It's Not So Quiet, Shh Shh

So the year's winding down, and everyone seems to be having a havoc time, holidaying (for those clearing their leaves) or working (or making a show of it, anyway). Over here in drownedglass land, all hell seems bent on breaking loose at my job site. No rest for the wicked? Mayhaps, but all I can do over here is pester those responsible to get the problems solved pronto, year-end holidays and annual leaves be damned.

In between placating clients, pushing colleagues and pummeling contractors, there's still time enough for me to patter away on my keyboard, perhaps reminisce about the year that's just about to pass on... but you know, the end-of-December miasma is not just making me slack on work, my brain's kinda on auto-pilot mode which means I can't really write this post either. Hence, the meandering (even more than usual). Ah heck, I'll just be lazy and recap the highlights of my 2008 that managed to get blogged about :P

January: The month of firsts... My first and (I swear) last experience of letting fish eat me. Also my first (and hopefully not last) taste of Delish cupcakes. And the first of what would turn to be a semi-regular gathering with a bunch of real titties!

February: What else, but Chinese New Year (it's a short month) and that never-to-be-fulfilled non-resolution.

March: I turned 32 *yawn*. More significantly, there was plenty of food, especially meat. And Cook said hello to me... ME!

April: Stork delivered a boy (like, finally)! Began mulling over migration about this time, though I'm lingering on still.

May: Went to heaven, then to hell, and found a little hope. It helped that I had a new toy to play with.

June: A lousy time, and not just because of the exorbitant fuel price hike.

July: Compensated by throwing myself into SYTYCD Season 4, and, inspired by the choreography and songs, made up not one, not two, but three stories. I guess dream therapy helps.

August: Had started my exile at the end of June and barely had time for anything - be it friends, family or blogging. All work + no play = dull boy.

September: Seems like the exile was cutting off my social life to the point where I got all maudlin over meat.

October: Things picked up with the return of a certain prodigal, and gay ol' times were had with the ex- (and the practically-ex) bloggers - including the rather terrifying introduction of jiu hu char into my potluck repertoire and the uttering of what is most certainly the quote of the year.

Novemeber: A very good month indeed - completed my dream collection, a wish finally came true, and I rediscovered my roots... "di sebalik batu", so to speak.

December: With things to look forward to, I take a wistful look backwards. But the year is drawing to a close, and with that comes high spirits and the inevitable family drama (or perhaps it was just me storming in a teacup... as usual).

All in all, I had a very good year indeed. The job's so much better than my previous one; my circle of friends has grown wider, yet no less cosy; there's stuff to look forward to (at least for a little while); and generally things are looking kinda up, despite the downturn. Who knows what tomorrow would bring, but it doesn't really matter. I've learnt that I have grown enough to face all sorts of shit now, and what with such wonderful people surrounding me, everything will be quite alright, as long as we hold on together.

Happy New Year, everybelly!

The Ti*ni@s!ng Race Klang Valley

Whew! What a day it has been, running around the valley, trying to accomplish quite a number of things in a single Saturday. Got up early, gave the apartment a cursory scrub and I was out the door by 9:30 am.

Checkpoint 1: Suria KLCC
Task: Purchase a discounted copy of Absolute Sandman Volume IV
Found out that the tome was out, was available in Kinokuniya, and what's more, Kinokuniya's Christmas sale has started! Unfortunately it was not 30% off as I had hoped (could have saved RM100!) but 20% was still a good discount. Got in as they raised the shutters and left with the satisfaction of knowing I wouldn't have to wait anymore to get my grubby hands on the final volume of the whole series. Hooray!

Detour 1: Yulek, Cheras
Task: Service the car
It was time to service the car and I figured I really had to get this done this week in anticipation of maybe needing to do a spot of travelling next week. Decided to pay a trip to the old neighbourhood to see if, by some unlikely chance, the hot young mechanic was still working there. Alas, he was not, unless he had transformed into that fat and ugly AND short guy working there. Damn! On the plus side, I had a chance to have my brunch there, something I haven't done since I moved out of that particular suburb. Not that the food was great, but simply for its nostalgic value.

