December 2002 – Page 5 – sixthseal.com

Melancholy, my bride

December 5, 2002 by HB

This was taken while driving this evening in a thunderstorm. The black thingy is the windscreen wiper.

It was absolutely pouring with rain when I was driving home this
evening. You just don’t get this kind of rain in Melbourne. It was a
fierce sort of rain, relentless and loud and making visibility near
zero. There were thunderstorms and lightning and what not and you’ll
get drenched in a second if you’re not under some sort of cover. I have
loved storms like this ever since I was in Form One. Form One – Form
Two were afternoon classes in my high school and it usually finishes by
either 5:45 pm or 6:25 pm. It would be getting dark by then and I used
to wish for heavy rain at the end of a Friday. I had to walk quite a
distance to wait for my mom to pick me up in front of a bakery and when
it rained, it was lovely to walk along the long stretch of road leading
to the bakery. It would be getting dark and the rain would be pouring
down, soaking my uniform and I’ll walk slowly and happily, savoring the
fact that there was a weekend ahead of me. I loved the feeling of rain
soaking me and getting me thoroughly wet. I think the combination of
dusk + rain gave the whole thing a melancholic tone, which I really
liked. That was one of my strongest memories of Form One (age 13).

Korean BBQ House

December 5, 2002 by HB

I went to the Korean BBQ House today with a couple of my buddies. We
had wanted to go to Shabu Shabu at first but it was totally full. Our
next choice was the Paramount buffet, but we saw that it only happens
in the weekends. Since the Korean BBQ House is right beside Paramount,
we went for that instead. There were four of us – Daniel, Ting Chuan,
Johnny and myself so we had the meat platter thingy. None of us have
been here before, it had only opened recently. This is the same place
that Vivien [blogspot.com] went to on Wednesday.

BBQ

Anyway, the meat platter was really nice, it had beef, lamb (mmm)
and chicken and it tasted really good. The meat was put in the middle
of the bbq platter and there was some chicken soup poured over it.
There was a small moat thing surrounding the platter to catch the soup.
The meat tasted really good, it was probably marinated well and the
resulting soup + meat drippings on the side of the platter was divine.
I imagine it had a lot of calories though.

Sinful

I also had this ABC special, they called it a BBQ special bowl or
something, I couldn’t remember. The bowl was huge and it had a scoop of
ice cream in it too. However, the best thing about this place is the
service. The service was excellent. There was a waitress
to pour the drinks, cook the meat and serve it, all with a smile. I was
pleasantly surprised at this level of service and I would have no
problems recommending this place to anyone.

Our waitress

Hmm…I just realised that we did have a group photo taken, but one
of the guys was partially cut off from the frame, so I’m not going to
post it.

Xany Xanax

December 4, 2002 by HB

Mmm…Xanax

I’ve always wanted to try Xanax coz the 2mg bars just looks so sexy.
Thus, I decided to go shopping for some Xanax today. It’s a relatively
short acting benzodiazepine. Xanax is the same drug that Noelle Bush
(the niece of the current United States president George Bush) was
arrested for because she tried to pass off a fraudulent prescription
[cnn.com]. The first pharmacy I went to regarded me with suspicion when
I asked for Xanax. They didn’t want to sell it without a prescription
and told me to get some at the clinic instead. I got a general feeling
of not being welcome the moment I mentioned Xanax.

The second pharmacy I went to was more accommodating. They didn’t
know what Xanax was and asked me to write down the name of a piece of
paper. I wrote down Xanax, Alzoram (the Malaysian generic brand name)
and Alprazolam (the chemical name). The old lady there asked his son to
read the paper and he instantly recognized Alprazolam. He told the old
lady it’s sleeping pills (?) asked where it’s kept.

She said they have some at the back and he went over to rummage
about under a cabinet. I was feeling hopeful at this point, I didn’t
even get asked for my prescription script. He didn’t find any at the
back and rummaged about some more in a box of Handiplast (the st
bandage). He came out with a stack of blister packs tied together with
a rubber band from the box of Handiplast. Don’t ask me why it was kept
there, I was puzzled too.

