sixthseal.com – Page 274 – Leading the wild into the ways of the man…

Hartamas Square @ Sri Hartamas

January 3, 2004 by HB

Hartamas Square

I just came back from supper at Hartamas Square at Sri Hartamas. I
was there for supper with Richard, Alice and my gf. I was already
inebriated before coming due to liberal amounts of vodka and the
consumption of a certain number. *cough*

I thought about what to eat (besides beer) and decided on this
Taiwan Pizza outlet, since the concept sounded intriguing to me.
Seriously man, I was that blur…I looked at the “Taiwan Pizza” menu
long and hard and was wondering why the menu doesn’t seem all that
Taiwanese to me. I finally saw something that looks good – Dragon Pizza:

It looked good in real life too, nice shape. It also looked a bit large for me to finish, until I poked it with a fork:

It deflated to a reasonable size then. It had egg, mushrooms (the
non magical kind, the soft mushrooms that’s flat and semi transparent
and gooey and tastes nice, can’t remember the name now), ham and
probably some other stuff.

Several large TV (plasma? LCD?) screens there.

Anyway, I only realized that it wasn’t Taiwan Pizza but Italian
Pizza when I was asked what I ate and I said “Taiwan Pizza” and they
were like “huh?” and I siad “Taiwan Pizza, over there” and Alice said
“That’s Italian Pizza” and I was sure it said Taiwan and I asked my gf
to look and she said it was Italian Pizza and then I looked harder and
it still registered as Taiwan and then I looked even harder and
well…it was Italian Pizza after all. Duh. 🙂 I can’t believe I kept
on seeing Taiwan instead of Italian.

Harmatas Square is popular – packed with people.

I’m sleepy now, did more ah…numerical work when I got back, so here’s another shot of Hartamas Square:

Okay, I’m going into work tomorrow (willingly) so I’ll just finish
that bottle of vodka that’s been sitting in the fridge for…er,
several days and put another one in. Good night everyoine and have a
nice supper!

Melbourne: Day 4 – Melbourne Changes (Part I)

January 1, 2004 by HB

Day 4 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

Part I: Melbourne Changes

Queen Victoria (QV) complex

The QV site is one of the changes I noticed – the development work
has completed for some buildings and there were several shops already
open. This is the area beside the State Library and used to be the
Queen Victoria Hospital site before it was demolished. I remember
seeing the QV block being in development for a long time, last I saw,
it was a huge pit in the ground and now the QV complex has sprung up.

There is a bowling bar called Strike bordering the edge that faces
the State Library. I would assume a bowling bar is a bowling alley that
has a liquor license, but I didn’t have time to drop in and check. I
had to cover a lot of places before the convocation later in the
evening.

This is the other end of the QV building – it has banners proclaiming the opening of Big W and Safeway.

The escalator goes straight down into Big W (a department store
chain). I had to navigate through the store before exiting to the main
square.

I later found out that this side alley beside the escalators leads
directly to the central area and to Safeway (a supermarket chain).

This is the central area/food court. There are several food outlets
here – off the top of my head, I remember seeing KFC, Wendy’s, and some
fruit juice shake franchise.

There’s also a bakery called Breadtop. I misread it as BreadTalk at first, found that funny.

Melbourne Central

I found out that Melbourne Central has undergone development work as
well on the first day I arrived. I saw that the escalators from
Melbourne Central Station has been boarded up and redirected to another
entry point.

Prior to that, signs of construction work can be seen – the area
after Nando’s on Swanston Street is covered up until the newsagent’s
opening.

There isn’t much going on inside either – most of the mall seems to
be closed and boarded up with a notice about development. The newsagent
is open, as well as several shops on the ground floor. The upper floors
seem to be devoid of commerce though as can be seen from this photo:

2004

January 1, 2004 by HB

It’s 2004! So…how many of you have broken your New Year’s
Resolution already? Who has work tomorrow? I’ll have to go into work
even though it’s a holiday but I don’t mind considering I still have a
job. 😉 I wouldn’t be able to pay the excess bandwidth bills if I
didn’t – RM 120 for both sixthseal.com and castitas.com for December
2003. Ouch…it’s my damn “doctor shopping” keyword. Rush Limbaugh just
had to get caught doing it last month, which led to a spate of news
reports and the resulting people searching for that keyword. It happens
to be one I target, so that led to a flood of visitors into one of my
most photo heavy pages….

I don’t feel new today. But at least this year was better than the last [sixthseal.com]. 🙂 Have a happy and stress free new year everyone!