Bonus Task: At any point in the day, get a Toffee Nut Latte from any Starbucks outlet
Despite having to do all that, I managed to arrive at my next destination at about 12 pm. Plenty of time to stroll around, check out CD's, buy some toiletries, and yes, grab a takeaway coffee. The Toffee Nut Latte is one of the things I look forward to when Christmas swings around. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy, not to mention feeling like a New Yorker when I strode down The Street with that cup in my hand. Got stopped and pestered by a rather desperate credit card salesman (not a cute one though) who wouldn't take no for an answer. I smugly told him he was gonna make me spill my coffee, flipped my hair, and I waltzed off, leaving him gaping like a fish that was not drowning. More or less.

Checkpoint 2: The Curve
Task: Locate buddies and complete one Body Jam class
Toffee Nut Latte in hand, I found Eugene and Kyen easily enough, sitting in a kopitiam. I blatantly sat down with them with my "outside drink" (see, I can walk on the wild side too!). Caught up on the weekly gossip (these two are capable of accomplishing in one week what I might need a month to do), then dragged our butts to gym. Did not actually complete the class but I suppose it's alright cos I only skipped the cool down and I'v always made it a point not to cool down to the strains (literally) of Beautiful Liar, anyway.

Detour 2: Bukit Jalil
Task: Meet up with several people, one of whom will lead everyone to the next destination
Supposedly we were to go to Port Klang for seafood. But the combination of distance and lack of familiarity led us to consider other options. In the end , it was qwazymonkey who led us to...

Checkpoint 3: Kelana Jaya
Task: Eat sea creatures. And some land ones, too.
With WiFi, Saoba, qwazymonkey and assorted hubbies-in-tow, I found myself in a restaurant with a suspiciously red-sounding name, City Star, not too far from Dataran Prima. Service was wanting - it took them forever and then some to put our orders on the table. Thankfully, the food was pretty good, so all was forgiven once our bellies were full and happy.

Final Task: Present cakes and gifts to the birthday boy
After dinner, everyone adjourned to my place so that we could sing off-tune birthday songs, play with the presents, and generally act silly in private. The birthday boy walked in to find a tray of mini cuppacakes and a basket of bitches waiting for him. A fun time was had by all. Well, maybe except for the token straight fella who was missing his football game but we're not the type to understand such things.

Man, I'm now looking forward to spending Sunday doing nothing much altogether.

The Third Volume: In Which We Learn A Little More Of Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair & Delirium (Who Was Once Delight)

I've dribbled, drooled, gushed and gasped over this enough times already last year and the year before that. Suffice to say, I'm still incredibly loving Sandman (even though it's been a little more than a decade since I first read it!), and I am so so glad I grabbed that second-to-last of the Volume III's in Kino last weekend at 20% off.

Thanks to the vigilant Wingedman for tipping me off! Haha. I suppose by now their stocks will be gone until the reorder comes in. Hehe.

Volume III covers the "Brief Lives" story arc, the tales told at World's End, and a host of miscellaneous standalone yarns, including the rather inspirational - "Fear of Falling".

I love "Brief Lives", mainly because of the heavy involvement of Delirium, one of Gaiman's most fascinating characters (kind of the Fool archetype who spouts all sorts of weird shit and and occasionally some really insightful shit just falls out). Dream, getting all gloomy as usual after get spurned (yet again), decides to tag along his sister in her search for their missing brother. Yes, all sorts of things happen, including yet another pebble getting cast into that murky pond of fate. Add that to all the other pebbles and ripples from the previous stories and you'd get... Volume IV of course.

The miscellany of stories in Volume III does serve as a little break. It's really the calm before the storm. Volume IV would be the last of the collection, climaxing the series with "The Kindly Ones" followed by the very beautiful epilogue, "The Wake" (of which a glimpse is given in Volume III).

