A stack of postcards from graceshu

grace_postcards_stack.jpg

I got a stack of postcards from Grace
[pixelphobia.net] today. πŸ™‚ It was all bundled up when I got home and
consisted of a total of 5 postcards rubber banded together. The first
four are McDonald’s postcards, each one having a single letter – FOR,
WHAT, ITS, WORTH. They actually double as a coupon for a free something
with a purchase. The back of the postcards actually fit side by side to
make a large banner with “i’m lovin’ it”!

grace_fwiw.jpg

Don’t worry about it if this all sounds puzzling. “McDonald’s
vouchers” and “i’m lovin’ it” is an insider thing between us. Something
like our private joke, except only the first one is funny and the
second one isn’t. :p Anyway, the 5th postcard is mailed from Cameron
Highlands during her camp:

grace_cameron_f.jpg
Front of the postcard.

It reads:

Hi,
Camerons was freaking cold
as it rained all day & night.
Had some freezing & sleepless
nights during the camp. Other
than that, all was fine. They
had pretty good strawberry farms & shortcakes
there too! As usual, ate a lot.
Will write again when am in Ipoh!
Take care!

Grace
24/10/2003

grace_cameron_b.jpg
Back of the postcard.

Thanks Grace! πŸ™‚ She’s the greatest, taking time out to mail postcards.

On another note, I have been notified by The People From Above
(otherwise known as TPFA) that updating my weblog during work hours is
unacceptable, even during lunch hour, and while I’m known for being
subversive, I shall accede to this. I can understand how management can
interprete this as a loss of productivity so I will not be updating the
site, replying the comments or even visiting my own blog(s) during
office hours.

However, I will update daily as usual, when I get back from work.
The first person who accuses me of giving in to The Man gets a hefty
kick to the balls (or to the general region for females). πŸ˜‰

Postcard from graceshu!

gracepostf.jpg
Front of the postcard.

I just got this in the mail. Grace
[pixelphobia.net] is currently having a road trip and she’s in Penang
right now if I’m not mistaken. It’s great to get a postcard from her.
πŸ™‚ Have fun on your trip Grace and hope that everything goes well for
you! Take care!

gracepostb.jpg
Back of the postcard.

This is what the writing on the back says:

This is where I’ll be visiting
tomorrow!

There’s this Malay palace
built entirely without a
single paku there.

It will be interesting. You take care &
have fun yourself. Bye!

Addresses and names has been obscured with mosaic for privacy.

Kimarie Hair Academy

kimarie.jpg

Kimarie @ Sungai Wang

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Meet my hairstylist – MC (initials of her name) of Kimarie Hair Academy at Sungei Wang (she has Tuesdays off).

I finally got a haircut yesterday after putting it off for weeks. I
went to Sungei Wang and looked around and found that RM 25 seems to be
the base price for haircuts around there. I went into Kimarie and asked
how much it costs and was told it’s RM 25 by a hairstylist and RM 48 by
a professional. I said I’ll go for the hair stylist, seeing as to how
my bank balance is dismally low and how I have to pay excess bandwidth
fees every month, and I was not disappointed. πŸ˜‰

mc_progress.jpg

Getting my hair cut.

mc_closeup.jpg

This is a closeup of MC. It’s taken from the mirror reflection
(obviously – haircuts limits your mobility) so the quality isn’t
optimal.

mc_haircut.jpg

What my non selekeh hair looks like now.

Minishorts grills sixthseal.com

interview_splash.jpg
I actually replied the interview questions some days ago but didn’t
even have time to post it up until now. My apologies for the sporadic
updates, it’s like work come back sleep repeat. Thank God it’s Friday
tomorrow.

1. Alright, tell us how the hell you got to know someone like Veritas?

I’ve known him for ages…I don’t choose certain types of people to
hang out with, but I do tend to gravitate towards recreational drug
users and what people would call Ah Bengs because I don’t enjoy the
company of pretentious people. I’ve mentioned this before, I don’t like
to dress up and sit down at some yuppie bar and try and look cool and
pick up chicks. That is not my scene. I noticed that even though
society brands these subcultures as “bad”, on a personal level, the
company is much more enjoyable than the pretentious people, these are
the people who go all out and have fun. =D

The above paragraph is full of assumptions and sweeping statements
though, so take it as you will. The main reason is because we share key
interests – pharmacology, photography and traveling. I feel like I’ve
know him all my life.

