The Dark Life of Lancy

Miracles.
Some people dispute them, some people swear by them, some people desperately need them, some people pray for them.
But one thing is for sure: EVERYBODY wants them.
Especially miracles that work in your favor.
Personally, I have experienced miracles since as young as I could remember. Of course, you would probably also have to define what actually constitutes a valid miracle. In any case, however, I believe that miracles are a matter of personal perspective, hence my claim to experiencing miracles.
I dare say that since I was just a toddler, I have probably had no less than 5 or 6 near-death experiences in the 20-odd years of my life. The bulk of them happened within the past 10 years. And yet, till now, death has not been able to claim me just yet, and quite frankly, I attribute that to the grace of God, by granting me just-in-time miracles over and over again.
In fact, another miracle just happened a couple of days ago, though not on me personally, but I feel inclined to share it.
I got a call from my father sometime last week, sounding very serious and hesitant. I immediately sensed that something was horribly wrong, and to be perfectly honest, felt a sharp stab of fear. My heart went cold for a second before he announced the bad news: My sister’s car was just stolen while she was at work.
I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but I actually felt a huge relief. Sure, a stolen car is a huge inconvenience, but at least my family is safe, alive and healthy. I was half-expecting that someone was in the hospital or something.
Still, that was bad news. I was told that my sister had lodged a police report, and I was planning to call her later that evening, knowing that she was probably still in a state of shock and probably too busy handling the police reports and stuff.
That was when the miracle was granted to us.
Less than two hours later, my sister called me herself, and told me the miracle: She had found her car again. Apparently the car broke down just when the thief was trying to make his getaway, and had stalled somewhere not too far away.
The car’s engine was apparently faulty, with some loose mechanical component had been dislodged within the engine block sometime ago. My sister had been driving this second-hand car for the past 9 months or so, and it could have had failed anytime during that whole 9-month period. But, instead, the engine chose this EXACT day and this EXACT moment to fail.
Had the car failed anytime earlier, she would’ve gotten it fixed, and today she would probably never see her car again. Should the car fail anytime later, the thief would probably have made it to his hideout, wherever that is, and she would probably never see her car again either.
I mean, WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT?!
Right now, she’ll probably have to fork out an extra RM 2,000 to fix up the car, but hey, to me at least, this is not just a blessing in disguise…this is a full-blown miracle, in every sense of the word.
Miracles are all around us, every single day. We may not see the dead coming alive, or the sea parted, or water turned to wine, but the miracles are there, if we only look hard enough.
Have you experienced your miracle today?

Well, 2007 came and gone…in what felt like less than a blink of an eye, which I’m sure a lot of you will agree with me.
Gone, never to come back…lost…forever to be referred to as HISTORY.
And me?
I’m still the same old me.
Same OLDER me.
These days, I just could not care less about what goes on around me anymore.
I mean, I was blissfully ignorant before…but these days, these days are different. These days I am so absorbed in my own thoughts, troubles and problems that I have absolutely NO INTEREST whatsoever in what goes on.
Our ex-Health Minister, who proved to us that at that ripe old age, he was very healthy indeed…the case of Edison Chen (no idea why people are so hyped up about it…people have sex, period. Celebrities, political figures, football stars, EVERYBODY has sex…OK, maybe except eunuchs and people who adopt celibacy. Hell, I’m pretty sure even Yoda has sex once in a while…!)…the upcoming general elections, bodies found in bags, kids missing, ex-presidents killed, Microsoft trying to take over Yahoo…you know, the whole lot.
Something must be wrong with me…or maybe the world is just sick.
Sick…or sickening, anyway.
Which is probably why I have not posted on the blog for such a long time…there’s absolutely nothing meaningful to say anymore.
That, plus the fact that I’m bloody lazy, of course.
Will 2008 be any different?
We’ll see…10 more months to go.
Time for some coffee.

Hang on…first of all, let me reinstate here that this blog is
private, I did not invite you to come read this bullshit, and I do not
propagate racial disharmony or claim that I am always telling the
truth.
This is my private diary, and if you’re reading this, then you’re a lousy spying voyeur who’s probably up to no good.
Shame on you.
You know…just so I don’t get into trouble with Big Brother. You never know.