I'm so looking forward to finally having the entire Sandman series in my collection. Thankfully, I don't have to wait that long as it's due for release come year's end, just in time for Christmas sales.

Yay!

Sergio Aragones' Gream?

Delirium/Delight

Little Endless!

Absolut Dreamin

Finally. I've gotten hold of the book I've been trying to get for about two months now. Sure I could have bought it over at Borders since the beginning of the month but it's Kinokuniya that's offering it at a cool 30% discount. And of course, the stocks in Kinokuniya get snapped up within a day they hit the shelves. Every single time. Despite the hefty three-figure price tag!

I think I've been doing too well a job in promoting Mr. Gaiman's work, seriously.

But the good people at Kinokuniya called me up yesterday morning to tell me the stock's arrived, and they were nice enough to hold a copy for me. Which was just as well, because when I got to the store last night, there wasn't a single copy of it left on the shelves.

So just what book's been selling like hot cakes? None other than The Absolute Sandman Volume 2, collecting issues 21 to 39 of the acclaimed The Sandman series from Vertigo, with a bunch of bonus materials thrown in, all in heavy, encyclopedia-like hardcover.


I just have to make sure I don't literally drool over the pages.

And of course, it's totally gratifying to get to the counter and see the cashier punch in a RM100 discount. Like, omg, this must be the best deal ever!

Well, that's two down and two more to go.

Want It! Have It! Do It!

I want this one!

Groo's a favourite from my long-lost childhood. Just love the stories of this bumbling barbarian who pretty much brings disaster with him wherever he goes. He does try to be helpful but practically everyone considers it most helpful to send him away on long, distant, impossible missions. The farther, the better. Preferably to an enemy kingdom.

Back when I followed the series, the story was told in epic fashion. A brief lead-in, followed by a fairly detailed "opening title" tableau (usually with a trail of disaster tracing up to Groo), with a poem to introduce the story. And of course, it always ended with a moral. Whether or not the moral makes any sense is another question.

Anyway, as soon as I heard about this special 25th Anniversary Edition (like, I can't believe Groo is younger than me!), I headed over to Borders to get my hands on one. To my disapointment and disgust, they didn't have it. In fact, they don't even have any Groo titles!

Boo to Borders!

I had this one!

A friend of mine introduced this to me, and boy, did I get hooked from my first mouthful.

It's Peanut Snowie (no relation to the blogger... I think) from 600cc. It may not look like much, but it's quite heavenly. Basically, shaved ice ala ais kacang, smothered in peanut butter and ice cream. Peanut butter lovers, you gotta have this!

Haven't yet tried the other flavors they have. Recommended on the menu was the Flossy Snowie, as in chicken floss. While possibly palatable, it does sound rather dodgy. I mean, chicken floss on ice?!

Tried the beef on rice there too, but it's pretty ho-hum. It's the desserts that stand out, I suppose.

600cc (apparently, the "cc" isn't "cubic centimeters" as I had thought, but "cute cute") has quite a few branches, all of them though, in the state of Penang. I'd like to see them open in the Valley and give KTZ a run for the money.

I don't quite know if I like this one but...

You aint even tryin'a play me, boy
Cos you're so good, and you're so fine
Got me sayin' crazy things - listen!

Honestly, first time I heard this one, I thought, "Just like every other JLo song."

However, just like every other JLo song, it is rather infectious. No thanks to that Bollywood-ish trill (but, thankfully, no Benny Lavas). I scoped out the video and actually felt a smidgeon of disappointment to find that it didn't contain scores of people appearing out of nowhere to dance in perfect unison.

Still, this could be a contender for a future BodyJam track, no?

One plus point is that the song has driven out that incessant "ella, ella, eh eh eh" out of my head, which is a darn good thing. I just hope the ah-bengs would be so happy with JLo's return that they'd stop booming Beautiful Girls from speakers everywhere.