Xanax/alprazolam/0.25mg

The old lady asked me who the medication was for and I made up a
cock and bull story about doing an exhibition about benzodiazepines for
my university and I was going to stick one pill on a piece of manila
card. I don’t know if she actually believed that story (I had the
feeling she didn’t from the look on her face) but there was not
questions asked after that. I got the impression that this is a “no
questions asked” pharmacy if you catch my drift. The guy came back at
this point and asked me how many blister packs I wanted. I examined one
of the blister pack and saw that it’s brand name Xanax pills with each
tablet containing 0.25 mg of alprazolam. I was hoping that they carry
the beautiful 2 mg pills, but oh well, this will work perfectly well
too. There were 10 tablets in the blister pack, which comes to 2.5 mg.

I decided to just go for one blister pack and it was sold to me, for
RM7 (A$3.50). This is the brand name Xanax (alprazolam) marketed by
Upjohn pharmaceuticals (the old name, they have since merged with
Pharmacia). On a side note, I’ve read in the newspapers that being
caught with possession of Xanax pills without a prescription carries a
RM2000 fine and/or a 2 year jail. Someone who was caught with 24 pills
got that sentence recently. They were credited as “upjohn” pills
though, which further illustrates that mainstream journalism has their
heads planted firmly up their ass when reporting on technical or drug
issues. Upjohn is a pharmaceuticals company, not a drug name.

Upjohn 29/single score at back

Trip Report

Substance name: Alprazolam (Xanax)
Street names: Z-bars, bars, Upjohn (in Malaysia)
Dosage: 2.5 mg (10 x 0.25 mg) taken orally in a mixture of
powder, broken off bits and whole pills. The pills seem rather crumbly
and some broke into pieces as soon as I pressed it from the blister
pack. I do not have any tolerance to benzodiazepines.
Usual recreational dosage for people with no benzodiazepine tolerance: 1-2 mg
Pills: White oval pills with Upjohn 29 imprinted on one side and
a single score on the other side. The pills have beveled edges. Each
pill contains 0.25 mg of alprazolam. They come in a blister pack
containing 10 pills for a total of 2.5 mg, if you eat them all.

T+ 0:00
I took all 10 pills at 11:00 pm sharp. The pills are in a mixture of
powder, bits of tablets and whole tablets. This was because the pills
are either very brittle or this is old stock so they break easily. The
tablets tasted like powdered mint (without any hint of sweetness) at
first and very bitter when i washed it down with water.
T+ 0:05
noticed some clumsiness and a heaviness in the head and a general feeling of being mildly stoned only 5 minutes later (!!!)
T+ 0:08
a feeling of not being very sober, but i can’t put my finger on what
exactly gave me this feeling of non-sobriety. i just feel not very
sober. the medical term for this is derealisation i believe.
T+ 0:14
mild nausea. a feeling of numbness in my extremities, especially the
fingers, very much like the feeling you get when you’re starting to get
drunk. Heaviness of the head is present all throughout the time.
T+ 0:18
feeling a kind of “super enhanced sight”. its like i can see every
movement i make is in full frame and with a high framerate. don’t
really know how to explain it besides this. it feels like the start of
a LSD trip visually, everything looks enhanced, colors stand out etc,
but this is very mild. clumsiness did not get any worse. numbness in
extremities still present.
T+ 0:20
a mild euphoria. not like ecstasy euphoria but more like codeine
euphoria. aka stupid euphoria. 🙂 a better word will be contentment.
palms are feeling sweaty, which is peculiar for me since i seldom get
sweaty palms
T+ 0:22
pupils VERY dilated (?!?!?!) even in bright light. looking at myself in
the mirror feels wierd. uneven dilation. my left pupil is more dilated
than the right one.
T+ 0:30
feeling contented and relaxed. not much progression other than that.
feeling slightly disappointed due to high expectations. i’m more of a
fan of “fuck me up” drugs like LSD which provides cool visuals and
wierd trains of thoughts.
T+ 0:40
hmm…feeling slightly sleepy now.
T+ 0:43
er…i’m trying to fight this feeling of being sleepy. it’s getting stronger. heh.
T+ 0:50
i caught myself staring at a half eaten chocolate bar with a bit of
chocolate sticking out in an interesting manner. stop hypnotizing me
dammit.
T+ 1:00
yawn. i’m trying to keep an open mind but it seems that this is all
Xanax has to offer. a feeling of being (very) mildly drunk and
admittedly quite significant relaxation. not much euphoria to speak of.
valium (another benzodiazepine) provides much more euphoria compared to
this.
T+ 1:10
wtf? i feel myself returning to baseline already. baseline = normal (sober) state
T+ 1:15
i still felt slightly clumsy and my body feels heavier than usual when
walking. not much more numbness in the fingers and i’m still feeling
sleepy.
T+ 1:20
noticed some problems with memory. i dropped my cell phone to the floor
earlier and didn’t remember to retrieve it until 30 minutes later.
T+ 1:26
hehehe
walking arond in the dark with my arms swinging freaked me out
considerably. and i thought Xanax was supposed to be prescribed for
anxiety and panic attacks. =D
T+ 1:30
feeling close to baseline now. i suspect i’ll have a nice deep sleep later tonight too. 🙂
T+ 1:40
a nice afterglow can be felt. still feeling contended and happy.
walking still feels a bit strange, but nice. i just noticed that time
passes pretty damn fast on Xanax. i didn’t even notice that nearly 2
hours have passed since i took the pills. hmm…i wonder what i did in
those two hours since it didn’t felt like i did much at all. 🙂
T+ 2:20
i did another time jump. don’t ask me where the past 40 minutes went, coz i seriously don’t know. i wasn’t even doing anything.

