 blacklists. Proof:



For the record, I had (all tuned) VW GTI, Supra that didn't had much work into it (saved for the paint and repaints) since I got it through the pink slip, my beloved RX8, a souped up Porsche, and another fancy DB9 that I put some works into. Pehaps pictures later.

I raced, failed many times, paid a whole lot of fines so I'm clean with the police. At one time, I had two of my vehicles; the Porsche and DB9 impoounded. I had to sell the cute GTI to get some cash to pay up. The pathetic amount wasn't enough to pay peanuts. I ended up with the sick RX8 which racked up bounty that put the sucker that took my BMW M3 to shame, and the Supra that's so fat and retarded, it cannot move off its bum.

TODO then: minimum

-7 races completed
-4 milestones completed
-2.3 million bounty

What I had:

-10 races completed
-3 milestones completed
-2.6 million bounty

Then my bounty amount and number of races was sufficient to move me to the next round to fight Blacklist no.6. But the P.O.S. milestones were short by one. I had 4 choices of milestones left:

1) Trade paint with at least 22 police vehicles
2) Achieve a speedtrap that needed 180KMh that's between 2 sharp bends
3) Achieve a speedtrap that needed 250KMh, located on a bridge heavily polluted by police cars, and the trap's at a slight bend at the end of the bridge
4) Skip 10 road blocks.

The obvious choice was number 1. However, each time I reached the high scores, like after painting 20 plus police GTOs, they'll corner me immediately after I mistook a bend and spin out of control. ALT+F4 helped to prevent 'shawn' from getting a record, and blowing his milestone, but also pulled a lot of hairs from my head. Bloody hell, I restared the game till the keyboard's chun-ed (cantonese for stupid-fied).

In the end, with the advice of Kzk about using the speedbreaker (which works by retarding time so you can make amazingly fast maneuvours within that split nano-seconds), I raced by to behind the bus terminal to hide. The 30 plus stupid police vehicles, including souped undercover GTOs, battering-ram fullsized SUVs didn't know where the asswipe bastard hid in. I completed number 1 and 4, of which, number 4 made me the king of the virtual roads.

Enough reasons to raise my pay?

You scored as Satanism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Satanism! Before you scream, do a bit of research on it. To be a Satanist, you don't actually have to believe in Satan. Satanism generally focuses upon the spiritual advancement of the self, rather than upon submission to a deity or a set of moral codes. Do some research if you immediately think of the satanic cult stereotype. Your beliefs may also resemble those of earth-based religions such as paganism. Satanism 92% Buddhism 79% Islam 75% agnosticism 71% atheism 63% Paganism 58% Hinduism 38% Christianity 29% Judaism 29% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

No, I'm not a guest blogger. I'm Shawn, thank you. I'm not sure if people know my chinese name, it's 镇勋. My parents never knew why they gave me that name, they just thought it sounds nice, and tada! I have a chinese name that sounds uniquely different.

In fact, so different that most dunno how to pronounce it at all. Those who know hanyu pinyin, and some chinese, have the initialtive to look up a small chinese dictionary, will see my name as zhen4 xun1, in it's pure hanyu pinyin form.

A few days ago, while I was taking an after-dinner stroll with Ma, an old auntie who lives in the same block as us, entered the lift at the 6th floor. This old auntie, I rnever really liked, mainly because she has this very heavy smokey smell that emits from her body whenever anyone is 2 metres from her. Unfortunately, the smokey smell is unlike one of those Marboro after-smoke fragrance. The smell is more accurately described as 'burnt weeds' that you pick from the wild fields.

The family had known this auntie ever since we moved here. She knows my father works overseas, she knows I have a brother, she knows my brother's name as zhenyong, but she's waaaay too old and blur to recall MY fucking name.

Below are excerpts:

"allo!" auntie says in english.

*nods head*

*parents like auntie continues conversation in Hokkien *

"This one is big one or small one?" auntie asks when changing the conversation.

"Big one," mother replies.