Oh yeah, this one seems to be a significant milestone for JLo, too. It is, I think, the first time a relationship she's in has actually lasted all the way into a second album (third, if you include the Spanish one released earlier this year). You go, girl! You're doin' it well!

Words Get In The Way

As much as I do love to hear the sound of my own voice... as it appears on paper (or screen) anyhow... I don't actually sit down and pound something out on a paper everyday (besides work stuff which is mainly technical mumbo-jumbo though sometimes no less creative). I've been known to pull stories out of the hat in classroom scenarios but generally speaking, I'm not much one for write-on-demand.

(Guess it's time to forget my dreams of getting paid for what I write...)

Take for example my lesser known blog (compared to this already not so well-known one) here. I do dabble in poetry every now and then, and before I started blogging, it was what I mainly wrote (I'm too lazy and uninspired to work on that Great Novel). If I remember correctly, I kinda started BoM&M not only to show off what I could do (on occassion) but also to keep me writing bits of poetry every now and then. Oh look, and the last post was half a year ago. Which, incidentally, was a post of something I had written a year or two ago. Or was it three?

Time to go rummage for more old stuff I've yet to post.

Oh well, words do fail me sometimes. Though mostly it's my brains that fail me first.

So, for all those times when I've nothing better to say, I may just put up a pic or two. In yet another space tucked over here.

There you go, folks - pics, poetry and persona. My own little triumvirate of blogs. To let everyone know that, hey, I'm keeping in touch.

Even if it does take me a while to update.

;-)

A Pandemonium Of Paper

Fuck.

That was the notion that first hit me the moment I stepped out of the lift and into the hall. Rows and rows of tables. Books on every one of them. So many books! It should have been a haven of the ohmigawdbooksomanybookseveryfuchokingwhere! variety. Except that the only thing I could think of was: where do I fucking start?!

Bargain book hunters know the perils of book clearance sales. It's pretty inevitable that you'd have to sift through a whole lot of junk before finding those gems, especially gems at prices that are seriously marked down. But at least you'd usually have an idea where to look.

Not at the Times clearance sales. To my perhaps-untrained eye, it looked like there was no discernible order to the place. After browsing for just a few minutes, it became obvious that I was mistaken. No discernible order? Make that absolutely no order. Period. The books where strewn from table to table with no organisation at all, whether by genre or author or whatsoever. Kid's books lay side-by-side with romance novels with some self-help books somewhere in the middle. Heck, lying on top of one pile was a book called Adult Origami, not because of the complicated, highly-challenging techniques of paper-folding involved, but rather because of the *ahem* adult nature of the subjects involved. I can imagine a kid picking up one of these and goes to ask daddy, "Why are these bunnies called 'randy rabbits'? And what's this funny looking thing called 'schlong'?"

Anyway, I was already there so I did what I could and just glided past row after row, scanning for whatever caught my eye. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised to see that there were some pretty interesting stuff there (besides Adult Origami).

Among my better finds there was Kylie: La La La. Yes, that showgirl book (aka the pseudo-intellectual, coffee-table-adorning must-have-collectible for aspiring gay princesses). At a very affordable RM15, it was a steal! I so wanted to get my grubby hands on it. Unfortunately, it seemed that a lot of other grubbier hands got to it first because the copy I found was all scruffy and crumpled. Not something you would want to put on your coffee table for your sisters to see. Darn.

In the end, I didn't really bother to do a thorough search of the place. I didn't even look at every single table much less flip through every book. There were some usual ones that kept popping up everywhere, but they were usually the ones I wouldn't bother with anyway. Still, it turned out that there was a pretty good selection, particularly for fiction of the various genres, and if you weren't too picky.

