Life is a Circle

Do you know that life is a circle? I know you do, and mine is a much tinier circle. Payday, Pay bills and then wait for Payday again. Today is supposed to be Payday but it does not happen until the end of the day. In the last couple of months, due to some issues with the bank, pay only got in on the 2nd or 3rd of the following month.

Darn, I am so totally broke. Got up this morning, checked the wallet. Enough to get me through the day coz I’ve got only about 10 buckaroos left. I hope some kind friend is reading this and will offer to treat me to lunch and or dinner hee hee. Actually, what can one eat for 10 bucks, actually 8 left, coz I ate fried beehoon for 2 bucks this morning.



Actually, I am glad we live in Malaysia coz with just 8 bucks, I am sure I can survive through the day. Drinks are free, if I drink all my beverages in the office and they do have a large good variety to choose from too as the company is rather generous in stocking up the pantry. I could go over to the nearby food court and order a curry noodles or noodles of any sort as this will only cost 3 bucks and a half or 4.





That leaves me with 4 bucks left. Hey, no worries as there is this great malay stall near my place which sells a large packet of rice with curry, vegetables and beef for 3 bucks fifty. Wow, I still have money left. Now isn’t Malaysia great.





We can actually live on less than 10 dollars a day if we wanted to. But that means no McDs, KFCs or A&Ws and definitely no Pizza Huts. Look at the positive side of things, you get to keep away from the junk food, get into a more healthy eating style and save money. What more can one ask for?

Midweek blues ~~~

If you are an optimistic, you will think, oh half way through the week, another 2 more days to the weekend. If you are dead bored like me, you’d think, oh, only halfway through the week, another 2 more days to the weekend. Notice, same line but different tones haha.

I was listening to the radio on the way home last Monday and heard that the world famous Canadian pro-wrestler Chris Benoit was reported to have murdered his wife Nancy and child Daniel and then killed himself by hanging himself with a weight-pulley machine. Did you know that according to the world’s statistics, there are more males suicides than female suicides. Goes to show either 1) males cannot handle stress as well as the females or 2) males are braver as it takes guts to cut yourself, or jump out of a window or in this case, hang yourself. Whichever the reason might be, this little write-up caught my eye. Look…



Any stamp collectors out there? There are some proposals submitted but I don’t think our government will pass the lot to be made into first day covers.



Sigh… another 2 more days to the weekend…..

Sigh... Monday Morning....

Why is it that I always need a weekend to recover from a weekend… Oh well, a start to a new work week. The only people (if you can call them that) to get me through Monday mornings are Cal and Dil. First thing I do after logging into the PC is to go straight to see what these 2 have been up to over the weekend whilst I was away. Cal never fails to bring a smile to my face and Dil will always have me nodding in agreement at management’s idiosyncrasies.

Cal is short for Calvin. He is an adorable 6 year old kid, who is highly imaginative and with his energetic and sardonic, albeit stuffed tiger toy Hobbes, he has the most wonderful adventures where he transmogrify into dinosaurs and aliens. Calvin
and Hobbes is a comic strip, created by Bill Watterson. This comic strip was syndicated in 1985 but I only got to meet Calvin in the mid 90s when a girlfriend gave me one of his comic books as a Christmas present. I was sold on this little boy from then on. Don’t get me wrong, he is wonderful and cute as long as he stays within that black and white (sometimes colored) frames of the comic strip but I would pity the mothers of little Calvin’s come alive haha. Believe me, he is no angel but neither is he the devil. He is just a typical little boy who will get into all sorts of spills like pushing his mom’s car down the street just to see what happens after it reaches the end of the street. After all these years, Calvin is still the only child. I suppose his parents got wiser after him haha. His dad wanted to have a dog actually.

Dil, or Dilbert is a cartoon for adults as Dilbert’s cartoon strips (creator is Scott Adams) are known for its satirical humor about the white-collared typical corporate office. There are so many characters in the strip that you don’t really have to look too hard to identify your “idiot” colleagues, your “stupid” bosses and “moronic” friends in there. Opps, I am definitely going to get strung up and grilled for this. Ok, Ok.. I even found my egotistical self in there .. everyone feeling better now??

