Malay: Al-Kisah Si Lembik dan Muka Pantat; English: Tale of Softie and Pussy Face

Whilst I was online recently, someone that I knew, drop in over MSN to say ‘Hi’. Although we used to work together I am not even sure if I would consider her as a ‘friend’. Not trying to be rude, I returned her greetings. Then we began our usual ‘bullshit’ chat about life in London and her life in Asia.

After a 5 minute ‘how is your life – bullshit’, she asked “So have you been drinking a lot in London”.

To dispel the myth about my alcoholism in London, I answered “Actually, I haven’t been drinking lately. Only unless when a project is completed, I would go out with my colleagues for a beer”

Then she answered “Beer is good. I love beer. You owe me beer!”

“Don’t remember owing you anything?” I answered.

“Yes you do! And you did not inviting me to your wedding and your farewell party!” she pushed on.

What the f*ck? Don’t remember owing her anything in life! Her statement then struck me and reminded me of her and her friends’ ‘punanism’ behaviour. You see, this woman, let’s called her ‘Lembik’ had a history of being a party crasher. Like pirates, she and her bunch of punani friends would usually attend other people’s party without being invited, consume all the alcohol and food, then leave without even contributing a single penny. And I had my fair share of experience with her barbaric behaviour!

Once, Vulture (good friend of mine) and myself held a dinner party with some of our close friends to celebrate our promotion. Unfortunately, our private party became a nuisance when Lembik arrive uninvited with her friend Mr. Pussy Face (the name is self-explanatory - a guy with spiky hair and an imaginary crack on his face). Pussy Face, as we understood, is some rich kid in town who runs his own business. Despite his wealth status, he and Lembik are infamously known to eat, drink and party at other people’s expenses.

Lembik and Pussy Face walked to our table on the pretext of saying ‘Hi’. Then they sat down and started drinking our beer. Next thing you know, Pussy Face ordered food. Biggie, being a gentleman cracked a joke with Pussy Face “Brother! Remember to leave money on the table for your food and drinks!” It was a nice stark reminder that he is welcome but do pay for his own meals.

Alas, Lembik and Pussy Face’s skin is much thicker than a crocodile’s skin. Either they’ve got no brain or played dumb, they continued on the night drinking our alcohol and eating our food. And when the night end, we took the bill and Biggie ask for their share of money. Unfortunately, they walked out pretending to be drunk and pretend not hearing Biggie. They didn’t even have the courtesy to leave any money for their share. I was made to understand this is not their first time. I guess maybe Pussy Face may be having trouble with his business and need to beg for food and drinks by crashing people’s party.

Anyway, what is loss is loss. We didn’t want to make a scene. But what annoyed me was Lembik had the cheek make a statement about not inviting her to my wedding and farewell.

Well, here is a message to you Lembik if you are not crashing other people party and happen to read this blog: My wedding and farewell party is a private function. It is for my family and close friends. It is for people I respect. It is for people with integrity and represents the best of social behaviour! People like you and Pussy Face are not the best kind of people I had in mind to give my respect. I would however suggest that you and Pussy Face sign-up for ‘How not to be a Punani’ classes to improve your ill-behaviour. Maybe then, I may change my perception of you.

And here is my last famous last word for you Lembik:

When barbarians knocked on your door…

$25 billion – that is how much it takes to secure the biggest prize in Wall Street in 1989.

‘Barbarian at the Gate’ is not a computer game as some had mistakenly assumed. It’s a book published in 1990 by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar which depict the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco in 1989.

The story described the greed and the power hungry of men in the 1980s which followed through Ross Johnson – his origins up to his rise as the CEO of RJR Nabisco, an American conglomerate formed in 1985 as a result of the merger of Nabisco Brands and R.J. Reynolds Tabacco Company. By mid-1980s, RJR Nabisco was sitting on a $1 billion cash flow with a battered stocks performance on Wall Street (due to potential tobacco lawsuit liabilities). The cash pile that the company sitting on began to attract the attention of players in Wall Street – which later eventually became an epic battle.

Whilst the first part of the book described the history of the conglomerate and Johnson’s rise, the later half of the book centers on Johnson and his management’s team attempt to acquire RJR Nabisco. The management team together with Shearson Lehman Hutton announced their proposal to take RJR Nabisco private at $75 a share. The announcement was followed by the entry of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (‘KKR’) with their team of bankers and advisors at $90 a share, thus setting off a fierce battle for the control of RJR Nabisco.

