Surprised? You Betcha.

It all started last week. Wednesday, the 23rd of Dec. I remember, because it was Dad's birthday. Mum got a call from someone. My sister and I were sitting next to her, making presents for Dad. My brother was in the next room, having breakfast. Listening to Mum's conversation, we began to suspect something.

"What time will you be coming? How much time do you need? Okay, sure, I'll get him out of the house."

It became obvious. A surprise party was being planned. For Dad? Probably. We bombarded her with questions as soon as she put down the phone, but she seemed reluctant to talk. This was odd, because Dad wasn't home. Eventually, she took up a piece of paper and wrote on it:

Koko's friends are having a surprise party for him this Sunday.

Koko is my bro, just in case you don't get it. Chinese words are, sometimes, non-transferable. So anyways, we started planning for my brother's surprise party. A few questions crossed my mind. Why on Earth would they be throwing him a surprise party now? His birthday is way the heck over in April. Meh. I guess they've all come back from overseas and want to surprise him.

So that's how it went. On Sunday, we all went out. We went for lunch, then I went with Jamin and my bro to watch Princess and The Frog(it was alright). Mum and Dad had already gone back home.

By the time the movie had ended, it was still only five. We couldn't go back yet, becuase Jun Ian's friends said to only let him in at 7 pm. Luckily, my dad had overseen that problem. When my brother called him to pick us up, Dad told him that he was busy, so he'll be coming in an hour's time. So we waited at Borders. (phew, safe)

So, at six or so, Dad picked us up, and said that he had to go talk to his brother for a while. So there we went. We went in, and my uncle wasn't even home. I was worried that my brother would suspect something, because Dad was just sitting around doing nothing. Even when my uncle came back, they didn't seem to have anything much to talk about. Luckily, though, my brother didn't seem to notice anything odd. And if he did, he didn't mention it.

* * *

We pulled into the driveway, and my dad "accidentally" pressed on the car horn. BOOOOooon. Damn, I thought. How inconspicuous can you get?

I waited for my brother to go in first, making a big fuss about taking off my shoes. I didn't want to stumble upon his friends and have them "SURPRISE" the wrong person.

However, no one seemed to be around, except...

"Whaat? Justin? What're you doing here??"

"Huh? We're going for band practice tonight. Your mum said it was alright. I told Jeremy to message you. Didn't he?"

I smelled a rat. A rat that smelled awfully like... CONFETTI!

The whole bunch of my school friends burst in my front door, and with Jia En at the lead, they proceeded to spray me from head to toe. I covered my face with my arms, and stood in shock for almost a minute as a never ending spray of confetti, streamers, and fake snow came down upon me.

You know the part at the end of American Idol when the streamers come down onto the winners? Well, I felt like they felt, but so much more hardcore.

Eahh, those gases from the party spray cans are toxic.

I brushed sticky bits of coloured snow out of my face and stared round at everyone.

"I'll be right back. I need to take a shower."

* * *

When I got down, I found that they'd brought food. Lotsa food. I don't know who exactly brought what, but there was pizza, cream puffs, cupcakes, several assorted cakes, potato chips, and many bottles of drink. Then, I managed to take a good look at everyone who was here.

That is, everyone being Jeremy, Ashwin, Victor, Jia En, Li Yang, Juan, Bryan, Rachel, Pei Yii, Sze May, Deniece, Naveena, Clarissa, Samantha and Justin.

Here they are, in their mentioned order from the left.

And here I am, blowing the candles from Jia En's cake out. Those crazy little things never seem to go out, you know? They're like some magical candles. They sparkle, and no matter how many times we blew on them, they would just keep coming back on.

So.. Yeah. Afterwards, we went around the house, then we played Indian Poker and and Signs.

All in all, I had a great time. Best birthday party? Of course.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Christmas

I give up. Let's leave the past in the past. It's really too much of a hassle to post everything that happened in the last few weeks, especially since I can't remember any details.

So we'll just update a little bit. Yesterday:

1. Results collection day for PMR students.

2. Christmas Eve.

3. Justin's birthday.

So there you have it. I collected my PMR results yesterday. And DAMN, our form was pretty darn awesome. Almost everyone I spoke to got 6, 7 or 8 A's(by almost everyone, I mean 90%, no kid).

I mean, I know that some of you guys may not have done so well, and I'm sorry if I'm making you feel worse, but honestly, looking at the overall results, I think we're better than any of the other forms, ever.

So great job, form 3's of 2009!

Yes, I'm super happy with my results too.

Moving on, today is Christmas. Which makes yesterday...

Christmas Eve!

