Thinking Computers

You know, I've been a computer science student for the past four years, and for the first two years of my studies, I have looked upon my courses as if though they were the bane of my college life. The prospect of not understanding the science behind every action, and the consequence of not really giving a damn to when it really mattered. And thus, I wasted those years on trying to have as much fun as I possibly could in an institution that harboured mostly on looking professional rather than being professional. Patronizing us like the wankers they were, me and my friends began to lose interest and question ourselves why we were in this field in the first place.

That is, until I changed to come to university about last year, where I learned to sacrifice fun and time for a daily routine of hitting the books with an interest to learn for the first time since I learned how to multiply. Numbers, not people. ;)

I was cast alone in an environment that I was unfamiliar with, friends far away and few inbetween, as I set off to the daunting task of making new friends and acquaintances. But yet, I could not help but feel that my time here in university has been well-spent as I have come to grips with the joy of attaining knowledge, no matter how useless it may seem at times. Which is why I wish that I had better lecturers/teachers in the past that made more of an effort to motivate us, and to educate us, rather than being a so hard-arsed on getting people to listen to them as they spoke on things that were redundant. Useful perhaps, but in a medium so boring, so annoying, that even sitting there without a thought in your mind was hard enough to do.

Then I wonder, the lecturers then knew us face-to-face, our names and our characteristics, and for those who proved themselves to be good educators rather than teaching machines became friends, if not acquaintances. Not so with university, where I don't really think lecturers would give a damn about the well-being of a student, but rather to impart knowledge as they would see fit. After all, are we not jars to be filled?

Funny how it is that for the first time, I've actually begun to understand the scenes that work behind the machine. The code that pieces the abode that is the Lawnmower Man's. Understanding the reasons why and how. And for this, I'm grateful.


Currently listening to: Delirious - King or Cripple

Something to Talk About

Weather is slightly overcast in Melbourne today, which is something I've grown to like over the years when I was in Malaysia. I don't really like it all too sunny, or rains that come in monsoon sort of size. Overcast is a bit uncertain, and you never know when it's going to rain or when it's just going to break with a bit of sunshine, though usually it ends with the former.

So there I was on my way back home in a tram, so I pushed down the window and leaned my arms on the window ledge, just to feel the cool, unpredictable wind crash against my face and sway my hair a little bit. A nice feeling, and a lot better than any air-conditioning, if you know what I mean.

And as we came up to a tram stop at a cross junction, one dude listening on his headphones looked up at me and started to grin, and laugh a bit. I thought he was perhaps talking to someone by means of those hand-free sets, but he took both phones out of his ears and asked me this:

"What's happening, mate?"
"Nothing much. Just chillin'," I replied, and returned the grin. If we had stayed longer, I would have made some comment about the weather or something, but then the tram started to move forward.
"See you later, mate."
"See you later, man."

A short conversation between two random guys on the street, which happens quite a lot, even if the settings change. Like the street acrobat I met on the tram, or the man carrying palm stalks for his big vase in the elevator. It's what I like about Melbourne, and Australia as a whole, that you won't find over in Malaysia, unless you are somewhat acquainted with the people or perhaps of the same skin color, or something like that.

I think I'm beginning to really appreciate Australia, this being my second year here.

Currently listening to: Mahavishnu Orchestra - A Lotus on Irish Streams

Tribal Talk

I came down to Melbourne from Malaysia a little less than two years ago, and I was a little tense, considering that until then, I never really stayed away from home for extended periods of time. And I was also a little lonely since I was the only one from my class back in college to actually choose the university that I'm going to right now. I got by pretty alright, when I look back on things, though sometimes I wished I could have been more permitted to enjoy the atmosphere of a foreign land. Sometimes that was brought about by the continuous horde of paperwork on my shoulders, and sometimes out of the hesitation of the heart, but nothing more so than the lack of friends.

Where back in Malaysia I would enjoy the camaraderie of my comrades, going out on almost a daily basis to seek the nearest drinking hole and just fraternize. Of course, it was never limited to mamak stalls, as we also included Ramly burger stands, Chinese restaurants and the like. Food was cheap, and the chatting topics aplenty. Here in Melbourne, I didn't gain companionship until a while later, as is with most other places that one would come into for the first time.

Now, at the time, I deemed to make myself seem like a friendly person, and I would bring up small talk with the random fellow on the street, if the occasion called for it, of course. And one particular incident I remember for today was when I walked into an Indian grocery store to grab some curry powder. One Indian man (northern Indian, I presume, by the color of his skin) was behind the counter, and when I went up to pay him, I asked him an innocent question.

"How long you been here?"

He looked at me on a slightly peculiar angle, as if he tried to fathom what it was that I was trying to ask of him. He answered: "Fifteen years."

Fifteen years, a long time, I replied or something of the sort, paid the man and walked out of the store.

On another occasion, I was in Brodie's car and we were talking about some random stuff until I brought up the subject of the poor Vietnamese bugger that was going to be executed in Singapore under drug charges.

