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Small Talk:
I was going to enter a lift in the FOE building one day, and I overheard two guys chatting inside as the doors opened. Suddenly, one of them said to the other, “Dude, why does your fart smell like roasted ginger?”

I decided to take the stairs.

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You see, I attended a training session for the MMU Voices debating team, because I got suckered by the club’s president, who happens to be a friend of mine. I just made some light talk about how I used to debate in secondary school and all that and he suddenly insisted that I come.

Of course, I could have said “No“, ignored the invitation and went back straight home, but that’d be plain rude wouldn’t it?

So I went, and before I knew it, my prehistoric blood began to boil. I could feel it surging behind my neck, flooding my brains and driving my heart crazy. After leaving the debating scene for well over half a decade, I felt… invigorated, rejuvenated, reanimated. I haven’t feel such feelings for long, LONG time.

I wanted to argue, to bicker, to brawl against another person in a battle of wits, humor and tactics. I hunger for the raw excitement of mental combat, and I felt a sudden bloodlust for some REAL competition. I was fully aware that I’m putting myself against extremely advanced and critical thinker who actually KNOW what they’re talking about, instead of jackasses who spurt out nonsense without even knowing what the hell they just said.

And then I spoke, for a very short mock debate. It was just a 5-minute speech per person, just for the committee to see what you’re like. At the end of the session, the trainer pointed at me.

“I want you in the Australs.”

Apparently, Voices will be taking part in the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Tournament, which will be held in UiTM in several weeks time. Universities from across Asia and Australia [hence the name] will be participating in the 7-day event, competing, learning as well as socializing. MMU already has four teams, and this particular session was meant to form another two.

I was to be drafted into Team Five.

I am honestly honored, and excited to be drafted *snap fingers* just like that. Unfortunately, I will have to skip seven days of classes to attend the tournament. Seven whole days. That would mean skipping my 2-hour lectures, and 3-hour tutorials, and I’ll be missing out on a lot of important fundamental knowledge on my courses.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal, actually, if I didn’t have such a terrible track record during my FOE days.

To make a long story short, I fucked up my engineering course. I decided to make things right by going back to square one, start anew and do things properly. FCM is going to cost me [read: my parents] a LOT of money, and I’m not quite prepared to take the risk of fucking up a second time.

As much as I would like to be part of a very awesome debating tournament and develop my mental capabilities further, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the offer. Believe me, I’m more disappointed by this than you are, Coach.

I’m sorry. Words fail to describe how I’m feeling right now.

Some of my very ‘hip’ friends gawk at me in disbelief and find it absolutely ridiculous that I hate the mainstream RnB/Hiphop Black music. Here’s a good explanation why [thanks, UrbanDictionary!]

1. Fo’ shizzle my nizzle

“fo shizzle ma nizzle” is a bastardization of “fo’ sheezy mah neezy”
which is a bastardization of “for sure mah nigga”
which is a bastardization of “I concur with you whole heartedly my African American brother”.

In other words… What. The. Bloody. Fuck?
Some people just have difficulty speaking in simple, regular, intelligible English, it seems. Sheesh.

And don’t even start.

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Small Talk:
Asam Laksa is like, the best Maggi flavour, evar. *slurp*

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At my age now, I am eligible to vote. But I honestly don’t know who to vote for.

I realized that a horrible part of growing up is that you will come to learn of a lot of things. Dark things, evil things and cruel things. Things that force you to think really, really hard before you make any decision. At times, even after struggling so hard, you can never be sure if the choice you made was the right one.

My doubts have just been reinforced today, with the case of Lina Joy.

Quite a few friends have asked me how I felt about the whole thing, since they know I’m not the type to shut away discussions like this. Unfortunately, every time someone brings up this question, I can’t find an answer. I honestly couldn’t. It’s not like I don’t want to tell you what think because ‘it might offend you’ or shit like that. I don’t hold back on things like these, as some of you already know.

I just really don’t know what to think of it.

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You know, with all the talk about how much our local police sucks, I think it’s such an unfair deal. For them, and for us, too. It doesn’t help that there’s so much news and rumours and half-baked gossip about police accepting bribes and messing around in, uh…dishonorable schemes. Their public image right now is no better than that of a bunch of ghetto hoodlums.

It’s unfair for them to have been pasted with such terrible labels. It’s also unfair for us to not know what the police have been doing to maintain order and control in society. So far, all the information we get about the police comes from the media, and we all know how we only get interested at news about how corruption and various scandals run rampant across police ranks.

I’m sure police officers, more than any other government servant, meet a lot of interesting people from all walks of life. They deal with common folk like you and me, they deal with politicians, they get into stifles with criminals, junkies, and who knows who or what else.

Their lives would probably be a lot more interesting than ours, what with the news about the capture of a drug dealer, or a maniacal driver, or a tortfeasor of fraud. The news only reports of the result of the investigation. From the police dramas we’ve seen on TV, we know that a lot of work and events go on behind every arrest.

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Small Talk:
OMG! OMG! OMG! In less than 12 hours, Blizzard is going to announce it’s newest game release! I am dead serious in my prediction that it’ll be Starcraft 2. It better damn well be, after what they did to Starcraft: Ghost XD *cross fingers and dances like a rabid fanboy*

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Simon gave me a link that hinted to a very disappointing piece of news. So I went ahead and Googled for more information. One particular blog that I found has made several distinctive remarks about the whole issue. There is an anime licensing company in Singapore now, and from the looks of it, there’s also a compiled list of anime titles that are already licensed there.

I remember how many governments were very fired up against Kazaa and MP3 music downloads. Judging from what we see today, apparently nothing much has changed. When people can’t use Kazaa, they use Limewire. When Limewire began to suck, they move to something else [which I won't mention]. If not, they move to one of the many Bittorrent clients available. With the many ways of covering your tracks and masking yourself, people have continued to download media off the net, and nobody could do anything about it.

Of course, Mr. Yankovic knows exactly how things are with the MP3 drama these days.

I can’t find the link, but according to the results of an online survey I read a couple of years ago, a majority of p2p users still prefer to go out and actually buy the original music CDs instead of sticking to MP3’s alone. The reason is quite simple, people who really appreciate the music will appreciate the novelty of an original item, and will enjoy to pure quality of uncompressed audio. Okay, don’t start with me about unnoticeable quality loss in the latest audio compression formats, that’s not the main idea here.

I think the same can be said about anime.

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