sparrow (hk) ***+O
untold scandal (kr) ***OO
going postal (uk) ***OO
wuthering heights (uk) **+OO
sakuran (jp) ***OO
crownies (au) ***+O
death by murder (us) ****O

cryptonomicon ****+

knowledge, wealth, power
what’s the point to collect them
if not for wanking

yes, we’re a bunch of creatures, fond of masturbations; sexual/physical masturbation, spiritual masturbations, intellectual masturbations, etc etc.

a javan rhino
walking on tv and bang!
a bird hit my glass window

テレビの犀
バン！窓を打つ
飛んだ鳥

i’m not into festive gathering etc, so when my ex-housemates invited me to join them for christmas lunch, i wasn’t so keen. but, since there’d be only eight people plus two dogs, i think i can handle it. (the host v+c + bollo, k+e + gidgit, me + gf, a.b+ his housemate)

so i asked gf to bake something, as a token to bring along. i thought of something like christmas cake (because i just watched some posts about it on youtube), but we haven’t got proper equipment to bake the sponge cake. so gf offered an alternative, lemon meringue, cos it’s easier and cos i like it. unfortunately, it didn’t set and too runny to carry around, and we went to lunch empty handed.

after lunch, the hot weather made everyone sleepy. the hosts were trying to keep everyone up by suggesting games. ended up playing drawing and guessing a movie title. i thought my choice of titles were hard, but they managed to guess it relatively easily. oh well.

once the hosts realised they can’t use games to entertain the sleepy guests, they asked us to join them for a walk. it was already 4pm ish, and the weather had changed from dry hot to hail to cool and drizzle. i decided not to join them for their walk and go home instead.

we were quite lucky to get home early, as not long after my train arrived near my house, a lot of subsequent trains got cancelled due to high flooding. granted i was grumpy and wet, but once in a while, a change of activity from my daily routine is welcome.

***
new thing learnt: when a dog has its tail is up and curved with its end pointing up/forward and it’s waggling it, it is in playful mode. however, if the tail is up, but bent down/backwards, it is holding its bladder from pissing.

clearing the grasses
with a lower back pain and
a cheering raven

草を薙ぐ
腰痛と
カラスの応援

from an old man’s head
a strand of white hair stands out
among his black beard

じいさんの
黒髭の中
白髪の芽

—
a spider waiting
on a bathroom corner
while crossing her leg

バスルームの
待ってる蜘蛛
脚を組む

my year without sex (au) ***OO
kungfu panda 2 (us) **OOO
captain america (us) **OOO

book:
butlerian jihad ***OO
could be better if frank wrote it. as it happened, i like the plot, but not really like the way it’s told.

me: i’d like to have one pad-thai to take away please.
waitress: yes, one tai tai to take away, coming.

after showing signs of discontentment (a few wrinkles on the top left – a sign of screen burn) for a few months, my old monitor finally decided to serve me no more. never mind the important works that i need to do, it simply doesn’t want to display anything.

so i did what a general have to do when a soldier refused to react to his command; kill and replace it.

i could have waited till monday to buy the new monitor from my usual shop, but i’ve got some work to do, and gf was partially nagging me as she has assignment due monday, so in the rush, i’ve only managed a not state-of-the-art monitor, only a samsung with 1680×1050 pixel. (in comparison, my brother’s monitor is 1920x and it was a few months old. granted he needs an adaptor to run it, but still… mine was not as good.)

i still remember watching the harry potter and the philosopher’s stone in theatre in jakarta, a few months after it was released in the uk. the moment where i was astonished to realise that hogwart dining hall looked very very familiar to me, (and it should, because i dined in that very same hall for four years almost every day.) and also the surprised expression of my cinema-mate (h.s, who went to watch the movie with me,) who was surprised hearing me mumbling and surprised.

but, apparently, the movie was released in the uk ten years ago! which means, all the ‘memory’ that i just described is my recollection of what’s going on roughly a decade ago. time surely flies.

long time friend v, had finally realised her dream of becoming a mangaka, and i think she managed to get shogakukan as her publisher too.

google keywords for her manga: 国境なき学園 (.jp), translated into “Campus Dwellers without borders” (.en), and “Siswa-siswi bebas perbatasan” (.id)

congratulations is in order.