The 2004 photo was made with generic 5 mg MPI nitrazepam tablets for the “200” and generic 1 mg Apo-Lorazepam pills for the “4”.

Goodbye 2003!

December 31, 2003 by HB

It’s less than one hour before the end of 2003. This year has been
interesting, for the lack of a better adjective. I was still in
university at the beginning of the year. It’s the end of the year now
and I’m in the workforce and I haven’t been fired…yet. 😉 It’s the
year of transition – from studying to working and I’m still learning
the intricacies of this different life.

I’m sitting at home right now – it’s the second year in a row that
I’m not out for NYE celebrations. This time is because my gf didn’t
feel like going out, plus I’m tired from work so we’re just chilling
out at home. I think we’re in the minority though, as the photo above
shows – that was taken at around 9 pm at the KLCC LRT station. The
incoming (into KL city) human traffic is much voluminous than the
trickle of outgoing traffic.

It’s been a good year for sixthseal.com too. Thank you for all your support in 2003. I’ll see you again in 2004. 🙂

Guess the price of my nasi campur (photo included)

December 30, 2003 by HB

Guess how much this combination of nasi campur costs? There’s more
sotong pieces than meets the eye, some of it is obscured by the chicken
drumstick. No, I didn’t play “Hide the sotong” intentionally, it was
due to the real estate on the styrofoam packs. By the way, “Hide the
(most expensive item)” is a technique where you cover up a more
expensive item with a less expensive one – like covering a drumstick
with cabbages. This is an extreme example, it’s just to illustrate the
point. I’ve never done that intentionally though, not for any moral or
personal reasons, it’s just coz I don’t bother.

The way things work over here is like this – you get handed a plate
or take away pack filled with rice and you choose whatever you want
from the array of dishes displayed. You can opt to have as many items
as you want and the portions you choose is up to you. The price (which
can vary depending on time of the day, whether you’re a regular, as
well as many other factors) is tallied up when you’re done, based on
your choices. However, “Hide the xxx” doesn’t work all that well
nowadays, because the proprietors usually check underneath due to the
popularity of this method.

Back to the post, my lunch has a drumstick, sotong and chili covered
brinjals. You don’t eat for a couple of days and then you feel hungry
enough to eat a horse. 😉 Anyway, guess how much this nasi campur pack
costs?

I cut my finger for RM 2000

December 29, 2003 by HB

Okay, I had this big bag of trash with me when I came into work
today. When I say big, I mean huge. The plastic could hold one man
quite comfortably, if he’s willing to go into the fetal position.
Whether it’ll hold his weight or not is another matter, but I
digress. Anyway, this bag had 4 smaller bags inside, all filled with
trash. Don’t ask me why, some thrash is private you know…

Back to the bags of fun, I opened the big bag and stuffed the first
of the smaller bags into the DBKL garbage cans opposite the building
where I work. This one went in relatively easy since it’s one of the
smaller ones. I went to the next one and shoved the bag into the can.
If you’ve seen one of these things, you’ll notice that it’s no mean
feat – the holes are very small…

All is good though, two down, two to go. I crossed the street and
went to one of the cans further away and jammed one of the large ones
into the trash can. It wouldn’t go in. A homeless man looked at me
greedily, probably to see what it was I stuffed down. I don’t want
anyone prying into my trash so I glared at him and went to the next can.

I stuffed it in. It wouldn’t budge. I used brute force to jam it in,
and it slowly…gave…way…and then I noticed that I seem to have a
laceration somewhere because I could feel blood dripping. No, that’s
not good. I’m already dehydrated, I need ALL the blood I have or I’ll
probably pengsan [pengsan.com].

No, I didn’t just pimp that site for fun. Er…maybe I did, but
anyway, I realized all too late that the particular bag I was trying to
get rid of is the one that contains Sharp Things. Anyway, I was pretty
pissed at it by this time and really jammed it in…and gave myself
another cut. Not to worry though, the Sharp Things are mine and at no
point did the laceration or Sharp Things come into contact with the
thrash can’s germ filled side.

However, I naturally did not appreciate being given a subcutaneous
incision for no good reason, especially when I’m dehydrated. But at
least that’s 3/4. I looked at plastic bag #4. It’ll never fit in, it’s
physically impossible. Well…yours truly isn’t exactly stupid, so I
took plastic bag #4 out and emptied most of it’s contents into the
original giant plastic bag and stuffed THAT into the next garbage can.

