Jingles and Vinyls of Childhood

"Kalau adik, malas lagi: malas bangun pagi..."

Lying in bed just now, the lyrics above came to my mind for no reason. Googled it up and found out that the song's name was "Lompat si Katak Lompat". It's a children song that teaches good values such as, obviously , waking up early and forcing frogs to leap.

As a child, my brother and I used to put the record on play. Yes, we used vinyl records aka piring hitam. I remember there's a cupboard full of vinyls, mostly filled with weird, unknown(to me) artists but one of them was a vinyl containing children's songs such as the above and others. Here are snippets of what I can recall from memory.

Pak mamat ada kebun,     A malay version of Old Macdonald
iyai-iyai-o                         I know it's written A-E-I-O-U, but trust me, my misheard lyrics is better

Bangau oh bangau, kenapa engkau kurus,
Macam mana aku tak kurus, ikan tak mau timbul.
Ikan tak mau timbul.                                              Selfish fishes!

Langkah kiri kanan, langkah kiri kanan;
perlahan-perlahan.
Langkah kanan kiri, langkah kanan kiri;
sambil menari(menyanyi?)

Suwa suwei good morning,      Have no idea what the real lyrics are
Lalala, lalalala. 

Can't say I've learnt a lot from these songs but they sure did taught me about rhymes. We played the songs countless times, until the needle on the player broke, I think. Sure beats kindergarten.
Oh, the vinyls also taught me how the ecosystems work (bangau oh bangau).


I wonder in 100 years from now, how would the people reminisce about their childhood.
"I remember that we had an Ipad, you know, the one where you have to touch the screen in order it to do anything, not like those holograms today where you just say what you like. Those days... *sigh*  They had apps, and this app that I played as a child, can make animals sounds when I touch their pictures. And I also remember..."
Wonder if it's anything remotely as that.
I doubt it tho. Technology nowadays were not built to last.

Thanks for reading, and Eid Mubarak everyone!

How I Read, a Story Book

There's a big stock of unread books in my inventory, since Amazon.com did promos where three books only cost 15€, which in certain combination of books, had save me around 13€. So I bought six books and save quite a sum of Euro (or so I said to console myself about the purchase) but now I have a lot of unread books, not including those that I downloaded on my Kindle. Thus I try to gobble them all up so that they would not be left collecting dust, where I sit down to read almost everyday. While on the bus one day, I stared out the window but at the corner of my eye I saw a man reading a book. Why not read during commute, the question pops in the air.

bak kata orang bukan kedah tapi pulun nak cakap kedah, "tudia baq hang,  macam mana nak habis baca tu!"
read top two of the stack already.

I have a hard time reading on transport because it tends to make me dizzy, which is my main excuse. Main reason is though, I do not like reading interrupted. I don't like reading while waiting, because then I would have to look up once a while to see whether my number is called up. I don't even like reading while at the same time messaging/chatting because my reading has gaps in it. I like to read in one go. I find it more interesting and faster that way because when I read, I imagine the characters up. These characters then build up and act their parts, mouthing their dialogue as my eyes travel across the letters, all the way till the end of the book. I guess some people would call it imagining rather than reading, but that's how my mind works. So familiar books, like a trilogy/series such as the Harry Potter (book 6) only took 11 hours while short stories are a chore, because for every story, I need to re-imagine them up.

Back to the reading on commute, I began to rationalize, saying that not reading and staring out the window is not really that wasteful. I then began to pull quote from memory, such as "The man who believes everything he read, shouldn't read in the first place," and how Einstein values the power of thinking than the power of reading. I'm not sure those quotes are true, but they served my point.

I further rationalize that while staring, I can see a lot of things. Observe. Notice. Reflect. And imagine the things I'd miss if I bury my head in a book, while the bus passes a group of clowns! Memories are not from paper, they are felt through the skin, the sight and kept in the heart (I'm just being dramatic here, I know the brains store my memory and the heart pumps my calorie).

But then again, is it not that small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events while great minds concern themselves with ideas? So I stop myself of rebutting all imaginary opponents who advocates me to read during commute because in the end it is not how you read, or what you read but it is what you get from reading, or in a broader sense anything you do in life, that is important.
Some people might read Kafka but they still view the world from a seven year old while some might read Calvin and Hobbes yet saw the wisdom of life.

