TV characters... we're all influenced by them. Thanks to the eloquence of Hannah Montana, my sisters are now using, on average, three 'likes' per sentence. Thus a regular conversation among their friends would go, "I was like, at the mall the other day and there was like, this like, bag right, and it was like, totally hot you go gUrLz..! ^_~" There's also my good friend Zul, who had considered the gym his second home after witnessing the number of buildings that The Hulk was capable of tearing down just by sneezing. You're getting there bro. And then there's Judd. Aspired by the massive acreage of hair on David Hasselhoff's chest in Baywatch, he's been under the strict rules of an intensive 30-day 'body hair rejuvenation' program; which involves sunbathing, to the horror of his neighbors. As for myself, I've never really been heavily influenced by any particular TV character. While I tend to believe that the fashion of my wit is in the mold of Dr. Gregory House, my intelligence has never been likened to anyone beyond Peter Griffin. Yes, the same Peter Griffin who wrote the following letter, "Dear MacGyver, Enclosed is a rubber band, a paper clip, and a drinking straw. Please save my dog." If given the choice though, I've always wanted to be like Tim Allen in Home Improvement. That's right, Tim Taylor, the ultimate Mr. Fix-it and long time host of Tool Time. I want to be able to fix things. (And of course, have my own TV show with initially, Lisa (Pamela Anderson) and later on, Heidi (Debbe Dunning) as the assistant. Guys my age we owe a lot to Lisa and Heidi as the show was at their peak in the mid-90s; an era during which most of us hit puberty. Sigh...) As I was saying, I've always wanted to be good at fixing things. I suppose it's only natural for guys to be a bit restless whenever they see a leaking pipe or a loose door knob or punctured tires or Zuleyka Rivera Miss Universe 2006; you know. We would usually experience this sudden urge to screw and tighten some bolts and nuts; especially when it comes to Zuleyka Rivera Miss Universe 2006. Sorry. Nevertheless, I do put some effort into developing my stuff-fixing ability. Every now and then I would look around the house for things to be fixed; in my carpenter pants and equipped with the best tools and gadgets in town. Stanley screwdrivers, Swiss Army knives and Bosch drills all packed in my Black and Decker Power Tools toolbox and ready to rock and roll. Before I give a call to Tanggarajan, the family Mr. Fix-it to come over and 'assist' me, in 'operating' the toolbox. At least I tried.
I had the privilege of giving a few words at my friends, Fadhli and Farah's wedding last weekend. Unbeknownst (that's Belarusian for 'unknown') to them, my public speaking ability is only comparable to that of a door stopper's. But I was honored indeed and took some time (27 minutes) to write the following text; before realizing that reading it out would only garner as much attention as actually putting a door stopper on stage. So I had it folded to drench in my pocket as I went up and delivered my words, loosely based on it. Mr. B, Farah, hope I did alright and thanks again, it was an honor. You guys looked beautiful that night. You too Badol. Assalamu'alaikum w.b.t. and a very good evening, Ladies and gentlemen, we're all gathered here on this beautiful day to celebrate the blissful marriage of my good friends, Fadhli and Farah. My buddies at the table near that corner over there, on the other hand, are here to get to know girls. You wish, my friends. It wouldn't be too much to say that I grew up together with the couple. I've known them for a good ten years now. We went to high school together. Fadhli was this kid from Bangi whom I believe hated me as much as the other students during the first few weeks as I could never stop talking about wrestling. In my defense, at the tender age of 16, it wasn't easy for me to resist from wanting to be The Rock. After a few games of basketball and outings to Kota Bharu however, we became good friends and left our differences behind; despite the fact that I still couldn't stop talking about wrestling. Farah was one of the Damansara girls at our school. Unlike the stereotypical 'city girl' who would usually look at me and my friends as dirty, smelly boys, Farah was never short of a smile. She was always ever so friendly with us guys. And I suppose it was her warmth that fascinated Fadhli, before they started a relationship towards the end of our senior year. We went to the States to further our studies in 2002 and I didn't get to see the couple much; maybe once a year at the Malaysian Games. Now the cool thing about these two people is the way they allow each other to spend time with their own friends. So during these Malaysian Games thing, Fadhli gets to hang out with his guy friends and laugh at horrible, horrible jokes (none of which ever came from me) while Farah gets to enjoy the company of her girl friends and talk about, I don't know, potpourris. But at the football matches, Farah is always there to cheer for Fadhli as he paves the field with grace. A heartwarming scene indeed as I too got my fair share of cheers, from fans of the opposite team. And therein lies the beauty of this relationship between these two wonderful people. Their chemistry as well as the understanding that they have to each other fuels the happiness, for them to share together. Fadhli, Farah, my prayers for many more blessed years to you guys. Amin. Thank you. Wassalam.  Give it up for Mr. B!
