story – sixthseal.com

Betrayal 1

Betrayal
The story of the little gangster that could

Betrayal 2

Homo Ahbengus
Native to: Malaysia, Singapore
Mating habits: Often and indiscriminate
Social behavior: Hunts in packs
Sanctuaries: Sibu, Kuching, Miri, Klang, Cheras

Ultimate goal in life:

Betrayal 3

To own a semi-automatic handgun (preferably wrapped in newspapers, the classic but rather cliched method of concealment).

Job description:

Betrayal 4

Loan shark. Getting usurious money lending interests or gambling debts by property destruction, kidnapping, intimidation of the borrower, family and extended family (and pets if they have any).

Betrayal 5

One day, after getting a RM 3,600 interest from a borrower, his IQ 64 brain creaked and slowly came to the seeds of what he thought was an ingenious idea.

“I’ve got it!”, he exclaimed after 3 solid hours of hard thinking as the sun began to set in the horizon, still holding on to the wad of money.

Several startled birds flew off at his personal eureka and a couple who was doing the horizontal boogie in the abandoned car park furtively looked up and started quickly dressing.

He has worked long and hard to become the right hand man of the boss. General consensus was that he’s an asshole (which makes him Employee of the Month material in this line of work), just not very bright.

The latter was in fact the primary reason his boss trusted him with a handgun, though he did not know it.

Betrayal 6

Thus, when he concocted a cock and bull story about how one of his borrowers ran away to the freezing wastelands of Siberia and left only a RM 10 note, it was not altogether surprising that his boss looked at him in increasing incredulity and growing annoyance.

Betrayal 7

The boss expressed that annoyance in very reasonable discourse…using his fists.

Now, our protagonist did not think that was right. He has worked hard and risked his life (or so he would like to think, his victims were mostly degenerate gamblers who cringed when he raised his voice) and made his second intuitive leap of the day.

Betrayal 8

He thought it would be nice to be the boss for a change.

Betrayal 9

He slowly walked towards his boss as he slipped a very sharp knife out. He has a gun but unfortunately no bullets to go with it. His boss, being a little bit smarter, had only given him 3 bullets and he had used them all in a previous assignment. There was a gang war then and come to think of it, he didn’t think it was an accident that he walked into a room with four armed men and a gun with only three bullets.

Betrayal 10

He mulled on that piece of information as he stabbed, slashed and generally butchered his (now deceased) boss.

Betrayal 11

Then, he shook a cigarette out and smoked it ponderously as he thought about how wonderful it is to be the boss with a large gang beneath him. As I have previously mentioned, he is a bit slow.

Thus, when a random police patrol passed by two hours later, they saw a man sitting on top of a dead man, both of whom was very well known around these parts largely due to their criminal enterprises.

Betrayal 12

The man was covered with blood and appeared deep in thought.

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Notes: This was a photo shoot I did over two days during Chinese New Year. Willie of I-Concept Event Agency introduced me to Jason, who runs Jasongs Photography. I’ve known Willie for years (he’s Jeanie’s brother) and when he asked if I could do him a favor by being a model in a photo shoot, I was happy to help out.

Jason and Willie just got into a partnership and they do a lot of wedding photos and family shots. They wanted to do a high pass shoot – there was a lot of fake blood (which is permanent if it gets on your clothes), location scouting, multiple flash units to light everything up and early mornings. That is not a real gun – it’s a Beretta 92F replica. It was a lot of fun to do and we found this really cool abandoned house which would be great for photos.

I wrote this tongue-in-cheek post when I saw the photos just now. I agreed to help with the captions so I have an alternate post on Facebook with completely different text. It’s more serious and gritty, you can view and read the photo story here. Let me know which one you think is better. 🙂

abc soup recipe

ABC soup is basically a soup where you dunk in everything that’s available to make a clear broth soup. The traditional (if such a word can be used to describe this) method calls for:

abc soup vegetables

An onion (whole)
Carrots
Potatoes
Tomatoes

abc soup ingredients

I used to think that ABC soup is called that because it’s easy as 1-2-3 (or ABC) but I’ve been thinking about this old folk tale about the stone soup story. There are variants of this story but the one I heard is about this traveller who comes into a village hungry with nothing but a pot.

abc soup pot

He asks the villagers for some ingredients to put into the soup but no one wanted to part with anything. He then announces that he’s got a “magical stone” that makes wonderful soup and proceeds to fill the pot with water and puts the stone inside. So, he’s sitting there, stirring what amounts to nothing but water when a curious villager comes over and asks if it’s done.

abc soup cook

The traveller says not yet, but it would help if someone had carrots to put in it. Enhances the flavor, the dude casually mentions. The villager grudgingly says that he might have some carrots at home and adds it to the hot water. This became a cascading effect as the villagers watched the traveller cook his soup – each one started contributing their own stuff – a bit of meat, some onions, tomatoes etc and lo and behold – it was the best soup they’ve ever tasted.

abc soup boil

There’s a moral in there somewhere but that’s not why I’m writing this post. Heh! ABC soup has become something of a staple in our cooking since it’s quite versatile and very easy to cook. You basically need onions (sliced in half), carrots (diced), potatoes (whole if you use the tiny ones) and tomatoes (sliced in half).

abc soup peel

Just use to golden rule:
PEEL the stuff that needs peeling
SLICE the stuff that needs slicing
DICE the stuff that needs dicing

abc soup

You bring a pot of water to boil, add some salt to taste and dunk everything in. Allow this to simmer for 30 minutes or so and it’s ready to eat!

abc soup heat

The best thing about this is that even if you can’t finish it you can still eat (we use more ingredients than soup) it in the middle of the night. There’s this thermos like thing (except it’s much bigger) that we use to keep it warm.

abc soup leftover

I can just scoop some out and eat it at 3 am in the morning if I’m hungry. ABC soup is easy to cook and infinitely customizable – we’ve put leftover minced meat inside too, it goes very well with just about anything. It’s really healthy compared to the other stuff I eat too. 🙂