Some might read intermittently while some drank the story in one shot, yet both might walk away with a new understanding.

Lain padang, lain lalangnya.

p.s. I keep contradicting myself lately. Wonder what's gotten into me, or is it that I've just realized that?

How I Met

I've been watching the series HIMYM recently, which I would not explained what the acronyms are since if you know what they mean already, it doesn't matter. And if you don't know what they mean, you won't prolly relate with this post. And if you won't bother googling the acronyms, I'd bet you'd prolly won't read this post to the end.

Anywaaaayyyss... I know I'm a bit slow, because I am not a 'following' type. Following is when you like some series/comics/something-to-those-extent, and you wait them to be released every week. I hate the waiting.
My friend argued that, 'following' is fun as it gives a sense to fill the activity through the days, where he proceed to explain that at mondays, he can wait for Manga A, on tuesdays for YoutubeChannel B, on Thursday for One Piece and etcetera.
As for me, I'll usually take anything that I like in one gulp. Not exactly a marathon, but kinda mania. That's why I don't watch/read series that haven't ended, usually. So about HIMYM, I've watched one of its episode, while on a bus with mawas, and felt it was okay. But since it's a series and it doesn't have a foreseen ending("takkan bersiri-siri pon dia tak habis cerita bini dia sapa? mohong gila!") and the fan are strong, which always turn non-fan off("hang kata best gila. lame ja barney ni"), I haven't taken the interest. Recently I read somewhere the MOTHER is made known to the audience so since I was searching some movies to watch while I eat, so I think why not.
So I began to watch.

HIMYM is most ways, I agree with another friend, not as funny as Big Bang's theory(I'm not following this one too, I only watch occasionally when people watch it). However HIMYM does have, loosely, a plot. Although their jokes seems tame and the hillarious ones seem scripted, I like the dialogues more. They feel more real(except Barney's lines) because when you're with friends the normal thing to happen is you make small snides and snigger, not make clever remarks/comebacks and walks off nonchalantly(like in most comedies). HIMYM fall to this too, because they have too, but most of the times the scripts are palatable(<---I thought I just made this word up, but turns out I didn't.)

Writing script is hard.
Why did I say that? Because believe it or not, I tried once. Kids, when I was in high school...

*****

...my school had a new foreign English teacher. He was from England, I think. Or Australian. Whatever. You see, normal English teacher won't normally have time for conducting theater for student to perform in. By normal, I mean the Malaysian teacher who are pressured to tell the student that The Pearl by John Steinbeck actually have morals in it, and to be able to regurgitate them back on exam papers. So this new foreign teacher doesn't have those so he did a theater, and began auditioning. I went to it.
Not many went, so I wasn't surprised I got a part. Plus there are those that went and got the part but 'tarik diri'. They said they were just trying their luck. One of them was a girl named Blabla.
The audition needed us to walk by twos, from the back of the hall to the front where the teacher sat. During the catwalk, we had to act an emotion/characteristics that the teacher thought up on the spot. It turn out I was paired to this girl named Blabla. Blabla was in a different class from me and although I seldom talked to her, I knew her. As I was wondering what the emotions I had to do, the teacher said the word, "Talkative!" or something like that.
You see, Blabla was among the most talkative and noisy person that I ever knew and I knew a lot of talkative person(anyone who talks more than me, is talkative). I was thinking, "What? This girl IS the epitome of talkative! Of course she's going to do it better than me. Of course I'm not going to get any part and me being called pansy was for nothing. Of course... hey she's walking first!"
Blabla was already walking so I quickly followed suit (up!) and walked besides her. Plus I tried being the character that was given, talkative. If you know me, I was everything but that. However I really wasn't going to 'lose' to Blabla so I talked myself out. Mostly nonsense but those words are the few occasion in my life that I 'talked' a lot in front of strangers/not-friends. And the first time I talked a lot to Blabla. The first of many? Maybe.

No, Blabla isn't your mother.

Anyway the audition ended and initially the teacher gave the participants the chance to pick their own scripts so we decided to wrote one. The idea of the script was someone else's but I gave my agreement so it was much my fault too. I was tasked to write the dialogues, so the words, in English, were mine.
It was about some girl/boy who got ditched and died. And became a ghost.
Yes, it was that bad.