Dear Marks & Spencer, There's a scene from the movie 'Dan in Real Life' in which Dan (Steve Carell, of 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' fame), was browsing in a bookshop before Marie (Juliette Binoche, of 'Chocolat' fame) walked in. Seeing that the shopkeeper was on the phone, she approached Dan, mistaking him for a shop employee. Mesmerized by her beauty, Dan played along and assisted her in selecting books; grabbing 'Everyone Poops' as she cited Hemingway, Tolstoy and Austen. Despite learning that Dan lied about working there, Marie was moved by his warmth. And she opted to accept his offer for coffee; a sitting which later bloomed into a tale like no other. Though the serendipity of it all seems too good to be true, to say I would mind something similar would be a total lie. Dan had provided guys the world throughout, the perfect approach should an attractive woman mistakes them for a store employee. Something with a 384,394,172:1 chance of actually happening in real life. Last week, I (myself, of no fame) was at your KLCC outlet. In my effort to find some office attires, subsequently shutting those who'd likened my pants to that of M.C. Hammer's, I browsed through your clothing racks. As I raked away more pants that would only further encourage my friends to wail 'Hammertime!' everytime they see me, a voice headed my way, "Excuse me, do you have this in other sizes?" Heads down, I held my eyes shut as I asked myself, "Is this it? Is this it? Am I Dan, in real life? Here here my damsel in distress, I shall get you the size that you want; even if it means prowling the store room at the back. Don't worry, I won't get caught. You already are, living proof that I look like a guy who works here, somehow." Before I turned my head and realized that, it was a rather unhappy looking lady with hangers in her hands; one attached to the dress and the other, whipping at the two kids running around her legs. Jaws down, and in fear of enduring the wrath of her mighty hangers myself, all I could mutter was, "Sorry ma'am, I don't work here." To which she apologized, naturally... as she lashed another hanger-whip at her kid, naturally. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Where is this guy going with this?" A question which I can't even answer myself. I wanted to write about how I longed to be Dan in the bookstore scene. But I ran out of formats so I guess doing it as an open letter to you guys would be alright. Nevertheless, I felt sorry for the lady. She must've felt bad thinking that she had ruined my day; which wasn't case. It was simply not the first time I was mistaken for a shop employee. You name it... from Secret Recipe, to Victoria's Secret; I'd worked for them all. The difference was all too obvious anyway that day, as displayed by the following artist impression (who ran out of ink so we had to use advanced CGI to render a human-like image of me):  She might've forgotten to put on her lenses, who knows. Sincerely, Asrif Yusoff Treasurer, Malaysian Chapter The Association of Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas in American Gangster Lookalikes (TADWFLAGL)
It doesn't matter that the cumulative cost of fuel and two tolls to your place accounts for 43.2% of my monthly savings. It doesn't matter that I actually live in the 'food capital' of the country, where the number of McDonald's per acreage land is more than the number of sheep in New Zealand. And it certainly doesn't matter that the fried rice at your place tastes like sand paper, marinated in trisodium phosphate. For every bite of it tastes like little drops from heaven when it's you who's serving. While most would deem anything made by your chef as the ultimate culinary disaster, when it's you who's sliding the plate onto the table, I see an exquisite delicacy from the palace's kitchen, prepared with utmost intricacy. You could be serving a bowl of chicken feet broth and it would still look like coq au vin, whatever that means in French. We used to drive around your area with our heads jotting out of the car window, me and my friends, to see if you're at work. No amount of permanent scars on our faces, thanks to the branches of that tree in front of your place, could ever deter us from taking a peek. For all you know, it could make a good, laughable story as we share a drink under that tree one day. ('We' as in me and you of course... not me and my friends. Not that I'm discounting the fact that I have a higher probability of sharing a drink under that tree with them instead.) In the effort to become future 'thinkers' of the modern world, I'd engaged in numerous discussions with my friends; most of which would usually lead to heated arguments. Our debates cover a host of topics, from the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis on the Asian economy, to the impact of placing a compressed soda cans in between the tires of a mountain bike (which are: 1) the generation of a really neat 'motor-sound' to simulate the experience of riding a motorcycle and 2) very angry neighbors). But nothing -- and I mean not even a disagreement on whether did Tara Reid or did Tara Reid not perform augmentation on her body -- could even come close to the squabble