You know, Christmas Eve always holds more excitement for me than Christmas itself. It's probably because my family celebrates Christmas Eve rather than Christmas, so after opening all our presents and when all our friends and relatives have gone home, there isn't much to Christmas Day itself.

So what does my family do during Christmas Eve? On my mum's side of the family, you would probably guess how we celebrate our Christmases. We get together and do stupid things all day and act like immature little kids, while having the time of our lives. Nothing new there.

On my dad's side of the family, we have a hyperactive group of little kids(some with too much testosterone and others with too little), a couple of dancers(three, so to speak), and the dancers' sisters.

Being so, we spent last night namely playing Guitar Hero, watching the newest season of So You Think You Can Dance, opening presents and parading around in them, and when everyone had finished eating, we cleared out the tables and opened up the dance floor to everyone present.

Next on the list, a birthday greeting to Justin.

Happy Birthday, Justin!

And the 23rd was Dad's birthday, so...

Happy Birthday, Dad!

And, tomorrow is Li Yang's.

Happy Birthday, Li Yang!

One last thing. This is the most Cawesome thing ever. What is Cawesome? Frankly, it's cute and awesome. Watch it, or I hate you. Along with a few hundred other proud Ukranians who do.

Cawesome. Tell your friends.

Are we done? I think so.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Sry, gotta AFK 4 awhile. BRB.

I'm not dead or anything, don't worry.

I've been too lazy to update, not to mention that I've been away for my ten day stay at Outward Bound School, so that's my reason for being, er, as people say, AFK(though we in OBS have changed the original meaning of away from keyboard to suit our situation, making it away from kayak).

So anyways, I actually wanted to do a nice long post on everything that has happened, like OBS, the family's early Christmas party, my own birthday, and all the other post-worthy things that have been happening to me since the start of the holiday, but it just so happens that I have to leave for Singapore early tomorrow morning, and I have not started to pack my bag, so... You get the idea.

No post until I get back. And even then, it'll depend on my mood. But worry not! I will be sure to have posted at least one enjoyable post by the end of this holiday!

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

1, 2, 3, W!

Firstly, I would like to thank the people whose Facebook accounts I have stolen pictures from. Namely Amber, Looi Ling, and Naveena. But mostly Naveena.

I would just like to say: We wock. Wock with a capital W.

It's been the best year. Surely. If not throughout the whole year, at least these past few weeks of post-ex have really brought us closer. Case in point, our killer klass party.

At the beginning, we were fearful it might not be half the class party last year's was. The reason:

No one had brought a radio.

So a couple of us went around the staff rooms to check if any of the teachers had a radio we could borrow. When suddenly, our monitor, the ever-prepared Tan Lay Yin, mentions that "Oh, one of the teachers are keeping my radio for me."

This is Tan Lay Yin from the back. Trust me, you don't want to see the front. Haha! Just kidding. Sort of. And yes, I drew that toothless picture of her saying "I'm Lay Yin!".

If you're wondering why everyone is leaving nice messages on her shirt(Lee Jia Wen excluded, he wrote the "Kick me"), it's because she's leaving school next year to go learn somewhere in FRIM(don't ask me, that's just what I heard).

So anyway, back to the story. We retrieved Lay Yin's radio from the staff room, then went back to class, only to find that it was way too soft to supply music for a dance party.

The radio dilemma. Hmm. That sounds like it could be a great movie! Let's see...

YES! It's amazing!

Anyway, because The Radio Dilemma, we had to come up with a new plan. Our resourceful Mr. Jonathan Patrick James came up with the solution.

"We need to find another radio."

It's not exactly the best plan, but I was kidding when I said "resourceful". No offence, Jon. So we went again.

We thought for a while. Who would have a radio? Then, we happened to see Mdm Vicky standing in her staff room looking bored. Ding ding! She might have a radio.

But even if she did, what if she didn't want to lend it to us? We needed someone to persuade her. Someone good at sucking up. Someone like...

Alistair Bow!

That was proof of his suck-up prowess. Standing hand-in-hand with our principal, Mrs Matthews, preparing to waltz.

We ran to find Alistair, and found him talking and joking with Mdm Shabnam. See what I mean? Suck. Up. So, we told him we needed him to work on Vicky, but Shabnam, overhearing our plan, told us that there was a radio in staff room 8 belonging to Kok Hao Zhe which was not in use.

* * *

And so, the party begins.

It so happened that the day of the class party was also Chai Jia En's birthday. Here we see him trying to fly.

And so, being in charge of bringing a cake for the class party, I decided to make it Jia En's birthday cake. You're welcome, Jia En. Haha!

See? Look at it! I baked that, believe it or not.