I eventually walked out with three books:


WarCraft Archive - to slake my thirst for epic fantasy. It was a book I had considered buying only a month ago. I think it was RM50+ or maybe RM60+ when I saw it. This was going for $45, and with FOUR(!) books compiled in there, I figured it was an already good buy made even better. Way better.


number9dream - to build up my contemporary fiction collection, which is lagging far behind my fantasy pile. I already have the first book from David Mitchell, called Ghostwritten. That first book impressed me enough. His third book, Cloud Atlas, had such a beautiful cover I wanted to buy it just for that. But a quick look at the contents told me it wasn't something I'd get very far in reading. This one, the second, seems more promising, with one critic blurbing:

Eiji Miyake, 20, naive and wholly loveable, encounters a frantic, exotic world when he comes to Tokyo from his small island home to find the father he has never met.

I think I was convinced by the time I reached "20, naive and wholly loveable...".


Basket Case - for some laughs (hopefully). Never read his books before but this one's supposed to be a comedic crime fiction. I suppose I could use a little light reading.

All in all, the sale was not too bad an affair. My only complaint was that it was way difficult to find any specific genre or author in the mess. Finding a specific book would be like finding a needle in a haystack (unless you happen to want something they have a lot of). The prices were fair enough - RM20+ for most regular books, which is about 20% to 30% off normal prices. Some titles were marked at between RM5 and RM20 (some of these included hard covers), which is a pretty good deal in my eyes.

In the end, I was actually thankful for the haphazardness of the whole place. If it was easy to find what I wanted, I would have spent at least three times what I actually did. Or more.

For those in the Valley who haven't been there and would like to brave the madness, the sales has been extended till 6th May. As for me, I'm wondering if my wallet will allow me a trip to Borders for their 2nd anniversary sale, then onwards to the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair.

Gaiman. Dreambook. VERY Poor But Still Happy

Since the day I first stumbled upon Neil Gaiman's Sandman among the shelves of the Rowden White, I've known if there was any comic series to collect, this was it.

Well, many many years after, I've finally bought my first volume. Not the regular first volume, mind you, but the first Absolute volume. Drooool....

I just have one gripe about this, so let me get that out of the way - it's fucking expensive! It practically costs double the normal collection, which, by the way, already costs more than other collected comic series. Man, when I say I'm paying for my indulgence, I mean it literally!

Yes, as Will had said, that's the whisper of very expensive pages.

So why did I part with my money so easily?

Other than the obvious 'fool' answer, of course.

The long explanation is this: This is definitely a collector's item, and being one of those many out there who consider this work as one that has taken the comics genre up to the hallowed status of literature, I simply had to have it.

The Sandman is oooh so good. With a great depth of emotion, layered storytelling, fantastic plot twists, and strands of world mythology weaved into something totally new, Gaiman did for comics what Tolkien did for the fantasy novel (though I kinda hate how he inadvertently started the whole trilogy thing which seems to be multiplying like rabbits).

I could go on and on, really. But either you already know of Gaiman or you don't, and if you don't, you could go sample Sandman by downloading the 1st issue for free here. Mind you, Sandman #1 was all about setting up the story and it's not nearly as good as what follows.

Besides being one of the best stories ever told (in my opinion, but it's also my blog so my opinion's the only thing that matters here), it's also packaged very nicely. Like, to make you think you're getting value for money and all that. And yes, in case it wasn't clear enough in my last post, I really am a sucker for pretty things.

Absolute Sandman Volume 1 really is as heavy as the name would suggest. Quality paper bound in a hardcover reminiscent of my mom's Encyclopedia Britannica set. A slip cover to protect the cover - it may only be cardboard but it's really thick cardboard. It's a wonder they didn't throw in a plastic sleeve to protect the slip cover - now that would be value for money!

To impress the collector even more, they've recolored it. And thrown in Gaiman's original proposal, evolution sketches of the look for Sandman, and the script for the award-winning Issue #19 with the original pencilling by the very good Charles Vess, who also did Gaiman's Stardust (check out his work for Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall).

So yeah, that was my long-winded explanation for getting the book.

Here's the short version - I'm a whore!