Anyways, to those who aspire to be totally ignorant, but sadly, are not ignorant enough (like me, unfortunately), I’m sure many would know about the Chinese Malaysian studying in Taiwan, who recently created quite a stir amongst our beloved politicians when he created a parody of our national anthem "Negaraku" in the form of a Mandarin rap song.
Our National Anthem in Mandarin, and littered with rude slangs and otherwise purportedly insensitive remarks about Islam and our fellow Malays, you can imagine that politicians, and many other hardcore fans of the Malaysian integrity, have been condemning the fellow and have even called for a ban on this video, and many have even gone so far as to call for him to be arrested and stripped of his nationality.
Well, I’m not one to judge and criticise blindly, so being the good little boy that I am, I went to Youtube and watched the entire clip.
Twice.
And downloaded it.
And I have to say: This dude is a bloody genius.
For one, rude slangs do not disturb me much. Considering my circle of friends and line of work, his so-called rude language actually seemed mild in comparison and, in many instances, even gut-wrenchingly hilarious.
Also, I can’t say much for his "insensitive remarks towards Islam and the Malay community", as far as I am personally concerned. Maybe I am just being ignorant, but it seems to me that all he said about Islam was that the prayer recitals, blaring from the rooftops of local mosques, were sometimes off-key, and that they acted like alarms clocks, timely as they are.
Most of the flak has been on our government, actually. The snail-like performance of the government departments and their lackadaisical attitudes, the willingness of our police officers to enjoy a cup of steaming teh tarik with drivers everywhere, the folly of our education system…you know, THE TRUTH IN GENERAL.
This is the freakin’ 21st century, men have been to the Moon and back, we have satellites that have sailed out of our solar system, we have the INTERNET, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKES, and yet here we are, condemning a bloke who’s (mostly) told the truth in general, and, to my knowledge, not really triggered any major consequences at all.
Perhaps, the only sin this poor fellow committed, was that his humor was seen by people who do not have any. People who are so simple and shallow-minded, and have so little confidence in the intelligence and maturity of our nation, that they worry that a parody song could jeopardize the integrity and stability of our nation, and bring down a millenia-old religion.
Humorless imbeciles with primitive lizard-brains should be banned against watching Youtube.

I’m not sure how many people watch CSI on TV, but it amazes me everytime how good and imaginative the scriptwriters are.
A couple of weeks ago, I was just lazing around on my really comfortable sofa, with a cup of hot Nescafe in my left hand and the Astro remote in my right hand, browsing through the channels, when I came across CSI on one of the channels.
I kinda forgot the episode, but my greatest impression came right at the end of the episode, when one death-row inmate committed suicide in his prison cell.
OK, death-row inmates committing suicide is nothing new, granted. But here’s the kicker: This fellow did it with…a sandwich.
I shit you not…our friend killed himself by eating a peanut-butter sandwich.
Apparently he was hyper-allergic to peanuts. A couple of minutes after eating it, he was convulsing and coughing up foam and just died.
I mean…like, how cool can you be?
Imagine the conversation between the guards:

Guard 1: Hey Fred, I heard one of them kicked it in his cell last night.
Guard 2: Yeah. Guess he didn’t believe in the whole capital punishment business.
Guard 1: No kidding. By the way, how’d he do it?
Guard 2: Oh, you know, the usual…he ate a sandwich.

Makes you wonder how frail the human life is, and how little it takes to effectively kill someone. In another case, I read in a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip that by just playing innocently in a little rain, you may catch pneumonia, wind up a horrendous hospital bill, linger a few months and die.
I mean, like, WOW.
Hats off to the people who come up with these ideas on a daily basis.
Instead of killing hostages and bombing the subway, terrorists could now just force people to play football in the rain, after forcing them all to eat peanut-butter sandwiches.
Or durians, for that matter. I know some people who would rather punch the Devil on the nose than to touch the fruit.
Weird folks.

Years pass, seasons change, time and tide flow in an eternal fluidic motion like the event horizon of a cosmic black hole, sucking everything into the eye of its endless maelstrom from which no-one can escape. All light is lost, and hope becomes a luxury even for the extravagant.

Time is a cruel master. And yet, it is a fair one. No one can add a single second to his life beyond what was allocated, no one can decide if his days were to be longer than his nights, and no one, by his own will, can decide to live in any time other than the present. The Sun shines on the evil as well as on the good.

A full six years have passed since the first day I was introduced to all the members in this institution, since my real first step into society, since the first day I walked into another phase in my life, and never looked back.

Today marks the beginning of the seventh year. May the best of last year be the worst of this.

I recently went for a movie with a pal at One Utama, namely "300".

It was quite a cool movie, very nicely done. For those who have not watched it yet, it is about Leonidas I, King of the Spartans, who, in 480B.C., led 300 Spartan warriors to battle against the invading Persian army. Historians’ opinions differ, but most put the estimated number of Persian soldiers at 250,000 to one million. The battle, which came to be known as The Battle at Thermopylae, though lost, sparked an all-out war between Greece and Persia one year later, and the Spartans became legendary for their courage, bravery, fighting skills and unrelenting will. They later became known as the greatest warriors that ever walked on the surface of the Earth.