But damn. That day was also possibly Jia En's last day in school. He went for an interview to get into a military school the very next day. I don't mean to curse him or anything, but I think I speak for many when I say I hope that he doesn't get in.

So anyway, we started dancing, and slowly, people from other classes started coming in. All the teachers were coming, too. How nice.

Now, if you look at this series of pictures taken by Naveena, you will see that it would actually make a very good flipbook/.GIF image. Haha!

Jon and I begin to dance.

Jia En punches in.

"Hey, Jun Shern, let's squash him!"

"Okay, now!"

No narration required.

The End.

Hilarious. And we have more pictures!

It's close to midnight,
and something evil's lurking in the dark.

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike

DANCE BATTLE!
This is my favorite pic, personally. The angle is so dramatic.

This is me. I think I'm doing baby swipes. It's hard to tell. Doesn't look like anything in particular.

Again, me. I think I'm coming down from a handstand.

Wheelbarrow race!

Jun Shern + Bryan = Breakdance

Let's not forget all the great food, yeah? Which everyone contributed to. Woot!

And.. yeah. Run, Jon, run!

That's pretty much it.

Damn, I'm gonna miss all of you guys who'll be leaving.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

The Cold Front

It's getting colder. Or rather, these last two days, my area has been really cold. It's as if the air-con is on 24/7.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Who's The King Of The World?

I've really missed out on a lot of posts. Many things have been happening, really. What with all the post-ex activities(which from now on will be referred to as PEA), and absolutely no work involved in my life, I've been having a great time.

I can't remember everything, though. The main stuff was like the AAR concert,

which, predictably, was super-awesome. At the start, we kept trying to get to the front, with me leading the pack holding my handphone, pretending that I was trying to get to my "friend" who was far in front. However, nobody cared. We managed to get quite deep in, then found ourselves stuck tight in the middle of a dense sea of bodies.

It became kinda crazy during the local bands' opening acts before AAR came, but it was all in good spirit. You know, sort of a mosh, but not so serious. Just people pushing us all around. And, I happened to get hit on the head by a flying plastic bottle from behind.

I didn't mind any of that, except for an annoying little malay boy with a large bag pack on. He was seriously getting on my nerves, constantly half-crouching and covering his head then using his backpack to crash into everyone around him.

When Pop Shuvit came on with Mara Bahaya and everyone went crazy, I really lost it with that kid. Whenever he came close to me, I would push him as hard as I could, but he just kept coming back. Always a pacifist, I retreated behind the other audiences. And found that the older malay crowd standing behind was far more hostile.

Eventually, we got tired of waiting for AAR to come on, then went further back to get some drinks. Then, we learnt that it was much more comfortable to watch alongside the more relaxed crowd at the back. So it was there where we spent the rest of the night, shouting along to AAR's best.

So let's talk about yesterday's Melaka trip. There isn't much to say, because without pictures this kind of post would be terribly boring. The most interesting things would be that we ate chicken rice balls and cendol for lunch, Jia Wen stole us some snake skin from inside the snake's cage in the zoo, and the bus ride back was a platform for the movie "Don't Shoot Me!", which you can watch on here on Facebook.

What's been going on in school? Well, there was my powerpoint presentation, which would honestly been ten times better if the hall's sound system was working properly. Meaning that I wouldn't have embarrassed myself if all the sound clips I'd inserted weren't on mute.

And then there was the patriotic song competition. Basically, the idea was to have each class perform a song which upheld the morals of patriotism. It was fun while it lasted. It gave us musicians an excuse to bring our instruments to school and jam. However, I've come to realize that jamming isn't a good idea. For instance, on the last day after our song performances, I'd invited the P class people over to jam. What resulted was many musicians in the same room, each playing their own thing and trying to be heard. That kinda thing just gives people headaches.

The real fun in music is performing. Like the few times when I'd played guitar in class and had people singing along to the songs I was playing. That's what music is about.

On the note of music(pun intended), I've decided to stop learning piano. Surely, learning piano for possibly almost 10 years and having nothing to show for it is a sign that piano just isn't for me. As a result, I have space to learn a new instrument.

However, I don't know which to learn. I can play gutar, piano, and a little bit of drums already. So those are out. Remaining choices are:

violin, trumpet, saxophone, cello, flute, harp

Elimination time.

1. Violin- Plenty of people play this. Besides, the violin is known to be a strictly classical instrument, and very hard to tackle if you plan to take exams.
Genre: Classical, otherwise limited to Yellowcard, Vanessa Mae and VSQ songs.
Verdict: Maybe not.