2. How do you separate yourself from Veritas, as in, don’t you get urges to become like him?

This is a somewhat strange question to answer. I can honestly say
that I don’t have any urges to become like him, because I don’t need
to. I’m not living voraciously by proxy, if that’s what the question is
about. I don’t think we have any identity crisis issues, we know who we
are and what we are, so no one gets any urges to be anyone else. πŸ™‚
There is no need to. Unless there’s some Dr. Huai Bin and Mr. Veritas
thing going on that I’m not aware of. πŸ˜‰ I kid.

3. Does your girlfriend approve of your friendship with Veritas and the fact that you are hosting Veritas?

No. My parents are against it too, they all insist that the drug
posts would get me into trouble one day because veritas is essentially
a Keyser Soze, there’s no information about him anywhere on both the
sites and my friends have expressed concern that I might be held
legally liable for the posts which he makes, since I own the copyrights
to all of his writings and photos.

I have been under a lot of pressure to drop veritas, but this is
where I put my foot down – veritas can post all he wants as long as he
wants. I defend him because he’s my content provider. All veritas posts
are copyrighted by sixthseal.com, he relinquishes all intellectual
property rights to me. That is why I protect him and that is why he is
here to stay. Well, not here as in sixthseal.com, here as in
castitas.com. People have constantly asked why I bend over backwards
for him. This is the reason.

4. KL, Melbourne, Sarawak— what do these three places mean to you?

Kuala Lumpur
There’s always something going on somewhere. It’s easy to lose yourself
in the crowd. Choo Ki has kindly warned me about how KL is different
from other places and she’s right. I like KL because of the anonymity
it provides. Back in Sibu, you can hardly do something without word
getting back to people who you wouldn’t want to know the next day.
However KL is in Malaysia and that is a big minus due to the nature of
my interests. Malaysia is home though, and it’s where I want to be
despite the draconian drug laws.

Melbourne
Lovely Melbourne…ah, what sweet memories I have in the three years I
was there. The laws are reasonable and there are a lot of checks and
balances in place to provide a sense of security. The rave scene is
great and the availability of things is greater than Malaysia despite
the fact that Australia is essentially a big island. There’s also
something happening somewhere every day, so you won’t be bored. A place
where you can do the 4:20 in peace, unlike Malaysia.

Sibu
This is really home. It would likely be the place where I’ll be when I retire. Rx meds without a prescription anyone? πŸ˜‰

5. Where do you see yourself in five years?

I’ll be working in an administrative position, and I’m aiming for a
monthly paycheck which has the same number of digits and first number
of what Wena is earning now. :p I will most likely still be in KL. I
would have finished my Masters degree by this time (or I will kick my
own ass) and would probably go for a doctorate just so I can go “That’s
DR Poh, not Mr Poh.” πŸ˜‰

Thanks to minishorts
for the difficult to answer questions. Remind me to go for confession
this Sunday. I have to sleep now or I’ll be late for work tomorrow so
I’ll reply all comments tommorrow. Sleep beckons me…

…and I’m off

goingoff.jpg

I’ll be flying to KL tomorrow. I’m heading to Sibu airport early
tomorrow morning coz my dad has an earlier flight so we might as well
head down together. Anyway, I’ll be staying in Bukit Bintang till
Wednesday and then I’ll be staying somewhere near Petaling Street till
Sunday and then I’ll be staying with my girlfriend’s brother till 1st
of November. It’s a bit convulated, but the room I’m going to rent
won’t be vacated until next month, so that’s when I’m moving in.

Well, I’ve got an interview scheduled on Monday, the time isn’t
confirmed though, so I’ll have to call earlier to confirm the time.
Does anyone know the easiest way to go from Bukit Bintang (heart of BB)
to 27, Jalan Tun Ismail via public transport? How long will the journey
take? Anyway, I have armed myself with Mapopolis [mapopolis.com] and map of KL [virtualmalaysia.com], and there’s always a taxi if I can’t get there.

