I think I have perfected the skill of selective memory rememberance and virtual event creation.

This simply means that I can choose to omit certain parts of my memory without ever recollecting it, just like how a computer hard drive not just puts files into the recycle bin, but rather shreds it and writes it over with 0s and 1s so that it is forever never retrievable. Therefore, I can never be reminded of things that have been subjected to selective memory remembrance. It just never happened to me, because I never remembered it.

The second skill is even better than I would have imagined, and yes it's all about imagination so powerful and vivid, that I'm not even sure if it really did happen. I have sometimes the tendency to quote facts from sources, and quite surprisingly, I didn't know when exactly did I read such things, or whether I've even read such things. Virtual event creation is all about creating memories from scratch to my preference to such a degree that I even believe that it really did happen.

Now what does these two skills mean? It means that I can shape my past to my liking. I can create events which never happened, erased events which did happen embarrassingly. Save a few physical momentos, nothing describes the past better than memory, but nothing is more unreliable than memory, except maybe Windows 95/98/2000/XP. So it means I have complete control of reality to a degree that has unparalleled power in the world! Whoever said, "He who controls the past commands the future" has spoken the words which are about to come true. Selective memory has erased the past as you know it, and the future is mine.

I know all of you out there are screaming, "Nutcase! Delusional nutcase!" but perhaps it is not my sanity which is to be questioned, but yours, after all, how do you know that your memories are real?

Midnight,
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory,
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Memory - Cats

It's in my head again, and I can feel it growing through the mushy folds of my brain matter, its long red tendrils snaking its way into the folds of spongy tissue, probing through untold secrets and invading guarded thoughts.

Yup, it's there again. Let's see if I can pull it out through my ear.

One reserves the right to make stupid comments and mistakes.

Otherwise the world wouldn't be so fun to live in.

I am ashamed to say that the moment I stepped into the hallowed halls of Genting Casino, I threw my most fundamental statistical knowledge out the window, and became what is to be known as a gambler.

You see, statistics clearly state that the house always wins. Statistics also state that the odds are stacked against you. Statistics have shown in the game of "Gambler's Ruin" the casino will take your money. Statistics also say that no matter what the previous results were, it has no effect whatsoever on the current results, i.e. memoryless property.

But even if I know statistics, I know that the roulette wheel, the dice and the cards don't know statistics. Which probably explains why I managed to walk away with some sweet moolah. But then I'm sort of ashamed because I actually believed in trends, where the cards tend to favour the banker or player, or whether the ball will fall on red or black, or whether the dice will be big or small. But it doesn't matter at all, and I guess gamblers will never be statisticians and statisticians will never be gamblers.

I sorta know for a fact that statisticians make bad gamblers too.

Anyway, what irked me most was not the ridiculous beats that come out, or the smoke in the room, or how that stupid slot machine won't accept my 50 bucks and wanted my 100 bucks only (yes, it's damn irritating, but it's another story). The most irritating thing in the casino was these old ladies who would sit around the table the whole day... literally the whole day, I know coz I was there the whole day too, but then again they were still there when I came back, but they would be there the whole day, and they would be in the VIP room, and you would think that they are huge gamblers, but then again, they make the smallest ridiculous bets which are way below the minimum bet on the table... so they like to stack their chips on yours. And they seem to hold up the game in the most ridiculous of all times by handing their membership cards to the dealer, or cashing in small amounts at a time or betting after the dealer kindly said, "No more bets."

I guess I'm easily irritated, but when money's involved, so is everyone. People have this love for shouting words like, "Picture!" or "Siam!" or as my dad later told me a few for esoteric ones, "Photostat!" or "7-up!" Now this are terms which exists only in an Asian casino, but wait till I hit the tables in Vegas to take a look around.

But one thing's for sure, I've only seen the dealer take out about 50k worth of chips during my entire time at the casino. But I've seen people cashing in from anywhere between 1k to 30k all the time much to my ire coz it slows the whole game down. So it's a sign I suppose. I sort of estimated that each table earns at least 100k a day. With a hundred tables open 24/7, that's over 10 million a day. That's how many suckers there are who go to the casino. And I guess stupidity does have its price.

Gee, with a Celica like this, what more could you ask for? Oh wait, how about a Mercedes SLK55? Gah.

Gee, I wonder which post gave away the fact that I was back in Malaysia?

One must say that I'm terribly pissed off. Anger does not begin to describe how I feel. I believe it is more of a disappointment but I can't say that I never expected it from Malaysia.

In the past three weeks, I have had the joys of experiencing three problems which I believe are all identical, and endemic to Malaysia by simple virtue of the way the system is.

The first of all is my DSL line which is very much like a zombie. It dies when it wishes to, it works when I don't really need it, and it refuses to work when I'm in the middle of a download.

The second problem is the streets of Malaysia. One look reveals a whole entire mess of giganormous proportions with highways choked full and perhaps, still... one might say, not as bad, but considering population, it is almost ridiculous to have traffic jams for the population size of Malaysia.