2. Trumpet- At first, I liked the idea of learning the trumpet. So I went to Youtube to check it out. Unfortunately, the trumpet has a pretty ugly sound.
Genre: Classical and marching band music.
Verdict: Nah.

3. Saxophone- This is my favourite. The sound is absolutely amazing, and it's portable, and very few people I know can play it. The only problem is, one of the very few people I know who can play it is my brother, so there might be a problem there.
Genre: Blues, soul, and pop songs aren't too far out of reach, either.
Verdict: Leaning yes.

4. Cello- A pretty cool instrument, definitely more ideal than the violin, for me. However, my sister wants to learn the cello, so she has banned me from doing so.
Genre: Classical, but good for accompaniment in pop songs.
Verdict: A forced no.

5. Clarinet- Jia Wen plays this. And it's also a cool instrument, and supremely portable. But I'm not so sure that the sound is very usable in modern music.
Genre: Classical, unless I learn to be like that beatboxing flute player on Youtube.
Verdict: Either way.

6. Harp- This would be really cool if I were a mermaid. Unfortunately, the harp is a rather sexist instrument, having been protrayed by the media as a woman's otherwise an angel's instrument.
Genre: No idea what genre this falls into.
Verdict: Probably not.

So there you have it. I think I'll go for saxophone, if my brother doesn't mind. It's a really sax-y instrument.

"The best thing about learning to play the trumpet is that I'll be called a trumpeteer. How cool is that?"

"So why don't you go learn to play the pion?"

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Sigh.

Damn. Didn't get into Overdose. Oh well. I knew it anyway.

Post-UPSR Post

Phew. I've had enough taste of life after UPSR to talk about it now. And yeah, it's hectic.

It's been really crazy, actually. Let's see. How will I do this post? I'm not interested in talking about and elaborating on everywhere I went, and you aren't interested in reading it, either, so I'll just make a list:

Thursday the 15th:
Band practice after school.
Sleepover Dylan's house.

Friday the 16th:
Audition for The Guitar Store's annual concert.
Return to Dylan's house to stay the night.

Saturday the 17th:
Naveena's party in the afternoon.
Mun Keat's party at night.

Sunday the 18th:
Band coaching session in Cheras' The Guitar Store for the concert.

Monday the 19th:
Ashwin's house, sleepover.

Tuesday the 20th:
Rachel's house.

Thursday the 22nd:
1U with primary school friends.

Friday the 23rd:
Band practice.

Saturday the 24th:
Double auditions-
Overdose auditions in the afternoon,
then back to the Cheras guitar store for final auditions.

So that's it so far. It's Saturday night now. I'm kinda worried about the auditions. The Guitar Store one went pretty well, I think, but Overdose not so.

It was mainly my fault, though. My guitar was kinda softer than the other instruments, so the all-so-important riff from Stars(Switchfoot) was lost amidst the Jeremy's drumming. Plus, for some reason, my effects weren't on the right settings, and I only realized that halfway through, since I couldn't hear myself playing. Sigh. We were so much better during yesterday's practice.

Can't wait for the results. Oh, and by the way? Guess who else is playing in The Guitar Store's concert? Our old friends, Kip Chean and Phoebe. Well, I wasn't really close to them while they were in WMS, but yeah. What a coincidence.

I'll give a better post next time. I'm dead tired now.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

We're finally back.

Honestly, these are some of the best days of my life. And the holiday hasn't even begun. I mean, we still have two more of our form 4 entrance exams tomorrow. And yeah, today's exams were extremely easy. Especially maths. (note tone of voice which is really dripping with warm, delicious sarcasm)

But hey, what do the entrance exams matter? According to school history, nobody has ever been kicked out of form 3 for having terrible entrance results. So all that we have to worry about is the streaming. And honestly, I'm fine with either one, although my family expects me to go for Science.

While we're on the topics of streaming, there were actually several jokes about that...

Mano, while briefing us about streams:

"You should choose your streams according to what you want to be. Tzer Chyuan, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I want to be a rich man."

"He can go to the money stream, then. Sungei Wang!"

And earlier today:

"Hey, Justin. What stream are you joining next year?"

"Hmm. Probably main."

Mainstream, see?

So as I was saying, no point worrying about the entrance exams so much. The way I see things, we're screwed even if we study or not. So now, I officially declare the stad of holidays.

And, I also declare that English, Maths, BM, Geo, KH, Science and History are:
And yes, I'd purposely left History as the last to be named. Just to have the privilege of saying History is History. I'm rather proud of all my new ambigrams. I think they're pretty easy to read, compared to those I've made before.

See this next one.
Heart, as you can see.