Actually, a single sentence does not do the act justice. There were
plenty of grunts, maneuvering, crude levers, back support, standing
back and analyzing with the little pats here and little ruffles there
method to make it go in. It took about 5 minutes and 10 profanities
before it was finally in. If anyone had seen me then, it must have
looked like I was humping the DBKL garbage cans. That’s the effort I
had to make to stuff it in – by giving it a counter weight on the other
side.

Now there’s this last one, it’s a Myers bag, festively decorated,
not too dodgy except for the blood stains, so I took that into the
office. I unlocked the door and was confounded with a problem…my
right index finger is bleeding. My right index finger is the one I use
to authenticate myself with the biometrics scanner. I didn’t want to
authenticate myself with an open wound, in the interests of my fellow
coworkers.

No, I don’t have any dangerous pathogens. I just have a high level
of civic consciousness. Oh, and also, doing that would introduce
bacteria and other nasties into my wound. 😉 It’s bad to touch anything
with an open laceration, especially for hypochondriacs like me. All is
not lost though – I remember my thumb (which was clean) was another one
that I could authenticate with. It just never did work for me before
though…

I tried anyway. Nope. Nope. Verified! That’s just on the third try –
praise the Lord! 🙂 I went in and took a photo of my finger and then
went out to dispose of the final bag. This was one of the bags that
have an open, unsealable top. I noticed something that should have been
in my backpack – a bank draft for RM 2000 from one of my bank accounts
in Kuching, which I never got around to transferring to my main one.

There you go, a little anti-climatic, granted, but that’s how my cut
finger saved me RM 2000. I went to wash my finger and wanted to put a
Band Aid around it, except I wouldn’t be able to authenticate after
that, so I just wrapped a clean tissue and used my thumb (which worked
again – whee!) to get in.

Melbourne: Day 3 – McDonald’s Salads Plus

December 28, 2003 by HB

Day 3 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

I woke up after a solid 26 hours of sleep on Monday. This is the
third day I’m in Melbourne and I realize that I’ve technically wasted
one whole day sleeping. 🙂 I woke up feeling famished and went
in search for food again and to take some photos of Melbourne city. I
went pass a McDonald’s and saw that they had this Salads Plus menu with
healthier options. McDonald’s in Australia has been pitching this angle
for quite a while now so I decided to sample their Salads Plus menu.

The Salads Plus menu consists of a variety of low fat and more
nutritious options that have 10 grams of fat or less each. I’m not
watching my weight or anything…people say I should gain a couple of
kilograms, but work and the related necessities to maintain
productivity has the effect of suppressing appetite and increasing
metabolism at the same time. I digress. The reasons I’m attempting to
eat the entire range and review it should not be foreign to long time
readers – I just want to. 🙂

Chicken Foldover

This is touted to have only 9 grams of fat per serving. It’s made
with Bega So Light cheese and has roasted chicken breast meat and
veggies on a herbed toasted flatbread.

I didn’t expect much from it, but was pleasantly surprised to find
out that it actually tastes good! It could be the 26 hours without food
though, but still, it’s pretty good.

Vege Burger

This one has 10 grams of fat per serving and it’s Sanitarium vege
patty in a herbed foccacia bun. The patty is made from chickpeas,
vegetables and spices a.k.a. fake meat. It also has a piece of beetroot.

I didn’t like this one…the patty tastes like potatoes. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that, but generally vegetarian meat
substitutes tastes unpalatable to me. The only thing that saved it is
the sweet chilli sauce inside. I couldn’t have chocked it down without
that.

Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch

It just says 97% fat free on this one. It looks like ice cream, but
it’s actually yoghurt. There’s strawberries and blueberries in it
though, and it’s topped with oats. They use Nestle low fat yoghurt.
McDonald’s partners up with other food manufacturers in the Salads Plus
menu if you haven’t noticed.

That was what I had in the first sitting. After walking around and
taking more photos, I passed by a different McDonald’s and decided to
see if I could eat through the whole Salads Plus menu. 🙂

This McDonald’s has a fridge at the counter with the salads and other stuff:

The salads occupy the first two layers and the third one has yoghurt
(including the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch) and fruit juice. It looks like
the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch is prepared and packaged instead of made
during your order. I decided to have a salad this time, since after
all, this is the Salads Plus menu. There are two salads – Garden Mixed
Salad and Roast Chicken Salad. Naturally, I went for the second one.

Roast Chicken Salad

This salad features roasted breast chicken, Bega So Light cheese,
lettuce, tomato, and cranberries. It’s 97% fat free and there are three
dressings to choose from – French, Low Fat Italian and Mango and Sesame.