The third problem is one with Pos Malaysia which is usually met with skepticism, and although I know a person who has similar reservations about the Indonesian postal service, I am often delighted, surprised and overjoyed to actually a battered, dismal and torn-up package arrive at my house albeit extremely overdued, having actually survived the arduous journey through the inner depths of the unknown workings of the hellish post office.

The opinions written here are solely my own and I take responsibility for ranting like a madman and if during the ensuring silence of my political incarceration, I shall go as a matyr.

The entire problem isn't that Malaysia has the technology, expertise or labour. It isn't even about the population, economy or political system. It is the whole underlying core belief in Malaysia which has lead to crippling inefficiencies in the system. And this core belief is embodied in Malaysia's vision of becoming a developed country in the year 2020.

Warren Buffett said that it is a very bad practice for executives of a company to make predictions for the future of the company, i.e. how much would the company make next year. Because such actions would cause the executive to start doing accounting adjustments to muck numbers to let the corporation seem to have achieved its predicted outcome. Similarly with Malaysia, in a drive to seem developed, it has done things to appear developed only on the surface, mainly which involves spending millions of dollars on projects involving "the world's biggest/tallest/longest/largest whatever."

While this seems to me like a chronic case of the Freudian term, penis envy, I find that most of Malaysia's actions more to be for show on the international stage rather than producing results. I find the existence of Proton, and now Perodua, essential to promoting this image of an Asian tiger poised to leap into the future. To say that cars are expensive today in Malaysia is not precisely true. While imported cars costs between three to four times more than in the international market, Perodua cars can be sold to people now for a monthly instalment of RM200 (approx USD 50) for a long period of time of maybe over 10 years.

As we all know, cars are a symbol of development; the more private cars owned by a country, the more developed a country is. Actually to be more accurate, the more cars owned per person, the more developed a country is. But to achieve that sort of status, the citizens of a country must be rich enough to own cars. Instead, through various sorts of priviledges and protections, the government has made local cars affordable for everyone. Now, in the words of AirAsia, everyone can drive.

Now that everyone can drive, but there's no place to drive to. Which explains the ridiculous congestion further compounded by the need to build huge megastructures all focused in a single area, compressing population density to ridiculous heights. And it doesn't serve the interests of the government to improve public transport at the cost of car sales. Which explains the haphazard manner and inefficiencies of Malaysia's public transport system. While everything must be bigger, longer and better, all at the cost of efficiency and improvements.

A similar root of the problem exists in Malaysia's broadband endeavours. Need the politicians wonder why Malaysian broadband penetration is still miserable? Leaving wired broadband to a sole company TM-Net, a subsidiary of Telekom is a reason. With insufficient population density in rural parts of the country to make the infrastructure viable, the government hands it all to one company who has yet to deliver satisfactory service in most areas. Too fast, too far to make it all happen.

And Pos Malaysia just plain sucks. It just does! Goddammit, this one is personal, god damned registered mail was suppose to arrive in one week, but it's already been three weeks, and they didn't deliver good on their promise and this so sucks. It's a miracle if it did even arrive. I hate the reliability of Pos Malaysia. @*$&(*@$^(*

I don't suppose anything happened.

He shouted at her, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
She glared back defiantly, "Whatever!" and turned to walk away.
He grabbed her hand, and she quickly whirled around to deliver a stinging slap on his face.
Instinctively his hand struck back, repaying pain with pain.
He walked away, muttering to himself. "Whatever."
She was shaking. Her hands quivered as she struggled with the clasp of her handbag. She drew out a glint of metal. Her hands shook, but she couldn't miss from that range.

The coroner found one bullet in the left thigh, six in the torso and one in the head.

A battle fought, a battle lost, and the dead and wounded lie scattered on the barbershop floor.

After 283 days, a new personal best, Jason has succumbed to the nagging of his mom, and had his head mutilated in a vicious fashion by an Edward Scissorhands look-a-like. Yup, it's gone, it's mostly gone, it's quite gone, I'm kinda sad it's gone, so please don't comment on it. Give me another 8 months, I'll be back, longer and cooler.

Bah.

But it's a sacrifice. A much needed one. For it can't wait longer.

I have not posted in a long time. With some deep contemplation, I realise that I am living in two worlds; one which exist in real space-time and another one which exists solely in the confines in the infinituum of my mind.

Maybe that's where my discontent with the current reality lies, because I often have glimpses and tastes of something a little better out there. But then again, it's all in my head, but does it count? Does a solely imagined experience count? It's not completely baseless, it's an amalgam of experiences, the best of each, jigsawed together to form something just a little better. I don't know, with one foot in this world, and one foot in the next, I don't know which is better. The only thing I know is that even a morsel of happiness in reality feels a lot better than the infinite happiness I can imagine. So perhaps in this perspective, I live like a beggar in this world, and a king in the next.

I don't suppose the world could ever live up to my standards. It's not made that way.

Further thoughts ensue.