"What is his name ah? Zin Yong or Guo Yong ah?"

*mother and I exchange puzzled looks*

"Orh. Err," I was starting to say I'm Guo
Yong, to save the old hag's face, when the elevator door opened. We'd reached the first floor. Now the elevator saved me from lying about my identity, and my health cos the pungent smoke smell just got diluted with the fresh air rushng in from the outside.

Since I have only 2 choices for my name, Guo Yong and Zin Yong, and happens so Zin Yong is taken up already, I'm officially Guo Yong, at least to that auntie.

"Narbei," I muttered to myself once safely outside the old auntie's hearing distance

I'm never a self-declared geek. I sometimes wonder why a few people will like to put a label to my name. Mostly on online forums, you just can't help but promote Linux in a way people would have liked Micro$oft as if it was holding them blackmail.

Operating systems fail me constantly. Like how WinXP sucks to the core. Just recently, like 3 days ago, my screen started having these weird line running vertically through it whenever I boot:



As a result, I have to use Bro's computer, which least pleases me. It would have, if not for a sticky keyboard which keys wouldn't budge, then everytime typing is a pain of literally haviing to punch the individual keys, I'll think of the millions around the world who thinks having a keyboard is the least of their concerns.

And not to mention a mouse that also sucks. I really dunno how anyone can surive liddat. One fine day, I'll buy him a MS keyboard. Or at least something that's close to my peripherals' standards. So for now, playing NFSMW is like a pain in the ass, cos the updownleftright keys are so fucking retarded, I'm reduced to driving like a paralysed freak on an automatic computer car.

I think they haven't changed one bit when I went back to school with C4 today. Of course the Kzk cannot make it again today.

"My grandfather's birthday."

C4: Eh? How come this excuse like very familiar leh
ME: Issit? Narbei...
C4: Oh yar hor! He used the same reason last year to escape ah! *claps hand in glee*
ME: =.= Liddat also can ah.
C4: Yah, what's next? See ah, use grandmother's birthday...

As usual, I cannot be bothered with pictures, despite C4 having a 1.3MegaPix nokia phone, and me a fantasically CMI K700i phone. We got lost when people like Mr Ng, Mdm Myl came along to disturb our rest on the benches. Besides, rubbish talks with Malay proved to be too much a draw to take pictures. Even so, Lugman changed phone; K750i (no longer that brick-of-an N-Gage). Yah lar, add together enough to shame the better of cameramen.

OK, as usual, the bulk of the people are in the canteen, not all wet and gooey like it used to be. The tent was surprisingly missing, replaced by people wearing black underwear shirts walking around in the hot sun. Plus Ganesh didn't need people to hang around to listen to him talk cock, which is good news for them. Plus the toilet cleaner principal (thanks alot for the idea, Buaya) isn't around, saved for the metrosexual-looking v-principal. Boss has grown his hair long, then now he really looks like a huge aweful-looking black squid is growing on his head. Mr Ng looks happy to see us, threatening not to marry unless we give him a huge angpao for his wedding. Pui, you maths teacher, of course you win the calculations lah, bodoh! =)

Anyways, he talked about how there's no more motication for him to teach because of the stupid students because he seemed to have risen higher rank comapred to the rest of the teachers, so that technically doen't make him a teacher, taking him away from what he loves to do most. He told us the Mushroom is retiring soon, then she's grooming him to take over her rotting HOD Mathematics seat. So suave lorh, I think. And while he's telling us these, he kinda looked like he's on cloud 9 already. Higher pay, faster money come, faster wive come also. HAHAHAHA! Then he said if he goes any higher, he'll have to go back to MOE HQ to take up some admin work or something like that.

Sad hor, good teachers liddat cannot go anywhere, must keep them chained to schools lest they lose their touch.

I tell you lor, I personally think it's very suay to be sick during the 15 days of our new year. I'm not 100% confirm about other religions cos I think Indians have 2 days, Thais have a weekend of water spraying or something, Malays seems to have multiple new years throughout the year.