Anyway, I’ll only be able to update very sporadically in the week
starting tomorrow, daily posts is likely, but without photos. My
digicam is still broken, most recent photos have been taken using a
webcam or is from my personal stock photo collection – the random shots
I take while carrying my digicam around. The plan is to get Nikon
Malaysia to fix it or to get another one, probably the latter though,
because I can’t justify the price to fix it when a better model can be
had for a little more. Anyway, we’ll see about that. FYI, veritas sends
word that he won’t be posting for this week too, in consideration of my
quest for employment, but he’s got “experience reports (all with
photos) of buprenorphine (without naloxone), pentazocine (also w/o
naloxone), triazolam + several other benzos and a wierd zolpidem
experience, basically quite a few from The Wonderful World of
Pharmaceuticals and one rare illicit that is long due (methcathinone –
experience report ONLY)
” after this week or when I get a job, whichever one comes first. πŸ˜‰

Well, I’ve got some last minute packing to do and I’ll also have to
read up some stuff in preparation for my interview, so till next time,
see ya everyone. My apologies for not being able to reply the comments
today, but I’ll do that next time I update. Thanks!

sixthseal.com featured in sexpo.com.au

durians.jpg

SEXPO

This site got a mention in the official Sexpo site! My coverage of the event (SEXPO 2002, Melbourne) is listed in the “All about Sexpo” news page
[sexpo.com.au]. You’ll notice that there is a comment from David Ross,
the promoter for Sexpo. He emailed me after that and told me that I was
eligible to apply for a Media Pass, which would make taking photos
easier (people without media passes are not supposed to take stage
performance photos). Anyway, if there’s anyone in Australia, keep that
in mind if you’re going to attend the expo and take photos – enquire
about a Media Pass. πŸ™‚ Thanks for the link!

Snackspot

On a somewhat related note, I discovered this great snack site for
people who appreciate food in my referral logs. I surfed over to find
that the Snackspot admin had linked one of my Magnum Sixties Nine reviews
[snackspot.org]. Thanks! Well, I shamelessly mentioned my post which
has all 9 reviews of the series, as you can see in the comments. Now,
what really made my day was the comment later on from “Astounded” who
said:

Just a side note – a few posts up this page there is a post from
“HB”. Check out his site – he has really thrown down the gauntlet to
Snackspot. He reviews sweets AND recreational drugs!!! And he appears
to come from a country (Malaysia) where possession of illicit narcotics
carries the death penalty!!!!

I really appreciate that, it totally made my day. Thank you “Astounded”! πŸ™‚

Sanlive

This
[sanlive.com] post is a really interesting one, the questions make the
answers an intriguing read. It would really be great if everyone can
answer these questions honestly in their own weblog. Here’s mine:

When and why did you start your daily reads list?
I can’t remember when, I had a “Links” page in my old HTML blog, but
those were mainly links to webpages and not blogs. The “daily reads”
(or “Blogs” in my case) was implemented after the move to Movable Type.
I started it partly to make easier navigation possible (the “Favorites”
drop down menu gets cluttered after a while) and partly to reciprocate
links.

Do you truly visit your daily reads DAILY?
Yes, unless I’m away or otherwise engaged. I don’t visit every blog
daily though, the ones that are frequently updated or which I like I
are clicked on daily, others less frequently. But the vast majority of
the links in my “Blogs” section are read daily.

Why do you add these people as your daily reads?
It could be one of many reasons – you’re one of my personal friends, I
like your blog/writing/personality, it’s a reciprocal link, you’re one
of the people who inspired me to start blogging or because you’re a
fellow Sarawakian. πŸ˜‰ By the way, that last one is what would make me
link someone, NOT someone on my current “Blogs” list.

How many people are on your daily reads?
There are 18 people in the “Blogs” section as of today.

