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*

Life Of A .doc

Hello, Document 1. Your entire existence as you know it is about to change. It's time for you to become a Kaedah Kajian.

I don't really have anything more to say. Just felt like saying that. Hmm. Okay, I'll put up a picture. For no reason whatsoever.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

4614454591458502933 (No, It Is Not A Random Number)

Whoosh. With a swirl of cape and an air of mystery, the masked murderer makes his appearance once again, having laid low for almost a month. Who will be his next victim?

Who has watched Transformers? In the cinema. I'm not actually eager to talk about the movie, since it's new and I don't want to spoiler anything for anyone.

I mentioned in the cinema, because instead of talking about the movie itself, I'd like to mention the delightful Heineken advertisement that I saw before the movie. It's absolutely hilarious.



And, it comes with a sequel:



Haha! I love it. There are, in fact, an abundance of hilarious commercials on Youtube, if you ever bother to look. Anyway, next topic.

Tan-ta-da-da!

Welcoming the newest edition to the Chan family!

Cost me a whopping RM600, but who's to say it isn't worth it? I'm still learning to use it, though. I suppose it takes time. And the program it comes with is even more complicated.

Recording software. The instruction manual for this is well over 200 pages, and it's bliddy hard to understand. A whole new world altogether. It's like learning Photoshop all over again.

Alright, I'm going to tackle my "whole new world". OH WAIT! Watch this. Disney's A Whole New World cover, by a guy who sings both Aladdin and Jasmine's parts splendidly.

Okay, done.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Newest Updates

Don't expect any. Not soon. I'm too lazy.

However, I suppose you deserve something after typing the whole url or clicking on my link or whatever.

Thus, here's some space to imagine your own post! It's ultra-fun and makes me feel less guilty!




























































































Note: Posts that you imagine yourself are not Madness approved and I will not be held responsible for anything said there.

Magnificient

Yesterday was the Fight For A Reason gig, and although it began kinda headache-y, what with all the metal performances and booming extremities of volume, every once in a while we had a band that stood out above the crowd. Marinate amazing showmanship with great musicianship, then fry it in a crowd with good response, and you get... Well, an awesome performance.

I arrived on scene with Dylan at about 4:30, and met Jon Gui, Eric Soo and the self-proclaimed "Birthday Boy"(no idea what his name is, Jon told me to call him Malay, but I don't think it's suitable to be used up here) right at the entrance. We stood around considering the ballet class for a while(the only requirement was to be aged 3+), and eventually went in.

We entered the room to find about 20 unrecognisable faces inside, with the exclusion of the organisers and a small handful others from school. We set down our instruments and took our seats on the carpeted floor, after paying for our tickets. Half an hour later, everyone had arrived and the sound check began. One by one, all the bands plugged in their instruments and tested the amplifiers and adjusted the settings.

Funnily enough, my whole band had left to go to the bathroom when suddenly:

"Initial Sound, it's your turn for the sound check now."

So I grabbed my guitar and went over to the corner with the amps, and several minutes later saw Dylan, Jeremy and Justin return from nature's call. They stood around asking "Where's Jun Shern?" for a while, and I thought that I would let them search a while, seeing as they had ditched me for a bathroom. It would have worked out, but Alison suddenly said:

"Oh, Jun Shern's over there. You can tell it's him because his shirt is so-"

It was at this exact moment that my amplifier decided to blare out loudly and prevented me from hearing exactly what my shirt was. I got the gist of it though, but talking about distinguishable clothing, I don't believe that she's one to talk, what with the luminous yellow jacket she wore yesterday. Haha!

Anyways, we finished checking our amplifiers and guitars, then at around 6:30 the emcees(Alison and Kim) walked up and announced that the show was about to begin.

Thus began the incredible lineup of heart-pounding loud music. I'm not saying that it wasn't good, but it was loud. And although some of the bands played songs that were too metal for my taste(I'm not saying which bands. Partly because it's rude, and partly because I don't know the names of the bands), some of them were absolutely awesome and great fun.

I won't go into detail about the performances. Instead, I'll put up some pictures. However, if you want more pics and videos, you can go to the FFAR blog to check it out. I daresay there'll be many more pictures there, seeing as I've just spent my whole morning uploading a whopping 114 pictures up there for Naveena. And also because of that, most of the pics you see here will also be there.