Fortunately the teacher scrapped the script and plucked out some funny, albeit meaningless, script which consisted mostly of puns and misheards. Prolly he got it from Little Britain.
I remember one of the scenes were about a policeman catching a thief who got bad luck due to his mispronunciation and puns. I got to play the police officer. Yeah, me.

okay, stop laughing.
So that wraps the story about how I wrote a story.

Oh your mom? You guys were adopted.

*ends with theme song*





Thanks for reading.

Kindle, rumusan ringkas

hai! bought a new kindle.

so some friends asked for a review and since I think some things need to be shown, so here's a video velow. yes, velow.

okay, negatif dulu.

Kindle(4) tak boleh

-baca dalam gelap

-tengok flash(i.e. video)

-sentuh/touch screen. jadi kena guna butang analog

 ada kindle yang boleh(kindle touch), tapi lembab. lagipon takdak butang kanan kiri(turn page). kena swipe.

-dengar lagu. (version lain selain ni, boleh)

pendek kata, kindle ni bukan tablet, hanyalah sebuah e-reader.

dan lagi spesifik, kindle 4 ni versi yang paling habis jimat. stripped down to basic functions, which I think is useful. 

okay, positif pulak.

Kindle boleh

-baca tengah cerah, tak macam lcd. tak silau.

-baca dalam gelap, dengan lampu. tapi tak sakit mata macam baca lcd dalam gelap.

 yes, I've tried reading the whole night with the phone. got spasm afterwards.

-simpan 1000-2000 buah buku. no external battery tho, but who can read 1k of books anyway?

-tahan sebulan, bateri. tu kalau guna sehari sejam, macam amazon cakap. tapi kalau berterusan, rasa seminggu lebih jugak tahan.

-sync buku antara apps. so if you read on the kindle apps on pc/phone, the bookmarks syncs.

-oh oh, ni koool tapi aku macam kurang guna, kindle boleh cari maksud perkataan tu dengan highlight ja. tapi semua apps sekarang bleh buat macam tu kan? still, cool.

Selepas seminggu:

Baru sempat habis "Pillars of the Earth" buku 1&2 tapi setakat best lah.

Cuma kadang-kadang bila nak tekan butang forward tu susah skit kalau guna sebelah tangan. ikut tangan gak la. bagi aku, samada tahan belakang kindle dengan benda lain, ataupon beli cover yang belakang dia ada ruang nak masukkan tangan. Kalau pegang dua belah tangan tak jadi masalah benda ni.

So, hope that helps. Just bear in mind it's not an ipad.

Oh and if you wanna buy one (through amazon.de), please click this link for your Kindle

I'd get a commission, teehee. Not sure how much tho, a penny maybe.

Thanks for reading, wasalam.

Post mortem: Buruberi cake

My mission yesterday was to bake a cake, a buruberi(blueberry) cake.

Verdict: Unsuccessful. 

So let's have a post mortem. But first of all, here are the blueberries that I bought from our local favourite supermarket, REWE. 

Looks more like fish eggs to me!

Outrageous! I have never seen such false advertising. Lain gila dari dalam gambar. The berries on the bottle's label were soo appetizing. Oh well, I make do with whatever I have. 

Anyway. I used this recipe,http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/blueberry-cheesecake/detail.aspx after comparing multiple recipes. Simple enough.

I went out and bought the ingredients.

I started to watch how to make the cake on youtube but then I got hungry so since I had to make dinner too, I stopped watching the video(s) right after the step mashing the graham bread.I straight went to the kitchen and proceeded. 

Therefore I think I went wrong there because I assume the baking process was as normal.

Here's the cake.

First of all, the oven has bad ventilation. See the different shade on different side? The lighter colour part is most probably closest to the oven door.

Secondly, I think the temperature is too high. That's why the bread cake has crust on top. I do have an oven thermometer, a small one which is mobile but I think it is placed too far from the heating coil, that it shows a lower temperature than real. Probably deviation is 15 K. Note to self: hang the thermometer on the coil, we'll see if it goes wonky.