seven samurai (jp) ***+O
killers (us) +OOOO
inception (us) ***+O
state of play (us) ***+O
young victoria (uk) ***OO
bronson (uk) ***+O
body of lies (us) ***+O
karate kid (us) **+OO

still waiting for the armageddon/rapture/end of day to come.

thou shalt not lie, commanded the bible, but is the command effective against people who are mentally unstable? who thinks they are telling the truth?

i had a slight itch on my nose, maybe some leftover gunk, or some overgrown nosehair. so my reaction is quite natural: pick the nose. but just after doing that, i remembered the activity that i did a second before; cutting some chilli for dinner. bad, bad move. very bad move.

but if i can rate the irritation level properly, it’s nothing compared to an event that i experienced during my childhood. i think i was in primary 4 or 5, and i finished my shower. i took my towel and dry myself. the first part to dry, as my habit dictates, is my groin area. and then… i realised there were a line of fire ants walking in the towel hanger area, and the line was cut in where my towel was just a minute before. and my penis started to feel irritated. and burnt. panic, i ran to my mother and ask if she has a way to alleviate a fire ant’s bite. to which she produced a bottle of minyak angin, an indonesian herbal ointment that is quite hot like liquid balsam. it only makes thing worse, i should have told her where the ants bite was.

mostly because gf exercises her full right to borrow dvds from her library.

erotic tales: sweeties (nl) ***OO
erotic tales: sambolico (nl) ***OO
chocolat (uk) ***+O
time traveller’s wife (us) ***OO
sherlock holmes (us) ***OO
last king of scotland (uk) ***+O
the devil wears prada (us) ***OO
x-men origin: wolverine ***OO
tron: legacy *OOOO
how much do you love me (fr) ***+O
alien (us) ***+O
the assassination of jeese james by the coward robert ford (us) ***OO
syriana (us) ***+O
till faith do us apart (gr) ***+O

1994 was the year when i first made friends with cantonese people. not some chinese born overseas, these friends are straight from hongkong type of cantonese. it was then when i fully realised that there are different types of chinese languages – i was somewhat vaguely aware of chinese dialects before, but i thought they all use the same grammar and writings, just different pronounciation.

so in order to mix well with the cantonese, i need to revise my somewhat crappy mandarin and learn their language. it’d be very beneficial in an international environment anyway. of course, you can’t simply come up to them and beg them to teach you their language for free. in real world, people pay a lot of tuition fee. but i can tap a few words here and then, plus there’s nothing more effective ice breaker than learning the others’ swear words.

almost universally, one of the swear words that is banned in any cultured society is ‘vagina’. the cantonese have a unique word for this, which i don’t think enlisted in any mandarin dictionary. it’s a combination of 西 (west) and 門 (door). i can’t even type the word with this mandarin keyboard, so i’ll just use a picture to illustrate it.

at first, i can’t get the logic of why they choose a west inside a door to represent a vagina. my mind wandered to some mythical concepts (west represents white tiger in fengshui, or metal element, or straight lines etc) and still couldn’t solve the mystery. it was not solved until yesterday, during my doodling in shower box that i got some inspiration and i believe i found out the logic behind the choice of word. no philosophy involved here, it’s pretty straight forward:

the outer layer represents the labia, the top part represents the clitoral hood, the middle line represents the urethra, and the smaller circle with two lines in it represents the vaginal opening – with some left over hymen maybe. simple as that. why did it take me 17 years plus to decode this, i don’t know. perhaps it wasn’t particularly on my top priority. and perhaps because i didn’t bother asking the cantonese to explain it.

anyway, once i’ve established that, i can now safely say i discovered the secret of the cantonese second swear word.

the word means ‘fuck’. with the door character represents vagina on the outer side, the word 小 (meaning small) inside it could represent a rod (penis – the middle line) and two extra stuffs at the side (testicles) seen from above. in normal circumstances, a penis inside or approaching vagina means coitus.

an implication of this old cantonese wisdom is that no matter how big or small your penis is, there will be a bigger vagina that would engulf it.

gf volunteered on the ‘taste of melbourne 2011′ event, and in return, got two free tickets. i volunteer to go there with her, hoping to get some free food etc, but the food there is rather expensive, and we ended up tasting the samples.

taste of melbourne
free ticket and ‘premium’ stuffs
and the usual meh