Have you deleted people from your daily reads, if so why?
Yes. There was the cut and paste disaster
(Note to self: Backup frequently) which made some people unaccounted
for, but most of that has been rectified. I’ve also been asked to
remove links because of my site’s emphasis on drugs, which was not
appreciated by either the blog author or people related to the blog
author. I don’t blame anyone for that, I’m truly sorry that a link from
my “recreational drug use friendly” site caused trouble for the people
involved.

I’ve also deleted people accidentally – the most recent being
Felicia. Oops! Making changes to the blog + generous amounts of alcohol
+ no backups = “Hey, one of my daily reads is missing!”. The Nazi Link Policy
(which has since been removed) also states that I delete blogs on
hiatus and password protected ones. Otherwise (bar accidents while
updating in a lack of sobriety) links do not get deleted unless it’s
one of the reasons above.

Do you comment on your daily reads DAILY?
No, I read them, but I don’t always comment unless I’ve something to
say. I will admit that I am susceptible to the “reciprocal comment”
syndrome though. :p You know what I’m talking about, someone comments
on your blog, you comment back aka “I’ll rub your back if you rub
mine”. πŸ˜‰ In my case, that is due to either guilt or a lack of time.

How often do you modify your daily reads?
Not often at all. It takes time to recompile a Movable Type blog. I
know that only the front page needs to be recompiled, but I have this
OCD thing where I need to recompile the WHOLE site, and that takes
longer and longer as the site grows. :p I did move some personal
friends into “Personal Websites” though because the site doesn’t really
qualify as a blog due to a lack of updates, but I still want to link to
them, because they’re my real life friends. πŸ™‚

Do you link people on your daily reads only because they linked you?
Guilt does pay a role in this, but my pastor told me guilt is just a
manifestation of Satan’s plan of deception and my dad always told me to
listen to the pastor. πŸ˜‰ Seriously though, there is a lack of space, or
rather time, since “Blogs” are the people who I read daily. I don’t
want to be a “link farm”, just linking people for the sake of getting
reciprocals or reciprocating reciprocals, but chances are, if you link
me, I’ll find out sooner or later and you’ll inevitably get into the
“Blogs” list coz it’s like real life, hang out with a person long
enough, and he/she will become personal friends and you’ll hang out
(read) them daily.

Does daily reads have special meaning to you?
Yes. sixthseal.com is not a link farm. πŸ˜‰

Your daily reads are mostly (F/M):
Female.

What do you get from reading your daily reads?
A peek into the daily life of someone interesting. Also, some blogs
have intellectually stimulating content which makes me think.

Are you likely to read LONG blog entries from your daily reads?
Yeah. However, if I’m strapped for time, I would only read long entries if they are interesting or well structured and written.

Do you expect your daily reads to read your blog everyday in return?
I don’t expect anything. I don’t want anyone to feel obliged to read my
blog, I’ll much rather have people read it because they want to or
because the content interests them.

Who on your daily reads has the coolest name?
Lye Cwan. πŸ™‚ I like her name. She’s AlCee in the “Blogs” section.

Who on your daily reads has the coolest layouts?
I like Hilmy’s layout. He draws as well.

Who on your daily reads is most likely to comment in your blog?
I can’t really tell unless I write a script and I’m supposed to be
working on the photo story now, which would have to be postponed till
tomorrow because I spent all my time on this. :p You should too, it’ll
be great if everyone can answer this set of questions honestly.

How many people on your daily reads are your friends in “real life”?
None. I’ve known the people in “Personal Webpages” for years though.

Who is the most intelligent or insightful person?
Xiu. Her posts make me think.

Who is the least favorite/most annoying person on your daily reads?
Jia Hui. πŸ™‚ I did not like her at first (and I told her in an email or
comment too, if memory serves) because her posts made her seem
arrogant, elitist and snobbish. That was a long time ago though, and in
my infrequent surfing around and stumbling onto her blog, her writing
style grew on me and I realized that she wasn’t that way at all. πŸ™‚ It
was just me who was quick to make judgements based on someone’s blog
entry. I have read her frequently after one of her posts made me
realize that my first assumptions was wrong and I have read her ever
since.

Another person who falls into this category is Grace (graceshu), she
also seemed arrogant and sarcastic from her posts and but again, that’s
another wrong assumption. I’ve known her better since and she’s a
really nice person.