Third, during the baking the cake rose almost three fold. After one hour baking, I left the oven door opened and simply forgotten about it for another hour. I think it was exposed to cold air all too quickly that it deflated. Initially I was perplexed that the cake rose since there was no baking powder or sodium bicarbonate but afterwards I realised that the cake has eggs in it. My reasoning is the egg 'rose' the cake, just as how an egg is fried in really hot oil, where it will create bubbles. I don't know if you've ever seen them but these bubbles can grow so big yet they have little structural strength and will usually pop. I suspect the cake has too much bubbles due to very high heat, just like the egg fried in very hot oil. Hence reason number  two. Fathi, my housemate, reasons that the cheesecake are meant to deflate, which is supported by the reason of chilling the cake. I believe this is can also be true and will read more on it later.

Before Chilling

After Chilling.
yeah after chilling it got ate first before the photo shoot

Taste wise, I haven't eaten that much cheesecake so I can't exactly pinpoint the difference. 

However I think I prefer a sweeter cake and less butter in the crumb. Note to self, only one tablespoon butter please next time.

The berries jam could also be a little sweeter. Note to self: go crazy on the sugar next time. And buy a different brand of berries.

Hey leave a comment. I'll prolly make another one(s) so I appreciate all the inputs.

Thanks for reading!

e-buk, ini mau diletak di mana ya?

This is not a goodbye post. I'll write that later.

Anyway I am going back in two days time and like any student studying abroad(really?), there are numerous shopping "process to be done". Honestly though I don't know about everyone else but for me it is like ritual to buy things - foods, electronics, books etc- in Malaysia before going back oversea since the price is much cheaper and the options are much, much more. Contohnya, kat sana takdak sos cili beb. Sadis gak nak makan sos tomato setahun, nak beli kat kedai asia kadang takdak, selalu mahal. Hence the frenzy shopping for me.
However in order to shop with a clear conscience(clear lah sangat), I decided to log in and check into my account bank to see its balance. Somehow the password is wrong. It seems I have forgotten the passwords or mix up the sequence, hence I cannot see my balance. I still remember my www.amazon.de though, where I usually do most of my shopping online. oh, Irony.

Local shopping in preparation to go back aside, I began browsing amazon.de. After all, it's been two monts since I logged in and most of the catalogue seems to change, plus it wouldn't cost a thing right to do a bit online window shopping, right? Right? RIGHT?? I'll leave that to individual preferences. So anyway I browse through amazon and if you've been on it recently(i.e past two years), amazon has been pushing its kindle device and all the e-books so agressively, that one article said, "short of changing its name, Amazon has tried everything to promote its Kindle."

Here's what a Kindle looks like

The reason Amazon is promoting Kindle and its e-books, is mostly because of the advance of portable device and decreasing interest in buying paper books. I know people who would swear they would print the entire book than reading it in digital form but the majority prefers convenience, hence the popularity of e-book.

E-book is convenient.

It can be bought and read within minutes, can be carried through the air, has almost no weight burden. And it is cost efficient, so it is cheap. Wait, I crossed that out because e-book is NOT cheap. Actually, its price is preposterous(unless you download illegally, but that's a different story)

"Really?" one would ask. Is it that expensive? 

Yes. Lotsa talks is useless. Here's an example.

the kindle price is the topmost, while the taschenbuch is the 3rd. 

kindle 5.99 euro

paperback 5.60 euro. 

wtf anyone?

eh, apsal ambik contoh twilight. dem!

okay, okay, here's a comparison of one of my favourite book, The Godfather.

Kindle 5.89 euro

Paperback: Amazon: 6.60 euro, 3rd party: 5.76 euro

well the kindle is slightly cheaper but for a 30 years old classic, it's still dissappointing. Really, it seems to be such a rip-off.

It is almost the same in other publications such as Guttenberg and what-not, most of which I surveyed charged expensively for an e-book. The reason I say expensive is logically the book has skipped the part where it has to be printed on paper and post to the readers. Yes I know the servers also cost money and the digitalization of old books is not magical, still the cost would be covered with multiple purchase as the cost per unit is almost neglible, unlike paperbooks.

If the royalty is said to be the factor, one would accept if it is not free, since even e-books sold by unknown authors on amazon cost that much, but what reasons can it be when famous e-books such as above are sold more expensive than their paper counterpart?