And this one, which is my favourite:

HeArTS on one side, SPaDe on the other. Amazing. But the colour doesn't look so good on here, does it? The Heart one worked better. But I swear, this one looked great in photoshop. Sigh.

I made all these during my geo exam. Except the History one, of course. No prizes for guessing which exam I did it during, though.

By the way, watch Glee.

It's just about the best thing ever. I started watching right before the PMR, and have not missed an episode since. That's how good it is. And watch Community, too. Which is from the director of ARReSTeD DeVeLOPMeNt. If you haven't seen Arrested Development, you should go check that out too. These are among the best TV shows of our time.

But seriously. Glee kicks butt. Here's a trailer.

No, just because it's a show about music doesn't make it a new High School Musical. I'm not one of those who hate High School Musical, but seriously, Glee is uncomparable to High School Musical. It would be like comparing a pronticle to a hirten. And THAT is impossible, because those two things don't exist. Haha!

By the way, I haven't seen the trailer myself, on account of my Youtube not working, but I am confident that it's a good trailer, because all they have do is take any 2 minutes from the series, and it will surely be good. That's how great Glee is. If you happen to run into the soundtrack of the series while at Youtube, don't. Those are the best parts of Glee, and it wouldn't do to spoil it.

If you can't find it anywhere online, and have trouble torrenting the episodes, I'd be happy to lend you a thumbdrive full of glee.

So anyway, I'm just about done here. Let's wrap up with a nice joke. A KH joke? Awesome.

What do you call a kuprum with a pet?

Kuprum berenamel. Beranimal, get it? If you don't know what kuprum berenamel is, go study your Form 1 KH.

Looks like we've reached the end of the post. Look below, try to understand the joke.
If you don't get it, try looking back to the stad of the post. Ah, now you see light.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

GO, TURTLE!

Or tortoise. Turtle? Tortoise? Ah, tomayto tomahto. (Go turn on your TV and go watch channel W. You know: W-TV. Wha. Te. Ver.)

If anyone DOES know what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, please tell me, cos I feel like this is something one should know, more importantly than learning about Orang Tua(s) in Sabah and Tuai Rumah(s) in Sarawak. Directed to the form 3's reading this: If this question appears in our PMR, you should all be taking turns paying for my Nasi Lemak Wedges every lunchtime.

Anyway, I think I'll go check out what the difference is myself. Okay... Lemme see. You gotta appreciate the efficiency of Google at times like this. Aha! Here we are!

Our answer lies here. Or here. The latter is shorter, but the first one gives a lot more info, for the hardworking.

To cut a long story short, turtles usually live in water, and tortoises usually live on ground near water.

So based on what we've learned today, this guy right here is a tortoise.

So next time some one asks you: "You know what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle?", you'll answer them, gain some rep, and thank me later by buying me a syrup in school.

So why all the turtle-talk? Well. Have you guys heard of Lonely George? The last Pinta island tortoise to grace the Galapagos Islands. And yes, that's the place were all the iguanas live. Apparently they have tortoise-eating goats, too. *shudder*

But anyways, some few years ago I read about him, he who was the last-surviving Pinta tortoise of the Geochelone elephantophus abingdoni species in the world. Here he is.

A star in his own right after being dubbed "the most endangered species in the world", he was, unfortunately, believed to be impotent. Even after all these scientists stuck him up to watching turtle porn and took him to Tortoise's Chow Kit, he was still unable to successfully produce offspring. Why?

As the article I was reading says: "Perhaps the tortoise is too old, or pehaps too disinterested, or perhaps decided that the world was going to the dogs anyway so why bring in more of his kind if their fate was to be turned into souvenirs for spanish housewives? Or maybe he doesn't even like kids."

Well, let's wrap this one up, since I should be getting back to my studies soon. All this I was reading about many years ago. But I suddenly remembered him earlier today, so I decided to check if he has finally kicked the bucket. Or bought a farm. Bit the dust, conked, cashed in his chips, croaked, expired, went belly up, went to the wall, went west, met his maker, gave up the ghost, went way of all flesh.

Whichever euphemism you want to use. Feel free. I personally went to check up on those so as to avoid you feeling uncomfortable of a certain one.

So anyways, I typed "lonely george" into Google. And WOOHOO! Read the article! Here.

So what do ya know. Next time we take a picture of the Galapagos Islands, it could turn out like this one.

(imagine all iguanas to be replaced with identicals of not-so-Lonely George, woot!)

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Back To White (Back, Not Black)

Woohoo, I've fixed the brown background. There were some coding problems, but that's now the past. So we shall look to the future!

And the present.


You know what? Mr. Balan would make a great tightrope-walker. All he'd have to do is change into a punjabi. Cos then, he'd be...