Some time during the band above's performance, I'd gotten tired of the loud music, and went out to check out the cafe outside. I had a drink there with Justin, Dylan, Jeremy, Tzer Chyuan, Ashwin, Mark and Jon. The peace of the outside world and the coolness of the 100 Plus was reviving.

Apparently, while we were outside sipping our drinks, the crowd broke out in mosh-pit fever. I wouldn't have known, but I found evidence within the camera that Naveena was taking pictures with. Ta-da.

This picture apparently shows someone kicking another person in the behind, and the victim obliging to position himself for the kick.

So anyway, I decided that we'd better go back in case we missed our turn. And in we went.

About this time, we were all feeling dead tired, and I wasn't inspired to play anymore. But the time came when we had to get ready to play, so we went backstage and tuned up our instruments.

Then came the announcement: "The next band is Initial Sound."

We trotted up to the stage and got everything ready. Dylan introduced us and made his birthday greetings to "all of you birthday people".

We started off with When You Were Young, as made famous by The Killers, and received surprisingly good response from the crowd. I never expected people to really cheer for us, because it was our first performance, and well... I didn't expect much. At all.


Afterwards we did Shattered(by OAR) and finally, Yellow. With a twist of Fix You at the end. The Fix You ending was the most amazing part. The build up was unbelievable. Everyone was clapping along, and when we started the final chorus, everyone within my sight was singing along. Thank you so much to everyone in the crowd last night. It was absolutely... Magnificient. I will never forget that moment.


So afterwards, we had Ashwin's rendition of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours. It wasn't that bad, I mean. He got everyone singing along with him. Though his song dedication was a bit of a lost cause, as his dedicatee was not there at the moment. Sad.

Towards the end, the bands seemed much better. My favourite performance afterwards was Blink 182's All The Small Things. I'm not sure which band did it, but you gotta admit. They could've rocked up hell if they'd wanted to.


Other performances worth mentioning were Holiday, performed by Kheng Yew's band,


Kim's take on Mad World and Pokerface(I never knew Kim could sing. And yes, she's good),


the solo performance of When You Say Nothing At All,


and Shadow Of the Day(Linkin Park), which was the last song I witnessed before I went home.

Okay, enough said. Remember, the videos and pictures are here.

Oh yeah! One more thing. Nav says we've collected RM1614 in total! Not bad, eh? That's about... 20 dogs? AWESOME!

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Yellow and Black Stripes

It presented the much required stress relief to me during the exams. Now I share it with the rest of the world. Watch, and feel in awe of

the master of self-defence,

the black belt of ridicule,

the Chuck Norris of India,

the Indian Tony Jaa,

the one and only: RANJINI KHANTH!

And part two:

L is for the way you look at me O is for the only one I see V is very, very extraordinary E is even more than anyone that you adore

L-O-V-E, by Mister Nat King Cole, everyone! *clapclapclapclapclapclap* Ah, the brilliance of the oldies. It's one helluva lot better than the Ashlee Simpson L-O-V-E(even if you do happen to hear me singing it in school, it doesn't mean it beats the oldies), and it should be recognized as so. Especially with the awesome trumpet solo in the middle, which was almost definitely done by a black guy. You see, white guys just don't have the soul to play the trumpet like that.

Anyways, today I was in Yellow Cab with Jeremy, Dylan, and Justin, enjoying our brilliant 18-inch pizza, when suddenly I heard another old favourite. Let's see how many of you know it. It goes:

I'm a-walking in the rain
tears are falling, and I feel the pain
wishing you were here by me
to end this misery
and I wonder wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder why
wa-wa-wa-wa-why she ran away
and I wonder where she will stay
my little runaway

The song is "Runaway" by Atticus. The other day, at Tzi's house, we were singing another pretty old one. Guess:

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree

Yeap, it's "Lemon Tree", as made famous by Fool's Garden. I think it isn't as old as the others, but still. And this one, which'll be the last one I mention here, you may have heard me or Alistair singing in class if you're in W or P.

When I was young Id listened to the radio,
waitin for my favorite songs.
When they played I'd sing along,
it made me smile.

Ta-da. It's Yesterday Once More, by The Carpenters. Alright. That's done, I guess. It's way too hot for me to comfortably continue sitting here and typing. Even with the air-con on. Which doesn't seem to be working.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*