However, that’s not my point.

I just wanted to point out that there were a lot of gory scenes with hundreds of liters of human bloodshed, and I am pleased to say that I actually liked what I saw. That said, I was pleasantly surprised that the film made it through the censorship board at all.

I recently found that I am quite into this kind of thing…gore, bloodshed, people screaming out of fear and desperation, heads and limbs chopped off, people stabbed with swords, spears, knives, and whatever kind of sharp objects solely intended to inflict pain.

I just finished watching Saw 2 and Saw 3 as well, though I must admit, it didn’t really compare well with the original Saw, in terms of psychological impact. I was actually feeling a bit bored halfway through both movies.

For the interested, "Hostel", inspired by Quentin Tarantino, is also an interesting watch, though it really focused more on the atmosphere rather than direct gore.

It really intrigued me how dark, evil, twisted and sadistic the human soul can be.

MMMmwwwaaahahahahahahaha…!!!!!!!!!

I think I need professional help.

A lot of things happened to me these couple of days, and suddenly I feel very much obliged to share some of the Universal Laws that our education system didn’t teach us:

Universal Law One:

If anything can go wrong for any reason, no matter how inconsequential or absurd it may seem, IT WILL GO WRONG.

Universal Law Two:

Any object, when dropped accidentally, will always head for the most inaccessible area in the vicinity, usually seeking shelter under another larger object. If the dropped object is of a sufficiently large mass and heavy weight, however, this Law will not apply, and the object will invariably land on your foot instead.

Universal Law Three:

There is, as scientists have predicted, another Fifth Dimension. Most of the objects that you see lying around everyday but do not use, will suddenly distort space-time continuum and enter this Fifth Dimension at the exact moment you have a sudden urgent need for it. Due to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy, this object will remain in this dimension indefinitely until the time when you suddenly require another object, whereas when that object disappears and enters the Fifth Dimension, the previous object will reappear back in our world, and settle itself in the most obvious location which you swear you’ve searched a million times before.

Universal Law Four:

When you’re just killing time, all the traffic lights will turn green as you arrive. When you are already late for a million-dollar contract meeting, all the lights will turn red as you arrive. Plus, all the cars in the city will suddenly decide to travel on the same road as you are, causing a never-before-seen traffic jam. Whichever lane you choose will become the slowest lane.

Universal Law Five:

There are 36 points on a compass, meaning there are 36 different directions all around. However, whenever you squeeze a lemon or any other highly acidic fruit, its juices will always head for the human eye.

Universal Law Six:

Time does not flow in a consistent manner. The rate of time-flow is inversely proportional to your state of comfort at that instant. For example, when you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for a million-dollar contract meeting (refer to Universal Law Four), under the scorching noonday sun with a broken-down air-conditioner and an extreme case of explosive diarrhea, Time slows down VERY significantly.

Universal Law Seven:

In a 50/50 chance situation, when you have a 50% chance of selecting the correct answer, you will still choose the wrong answer 90% of the time.

Universal Law Eight:

The human foot has inexplicable gravitational properties. Everytime you walk barefoot, all manner of distasteful and unwanted objects, such as sharp metallic objects, thorns, cat’s vomit, banana skin peels, slimy worms, sea urchins, etc. will invariably be sucked under your feet. The probability is doubled if you are walking barefoot in the dark.

Universal Law Nine:

No matter where you live and work in the world, you will always be surrounded by idiots who are inclined to make it their lifelong goal to make your life miserable. It doesn’t matter if you migrate or change companies, there will always be a fresh supply of idiots to greet you.

And finally, The ULTIMATE Law of the Universe:

Shit happens. Shit ALWAYS happens.

Well, Chinese New Year has come and gone, leaving me wondering why the hell we’re celebrating the most important Chinese festival during the bloody hottest period of the entire year.

Going out to visit friends and relatives during this period was, I’m sorry to say, something I totally despised. The ambient temperature must have been somewhere close to 40 degrees Celsius, and returning to your car after leaving it parked outside your relatives’ houses for an hour could literally cook any eggs you may be carrying.

However, the highlight of this festival was: my girlfriend became the target of a snatch thief, and she lost her handbag to a single pile of shit which happened to be in the form of an Indian man on a motorcycle.

This is not the first time that someone I personally know has fallen victim in a snatch-theft incident. It was really fortunate that my girlfriend was not seriusly injured during the incident. She was pushed off balance and fell down, bruising her knees. The perpetrator, obviously, sped off and was nowhere to be found. Her handbag was later found at a petrol station and returned to her, minus the few hundred Ringgit cash, her identity card, driver’s license and her handphone.

