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Hi. My name is Sam. I live in Bolehland. Where everything is supposed to be B O L E H. I stay in an old apartment complex called Happy Mansion. Am I happy? I am not absolutely sure. But happiness is a relative term anyway.

I have difficulty looking back in time. Perhaps that is a good thing because I will suffer less if I cannot remember. Somehow, I do remember some… Some time in the 3rd quarter of 2006, my long time companion died. My PERSONAL (digital) ASSISTANT just wouldn’t start no matter how hard I tried. It was one of the very first generation of PDA with colour. I missed my Palm IIIc. I also missed the data that goes with it… RIP Miss IIIc.

I also remember V for Vendetta. It’s my movie of the year. It’s just an exaggeration of Bolehland’s social political situation. For me, it is like looking into our very own future. Go get the DVD if you have not watched it.

When I was in primary school, I visited my grandparents place, which is a 100-yo Chinese shop house, during every school holidays. Unlike the Bok House, my grandparents’ house is still intact even they were long gone. My uncles and aunt stay there now. I remember one night when my grandmother was stir frying bean sprouts with half fat pork slices, a lizard fell into her wok. Of course she did not realise until I put it in my mouth. Yes, I ate half of the head-less, tail-less and leg-less cicak. Yikes! However, I did not wake up at the ceiling the next day. Jesus… how I wished I turned into Cicak Man then. With that, I can rob our filthy rich Town Councillors and give the money to the poor farmers up north and flood victims down south. And I can take Keluang Man as my side kick since he is not doing well after his many years of appearance on TV. And I shall change my name too, not Hairi of course, but Wayne, Bruce Wayne. As the perfect cover, I will be the naughty play boy by day and the super hero by night.

30th of December 2006, I couldn’t believe that Jerry and I worked the whole day and night refurbishing the Macs of my friend’s organisation. Guess what? A 7-yo iMac with 128MB RAM can run on OS X 10.3.9 (The latest is 10.4.4) with rather impressive speed. Mac rocks man! All my PCs won’t last more than 3 or 4 years and I wouldn’t dare to try to install Windows XP on a 7-yo PC. If you are getting a new computer, heed my advice, get a Mac! But of course, you have to promise you won’t treat your Mac like dirt. It’s a sin to do so.

I spent the first half of 31st of December 2006 sleeping because I went home at 5.30am. After I woke up, my day was full of events. My younger sister just flew back from England and she bought me a Damien Rice CD for the New Year. How sweet. I wanted to hug her but it is not in my family tradition to do so. My siblings and I went shopping in the afternoon. I decided to pamper myself… I bought myself a book. The Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

I was given the task to get presents for the two parties that Queen, Astro-gal and I were attending later at night. The first party was Soong’s Possible’s annual ritual. I got him and wife a hanging glass tea light shade. The second party was actually Toni-the-Star’s birthday party. Queen asked me to get some jewellery stuff. Gosh! That was tough. It was my first time buying this kind of thing. Fortunately, I was with my siblings who can qualify to be the Fashion Police. After much consideration, advice from my siblings and a phone call to the Queen, I got a necklace and a pair of matching earrings for Toni. Glad that she loved it.

On our way to Toni’s party, I discovered that Anwar Ibrahim is working at the apartment complex where the party was held. The party was noisy with a lot of booze. I was drunk. Astro-gal sent me home… it was like 4am then.

I spent the first half of 1st of January 2007 sleeping. Had lunch with Astro-gal and she was the true goddess of shopping. We walked into the digital mall after lunch where she checked out the CDs, ink cartridges, iPod condoms, computer bags and all… I sucked into the whole shopping thingy too. So I decided to pamper myself again on the first day of 2007. I got myself an arm-band for my fake iPod Shuffle. Now I can jog with my fake iPod Shuffle.

My first New Year house visit was Jerry’s. He cleaned his place! We had tea. Then I sent Astro-gal home, greeted Bobo, her Labrador, and went straight to my old uni buddy’s place to visit his family and an old friend from Canada. My new year mood just turned sour when I was driving… thanks for the toll hike from RM1.00 to RM1.60. I was smiling and saying happy new year to cashiers for the past few days, but I just couldn’t do so to the toll collectors.

I felt old upon entering my friend’s house because he already got 2 lovely daughters with his uni sweetheart (also my good friend) and I have to be called “uncle”. Perhaps, I should start using the arm-band thingy more, I mean jog, to keep myself healthy and young… somehow I have a feeling that it is not going to happen.

I spent the whole night there chatting and playing the kids. Then I came back and wrote this long winding post. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 11:56 pm and is filed under 点点滴滴.