BALANSINGH!

Get. It? Balancing.

If you don't get it, then you're terrible with jokes. As Li Yang is. You know I'd wasted a completely powerful joke on him? Here's how it went.

For some reason or another, our friend Mr. Lam was talking about punjabies(plural, anyone?) to Madam Mano. So anyways, he pronounced the word as "poonjabi". Fussy as she always is, Mano immediately corrected him.

"It's pun-jabi, Li Yang. Pun, not poon."

I suddenly laughed and said to Li Yang: "Yeah, no pun intended."

If you don't get it, I'd advise you to go and jump off a bridge. I hear it's really fun. With a cord around your waist, of course. I'd really love a chance to do it. Bungee jumping.

It's actually been a pretty lame week. What was that other joke? Ah, the one about our pra-PMR papers. I've told this one to Shabnam:

"Madam, what do you call the model PMR test papers that all the form 3's are doing this month?"

"Em, tak tahu. Kertas soalan PMR?"

"No, KERTAS RAMADAN PMR!"

Kertas ramalan PMR, you know? I hope you DO know. There's no point thinking of all these jokes if there's no one around to hear it. Especially if the few who are around don't understand it.

I think I'll close with a final joke. Hmm.. Which one? Ah, the one Alistair told me. Well, I've got just one thing to say:

"The angkasawan meninggal dunia."

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA!

Think about it for a while, and you ought to get it. Haha! Until next time.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

New Stuffs

I haven't been blogging much at all. But look. I have a good excuse: I have exams coming up. The big three letters: P, M, and R.

Admittedly, that isn't why I'm doing nothing. I haven't been studying that much either. I'm just lazy and uninspired.

*picture fat, balding old man whining about his remote control being too far away*

Anyway, I decided to just come up and post SOMETHING, or else y'all will think I've died or something.

So here you go. My newest artworks. First one's supposed to be me. Though it doesn't really look like me. I guess that looks like mine just can't be put down on paper, yeah?

And this one's my hand drawing my hand, drawing my hand, drawing my hand, drawing my hand... And I've lost count. But you get the picture. Literally, I mean.


Eww. I need a better copyright. Seriously. The little "Madness" box at the bottom of my pictures are spoiling it. I should just write my name at the bottom in grey or something. Sigh. Maybe next time.

Oh, and by the way. Are any of you experiencing problems with the background colour of my blog? Cos I haven't seen my usual white background in.. forever. The background that comes up on my computer is brown. At first I assumed it's just my internet with loading problems, but I thought I'd better check. Let me know in the Cbox, yeah?

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

The Calm Before/After The Storm

The trials are over, and now all I'm doing is playing with the Big Red Button on Gwen's blog. It's not as if I've never played it before. I've even had one up here on my blog a couple of years ago. One or two, that is. But the point is, I'm bored. And the creator of the Big Red Button must've been SERIOUSLY bored. At least I'm going out soon. Miriam's coming back again. Wait. Wasn't my last post about Miriam? Whoa, and she's already back. Has it been that long? Seriously? One month, exactly. Hmm. Okay, then. I'm going out. Occupy yourself with the Button. At the bottom of the page. Scroll all the way down. And have fun. After that, go watch Digimon or something. Youtube has every episode, and even the movies. There. Congratulations, you are now equipped with enough useless entertainment to last you the rest of the weekend. Notice the lack of paragraphs? That's thanks to having a broken "enter" key. Jeremy ate it. Did he really? Nah, just kidding. My "enter" key isn't even broken. I just don't feel like making paragraphs and spaces. Makes it more fun. Yeah, well. That's all. Jun Shern out. *Static*

The Green Laser Pointer and Other Short Stories

It has been a real busy week. Let's begin on Tuesday, shall we? Tuesday was the day my 19-year-old cousin Miriam, born and raised in Australia, came to visit. To introduce her to some Malaysianity, we, the Chans, the Tans, and the Dragons(The Loongs. If you still don't get it, nevermind. You don't have to.) took her to the hawker place in... Where was it again? Next to a futsal and sports center. Taman Megah, maybe.

Anyways, when we started going off to pick our dinners, Yee Hao gave me an offer I couldn't refuse.

"Come here, little Chan. I'll buy you a super-spicy sausage. If you can finish it, I'll pay you RM10. Okay?"

Ten bucks to eat a sausage. Pretty good deal, wasn't it? I mean, how bad could it be? That's what went through my head at the time. So I went with him over to the stall with the sign TAIWANESE SAUSAGES hanging overhead.

I looked at the menu. Among the many different flavors of sausages, three caught my eye. There was the Normal, Original-Spicy, and Super-Spicy.