It’s served with bagel chips. The above shows the salad with the
small container of bagel chips and a packet of dressing. Here’s a close
up of the bagel chips (croutons?):

This is the dressing I chose – Mango and Sesame:

The salad looks like this after everything is added in:

No, I didn’t toss it because I wanted to eat it like this. It tastes
surprisingly good (again). I was puzzled to find that I actually
enjoyed eating this salad. The mango dressing is really good, goes well
with the salad and complements the cranberry pieces well. It’s also
very filling, but that could be due to the fact that I’ve already eaten
two hours ago…

Orange & Poppyseed Muffin Lite

This is also 97% fat free and it tastes like the normal McDonald’s
muffins…I could barely finish this one. It’s quite large. It’s a
muffin, can’t describe it much more than that. It’s had orange pieces
in it and crunchy poppyseeds on top. I reckon I’ll have an excuse
should I test positive for opiates at customs…”Officer, I swear, it
was those damn poppy seed muffins I had. I hear they produce false
positive for opiates in urine tests”.

That’s true by the way – poppy seeds have morphine and codeine which
(if you eat enough) will cause you to fail a drug test. You’ll still
have explain away the cannabinoids and amphetamines positives though. 😉

Anyway, I didn’t manage to eat through the Salads Plus menu…I
didn’t go to Melbourne just to have McDonald’s everyday. However, the
only items I missed out on is the Garden Mixed Salad, Raspberry Muffin
Lite and the Granny Smith red & green apples (which you could get
at the supermarket anyway). My apologies for not eating though the
menu, but I covered the meat (no pun intended) of it, so this ends day
three of my Melbourne trip.

castitas.com

December 28, 2003 by HB

Whether you love it or hate it, it’s part of the sixthseal.com network, which currently includes:

sixthseal.com
The main site.

castitas.com
The first sister site.

pengsan.com
The second sister site.

castitas.com is where veritas writes and the content does not appeal
to everyone…it’s more of a blog with a limited target audience.
pengsan.com is a work in progress but we’re not talking about that now.
castitas.com was also meant to be a load balancing server, since it
doesn’t receive the 1.6k average (stats for December 2003 as of today)
unique visitors (not hits, visits) this site gets per day.

I feel that the sixthseal.com blog has weakened ever since the
decision was made for veritas to move to castitas.com. We both feel
that the original integrated blog was stronger in that it introduces
the people interested in reading veritas’s drug related entries to my
general interest entries and the people interested in my personal posts
to veritas’s drug posts.

The first works by allowing recreational drug users a look into
other perspectives, like the culture in Malaysia while the second is
meant to dispell the “junkie” stereotype by providing non users a look
into a recreational drug user’s life and hopefully see that there’s
intelligent users who does not pose a threat to society. That’s not to
say that veritas is a the safest and most responsible user out there
(haha), but hopefully, it would foster some understanding and tolerance
and realization that not all drug users are violent criminals.

The move was a mistake because veritas cannot possibly post daily,
so visitors do not know when a new post would be made. We both feel
that the glory days (or zaman kegemilangan as I like to call it) were
when the content was integrated and that sixthseal.com jumped the shark
sometime in July 2003. However, that does not mean that the main site
would stop churning out daily posts – I still like blogging.

veritas still likes writing trip reports too.

This long winded post is meant as a prelude to the future direction
of the sixthseal.com network. There will be changes…very soon. Four
days. I’ll not be revealing anything now, but whether you love it or
hate it, castitas.com will be heading in a new direction on the 1st of
January 2004.

[Edit: 1st of January 2005 changed to 1st of January 2004. Typo. Thanks for the reminder.]

Garlika Burger @ Burger King

December 27, 2003 by HB

Garlika Burger.

Garlika Burger is the new burger at Burger King. It looks good from
the ad so I had one of them. It’s not a large burger – the size is
rather small, smaller than the usual Burger King offerings. I’ll have
to say that it looks quite dismal too. It’s just a burger with a beef
patty with a slathering of garlic paste. This is what it looks like in
real life:

Never looks as good as the ad photo.

It tastes like…a burger with lots of garlic paste. 🙂 I can’t
really describe it much more than that because that’s what it is and
that’s all it is. It’s a little disappointing compared to the
promotional spiel. There’s no reason to dislike it if you like garlic
but I was expecting something more than a no frills burger with garlic
paste.

Anyway, on a more personal note, I will be going to work tomorrow.
There’s bills that needs to be paid and fronts that needs to be
maintained during the CNY reunion dinner. 🙂 Hey, life’s just a play
after all, so let’s just straighten our costumes because the show must
go on!