that we get ourselves into upon answering the question 'who you were looking at when you walked pass our table earlier'. A question that could only be settled upon a round of Pro Evolution Soccer on the PlayStation, to avoid bloodbath. So it was only natural for me to grab the bill before the other losers could even touch it when we were at your place the other day. I rose as I held the bill up, and heralded to my friends, "Citizens of this table, you're about to bear witness, the beginning of a love fairytale like no other... with the completion of my payment for our dinner tonight. As I embark upon this journey, may you losers continue to only be able to pleasure yourself with women ending in .AVI and .JPG for the rest of your lives. Behold..." And I walked straight to the counter where you seemed to be quite busy with the cash register; remotely disturbed by the number of guys throwing glances at you while they pretend to listen to their wives and girlfriends. "I'd like to pay." I said to you. "How do you sleep at night, leaving us all sleepless with your smile?" I said to myself. "And that would be RM 28.00" "Here you go... lotsa customers this time around eh?" "Yeah, most of them have been here since a few hours ago." "I could spend a lifetime here with you around..." "What's that?" "Oh nothing, I said I used to work near this town." "Really, where do you work now?" "Ah, I work for an oil company now." "Alright and here's your change... oil company eh? Which pump station?" "..." To say your last question squashed my heart into tiny blobs of frozen blood would be an understatement. And I left the counter grasping the change, leaving no space for its molecules to move. I can hear the sound of the guys in the restaurant holding their laughter in; some of them spilling water out of their noses in the process. From a distance, I can see my friends slowly standing up from their chairs and waving their hands my way putting the biggest of smiles on their faces. And I walked, the walk of shame, leaving you wondering... which, pump, station. Inspired by: Paul Simms' Four Short Crushes My other Simms essays: 1) Basic Instinct III 2) Splash Splash
I've been writing quite a bit now, covering a host of topics from the economic recession in Eastern Europe during the Great Depression, to my similarity to Pinocchio in terms of body part elongation. After roughly skimming through my past posts however, I realized that they all have two things in common:
Thus today, in conjunction with Paula Abdul's birthday, I believe there is no other time more apt for me to make a change in the things I write and eventually, God willing, the world we live in. I'm going to start writing on things that would benefit us in many ways and add value to our lives, while giving back to society. I'm going to write about something useful. About something useful. Moving on, just like any other servants of the corporate world, I spend the bulk of my time at the office. And day in day out, I've been irked by the amount of papers being wasted at work. It's a pet peeve that I never knew I had, in a way. Firstly, do allow me to clarify here that when I say ‘paper wasting', I am in no way at all referring to ‘office sports' such as paper airplane or the basketball variation, dustbinball. For these activities respectively promote aviation development and teamwork as well as athleticism within the staff members. Furthermore, white collar athletes across the globe are becoming greener by switching dustbins for recycle bins. Paper wasting in this context refers to the act of printing unnecessarily; often demonstrated through the printing of documents with miniscule need of being in hard copy format. Worse off, some of these documents are being printed single-sided. How does one deem a document ‘unnecessary to be printed', you may ask. Why did the chicken cross the road, you may also ask. While I'm more intrigued to answer the second question (which would be this), let's not deviate from our topic here. To me, a document becomes ‘unfit to print' when having a soft copy of it wouldn't mean the end of the world; or the banning of Dunkin' Donuts in my world. It happens all the time. I've seen people printing out the most needless of things. In ascending order of irrelevance, from a piece of paper that tells the current time and date to a whole chapter from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. What we need to realize is that the less we print, the healthier we become. I won't even dwell into the environmentally friendly or energy saving aspect it; doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that. Printing less simply improves our well-being. Stay with me on this one. So unless you're that kid from The Sixth Sense, you were born with five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Now, I'm going to elaborate how printing brings displeasure to every one of these senses. Sight Take a look at your office printer. Look deeper... stare at it. Now try imagining that your office printer is Zuleyka Rivera, Miss Universe 2006. Got it? No? Of course you can't. Not because you don't know how Zuleyka Rivera, Miss Universe 2006 looks like, it's because the printer remotely resembles