For Wall Street a $25 billion deal would mean ‘fat’ advisory fees and a raised profile that differentiate themselves among other competitors. This represents a stake – too high to lose for anyone in Wall Street. As all the players circle around RJR Nabisco, an obscene amount of money was raised from junk bonds and PIK notes to fund the deal. As greed and power comes into play, the bidding war raised from ‘take shareholders a ride’ $75 dollar a share to the ultimate final bid from KKR of $109.

Despite the book being published since 1990 (I was never a bookworm during the early part of my life) it is nevertheless a good read for anyone with the appetite for corporate battles. My take - 8 out of 10 for this book.

Old habits...

Old habits never die...

Kay is out of London for two weeks. Out of boredom, I decided to be a child again and watched this: Gundam 00





Now I am hooked-up and addicted to anime again.

Hey, like some of the old wise men used to say, there is a child in everyone of us.

Amsterdam, May’08 – The Good Side

This is an entry following my earlier posting on ‘The Wild Side’.

If you put the sex and cannabis aside, you may be able to see other beautiful aspect of Amsterdam.

Like all European cities, Amsterdam boasts old European-style architecture. It has a network of canal, all connected by beautiful bridges. There are various ways to explore the city. We could just walk along the clobber stones roads or along the canals to appreciate the architecture designs.

Alternatively, we could go on a bicycle, where it is not unusual to see locals and tourist going along cycling around the city. There is also a ‘bicycle tour’ available where tour guides will take you around the city on a bicycle and describe the history behind the city.

If you just don’t want to walk and can’t move on two wheels, you could always go on a city cruise. The cruise takes about 45 minutes tour and it would take you around the city comfortably while the tour guide provides you the history lesson.

For a small city, Amsterdam has lots of museums. If you are a museum enthusiast, this would be paradise for you. However, if time is what you don’t have, you could just keep your visit to Van Gogh Museum. There you could find large collection of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawing, his career and other artist’s works.

Here are some of the attractions in Amsterdam –

Take a stroll along the city and relax

Explore the city's architecture

More architecture..

Walk along the canal

Another piece of architecture...

Rain won't stop this guy from going on a bicycle tour..

Bloemenmarkt, the city's floating flower market

Tulip seeds

Moving outside of the city

Roads outside the city...

Zaanse Schans - the Dutch village

Take a trip out of the city to Zaanse Schans – a village-like museum. The area is filled with shops, cottages, windmills and houses, which people live and work. You can take a stroll and visit each building where the local community recreates the traditional Dutch way of life to give us a flavour of their culture.

The windmill is a key feature in The Netherlands. Traditionally, it was used to drain land of lakes and extend the shoreline to create fertile farmland. Of course, there are other uses as well such as grinding corns, crushing seeds to make oil and driving sawmills.

Amongst some of the Dutch ‘things’ you would find in Zaanse Schans –

Cheese storage

Cheese tasting

Guess where all the cheese comes from?

More cheese

Another well-known product of the Netherlands - clogs

Wooden tulips

Another place which is worth visiting is Volendam, a small fishing village with beautiful yachts and boats ‘parked’ around the harbor. When there take your time and stroll along the village and mixed with the locals (who still wear traditional Dutch cloths). Make sure you try some of their local delicacies – seafood.

Take a stroll along the harbor

Fried seafood stalls are found along the harbor

Disturbing discovery

I was analysing the visitors’ trend to my blog just today and made a ‘disturbing’ discovery. Good news is recent trend shows that my blog had attracted visitors from around the world. Bad news is the blog had attracted the wrong crowd.

Remember my entry regarding this? Apparently this post ranked third as entry page. (The first and second ranking goes to the main entry page)

My analysis shows that the very reason these visitors stumbled upon my blog to that entry was due to search words like ‘naked massage’ used in search engines (i.e. google, yahoo) In fact, the post had attracted unexpected visitors around the world because they were enquiring for naughty stuff!

Here is a list of recent visits and the search words used - just for laugh.

Date	Country	Search Word
11-Jun-08	US	naked body massage
11-Jun-08	M'sia	naked body massage in penang
11-Jun-08	US	naked massages
11-Jun-08	UK	naked massage munich
10-Jun-08	M'sia	naked massage in kl
9-Jun-08	France	body body massage stockholm
9-Jun-08	India	best naked massage in world
8-Jun-08	Italy	munich "body massage"
28-May-08	US	naked massage

While someone in France wants a “body body massage” (I have no idea what it meant), the person in India only wants the “best naked massage in world” (I believe he will settle no less).

Interesting discovery, yet very disturbing.

Amsterdam, May 08 – The ‘Wild’ Side

The following entry is the continuation of last week’s post.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands - the land of windmills.