"Can I have one Super-Spicy, please?"

Yee Hao turned to me.

"Last time I came here, I got my friend to try one. He bit into it and died-"

At this moment, the sausage-man tapped him on the shoulder.

"Here's your Super-Spicy sausage. Please enjoy."

So we went back to the table. When everyone got back to the table, and my Ice-Blended Mango arrived, the dare began. I took the sausage out of the wrapper, and looked at it apprehensively. It seemed alright. Slowly, I took a bite.

The result was instantaneous. When my brain touched the sausage, it burned straight away. My eyes were screaming, my tongue was immediately welled with tears, and I vaguely noticed Yee Juinn taking out his camera phone and pointing it at me.

One bite over. Five more to go.

I finished the sausage, but the pain wasn't over. My tongue was still on the verge of tears. It hurt like hell. It took one Ice-Blended Mango, two Iced Milo's and more than twenty minutes before I managed to resume eating my nasi lemak.

Afterwards, Yee Hao slid a ten-ringgit note across the table. "Congratulations, Shern. You have just experienced baptism by fire."

* * *

Wednesday was Petaling Street Night. Reasons for venture:

1. Good food around the corner from Petaling Street and
2. Buy the marvelous green laser as seen previously in possesion of cousin Jun Kit and the telescope man from Coco Night and
3. Introduce Miriam to the Malaysian black market. Well, not so much black market as fake market. But still...

Anyways, we went to eat the good food around the corner first. Yes, it was good. But that's not really anything to talk about. So we skip to the laser quest.

The first stall we met the laser in was owned by a stingy old man who wouldn't sell it below a hundred. Thankfully, I knew someone who had got his for RM70 in Melaka, so I wouldn't settle for anything too far from that.

We quickly learned that all the laser sellers there sold the lasers with a starting price of around RM170. So we met one guy, who seemed a little more reasonable, and we decided that we would take 3 for RM235. So it would be 2 for RM80 and 1 for RM75. Whoa. Expensive, but worth it. Seriously. Just look.


More pictures will be coming later in the post. Hold your horses.

* * *

Thursday night was Harry Potter night. We(Mum, Dad, Jamin, Miriam, Me. Others were busy) took the Hogwarts Express to Tropicana City, and caught the movie with nice seats. Opening night, too. Not bad, eh?

The movie itself wasn't really bad, but I wouldn't really go around shouting about it. It wasn't that good, either, so yeah. Nothing much to say. But the Ron and Lavender bits were pretty funny.

* * *

Friday? Concert night. And laser party night. Mum and I went to TGI's at the Curve after school for lunch, met up with Juinn, Miriam and Jamin(who skipped school). I also ran into Shanice, Sarah and Yi Wei there, in Metrojaya.

Nothing much happened at the Curve, except that we realized that Petaling without the I is Petal Ng. Let's move on to the concert.

I guess I won't say much about Friday's concert, cos it wasn't as fun as Saturday's concert, and nothing much happened. I don't have the pictures, either. So you guys'll have to look into Chen Yang's blog for that. At the moment, he hasn't posted them yet. So I don't know. Maybe they'll appear on Facebook. I wouldn't know, my Facebook doesn't work.

Hey, I've just realized that I haven't posted anything about concert practice. At all. Okay, here's the quick brief-through:

I'm in Tinta Dewa. Yes, the dance with the best music, best costume and best dancers. So yeah, it's hard to be modest when we're THAT good. Haha! Just kidding. During practice, we play alot of Hutan, we excessively sing songs like Viva La Vida, Lao Shu Ai Da Mi, No Boundaries, and we do stupid things. We enjoy dancing the girls' part more than the guys' part, and... Yeah, that's about it.

Ugh, this is a long post. I'm tired. Okay, let's talk about AFTER the concert.

I left school at about 10pm, got home at about 10:30pm. Then I got ready to go to Yee Juinn's house. For our promised farewell party to Miriam, who'll leave on Saturday afternoon.

Upon arrival, we each took out our lasers. There were four of us, but only 3 lasers. Jamin didn't buy one. However, that worked fine, because somebody had to work the camera. So work it Juinn did, while the other three of us shined pretty green lights all over the room.

Me holding two green lasers, pointing single beams at the ceiling. The extra lines all over the place are result of slow shutter speeds and the reflections of the beams all over the room.

Same effect, but with three of us holding the lasers.

Here's to a real crystal glass and once again, slow shutter speeds.

The magical crystal glass, complete with star-maker settings on the laser.

I call it: The Explo-Shern. Explosion. Jun Shern. Get it? HAHAHA. Yeah, I love this one. I was lying down behind the crystal glass, so that the glass would seemingly explode on me.

