My Adventure Of Not Having to Stand in Line at 5am

I had originally made plans to rush Kino at KLCC on the morning of the 21st in order to get my grubby hands on the latest edition of JK Rowling's 7th book. I had even planned with a fellow accomplice on where and when to meet.

Suffice to say being a nocturnal creature of the night, mornings have an acute distaste towards my well being. I woke up at 11am and oblivious to the sms my fellow accomplice, whom I assume to be nocturnal in nature, sent at 7am to inform me that she had overslept as well.

'Sod it', I had told myself when I realised the time but not feeling too dissapointed about it, considering the fact that I am a 'non-morning' person and abhor crowds in general, it was very unbecoming of me to have thought up of the plan in the first place. Therefore, I had concluded to purchase/steal/borrow a copy at a later date.

So, It was later in the afternoon that I was informed by my sister-in-law of the pricing debacle between the major bookstores and the hypermarkets. This time, even though I again told myself to 'Sod it', it was focused more on the ethical question of which moral ground to stand; the bookstores which were the victims in this incident or the unethical business accord of the hypermarkets.

Just like the sorting hat, my wallet chose for me.

I am happy to say that Deathly Hallows was an entertaining read. Well sure, Rowling could've wrote it shorter than the 600+ pages but then that would affect the book price and her commission. Clever woman.

Harry was not that annoying, fortunately, unlike in Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, it seemed that he had matured to a certain extent in the final book. Ron and Hermione still played second-fiddle to the Boy Who Lived as most of the other characters did but thanfully it was suspense from start to finish. The climatic ending was worthy of even Tolkien's Return of the King. Unlike the snore-bore of Book 5 or 6, Rowling takes you on a rollercoaster ride throughout.

One gripe that I have with the way Rowling handled it is with how she started the whole bloody Harry Potter adventure in the first place. You had Sorceror's stone; humorous, innocent and focused mainly with child readers in mind, to Deathly Hallows; dark, violent and catered more towards mature readers. Yes, money IS the root of all evil.

So, did Harry die as foretold by many? Well, you have to read for yourself. I'm not telling. All I can say is the casualties are indeed high. Apart from the cheesy epilogue at the end, I would really recommend the book.

And thus concludes my review. If you were looking for more in-depth reporting, than I suggest here or here. But if you do happen to hate it, "that dumbass 9 told us it was good', hey.. don't blame me. I don't read that much and the last book I bought was 'Monitoring Amphibian Diversity in Borneo'. So go figure.

Nox!

My Adventure of Watching Malaysia Get Bashed

One day, a bunch of Form 3 students had the brainless idea of asking the Form 6s for a football match. "No worries", the Form 3s thought. "This should be a walk in the park". Well, ok. those buggers were twice their size but the Form 3s had numbers on their side.

14 of the Form 3s to 8 of the Form 6s if I remember the line-up correctly.

The reason of the sudden testerone-enlarged-testicle idea was that they thought the Form 6s, being in Form 6 and all, were your classic geeky bookworms. Furthermore, the Form 3s had been training in the best-paddy-field pitches in their local housing area and surau kickabout for years now.

The only problem is that the Form 6s didn't send their classic geeky bookworms. They instead sent in the ones who were not geeks. 2 of them were from some football project school. Suffice to say the Form 3s got stuffed. Stuffed like a VJ by a political youth wing member.

What the Form 6 had that the Form 3s didn't was the experience and brain matter to play. Although, technical skills are at best, on par, the Form 6s, passed the ball, played the flanks, found space with chips, flicks and nutmegs.

The Form 3s on the other hand were running all over like headless chickens.

Fast forward to the present, the severe buggering of our lads in the Asian Cup reminded me of that infamous incident in 1992. It's easy to point fingers and play the blame game but the fact of the matter is that the Malaysian players were not good enough. Just like the Form 3s back then, Akhmal and co. had gone up against better prepared, technically efficient, and tactically astute opponents.

So, before anyone goes overboard in criticising our nation's performance, spare the thought for me, who was playing in midfield, exasperately trying to pull that team of Form 3s together.

My job would have been much simpler if most of my teamates knew how to pass and not attempt to dribble half of the opposing team when their individual skills are somewhat suspected.

My Adventure With the Concept of Complementary Principles

There are some concept of complementary principles which are not expected to succeed in this world, much less the inherently opposing ones.

Forget the Ying. Forget the Yang. Some entities or concepts are just not able to co-exist with each other, lest the destruction of humankind and cessation of all life on Earth.

For example, Timothy McVeigh and C6H2(NO2)3CH3, or;

Lyndsay Lohan and a bottle of Jim Beam, or;

George Dubya and a Brain (although, it is still debatable whether he has one in the first place).

Closer to home, two entities which do not exist well in the same context, room or situation is a dumbass and a shotgun.

As such, when you put these two together, you get incidence such as this:



A female sun bear, which was injured after being shot by a hunter, died while being treated at a state wildlife facility here on Sunday.

The bear was found by a villager in an estate in Kampung Sungai Pas, in Kuala Krai, and handed to the district wildlife officers.Wildlife conservation centre head here, Muhammad Ismail, said the animal was weak when it was brought to the facility last Thursday.

"We believe the bear was shot several hours before it was found by the villager, and it had serious injuries on the back. We gave the best treatment," he said.

He said they had intended to release the bear after it recovered. The department is investigating the case.

They didn't even had time to give her a name.

My Adventure of Giving You Lot a Warning

Oi.

This chap here is under CITES Appendix II, which means that her and her friends, although not neccesasrily threathened at the current moment, may face extinction, unless trade is closely controlled.

There-bloody-fore, without special permits, your shipment, as in the case on 12 June 2007, when a shipment of 76 leopard tortoises contained in two parcels labelled as “claypots” flown from Tanzania to the courier services section of the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal, would be bloody confiscated.

Oh, did I mention 2 individuals died due to stress and poor handling?

Not surprising when they've all been found strapped down on their shells and their heads were also tied back to prevent further movement.

Where were they heading?

None other than to your local neighbourhood poache err.. pet store.

Here's the bloody deal. No matter what that poacher at your pet store says; they have not been captive bred. More of often than not, they were smuggled-in. When you lot start buying these animals under the pretense of being a bleedin' animal lover, you are promoting an increase in demand for the trade.

No, don't give me that excuse of wanting to be a bloody hero and trying to breed them, with a yet another false pretense of one day re-introducing them into the wild bla bla bla. You bloody can't pull in a bird for yourself much less trying to force-breed another species. Let the experts handle it.

So stop buying them. Or any other 'imported' exotic animals from your local poacher for that matter. Allow them to live and die in their habitat as nature intended them.

Under your care, it's going to die in 6 months anyway.

My Adventure of Forgiving and Giving Thanks

Michael Bay, you are forgiven.

I forgive you for Pearl Harbour.

I forgive you for stating that they were a stupid toy cartoon.

I forgive you for your mullet.

It was those death threats wasn't it?

I understand you had to change and revised a few areas of the movie for reasons of practicality and logic, but we could've done without the exessive dry humour.

But overall it was a worthy effort on you part.

Thank you for giving life to Bumblebee, Ironhide, Jazz, Ratchett and most of all; Optimus Prime.

Thank you for making Megatron a baddass, and Starscream, the bully and coward that he is.

Thank you for your re-imagination of Bonecrusher and Scorponok

Thank you for and introducing us to Blackout, Barricade and that little-shite of a Decepticon, whathisname.

I will be watching it again this weekend and promise to purchase the original DVD when it comes out.

Thank you, Michael Bay.