her. Now try imagining that your office printer is Dennis Rodman. Didn't even have to tell you to try did I? The thing with printers is that they weren't designed for you to take them everywhere, unlike your cell phone or iPod. Hence the way they look doesn't matter; just like what women would usually say about men... who are rich. You could put a group of Furbies in the design department of a printer company and they would still produce a decent looking printer. As a matter of fact, I doubt any of the other things at the office would want to date it. "Yo Phone... seen that new desk lamp over at Finance? She puts the DANG in DANGDUT bro..." "Tell me about it Stapler. We need more of these desk lamps around here to neutralize Printer's eyesore effect man." "You don't even have eyes but I'm totally with you there man." Hearing I did a simple experiment the other day with the following hypothesis: "Sound waves produced by office printers have the same adverse effect on gerbils as music produced by Fall Out Boy." Two gerbils were placed in two separate rooms, Room 1 filled with music by the Fall Out Boy and Room 2 with a printer, continuously printing a PDF copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. After two hours, the gerbil in Room 1 was found dead after eating its own hand while the gerbil in Room 2 was found dead in his sleep after reading the first few pages of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There. Smell Well, when was the last time you heard anyone using printer ink as perfume? Taste I would be really surprised if you do this but try licking on a warm, freshly printed piece of paper. Hardly tastes like filet mignon, I'd presume? Touch See any of the above. Or come up with your own point; couldn't be any worse than the ones I'd written. Though you may realize that I ran out of ideas by the time I got to that Fall Out Boy experiment (which is non-fictional), I do hope that I managed to deliver my point. And as intended, contribute to the betterment of mankind. So, unless you're printing out this article to be shared with, while educating and enlightening that very attractive colleague of yours, please do think twice before printing at the office. Save the gerbils. EDIT June 22, 2008: Good night, George Carlin.
I was in the car with my cousin the other day and during a stop at the red light, we had the following conversation, loosely translated, "Man... it's always like this." "Elaborate..." "I drive a total of two hours back and forth daily from my apartment to the office and half of that time are spent at traffic lights and traffic jams. But never... never once had I ever stopped beside a car with a hot chick in it? Just look around... " "I don't think chickens are allowed to drive." "You stupid shit... but that's always the case you see. It's either (1) it's a car full of guys or (2) there is a hot girl in there... but on the driver's seat is a guy who knows that I'm looking at the girl. So he'll throw this face at me, you know -- Yeah yeah, who da man? Dream on sucker... dream on! Booyah!" "What's new then?" "I guess." We both grew up in pretty much the same environment, me and my cousin. Since small, we were trained by the elders in the family to see the world in a wide spectrum, but accept it in a narrow one. In watching football, for example, we were thought to see the players as people who must get things right (in other words do every single thing we say in front of the TV), 100% of the time. Because they were born to do so. Otherwise, they are the scum of the Earth. "Okay Dollah move up Dollah move up, to the middle! Ask for the ball! Now Zainal cross the ball he's there waving at you can't you see?! Send it in! send it IN OH MY GOD YOU CALL THAT A CROSS?! YOU'RE SUPPOSED PUT IT INTO THE GOAL ON THIS FIELD!! NOT THE ONE IN MARS!! WHY YOU SON OF A hey... it went in... alright... way to go Nal... always knew it was going to go in... right... nice..." Nevertheless, in actuality, the bulk of our discussions revolve around our misadventures with members of the opposite gender. But our misadventures are nothing like the usual drama-filled cases; full of deceit, emotion, deception, and Decepticon. More often than not, the misadventure happens even before the adventure begins. Another excerpt from a recent conversation, over the phone... "So what is it now?" "Yeah so I was at this meeting earlier today right. Then this super hot girl walks into the room and I went BADAZING! You know how often I have meetings with this kind of women right? Only slightly less than the number of time Malaysia won the World Cup." "Right right..." "And there was this empty seat beside me; the only empty one in the room and I was going 'please sit here and be single, please sit here and be single, please sit here and be single, please sit here and be single' AND before I could continue, this other lady beside me went..." "Bah... lemme guess. When's the big day? How's the husband/kids/baby? Saw your boyfriend the other day? How about we just come up with some random question about you not being single at all so that we could shoot down this dweeb beside me?" "The baby question." "Ah..." "Yeah." "Wanna go have sushi?" "Yeah sure, why not."