Afternotes:
I don’t see the appeal in taking Xanax by itself. It’s basically just a
chill pill, and I’m not into this particular class of drugs. I can see
its value in helping with meth/coke/other stimulant comedowns, but when
taken on its own, it doesn’t have very much to offer. Possible good
combos will be Xanax + alcohol (be careful, a lot of deaths has been
attributed to this combination) and Xanax + cannabis (the sedative
effects will probably provide a nice synergy). Personally, I feel
Valium (diazepam) would be a much better alternative if you like
benzodiazepines. Valium actually gives pretty good euphoria when taken
in recreational doses. An interesting thing with Xanax is time seems to
go much faster. It’s almost as if time jumps forward. One minute you
look at the clock and it’s 2:15 am. You feel that only a minute has
passed but next time you look, the time is already 2:45 am and you’re
left scratching your head about what happened during the last 30
minutes coz you don’t remember doing anything at all. Huh? It happened
a lot of times during the trip too. Very bizarre.

Caution:
Being in possession of prescription drugs without a prescription could be against the law in your country.

Additional info site:
Always follow a doctor’s instructions when taking prescription medications like Xanax. Deviate from doctor’s orders and take more of the said drugs, and you might find yourself addicted to prescribed drugs in no time.

Hello from Malaysia

December 2, 2002 by HB

Tullamarine Airport (Melbourne)

I’m absolutely beat. I only got 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night
to make time for packing my stuff and I moved 12 (!) bags of stuff to
the common room for storage on Sunday morning. I took the Skybus to the
airport and got there 1 hour before the departure time. I quickly
checked in my bag (I only had one) and grabbed a bite to eat at Burger
King before going to the gate just as the last few stragglers were
boarding the plane. Phew.

The flight to KL was okay but my ass felt like…well, ass.
My tail bone area was really sore from sitting too much. Does anyone
else have this problem on long flights? I wonder if it’s my bad posture
(I slouch too much) or coz my ass padding is too thin. Perhaps it’s
because I can’t seem to relax my ass muscles? Perhaps the word ass is
used too much in this post too. Moving on.
Anyway, I got a window seat and there was this 50 year old guy beside
me who played Bejeweled! on the personal screen all through the flight!
Seriously, it was a 10 hour flight and he was playing it all the while.
Man, that’s so hardcore. What an OG. He only stopped for toilet breaks
and when food was served. Whoa…that’s pretty impressive.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

Another thing of note is that MAS’s food budget seems to have been
increased. There are chocolates served with every meal now. This seems
to be the standard in all meal serving MAS flights because I got a
chocolate on my KL – Kuching flight too. The chocolate on the Melbourne
– KL is a Top Deck bar and the KL – Kuching one is a Kit Kat. They were
also serving big ass bars of ice cream (!) on the Melbourne – KL flight
too. Not with the meals though, it was served the way they serve
peanuts – passed around in a tray. When I say big ass, it really is
big. It was a 750 mL bar, if I’m not mistaken. Nice. Being the greedy
sort, I had two, but I nearly couldn’t finish the second one.
Apparently, there is such a thing as too much ice cream.