Look, there’s the guy that fucked up

December 26, 2003 by HB

Hello everyone. I’m having a really bad time now. I feel like i’m
going crazy. Before any of you make any presumptions, no I’m not on
drugs and yes, i did take my benzos like a good boy. i came into work
and i realized that all i have been doing is data entry for the past
few weeks (months?). i’m not a programmer, please change my job title,
i’m a simple data entry clerk. not tha t there’s anything wrong with
that, but i was doing programming for my own project (pengsan.com) and
i realized how i missed it, because it was fun.

i came in work today. it’s a holiday but i have unfinished work. on
opening my inbox i received a deluge of emails from the person i liase
with in another company for more data entry work. i looked at my
outstanding work and it wasn’t a lot, just need to do a mass replace on
ids, prob take 4 hours max. but i couldn’t touch it. i couldn’t look at
it.

i guess some of you would say i had a panic attack. but thats
improbable because i’m on a high benzo maintanence theraphy for my
anxiety, social phobia and panic attacks. you know the drill, i
couldn’t breath, i felt like i was going crazy, there’s sounds that
makes me jump, i can’t breath i feel like i’m having a heart attack, my
heart is jackhammering and i want to hide from i don’t know what but i
feel like my mind is ripped apart and i can’t escape, please help me
god!

it slowly passed and i guess you could say it was a panic attack but
like i said, i’m on benzos already. i’m also not taking drugs if anyone
is thinking along that lines. though the bad part passed and i felt
better, i still couldn’t do the work i came here to do. i took a walk
and came back and still couldn’t do it. i thought about a lot of things.

i felt like calling it quits but i don’t want to fuck up. its
chinese new year soon and i don’t want to go back to the family reunion
dinner with my parents and aunties and uncles and grandma and cousins
and all the other relatives without a job. i’ll be the one that fucked
up. they won’t say it of course, i’m sure they’ll be supportive or not
mention it but i know what all of them would think

he couldn’t take it. he cracked under pressure and he’s a jobless bum.

and i am. am i not? if i quit, that’s what i am. a fucking jobless
loser who couldn’t take it and quit. that’s all i am and that’s all i’m
going to be so i might as well just fuck off from the gene pool and
make the world a more productive and reliable place.

i don’t want to quit. i don’t think i can either, its understaffed
at the moment and contract says 1 month notice. i haven’t cashed in my
paycheck but i don’t think they’ll allow me to give it back in lieu of
one months notice. i’m afraid that there will be consequences from bad
feelings too. and thats not to mention the big fucking smear on my
resume from quitting on my first job and getting a bad reference. in
the current situation (overabundence of it grads), i’ll be lucky if i
could get a job ever again. there’s two million people waiting to
replace me who would be more than happy to have a job and more than
happy to accept my salary and do repetitive data entry.

but the most important thing is i don’t want to quit. i’ll fuck
myself up. and i don’t want everyone to talk about me and be known as
the person who’s WEAK and COULDN”T TAKE IT and CAN”T HANDLE PRESSURE
and QUITTER QUITTER YOU FUCKING LOSER!Q!!!

i don’t want to disappoint my parents and i don’t want to go to the
chinese new year reunion jobless and see what they think in their eyes
even though they won’t mention it.

i don’t want to quit but i don’t know if i can take all this data
entry work much longer.i can’t look at it. yeah i bet some of you would
think i’m weak but you don’t know me, you don’t know my psychiatric
history, you don’t know how many hours i put in recently and how many
hours i sleep and the most important thing is, i don’t give two shits
about what you think, sorry for disapppoiting you. like i siad, i’m
just worried about what my family (inc. extended) and gf and gf’s
family would think.

or maybe i’m just saying that coz i did mention that i don’t want to
be known as the guy who fucked up so maybe i do care about what you
think and i’ m just lashing out as a defensively.

i don’t want to quit and be know as the fucking loser quitter good for nothing piece of shit fucking loser.

i don’t want all that. what should i do?

i can’t look at the work i’m doing anymore. i’ll take the lrt back
now and sleep on it. i’ll see how it goes tomorrow, perhaps i’ll feel
better and come in and do the repetitive data entry but it disgruntles
me coz i’m not learning and updating my skills in programming at work
and i don’t have time at home. this is not to be seen as a critisism of
my company of course, i willingly accepted more work during a meeting
last time.

i’ll just go back and sleep and see how it goes tomorrow.

i don’t want to quit. what should i do?

i don’t want to be the loser in the reunion dinner. the weak one who broke down and quit his job, that loser.

what should i do?