I did a bit of business traveling recently and through it all, learned a thing or two about entertaining myself during these kinds of trips. Maybe I could share some with you. The tedious thing about business traveling, especially when it involves flights, is that you're bound to be alone for a long period of time. If you're a mere mortal just like myself (i.e. you're not Chuck Norris), you can't afford doing nothing during this moment in time. Humans were designed to not be able to withstand boredom any longer than half a minute. Even if you're driving, the long journey would leave you in this space where the only mode of entertainment available is the car stereo. And the games on your cell phone maybe, if you were born with the gift of multitasking. I usually equip myself with a host of things prior to a trip. The classic ones being books, magazines, MP3 player and sketching pads, or doodle pads as I like to call them whenever asked by a stewardess -- to sound cute. Okay, I made that up... they couldn't care less. Similarly to Pinocchio, a certain part of my body elongates everytime I lie; to my delightful amusement. The idea is to have as many 'mediums' possible to keep me preoccupied, subsequently ignoring the reduction in the speed at which Earth revolves. Legend has it that time moves no faster than the growth rate of Danny DeVito when you're on board a plane. You could've just read, with success, a copy of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary from back to front and realize that you're still eons away from reaching your destination. Reading seems to be a feasible choice. For most, it leads to being engrossed by the wonders of words; a fascination that I never ceased to understand particularly when the letters are as big as dusts. That's not the case for me however. I suffer from a medical condition termed by experts as Getdizzywhenreadingitis, causing severe headaches whenever I read on a plane. The severity often amplified should the font size of the reading material be any less than the size of my thumb. There goes my book flushed down the lavatory aft. Peter Griffin, wise man, once said, "I wish I could have my own theme music, which plays everywhere I go and whatever I do." Which is exactly how I feel about MP3 players -- they provide a soundtrack to my life. Listening to portable music transports me to into this other realm where my coolness level escalates to that of James Dean's. Think John Travolta's 'Stayin' Alive' scene in Saturday Night Fever. But no height of awesomeness comes without a price. I have a problem with the wires on MP3 players. They're everywhere! No matter how careful I'd be with them, making sure none of them goes through my earlobes or belt holes, I'd still end up strangled. It gets worse whenever I put the player in my bag. 94.3% of the time, the wires get intertwined (whatever that means) with other wires; charger wire, USB cable wire, patch wire, barb wire*. Sketching/doodle pads are pretty self-explanatory actually. My drawings are bad enough even when I'm stationary (Richter scale reading: 0.12). So you could imagine how pointless it could be trying to draw on a plane. Below is the snake that I tried to sketch while on a flight recently.  In conclusion, I have absolutely no useful tips on business travel entertainment; as opposed to what I'd written earlier. Well, there are always sleeping pills if Rob Schneider is in all of the in-flight movies. *I wouldn't, of course, complain as much should 'barb wire' in this context refers to Pamela Anderson's leading role in the 1996 movie of the same name. Who wouldn't want wires all over her anyway? More than ever if you're like myself or Pinocchio, and you lie a lot. |
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