justin_guber - @ 20six.co.uk

Yellow Haze All In My Brain

This is a photo of the haze, courtesy of Albert's Blog, on Tuesday. And can you believe it, it's gotten worse.

Outside the window of my office, I can only barely make out the building next to us. Everything else is a powdery whitish/yellowish haze of dirty air.

KL is officially blind.

Drivers can no longer use the KLCC twin towers as a means of navigation. If you're on the highway you'd have a hard time making out where your exit is before it's too late.

On the streets people walk around with gas masks and napkins over their mouths. Queues line clinics as hundreds rush in for pills and mixtures for haze induced coughs, colds and headaches. I have a gas mask.

Haze is basically dirt and soot. And I'm quite allergic to dirt.

For the past two days my nose has constantly bled. My eyes itch. My fever's finally going down (but not completely gone). And for once, I can relate with my fellow Malaysians. Except for the mad buggers who are still playing outdoor sports.

Apparently, Singapore isn't affected. Perhaps they have forcefields.

10.8.05 07:06

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Healthy Poop

For those who are wondering how this godawful haze is going, apparently it rained in KL yesterday and nobody noticed. Can haze deflect rain?

I must say, though, whilst I thought it was getting worse, I can see slightly farther out of my office window today than I could yesterday. Yup, I can now see two buildings away as opposed to yesterday's one. Whoopee.

Man Method reckons nature's fighting back. I reckon God's lit up a big Cuban cigar for the grand finale and blowing it in our general direction.

As for other news, I woke up in a slightly bad mood this morning. My mom was 'teaching' my bro his homework, and by 'teach', I mean 'make the kid memorize the answers to 6+... from 1 to 12'. Modern teaching. I hate it.

Hence, in a foul mood and wearing a gas mask I walked into 7-11 before going to work and bought me some fresh milk and Koko Krunch. I have not had cereal since my mid-teens and goddamn did it bring back a lot of good memories. I almost forgot how good cereal was. And fresh milk, Jesus! I hadn't had fresh milk since I was in England!

(For those wondering, most drinks in Malaysia are made not with fresh milk, but condensed milk, which is a lot thicker, a helluva lot sweeter and a thousand times more fattening. Fresh milk is a luxury. It's imported from New Zealand. Our cows aren't fit for McDonald's meat let alone fresh milk.)

I also forgot how cereal makes you wanna poop, and I was glad. After lots of tummy trouble the doctor gave me medicine that left me constipated all of yesterday. Today we poop healthy poop. Amen for fresh milk, cereal and above all, healthy poop.

11.8.05 03:49

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I take it back.

The haze has not gotten better.

In fact, it's gotten considerably fucking worse.

Now it's seeping into the office. HR is giving out face masks. We've been given the rest of the day off (if we have no deadlines for today, so I guess I'm not going anywhere for a while) due to this absolute ass-fuck. Apparently the API (Air Pollution Index, I think) is in the mid 200's in KL. In Port Klang, it's in the mid 400's.

To understand truly what this means, please refer to the following:

API Value Status

0-50 - Heaven and select parts of the Swiss Alps. Clean, fresh air that's good for the soul.

51-100 - Earth in general on a good day. Moderately clean air with a slight aftertaste in the city.

101-200 - Most major cities on a bad day. Dirty city air that makes you curse for not learning how to milk cows.

201-300 - Nature's equivalent of chemical warfare. you will get sick, you will curse and swear, you will despise the city no matter how much you loved it once before. It's the one time in your life when you envy the dead.

301-500 - Hell incarnate. There's no point breathing, you'll either choke from suffocation or die from holding your breath. Get-the-fuck-out-of-dodge.

Shit, there's even a blog about how bad the haze is here and how much we thoroughly despise it, which you can find by clicking here. People from around KL post pics of it.

This one's my favourite:
Be thankful, you lucky bastards across the pond. Be thankful you don't have to put up with this.

Till October, for fucks sake...

11.8.05 08:08

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Here Comes The Sun

I was stood outside the building smoking Dunhill lights when I saw it. An orange glow around shadows of pillars and trees.

The fucking sun was out.

I have never felt so happy to see the sun in Malaysia in my entire life. Sure, the air's still dirty and hazy, but I can see and feel the sun and I can see the sky and the clouds and it makes me all tingly in my nether regions.

It's a huge improvement from yesterday, when I went to the new wing of 1 Utama to check out 'The Island' (great flick) only to find the entire mall hazy too.

And now the sun is out. Sun, glorious sun!

...

...fuck me, it's bright out.

12.8.05 08:36

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Something's Tingling.

A slight possibility of something which I shall still keep vague for fear of jinxing it.

But there's a tingle.

Tingle's are good.

15.8.05 11:40

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Malay love triangle movie that actually gets it right.

I'm assuming quite a few of you will dismiss Gol & Gincu. Some of you may think it's too commercial. Others may assume it's typical Malay love triangle pap to the tune of a very bad rock kapak soundtrack. Some may even say that it lacks artistic integrity and the fact that it's devoid of any experimentation will simply perpetuate the continued making of run of the mill, commercial love triangle films featuring various members of AF (although this one does also feature AF guys n' gals, but does it well). I have only one response if you are any of the above.