The main character is of cause Dilbert, who is a technology freak. He has a dog named Dogbert but Dogbert is an evil one. He is definitely not Dilbert’s best friend as he treats his master Dilbert like a bumbling fool. The Boss is the boss, and typical of most bosses that we know is every employee’s worst nightmare. Not that he is mean, he is just STUPID (buahahaha). The rest of the gamut of characters in there includes Wally, Alice, Asok, Catbert, Ratbert, etc etc. Go, go. View this site if you live in a workplace like me from 9 to 5 everyday, you’ll need this to keep you sane.



Sigh.. back to work….

There is hope for me YET!

One more post before I begin my weekend…. Just wanted to let the world know that there is still hope for me YAAAHOOO!

Was blog surfing when I came across this Extreme Makeover post. Extreme Makeover was a groundbreaking reality series from ABC in which volunteers receive extensive makeovers. It began airing in 2002 and received overwhelming response from viewers. Not sure if it was a rerun or they were actually doing a new season but I did stumble upon it some time back when I was ASTRO channel surfing during my leave last December but kinda forgot all about it. Yah yah, I know.. beauty is superficial and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.. yada yada yada.. But I can’t help it. There are days when I would give a lot to be beautiful. But I use to say to myself, in another lifetime kid. But there may be help for me just yet ... have a look at these photos…they are so very encouraging.





Hey, what happened to pictures of Guys? Either they are not as vain as the Gals???? Nah.. maybe nothing helps..teehee..no offence Guys... it's Friday :)





A great weekend ya!

A change of flavor :)

It is Friday again and since it is such a great day... let's change the pace a bit hor. No more scary, gory stuff for today. Just something silly, absolutely non provocative.. Just for a laugh or smirk or simply a snigger ( and it might earn me a free ride to Kamunting for an all paid holiday – most Malaysians will know what that is). But being a Friday, I am willing to throw caution into the wind heehee…

A colleague sent me this today and I felt that it was good to share. These are posters of the latest Malaysian movies which will be released in 2007, but I believe the movie censorship board might not approve them for viewing. .





Another dear friend sent me this little comic strip. Click on it to have a larger view.




Have a Great Weekend everybody!!!

Hauntings and Disturbances….

Wow, how strange. After the post on fear and ghosties two days ago, I met a lady at a dharma bookshop yesterday. I noticed that she was buying heaps of dharma books, CDs, amulets and what have you. She had very tired eyes. She was talking to the proprietor of the shop and I kind of KPC-ly (inquisitively) slid over to where she was to hear what she was saying. Ha Ha .. .this is different from eavesdropping as the lady could tell that I was very obviously listening to what she was saying.


Her stories sent goose bumps all over my body. She told us how she has gone to various priests of all faiths, monks, samis and bomohs but to no avail. These men of faith have beaten her, shouted at her, pulled her hair in their attempts to get whatever that they thought was inside her to leave her body. Many have asked her to do all sorts of rituals. According to her, she will experience only temporary relief. A few days later, the disturbances will start again. She even took trips away from Malaysia for long periods of time and when she comes back, the disturbances will return.


I asked her about her latest encounter and she told me that apart from all the stuff rattling and moving on their own in her house, which had scared pretty much everybody away, including family members and her maid, the latest incident happened when she was coming out of her car. Since everyone has left her, there was no one to help her carry her groceries from her car back to her house. Out of sheer frustration, she said aloud with hands full, “Now everyone has left me, how am I going to carry all these stuff and lock my car” and suddenly, her car door closed and the locks clicked. When she got inside her house, she commented aloud “Why are you so nice to me now? What do you want?”

Three days ago, she started to hear a voice inside her head. This voice told her to get out a bucket of water, put salt, and several other things and mop the house down. Apparently for no reason other than acting out the command of the voice, she did. After that, the voice told her to take rice and salt and throw it around the house. Again she did. According to her, since that ritual, she has had peace the last two days but she is not sure how long it will last.

My only effort to help her was to set up a meeting for her with one of my senior dharma brothers. I know very little about ghosts and spirits but I know enough that they do exist, whether we admit to it or not. Now how to handle them, I am at a loss. I have been told that these spirits, good or bad probably want only one thing… to be happy and to be released from their present sufferings. Being a person of Buddhist faith, I believe that there are probably deeds and actions which we can take to assist these spirits. The meeting will take place sometime this week… Watch this space as the story continues…….

In the Dead of the Night .........