Brodie looked at me and told me that the fellow was an Australian, and not a Vietnamese, as he had been raised in an Aussie background for like, all of his life. He was not a Vietnamese, but an Australian. If you want to be really pedantic about it, you could have called him an Australian by Vietnamese descent, and that the only thing connecting him with that bit of land in Indochina was his name, his blood perhaps, and nothing more.

Now this got me thinking a bit. In Malaysia, the Malays, Chinese, Indians and whoever don't really refer to themselves as Malaysians, but rather by their race, which was what got Brodie talking when he learned of how things were in the fatherland (my fatherland, heheh). I don't suppose I could have blamed him for thinking that way, seeing as that despite having gained our independence from the British colonials for 49 years (43 for Sabah and Sarawak), we still maintain this racial profiling that has been a product of the ancient ways of settling who gets to do what.

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, I'll intro you a bit. Back when European colonists decided to come on over to Asia -slaughtering a few natives in the process, as they always do- and take control of things, there was a bit of a industry going on in Malaya, so the British saw that, and took good advantage of it.

In order to support this industry, they brought over Indians and Chinese from you-know-where to work in the mines, plantations and whatnot, and for a time, everything was peachy. Until the Second World War came about, Japanese came over, killed a few Chinese and made things difficult for everyone. Then the Emergency came around by the local commies, and after less than two decades of fighting, we gained our independence.

At the time, the leaders of the country noted that there was quite a substantial amount of Chinese and Indian immigrants that had now called Malaysia home. These people had grown used to the Malayan way, and to simply send them back home to their ancestral countries would have been a bit of a disaster, so everyone who was there at the time became citizens of the new country.

If you've ever taken a school exam in Malaysia, you'd have seen that there was a field that you needed to fill in, and that was called Race. And in various parts of our society, especially when it comes to government administration, the public are referred to each other not as Malaysians, but rather by our races, so instead of calling ourselves Malaysians, we'd call ourselves Chinese-Malaysians, Indian-Malaysians and so on, though the Malays would just be called the Malays because to call them Malay-Malaysians would be a little bit much.

Me being here, I have come to know anyone who is more or less local here as an Aussie, even if they're not visibly Caucasian. If they can be seen as Aussies, then why not we, Malaysians in our own country not look at ourselves and say we are Malaysians, instead of Chinese, Indians or whatever? Can we truly call ourselves Chinese, being so far removed from mainland China? Or be called Indians, and then be expected to say which village you were from (which is what my Indian-Malaysian friends say about the true Indians).

This is not to say that we should lie about what or who we are, because if I was of Chinese descent, I would still maintain a bit of the heritage of my forefathers, and also keep a little bit of the money-minded idiosyncrasy. But when I'm asked to what I am, should I not answer that I'm a Malaysian? Or when I see someone on TV, I would not look at the person by the color of his skin and just keep on watching simply because the racial profiling did not enter my mind?

So when I see another Malaysian on the streets of Melbourne, I would simply call that person a Malaysian, and not a Malay or a Chinese or an Indian, because that is what we are, and have every right to be.

An Argument

For the past few days, I've been up and about watching Japanese anime, and in particular, Bleach, a story about soul warriors who fight evil spirits, demons and whatnot. It's an interesting piece of work at first, but I can't help but but shake the feeling that it's just another series that takes on the path that Naruto embraces.

And just what do I mean when I say that? For those of you who're not really acquainted with Naruto, it revolves around a certain fellow in his early teens who has cursed to safeguard although he does not know, and is in some ways a tool for him to bolster his strength in times of trouble, when the curse would be bolstered into a form of a gift.

The protagonist of the story, a young lad by the name of Uzumaki Naruto has a personality that leads him to see the good in bad, the strong in the weak, even in the most inconvienient of times. Once-enemies and arch-rivals would be turned into comrades by his ability to strengthen everyone by his ever-present will power, never quitting even in the face of death, be they man or some odd-coloured demon.

Fair enough, but it can get a little more than annoying after the first few times. When one character will go into a fight or recollection mode, there will be times when the annoying flashbacks, or the unnecessary gloating that takes place between both parties of good and evil, and is not excluded to the revealing of combat secrets, when what everyone should be doing at the moment is winning the battle.

After all, doesn't time pass by when we flashback in real life? When we look back to our past experiences, as we sit back and contemplate, the seconds on the clock tick by, and they move on faster than how we feel when we breathe, apparently, if you can gauge my meaning. Which is more than a little annoying for the Naruto series. For every fight, there is some semblance of a flashback, and there are millions of these flashbacks, I kid you not. Heck, if they want to go even further, there might even be a flashback of a flashback, where the previous us in that particular flashback would have been thinking of a another flashback.

Confused? I really just skip the points until it takes me to the parts where they really matter, where people actually trade blows, instead of the little thoughts inbetween.

Granted, Bleach (which doesn't live up to the name, unless they're all about cleaning up evil) doesn't go to the same level as Naruto does in terms of annoyances, but it's taking on a similar pattern.