The green lights shot straight at a cup of guava juice. Makes for a beautiful rainbow effect.

The Pianist.

More pictures of Jamin's hand, illuminated by the Glazor.

My personal favorite. The cup of guava juice, from a different angle. Looks like a sunset.

At about 12:30 am, Yee Hou got home. He had spent the day at his Colleague's house. You know, the female one. Anyways, by this time our lasers were running out of power, so we asked him to drive us out to the nearby 7/11 to get new batteries. He agreed.

After paying for the batteries, Yee Hou decided to take us out for a joy ride around Desa Parkcity. He said: "Let's go kacau some people with those green lasers." So we all got back into the car and drove about the neighbourhood, shining our lasers out the windows, trying to hit all the apartment buildings that existed high in the sky.

Soon, we reached the lake of the residential area. Being his usual retarded self, Yee Hou parked his car right on the sidewalk, and we got down. We flashed our lasers all over the place, hitting the Waterfront building across the lake. Suddenly, we heard a whistle and a shout:

"Pweeeeett! Hoi! Hoi! Oi! Kamu!"

Shit, it was a guard. We weren't sure what to do. He was on the other side of the lake, but we couldn't see him properly. We stood there, like school children waiting to be punished by their teacher. Unfortunately for the guard, we were rebellious school children. We rushed back to the car under Yee Hou's instructions, and he shouted quickly to Juinn in Cantonese. Something about a flashlight.

I watched in amazement as Juinn pulled out a big floodlight looking device from the glove compartment. He plugged the light's cable into the cigarrette lighter-thing. CLICK. He turned on the light, and he shined it powerfully across the lake. It was... POWERFUL. We could immediately see the building on the other side, and we scanned for any sign of the guard. Then Yee Hou said: "Now let's see if we can find our friend and shine his eyes with both green lasers and white blinding lights."

Unfortunately, we couldn't find him anywhere about. So we took off, heading to the other part of Desa Parkcity. The houses up on the hill. We drove up there in a luminous green car, lighting the path wherever we went. Finally, we reached a nice spot where we could laser point at the entire city of Kuala Lumpur in peace. We got out of the car, but before we could start glazoring(green-laser-ing) the whole place, the unmistakeable sound of motorbikes drove up, complete with the unmistakeable sight of trouble.

It was more guards. Two of them. They came up and spoke to us about us not being able to "makan apa-apa angin di sini", so Yee Hou argued that it was public property, and seeing as we weren't committing any written crimes, they had no right to send us off. And even if it WAS closed to public, we were residents and bought the right to these ventures along with the house. But they said that it was by order of the Management, so they had to get us away no matter what. Sigh.

So we up and left the place, not wanting to give them such a hard time. I mean, they were doing their jobs, so it's not them that we should have a problem with. Afterwards, we rode home with windows wide open, blasting slow, opera-styled music at the neighbours.

At home, Juinn was like "Hey, guys! We haven't eaten any of the chips we bought! We haven't earned the right to sleep yet."

And so it was that we finished an entire bag of new Wang-Wang biscuits. What time did we sleep? Oh, some time around 3:30 am.

It was a pretty good night.

* * *

Saturday morning began at 8 am, when we went to see if the Desa Parkcity Clubhouse was ready for entry. We walked there, as Yee Hou was still sleeping and nobody else could drive us there.

It wasn't. So we walked to the Waterfront building which our friend the guard was the previous night. We walked towards the Kluang Station, deciding to get some breakfast.

"Hold on, guys. How much money do we have? We don't want to over order and end up not having enough to pay for it."

"I have RM6 only. What about you, Shern?"

"I have RM23. You two?"

The girls didn't bring their wallets. So with my RM23 plus Juinn's RM6, we had exactly RM29. That seemed more than enough.

So we ordered. Three roti canai's, one nasi lemak, one iced Milo and one Coffee float. Total: RM28.90. We had RM30. Seemed perfect. Enough to pay, and we could tip the waiter 10 cents.

So we ate happily. Then, I went over to pay at the counter. The man said:

"Okay, that'll be RM31.80."

I choked. "Sorry?"

"Thirty-one ringgit eighty cents."

"I'm sorry, there must be something wrong. Can we see the bill, please?"


I glanced at Juinn. "Oh, shit."

Juinn turned to the man at the counter. "Tunggu sekejap, yea? Saya lari balik ke rumah ambil duit."

* * *

I'm not going to post about the concert. For one thing, I've been typing for so long. Next, I don't really have much to say about it, and without pictures it would be a boring post. So I'll do that next week. Maybe. If I do get the pictures.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*