Get stuffed.

Gol & Gincu is not amazing. It isn't pushing any boundaries in an international sense. It does not say anything new about teenagers, valley girls, footballers, miscarriages and incest (if you're wondering about the last two, now's a good time to go watch the fucker instead of reading this dribble).

What it does is entertain. And more importantly, it shows quite clearly how you can make an entertaining decent Malay love triangle movie in this country without sacrificing acting, script, sound and visual quality.

If people keep making movies of at least this standard pretty soon we can phase out the poorly dubbed, badly cinematographed, terribly paced, impossibly dense, implausibly written standard pap that celups such as myself and the others in this country keep dissing on a daily basis everytime we see the hand painted posters stuck outside that cinema opposite Campbell Complex (not the Colliseum, the other one).

You know the ones. They usually feature Awie in a leather vest. And bandana.

On a Jaguh.

(Incidentally, I notice the poster of the month at that cinema is 'Gila Gila Pengantin Popular'. Am I the only one that thinks the photographer for that poster must be incredibly skilled for managing to make Nora Danish look not as hot as she usually is? We likes Danish. Yum.)

If you're living in Malaysia and have already seen all the decent blockbusters showing now like Stealth, the Island and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, do yourself (and Bernard) a favour and go check out the movie. A lot of you may say it's a cross between 'Legally Blonde' and 'Bend It Like Beckham', but please, give it a chance.

This movie cost the same as 'SH3' and was infinitely better in every aspect. I'm hoping and praying the gross on this movie exceeds 'SH3' and people in the 'industry' start following in their footsteps. 'Gol & Gincu' is the first Malay movie I've seen this year that makes me feel like there's hope yet. It's not my cup of tea in terms of movie genres I would go out of my way to watch, but it was watchable, enjoyable and fun.

...I just wish that all the men in these recent decent local films weren't so damn... wussy.

16.8.05 04:31

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The Problem With The Tingle

Ok, here's the thing.

On the one hand, I really want to do my movie 'Celup'. On the other hand, with my current resources it's a headache and a half to film on just weekends. The amount of planning and nitty gritty involved is more than I can shake a stick at and to top it all off, by writing the movie I essentially screwed myself over by writing adult characters in the mix.

Why is this such a problem, some of you may ask? Well, for starters, I don't know many adults (as in 'adults that look the right age to play adults to fucks like me') who I essentially trust and the J. Hassan contact seems to be lost in perpetual limbo. Even if I had him it would still be incredibly daunting.

I've been thinking about the movie for the past week, going through the fourth draft and looking at how I could possibly rewrite it to make it filmable. But every time I look at the script I keep thinking to myself, "godammit, I want to shoot this as is!"

This situation sucks to high heaven. What to do, what to do, what to do...

...and to top it all off, my clothes smell dodgy and my armpits are rank. Lynx 24-7 protection my ass.

16.8.05 05:58

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Man Method's A Brick

So Man Meth' calls me up last night amidst the roar and wail of Y2k rehearsing. He's got a band. His bands stuff (albeit work-in-progress) is on MySpace.

His band is called Jap Truckers.

I'm not sure if there's meant to be a 'the'.

In the pic, he is Lego, along with his female cohort who I'm not familiar with but quite admire in terms of vocals. Noonch.

What's weird is listening to the first track and noticing that it was the same track he was working on when I visited all those months ago as we drank tea, watched Jonathan Creek and endured Man Method's insistence of putting "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeah's on constant loop. Memories...

So check his stuff out. Electronica-ambient-etcetera-stuff. You may likes it.

And if you're reading, 'Meth, that girl's got voice. Nice one...

17.8.05 04:35

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Another One Bites The Dust...

So another colleague moves on to greener pastures today and it makes me wonder once again about what I should do about my immediate future.

Let's be brutally honest, here. The fun is beginning to rapidly diminish from this job. At least for the last month or so. There's a general mood in the colleagues closest to me of the "fuck all this shit!" variety. Many feel the need to jump ship and I'd be lying if I didn't feel the same way.

For the past month for some reason unbeknownst to me a number of friends have come up to me about possible job openings in other companies if I was interested. I do not think this is coincidence. Perhaps the gods are trying to tell me something.

As for my own personal feelings about my current situation? Indifferent. It's not as much fun as before, but it's not a great big strap on up the jacksy. I can still survive, and perhaps things will get better.

Perhaps they won't. We'll see.

18.8.05 07:22

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The Malaysian Weapon Of Choice

Paul's Keris Page - "The keris has always been considered as protective. In traditional Malay houses, a keris would be secured to the main roof beam to protect the house. Stories abound of keris flying out of their sheaths and attacking an enemy; of keris rattling in their sheaths at the approach of danger; of killing an enemy by just pointing at someone.

"There is a marvelous legend of a keris that could help people frosee the future. Hang Jebat, a legendary Malay hero, had a keris with holes in the sogogan that allowed him to see the immediate future when he peered through the holes. A keris with "combong" or holes in the sogogan is considered a very powerful keris today."

Kinda interesting site. I used to think the keris was a really odd choice for a main weapon.

18.8.05 10:35

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