But we chinese only have 15 days lor.

I spent most of the last month shuttling between Seremban and Singapore, and plainly everyone is sick of seeing me already (hahahaha!)

大姨: eh? You here again?
舅舅: HAHA! Back again ah? Good lah, in Singapore also sian, come here better. No need to see you mother. HAHA!

Flipping through the passport, I see these dates:
8 Dec 2005 Entry
15 Dec 2005 Kuluar

16 Jan 2006 Entry
18 Jan 06 Kuluar

26 Jan 06 Entry
31 Jan 06 Kuluar

05 Feb 06 Entry
09 Feb 06 Kuluar

All of them are actually meant for me to learn to drive, especially the last one. The first one was most enjoyable, on 8th Dec last year, cos that's when I had to attend a wedding of a distant uncle, who's old enough to be my elder brother. Half of the once formidable twins of the Loh family, Ah Sun Kor is waht we called him. Yeah sure we go to his father's house alot last time cos my great-grandmother of the maternel side used to be alive, just to peel red onions. I was young, barely 6, so when we go back to Seremban, I never really fanthomed why the aunts have the passion for red onions. Stinging, pungent as they come, the granduncle's market business of selling groceries don't need them to peel them red onions. All I knew then was I loved granduncle's swing. His house to big, you see, so the swing makes a great play place. We two, 舅舅's kids, 大姨's kids, and sometimes 舅公's 'young' kids --- Ah Ling and Ah Yan 姐 will think of the swing as a train, stop swinging only to 'take' passengers and 'let' them off. Ah Sun and Ah Yong kor will stick around with the adults, partly cos they're grown up already.

Since 3 years ago, 太婆 (great grand mother) died, the entire Foo-Loh family got separated. Now nineteen, I finally understand why Hoong Yiyi said during Ah Sun Kor's wedding, "yu gor ah po hei sai zao hou lorh hor?" (If 阿婆 is around then it'll be good lorh hor?) She's like the pillar of strength all of us hold dear, the young ones who will never understand, those who havn't been born to even let her hug like Cal and Em, those who took her for granted when she recognised you still though you barely seen her once in 2 years. Those few hours-worth I spent listening to shoutings of Hakka (太婆's death of hearing) isn't not all wasted. COme to think of it, I'm born and walking already when all the elders are in their real-fraying prime. And I might be the lucky one to tell the babies coming into this Foo-Loh familly how they looked like, how they behaved, who they were, pictures of them (uncle shawn! who's that old man? so handsome like me!)

I digressed quite abit. Besides the wedding, the first and the second will be the more relaxing ones cos most of the adults are around, lots of noise, Cal and Emb are flying all over as usual.

Then there were the X'mas decorations. I got a present for Emby, and Chee Yiyi is so nice to help me advertise it here. I present to you.....THE THING!


Thing, meet everybody. Everybody, meet Thing.

Emby got a bit scared, she wanted to jump off the building.



No lah, only joking. This picture I think was taken after Emby ran into the nearest adult to be hugged, cried a whole bucket full of tears, sprinted into my room, and this one taken when everybody's done opening their presents.

Then the next best exciting thing that ever happened is the angpao season. I haven't opened mine yet, so I dunno who gave what and what gave how much. Obviously there were alot of pictures that were taken with Keen Yiyi's cybershot, most of them not sent to me (I took them, OK!!! Only too lazy to move around, then all the pictures like staionary taken on a tripod or something. Anyways, I don't like the slow shutter speed of the cybershot, takes away all the fun out of candid shooting)

Then again, I sometimes wonder if I don't start making them aware of my presence, my mother Kheng will no longer be represented in the Big Foo-Loh-blah blah family. I don't mind if its "Orh! You are so-and-so's son ah!" or "OOI you Kheng's son! Hurry up, 牛加水 cannot wait for you alidi lah!!!" Sekali one fine day I go back, nobody recognise me. =(

OK back to my sickness, I'm still having a bit of cough. Dear Shawn, please dwink more water.