Oh, and I spilled 7-up on myself during the flight too. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll have remembered me spilling orange juice on the guy next to me
[monash.edu.au] on the KL – Melbourne flight last semester. 🙂 Now I
know how that felt. Heh. I was holding a cup filled with 7-up when I
decided that now was good idea to drift off to sleep. Next thing I
knew, I was holding an empty cup and I had a not entirely pleasant
dampness near my groin area. I tried to do some damage control by
attempting to soak up the 7-up with the wool blanket they provide, but
as you know, wool is not known for its absorbency. The cabin crew was
oblivious to my pages too, there was only 1 working this entire aisle
and he was preparing food. In a fit of improvisation, I used the pillow
they provide to soak the 7-up up. That worked nicely, but I won’t go
into the looks I got from people watching me rubbing my genital area
with a woolen blanket. I’m not sure what they were thinking, but I
didn’t think they saw me spill my drink from the looks on their faces.
My apologies to anyone who got a pillow smelling vaguely of 7-up these
couple of days. I don’t think they wash those things before reusing
them.

Anyway, I got a shock towards the end of the flight when I checked
Channel 12 (the real time flight update channel) and saw that we had
only just passed Alice Springs and still had nearly 6 hours to go! My
jaw literally dropped and my ass cried at the thought of having to
endure another 6 hours. It was a total WTF?!?!? moment. I reckon we
just had another 2 hours max to go. Luckily one of the cabin crew
caught my totally flabbergasted look and told me that the channel is
not working. Man, what a relief! Not just for my ass, for me too, I was
beat from only getting 4 hours of sleep the previous night and having
to move 12 heavy luggage’s to the common room (about 400 meters and 4
flights of stairs from my room).

For some reason, those seats smell like ass

Anyway, I arrived at KLIA at around 8:30 pm and went to the domestic
terminal to catch my Kuching flight. The flight was delayed, but it
didn’t matter to me coz I didn’t have a connecting flight to catch
until the next morning. Anyway, I reached Kuching at 12:45 am and
wanted to get some sleep in the air conditioned boarding lounge.
Unfortunately, Kuching airport is not a 24 hour affair and the lounge
was closed for the night. I had to make do at the open air waiting
terminal instead. I pushed two long sets of chairs together and tried
to go to sleep. I couldn’t even use my bag for a pillow coz I had stuff
inside that won’t appreciate the weight of my head. Furthermore, there
are grooves bordering every chair, which dug into my back the whole
night. I finally settled into a weird ‘S’ shaped position to avoid most
of the grooves and got a fitful 2 hours of sleep.

I didn’t even need my cell phone alarm to wake me up, several
passengers took it upon themselves to do that by walking around and
talking animatedly in an unacceptable volume before it was even dawn.
Anyway, I arrived in Sibu at around 8:25 am and was out the whole day
with my girlfriend. It’s 10:40 pm now and I’m so looking forward to a
12 hour sleep later. Mmm…sleep.

Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink

Interesting fact: The flash from cameras sets off the infrared
automatic flushers in toilets. I took a photo of a urinal at KLIA, I
was intending to talk about how they have an LCD panel showing the time
in those things now. The flash set off ALL of the flushers in the
toilet. I tried it again, and sure enough, it worked like magic. FLASH
went my digicam. FLUSH went all 10 urinals. FLASH went my digicam
again. FLUSH went all 10 urinals like clockwork.

P/S – I do not have an obsession with toilets, but I do seem to find myself thinking about them a lot. 🙂

Going home for the holidays

December 1, 2002 by HB

That’s my trash. All of it. It’s amazing how much rubbish one can
accumulate in a semester. There are notices and newsletters slipped
under my door frequently, newspapers that I got before my commute and
inevitably ends up on the floor of my room and general food wrappings.
I had trouble fitting my stuff into luggages too and found out the bulk
of my stuff are CDR cases. Thus, I’ve moved all my CDRs to a spindle
and thrown away the bulky cases. Now everything is packed and ready to
go. I’ll be taking my computer offline soon to store away. My flight is
at 3:40 pm today and I’ll arrive in Sibu on Monday morning. It would be
nice to be home again. 🙂 Later folks!