Who is most likely to give you news about the world or internet?
Xiu again.

Have you ever wanted to meet people on your daily reads?
Yes, it would be great to have a big blog meetup. πŸ™‚

Who do you admire the most?
Grace (graceux5) because her posts tend to be happy, and that cheers me
up too. Wena (mum-mum) with her photos of food. Grace (graceshu) with
her photo stories. Hilmy (Hilmyworks) because of his artwork.

Who has an attitude problem?
I answered this in “Who is the least favorite/most annoying person on your daily reads?”. πŸ˜‰

Who is the funniest?
Everyone has their moments but none of the blogs are full fledged humor/satire/parody blogs.

Who is the sweetest?
Literally? mum-mum is a food blog. πŸ™‚

Who is the most out-going?
minishorts has a lot of personal posts, that takes courage.

Whom can you trust the most?
You’ll know if you know. The people in “Personal Websites”. If I had to
choose from “Blogs”, I would say graceshu. Xiu is also a confidante.

Whom do you know the best?
The people in “Personal Websites”, I’ve known them for years!

Whom do you talk to most online?
Claire (minishorts), Grace (graceshu), Wena (mum-mum) are the top three.

Who is the lastest daily reads you added?
Jikon Lai. I like him.

Whose blog do you wish to drool all over on?
Jasmine. She was the first one to link me back in the old days of my HTML-only blog sans comments.

Whose blog do you enjoy reading the most?
I like to read them all, they’re daily reads.

You are least likely to comment on which blog(s)?
That would probably be unsung, although I do read him.

Sibu’s Parking System

sibucoup.jpg
Sibu’s Parking Coupon

It’s been a while but I still hate doing this…basically you have to
punch holes out of a parking coupon (scanned image above – good thing
my scanner is still available) and leave it on the dashboard so it’s
visible through the windshield. There are five sections to remove and
even though I usually like doing things like this (popping bubble wrap,
depressing that thingy on the cover of McDonald’s soft drinks etc.),
this isn’t fun for someone who answers “I don’t know” to “What date is
it today?”. πŸ™‚ It’s a good thing I have a Palm for dates, the time is
alright though, there’s always the car clock and the cell phone one.
The other problem with this is the way it has changed the way people
park…while it used to be (usually) obvious whether a car is parking in
or moving out, it now isn’t. Malaysia is hot, so people leave the
engine running to have the air conditioning going while messing about
with these parking coupons. You’ll all be sitting there waiting and
thinking, hmm…has this guy just parked in and getting the coupons done
or is he arranging his groceries (or whatever) before driving out?

The worst thing with the coupon system in Sibu is the way you have
to put as many as you’re going to park for eg if you want to park for 3
hours, you need to perforate 6 coupons (each lasts half an hour) and
put them all in a row on your windshield. The problem is there is only
one denomination available – the 40 cents (42 cents with tax to be
concise) one, which lasts 30 minutes. The people who need to park for
the whole day needs to put rows upon rows of parking coupons to cover
the time, and making sure to arrange it properly so none is partially
obscured, or they’ll see The Red Ticket (parking fine) on their
windshield wiper. I mean wtf? Am I the only one who thinks there’s
something wrong with this? 6 hours of parking requires 12 coupons and
these things are not small – they’re the length of a standard DVD case
and about 4/6 the width of it. Come out with higher denomination
coupons for Christ’s sake.

sibufine.jpg

Anyway, I got fined yesterday because I over parked for a measly 7
minutes. The parking fine (dubbed the “Overparking Compound Notice”) is
RM 1 per 30 minutes, more than twice the price of the coupon, which
isn’t much, so I don’t really care, I just feel that the system isn’t
practical for long term parking unless they come out with higher
denomination coupons like Kuching has. Oh, the back of the parking fine
has Fine Print that’s quite interesting – have a read:

fineback.jpg

Well, I’ll just give a quick update (personal stuff) about the things that happened yesterday and today:

I went to Wisma Sanyan early yesterday morning with my gf to buy
some stuff she needs before leaving for KL. The parking fine was from
then, I the parking inspectors usually aren’t that vigilant, so I
figured we could drop by Tops to get something to drink before heading
to the car. We saw the Parking Inspector’s Employee of the Month
walking right past as we headed back, curses. πŸ™‚

nemovcd.jpg

Anyway, I also picked up a pirated (unlicensed) VCD of Finding Nemo
to watch in the afternoon with my gf. It was funny how the store
operates – since the raids, they have only legit things on display, but
there are plenty of posters of new movies ie Matrix Reloaded, Charlie’s
Angels 2, Hulk, Terminator 3 etc on display. Basically, they ARE
selling pirated VCDs and DVDs of the pirated movies displayed in the
posters, so just ask at the counter, and the girl will dig around the
back room and be back with the movie of your choice in a few seconds.
πŸ˜‰ Other prices are still selling it openly though, but unfortunately,
Sibu saw an increase in price from RM 5 to RM 8 per movie since the
raids. It should stabilize back soon though, seems that the operation
is over.

I saw heaps of people at the Sibu Town Square last night for the
Borneo Cultural Festival, it was PACKED. People were parking in that
road divider between two opposing roads (the ones that has the street
lights). Man, I wished my digicam was working. I didn’t go though, coz
I was going for dinner.

My gf went back to KL this morning. πŸ™ Her semester started about a
week ago, so she’s already going over late. I drove her and her mom to
the airport this morning and we got some breakfast there before she
took the 10:05 am Air Asia flight out. I will be seeing her soon
though, will be heading over to KL in a while as well.

bandito.jpg

The picture above was taken about two weeks ago (my digicam still
broken – only scanner working), I had wanted to make it PoTD with a
crack about “San Pedro tastes so good, the Mexicans want it back” but
never got around to doing it. That’s okay, since I finally went to eat
KFC’s Bandito Pockett combo meal today (comes with a drink and potato
wedges) with Michelle, friend and pharmacy student. πŸ˜‰ I was on my out
when she called me so we went for lunch and then visited our ex-high
school. Oh, the Bandito tastes okay…a bit bland (had to keep on adding
Thai chili sauce) and you get to buy a 325 ml can of Pepsi Twist for
just 10 cents if you buy it with the meal. I wasn’t really interested
at first, until I thought of something it would go well with.
Potentiator?

That’s it, the story of my personal life up to now. πŸ™‚

From Sibu, without serotonin

sibuhc1.jpg

Hey everyone. Just a quick update, this is all personal stuff so if
it’s not something you’re likely to be interested in, ie you’ll rather
be reading trip reports and such, those posts are likely to decrease
exponentially from now on so I’ll be setting up an email form
submission or something to notify people when veritas posts. Anyway,
back to this, finally got the long due haircut yesterday, I feel much
better now. πŸ™‚ Here’s a photos from today, breakfast with my gf:

breakj03.jpg

Still no luck with the old HD, it seems that there’s this big ass
operation going on in Malaysia and there seems to be a distinct lack of
er, unlicenced CDs going around. I only found an old Win XP Home
Edition w/o activation crack and a Win XP Pro w/o SP1 so I still can’t
access the old photos in the other hard disk. Anyway, if you’ve mailed
me during the past week or so and I haven’t replied, please resend the
mail, as I can’t access my other hard disk, thanks! I’m off now,
serotonin levels have been strange as of late, seems like a
rollercoaster ride, unfortunately more downs than ups though. I haven’t
been making my blog rounds too, will do so tonight. See ya.

sibuhc2.jpg

Stain Blue – My day in pictures

Rainy day. Cold. Mushroom flush. Walk with me…

npmush1.jpg

Promising. Too orange. Didn’t stain blue.

npmush2.jpg

Squishy. Strange. Didn’t stain blue.

npmush3.jpg

Two strains. One promising. Didn’t stain blue.

npmush4.jpg

Kinda promising. But. Didn’t stain blue.

Related links:

Mushroom Hunting I is here [sixthseal.com].

Mushroom Hunting II is here [sixthseal.com].

Mushroom Hunting III is here [sixthseal.com].

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