You can imagine I was pretty enraged and was cursing that the asshole who did this would be spending several eternities wallowing in the innermost depths of HELL, with his limbs and tongue chopped off, eyes plucked out, skinned, all his internal organs ripped out piece by piece, and finally sodomized by a demon in the form of a 400-kg Sumo wrestler with a fire hydrant.

On a daily basis.

Then I remembered many of these snatch-theft cases reported in newspapers, and the injury inflicted upon the victims (I remembered one where a lady fell into a coma and later died, then a pregnant lady who lost her unborn child). These scum should not even be classified as humans. I don’t care if they were stealing to feed their family, or whatever. I would wholeheartedly support any proposal that empowers the public to beat the living hell out of these shitholes if they were caught.

If enough of these pathetic lowlifes were slaughtered, hopefully it may act as an effective deterrent to others.

That’s right…I’ve just found out that our beloved country has its own version of the KKK, but here we call it by a different name - the Information Ministry.

I am referring to the recent statement by Information Minister Datuk Zainuddin Maidin that the number of Pan-Asian-looking models appearing on television advertisements will be reduced.

So…what now? After years of trying to promote racial harmony and unite the people under the Malaysian nation, we are now discriminating people by how they LOOK?

I might be wrong, but it seems that Malaysia is going backwards. Backwards to the time where African-Americans were hanged just because they look black.

There are supporters of this notion, saying that the "local-looking" models were being marginalised by these "foreign-looking" artistes.

HELLO?! In case those morons never bothered to check, practically all the "foreign-looking" artistes we see on TV are ACTUAL MALAYSIANS. They are not foreigners. They are not Mat-Salleh’s. They are Malaysians, plain and simple. The only difference is that some have parents of mixed races, but they are STILL Malaysians. Even Maya Karin, the recent pride of our nation, is of mixed parentage. She looks Pan-Asian, "foreign-looking" if you may, but she’s Malaysian.

What do they mean, they want more "local-looking" faces on TV shows and advertisements? Do they mean they want only those with "authentic" Malay, Chinese or Indian looks to go on TV? Are we now discriminating people by categorising them as "pure-bloods" and "mudbloods" now, just like in the Harry Potter series? So, going on from there, I gather that this same group of people are also against interracial marriages? Further on, it also means that they are against racial unity and racial harmony?

What kind of narrow-minded politicians with such a warped sense of humanity are we voting into office nowadays? How are we to trust the government, our leaders, when they are so quick to judge and discriminate? These psychological diseases should not even exist in 21st century Malaysia.

Now they are targeting artistes with Pan-Asian looks. What’s next? Will they discriminate Malaysians who are too tall? Too short? Too thin? Or too fat? Or maybe they will ban Chinese and Indian artistes from all public appearances because they are not "bumiputra", and hence not a true representation of what "Truly Malaysia" means?

Since I came back from China last week, I have been doing some thinking in my free time. Oh yes, I can actually think, you know.

Anyways, reflecting on last year, I realised that I have actually changed quite a bit. Whether it be the fact that I am getting older, or more mature, or just the effects of extreme work pressure, I don’t know. What I do know is: Change is inevitable. A progressive deviation from one state to another state as a function of time.

People change. You and me, the durian seller, the mamak stall guy, our prime minister, the beloved bartender…everyone. Problem is: is the change for better or for worse?

There are many people who tell me that our country, due to the influence of many screwed-up politicans, are going down to the dumps. Personally, I believe that Malaysia has heaps of potential to be a great country, but not everybody is working towards that goal. Many politicians are just working towards amassing ungodly amounts of personal wealth and pursuing other lusts at the expense of the rakyat. 2006 has been a great year in proving this, what with all the cases of municipal councillors building palaces in kampungs, Datuks killing and blowing people up, public figures escaping income taxes for more than 10 years, certain leaders telling us that it’s a sin to greet people Merry Christmas or Happy Deepavali, "semi-value" politicans approving ridiculous hikes on "semi-value" highway toll rates and telling us that the agreement conditions are "sulit dan rahsia"…oh I don’t know, but if you asked me, our nation’s getting pretty good at screwing up at things like these.

Someone once said that Life does not change because it does not need to. When faced with a difficult situation, however, Life will always find another way. Well, I personally think that we’ve already sunk waist-deep, and it’s not mud I’m talking about. It’s way past due for our beloved Malaysia to wake up and change for the better. Other countries which we have always thought were way behind us are already surpassing us. China has already started making its presence known as the next technological superpower, and North Korea already has nuclear technology. And here we are, still debating on whether women should be told what they can or cannot wear to work.

Our ignorance is making me sick.