What the f**k? Is there windmill in The Netherlands? - Unfortunately, some people don’t see Amsterdam the way the above picture reflect.

There is a, if you like, the good side of the city and then there is also the ‘wild’ side. And most of the people see the ‘wild’ side of it. I mean, who doesn’t know Amsterdam is well-known for its legalised ‘coffee shops’, red-light district and kinky stuff sold all over the place. So, for this entry, I will just touch briefly the ‘wild’ side of the city.

For the naïve travelers, please do not be confuse when you stumble upon a coffee shop in Amsterdam - you might want to go somewhere else for a cup coffee because the local coffee shop don’t do coffee. In Amsterdam, cannabis is tolerated by the local authorities. An establishment that advertised itself as coffee shop is definitely no local Starbucks. It’s probably selling cannabis and if you mistaken it for coffee, it might be in for an adventure.

Everyone knows there is a Sex Museum in Amsterdam. And like they never learn anything about sex in their life – they go to the Museum for additional sex education.

Once, you’ve acquired the sex knowledge – you may want to visit the scores of sex shop hidden along the alleys within the city center. In fact, for this entry, I won’t even bother to leave the address for you – you can go on an adventure to discover these shops yourselves.

There are also lots of sex theaters and pep shows – which I can’t comment much because we didn’t go there. However, some of my female friends did visit a sex theatre and they did suggest its worth going since you don’t travel to Amsterdam everyday (hey – its personal opinion). Nevertheless, its really weird to go into a sex theatre with my dad, so I thought I would skip it.

Then there is the main attraction which everyone been shouting about – the Red-light District. We took a walking tour to De Wallen, the largest and best-known red-light district amongst tourist (under the supervision of Kay). The area comprises of alleys with hundreds (can’t confirm since I wasn’t counting) tiny one-room rented by female prostitutes offering their services behind a glass door with red light on top of the door. Sorry guys, we can’t snap any photo. So, I can’t share our walking tour experience with you.

Here are some of the other sights caught on camera during our visit.

Salt and pepper shaker - 'wank' it during your meal

Something tells me it's going to hurt a lot

Anyone for a chocolate?

Next: Amsterdam, May ’08 - The Good Side

A Close Encounter with Kiasu Travellers

Ever encountered weird travellers with crazy behaviour at the airport? I had - in fact, loads of shitty encounters to share with you.

Not too long ago, I was at KLIA - LCCT waiting to board an Air Asia flight (Malaysia version no-frill airline) to Bangkok with Kay. We got to the boarding gate rather early (about 45 minutes before departure time) and I was sitting there reading my book.

Then, all of a sudden, a family of 5 or 6 people walked into the boarding gate area. There were like 3 or 4 children, accompanied by 2 ladies (must have been their mum). The ladies must be housewives – as evident and/or suggest by their choice of fashion – worn-out t-shirt and short-pants, slippers as footwear choice and a plastic bags as their hand luggage.

What caught my attention wasn’t their fashion as I couldn’t give a two-hoot about what they wear – so long as they are wearing something – that would be a great favour to society. Anyway, when the family walked into the boarding gate area, they walk straight up to the gate. And I thought, what are these people doing? The airline hasn’t called for boarding yet but the family of travellers seems to put up an energetic show of enthusiasms by standing in front of the boarding gate.

After about 30 minutes of ‘excitement’ – standing in front of the boarding gate, the airline finally called for boarding and passengers began to get into the line. The family (despite being ahead of the game) decided to make sure that they are absolutely the first group to board the plane. They sort of hoard the frontline and began to make ‘small’ advancing movement. If it weren’t for the officer standing in front of the gate, I am sure the family would have pushed their face against the glass door and might have force the door open.

The minute when they were ‘release’ from the boarding gate, they began to run. I was dumbfounded! What the fuck? - sorry for the profanity but I think they deserve no less than what I am going to say.

Hellooo…WWII is over. You don’t have to run to the plane as if you are a refugee! You are already in front of the line. No one is going to take your precious seat of yours. No wonder Kay’s dad told us that travelling on Air Asia is like travelling like a refugee.

I am just not sure why can’t these people be more mature when it comes to simple things like getting on a plane. OK, maybe they want to sit together and since Air Asia is operating on a free-sitting basis, it would make sense to be ahead of the line. But to run even when you are ahead, that is just plain ‘Kiasu’.

I am not sure where they eventually sit on the plane, but after all the standing and running, I hope they get what they want! In fact, I think they should fart at their ‘prize’ seat to mark their fucking territory for all the effort they have put in.