I was reading the post of one of my dharma friends in our Lama’s forum. She wrote about her family members and friends having the abilities to see ghosts. I don’t deny the existence of spirits, ghosts, energies and the 4th dimension of space and time. But I also believe that most of us do not have this ability “to see ghosts”, not that we want that kind of ability. But I believe that in the moment when joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, hate or desire arises, wisdom is cut off. Emotion turns wisdom into false thinking (Flower Adornment Sutra).


I remember the time when 4 of us were still in University in Australia. It was a dark, dark night. I think it was the horror season on TV. After dinner, at about 8pm, we 4 girls decided to get cozy in the TV room to watch Salem’s Lot. Come to think of it, the show was not exactly that frightening. The TV lounge had only 2 bulbs of 40Watts coz the others had fused and we’ve forgotten to buy replacements. So, the mood was really set for a good horror movie.

Half way through the show, one of the girls heard some rustling from the back of the house. That was probably what started it all. Then, we heard a scratching sound on the glass window in the TV room. All hell broke loose and we started to scream, whimper and virtually scare ourselves silly. The bravest one of us went out to the corridor with the rest of the cowards tagging behind, made for the phone and called up a guy Uni-mate who lives not far from us. He came rushing to our house with some of his friends thinking that we girls were probably going to be robbed and raped. His furious knockings on our front door actually started another bout of screaming until we heard his voice calling “Can you all Shut the F**K up and let us in”.



After going through the back yard, we found nothing except 2 empty garbage bags which were rolling around in the wind. This was accidentally left there by my idiot housemate coz she was mowing the backyard that afternoon and probably forgot to pick them up. The scratching on the window turned out to be a dead branch from the tree that must have fallen due to the sudden wind (which also accounted for the rustling of the garbage bags). Well, so much of the undead from Salem’s Lot materializing at our backyard and front porch.

See, it all started from the emotion called fear and it slowly grew and grew until wisdom flew out of the window. Thinking about it now, it would have been more scary and dangerous if what was out there was human and its objective was to hurt. I suppose some people may consider ghosts to be evil too because they have more negative energy than positive, but it does not necessarily mean they want to harm people in the physical form. They most likely want to generate fear and let the human do the rest. Most harm or hurt comes to people who let this fear take over. So, if ever anyone of you think that you are in the presence of a ghostly situation, take control of your emotions and tell yourself… actually humans are more fearful and scary than ghosts. Have a look at yourself in the mirror in the mornings after a few beers the night before or for me, on a bad hair day morning eeeekkkk !

Planting dharma seeds :)

The weekend started with a wonderful book club meeting with my Lama (Guru), Tsem Tulku Rinpoche. It was as usual, a really great session and dharma talks by Rinpoche are always, always mind blowing. He talked about how happy and proud he was of his students at the recent Book Fair in Singapore and also the Buddhist Cultural & Arts Festival at the MINES. Have a listen at http://www.rinpoche.tv/ . The video is entitled “The Chart”. Fantastic!



He also talked about how each of us puts in 1 hour a day on our dharma practice and spends the rest of the 23 hours of the day in non-dharma practices like working, sleeping, eating, doing business, having fun, etc, etc and yet questions how come we do not see our minds transform. Put into that perspective, most would realize how ignorant and clouded our minds have been. So few of us ever sees the opportunities our Lama has given us to practice in meritorious environments. The talk ended at 3am in the morning and every minute spent in the presence of such a wisdom being is such good fortune to the listener.

Saturday & most part of Sunday were spent doing the routine stuff. At 3:30pm on Sunday, my friend David called and asked if I could get him tickets for the musical “The Perfect Circle”. Ahhh.. finally somebody has responded to my email and sms to getogether for this show. It is a musical production on Buddha, Karma & Samsara and Compassion (the Buddhist perspective).



David has brought his family up from Singapore for the school holidays and was thinking of spending some quality time with them as opposed of just letting them shop ‘til they dropped. Through James, a friend and his connections, David got his
tickets at this late hour (must be his good karma). I found the musical very interesting and entertaining. I found out later that David and his wife were not mandarin speaking; so much was lost as they could not understand the interview with Venerable Man Ya. Their 2 girls, Kimberly and Cassandra (11 and 9 years old) found the most part of the show a little bit daunting but they really like the dances. Well, this is what “planting the seeds of dharma” is all about. This family is going to go back to Singapore, carrying with them Buddha, Avalokitesvara, Tara and many more. How wonderful.