There are of course flashbacks, characters gloating, corny music at the wrong times (Transformers - The Movie, anyone?), secrets that should be kept secret instead of being revealed at also the wrong times (is that a Japanese thing?), and of course, the usual over-confident, always-"I'm okay!", sometimes boisterous characters.

Even the main character looks like Naruto, even though he's considerably less girlish, though they're both just as unnecessarily reckless. Also, they keep their secret weapons from being used until the very last moment, even in a duel against the most powerful of adversaries, either because they want to have their fun in a battle, or because they're waiting for THE MOMENT so they can just look good.

Fucking posers. I'm not sure if Terry Pratchett coined this up, but real warriors really just want to get on with it and just finish the damn thing. Just like how Sherif Ali from Lawrence of Arabia once said, no Arab loves the desert. Only mad Englishmen love the desert.

I guess it's the mad Englishmen in us all, to produce fantasies where characters are of no doubt larger than life. And I'm not talking about powers or magic and all that kind of stuff, but just that after a while, everything turns to a powerplay scenario.

On top of that, most anime characters seem to be larger than life, with too much pride, too much emo, and just about full of decisions that induce plot devices instead of just seizing the moment.

Well, come to think of it, if they did all the right things at the right time, animes would be really short instead of the elongated periods for each one. Well, not really, as every story is made to depict the experiences of characters as they go through sometimes life-threatening situations, or just life, no matter how risky it may seem.

But sometimes, you can't help but wonder if a story can do without all the unnecessary poser/power material, unless you have good reason to be doing so. Or perhaps such a way is justified, as the beginnings are mere comparisons to reality. As one grows in physical and mental size, shouldn't an art be allowed to do the same, whatever the medium?

So how can we gauge if a story is growing as it was meant to grow, or forcefully made to increase readership? Or does the term writer's block (let's not exclude all creators of art in this) fit in, where filler is thrown in if one cannot seem to back up the oncoming needs with proper material?

Which brings me to ask, instead of having countless episodes of semi-watchable/readable stuff, can we not concentrate on having a smaller numbers of quality output? Quality versus quantity, the ongoing argument in the world of the arts.

And to go back to Bleach, or Naruto, are they really better than the much-shorter-running series of Samurai Champloo? As an aspiring writer, I believe not. Is it not better to be remembered for a few good things, than a multitude of half-hearted whathcamacallits?

Not to say that producing a lot of stuff is a bad thing, as some people are talented enough to cope with, but we should never lose sight of the end result.

Sights of Malaysia (2)

I do believe that some of these are long overdue. I blame my laziness.
The following were taken by my handphone at the time, so the pics may not be too clear, or wonderful to behold, but as they say, a picture tells a thousand words.


There was this one time where my mate Larson, had trouble with his Proton Tiara, which I thought he should have gotten rid of, but as he said, it was his first car, and made a comparison to a first wife or first girlfriend.

I proceeded to tell him, "Yeah, you fucked up your first wife alright."

"Fuck you!" he replied, which was when we broke down on the highway, but this particular picture below was when the reverse gear could not function right, so we ended up servicing the car with cloth, a bit of duct tape and miscellaneous stuff you usually find under your car carpets. For a couple of hours into the morning. Heck, I even had a nap in that very parking lot, holding the torch up. Larson's on the left, and Richard's the other chap.


One of the best Indian mixed rice shops in Petaling Jaya (in Uptown). I would take six (small) pieces of fried chicken, two servings of vegetables, dahl the whole plate, have a dopple of acar on the side, and I get charged for about 5 Ringgit. Its no surprise that this lady's shop has lines of people queuing up to grab her food during lunch.


One plate of Maggi Goreng, in a mamak somewhere in PJ New Town.


The mamak in PJ New Town.


I tried to capture the atmosphere in one part of Petaling Jaya, sometime in December, when the monsoon season covered most of the peninsula. I have called Melbourne miserable as in windy, wet and cold, but in Malaysia, where you have close to summer temperatures on a near daily basis, the rains that come are a heck lot stronger, more dense and all in all, refreshing. They provide for a good night's rest without the need for air-conditioning, the droplets carried by the winds.

And sometimes you can just stand outside and let the rain come down and touch your lips, your face, and think back to a distant age, where the world was already old, but the memory of Malaysia beginning to form. Grey skies illuminated in some areas by the reaching structures of the Twin Towers and the KL Tower. The lights across a growing city, a nation in its youth.

I get a little romantic when it comes to rain in my country.


And it is at times like these where Teh Tarik tastes best.


No other hamburger in the world can top Ramly Burger. I mean, how many burger stands actually serve deer burgers? This truck, by the way, is one of the ways burgers can be brought to the masses, and they're usually found outside 7-Elevens.


One part of PJ, SS2, specifically.


I'm not sure what you call this, is it Tairu, or something of the sort? Diluted fresh yoghurt, mixed with parsley, some chilli padi, and various different herbs. Some people I know call it a Rasam of sorts, when they couldn't come up with a name for it.


Currently listening to: Ensiferum - Token of Time

(not my usual fare, I know, but I heard it off YouTube, and it has an okay tune to it, even if I don't like the vocals)