What I really made me turn off by these e-books sold by amazon is that they have the same price with paperbooks yet they cannot be shared or lent. Let say if I buy an e-book, I have to lend my account if I want my friend to read it(strictly legal speaking, that is). For a paperback, I can lend it to anyone I want, gift it to a friend or famil, donate to library, even sell it back as second hand books. 

If you buy an e-book, you DO NOT own it. Of course in paperbook you do not own the writings and idea but at least you get something for the money. With e-book you do not. Amazon even have the right, which it did on one book, to pull the book from your library.

Such a nuisance. conveniance turned into nuisance, such is the corporate manipulation. 

And all that for the same price(or even higher) of an ebook to the paperbook.

Well, that is my babbling for now. At least it stopped me from buying anything from Amazon and keeping me distracted long enough that I can now go shop physically to bring back to Deutschland soon.

Thanks for reading(and helping me save)!

p.s. sapa nak pesan sos cili?

How dramas would be if I wrote them.

I sometimes wonder what uni students do during the holiday. Mine is placid and monotonous, mostly consisting of playing my phone in front of the tele, while my mother watches programmes on the television, which mostly consisted of dramas. Occasionally I would lift up my head from what I am doing and complain about the shows. One occasion was today, as the series "Kasih Alia"(or something) was playing.

The female character, Alia, was walking away from a funeral with her smitten boss, Eric, when the boss asked curiously(jealously?) about her relationship with another male character. It goes something like this...

"Alia, Qabil tu ex-boyfriend awak ke?"
"Qabil?" she answered rhetorically. "Tak lah. Qabil tu, adik saya."
She paused.
"Yang baru meninggal tu, kakak dia." Slight pause. "Kakak saya jugak," she added.
Pause.
"Atas kerusi roda tu, ayah saya." Slight pause. "Yang baju putih tu..emak tiri saya. Dia kejam, saya benci dia."

The boss, Eric, seems to understand and (maybe) he said, "Oh, jadi dia adik awak."
The scene then ended there.

Not for me. I think that it should went further, which I said out loud. "Pastu dia kata lagi, "jadi, yang baru meninggal tu kakak qabil. kakak awak lah..' *pause* 'Yang duduk atas kerusi roda tu, ayah awak?*pause* Jadi yang baju putih tu, mak tiri awak? Yang awak benci tu?'"

I thought that it would be a great injection of humor but apparently I am sure that is not the wide accepted consensus, which my mother seems to condone to.
"Hish, ada direktor nombor dua pulak," she said, shaking her head in disapproval.

In case you are wondering, here's the drama, for those who are not avid watchers(Bless you!) or those overseas students.

Oh well, there's a time for everything and a reason for anything, inclusive me not being a drama director.
Jadi engineer la fariss oiii.

Thanks for reading.

Things I like # errr... number something

I like reading blogs.

Most of the time that is. I like reading them for the fact that I get motivated by reading the useful posts, written with a familiar 'voice'. Comparable to motivational talks by professionals or prominent figures, advices from people who are close to us, are closer to us and easier to digest.
Ya la kan, salah satu hikmah nabi dan rasul adalah manusia, supaya dapat bimbing manusia dengan fitrah.
The more similarities and closer a person to us, the more likely what is said will go to the head. And heart.
Like this article for example, which after I read for a few seconds, sent me scurrying to perform my 'appointment'.

Full article can be read, here.

The simple language is always welcomed.


The informal manner blog is written are easier to understand most of the time, and in some cases sound more honest. However some blogger took this liberty a bit too far. This writer for example mixed and change the language every few times in the same sentences.

Full article can be read, here.

It is very hard to understand because the mind has to adjust which language a word is every few times, that for me it is almost impossible to finish the article. I barely past the first chapter. Such a sad thing because the article is an informational one and the writer seems capable of writing fully in both language,either english or Malay, yet the result is a mash of incomprehension.


I am in no means belittling the writer nor critizing him, I only wish that the liberty of 'hacking' a language, can be limited to certain extent. I don't know any people who have no problem with changing the language every few seconds, but I guess they do exist, though for the few people who agree with me, please try to avoid this. :)

Now, back to reading what I like, and what is good for me.