Orbs.... whatzat??

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orb, there are many references made to Orbs, ranging from astrology, to software to a Nintendo game. But what I was looking for was Orb (paranormal) – a phenomenon that can be seen by some people with the naked eye, though more usually are captured on camera, considered by some to be paranormal and by others to be caused by the camera flash reflecting off dust.

What brought this on was when I was taking photos during my Bazi graduation class some time back. I managed to capture these circles of ?? on my digital camera. When I showed them to my classmates, it meant different things to different people. I did a little bit of research on this and found out that they were normally referred to as “orbs”. Searching through the web, I found tonnes of references made on orbs. Of coz being one who loves the unconventional, I leaned heavily on the paranormal where the orbs are referred to spirits, ghosts, positive energies. These are a couple of websites which I thought was tremendously interesting

…. One of the leading theories concerning what orbs are and the one that I lean towards the most is that they are not the spirit at all. The orb is the energy being transferred from a source (i.e. powerlines, heat energy, batteries, people, etc) to the spirit so they can manifest. This may not even be a conscious thing the spirit is doing, just a natural way they get their energy. This would explain why the orbs are round balls. According to the laws of Physics energy being transferring like that would assume is natural shape of a sphere. This theory can also be tied into the EMF readings we get during spirit activity. http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/orbs.htm, .

…. Orbs are believed (by many) to be ghosts in the form of balls of light. They are life forms that travel in groups and are believed to be the human soul or life force of those that once inhabited a physical body here on earth. http://www.ghoststudy.com/a_what_are_orbs.html.

All these were forgotten for a while until last Sunday at the MINES. While I was reviewing all those godzillion photos that I took of Amber Chia, I noticed one turned out very dark. And on it was one of those orbs. Some of my friends became very excited about it. Again the same questions came. Are these orbs spiritual in nature? Are they positive energies (or negative)? Or were they just specks of dust on my camera lens? Go figger.

BLOOD!!!

Unless you are a vampire or an aspiring vampire, this might not interest you much. Or so many of us think.


I had lunch with a friend last Sunday and she asked me if I knew exactly the state of my health by just looking in the mirror. Well, I know that my health could be better, considering that I am “round” at the moment. Apparently, a person might look very athletic and slim, but he could be far from healthy. So, I asked her short of getting a full fitness and health check by the doctor, how can I tell if I am ok? She said “Let your blood tell you”. Hello, how do I do that? Cut my hand, let the blood flow and wait for it to talk to me?? She told me to meet her up at Taman Mayang Emas the following evening and she will introduce me to my blood and let it “talk to me”.

We met on Monday evening. She introduced me to this nutritionist and without so much as a how are you, glad to see me… she “jabbed” me. Ha Ha..no lah. Seriously, she took a pen like thingy and just gave my finger a quick prick. Didn’t feel anything really. Drew a small drop of blood that would not even have drowned an ant, put in under a microscope and wallah.. saw this beautiful picture on the TV screen. Apart from a slight bit of cholesterol, the normal attack of free radicals… I am a rather healthy “round” person. Now, ain’t that a relief. I am so glad that I had this “conversation” with my blood. At least now that I know, I will continue to take care of me and make sure that I eat right, sleep right and exercise right.

Actually, it is true that you blood can tell you so much about your health. Check this out http://www.unomaha.edu/hpa/blood.html

Hey…ROUND is a shape too, you know :{

As I was leaving for the office yesterday evening, a guy from the next office also waiting for the lift with me asked “How many months pregnant are you?’. OUCH! & all the other colleagues turned and stared. Hey.. I know for a fact that I AM NOT PREGNANT. So, I answered him “I am NOT pregnant… just FAT lah!”. Hrumph!


As I was driving back, I thought to myself… I must be really putting the kilos on and lately I must admit that climbing up a flight of stairs does have me slightly winded. So, the minute I got back, I ran to the mirror and looked at myself … opps, I did look “kinda” pregnant if I viewed myself from the side. Hey, no lah..I just looked kinda ROUND. Round is not out of shape.. coz round is a shape what. Sigh… Ok lah round is a shape but not a very nice one on the body.

Decided to buck up, packed my shoes, and headed for the gym.. which I have not been for ages. Left my handphone in the locker and had a dozen missed calls. Called, sms-ed and told everybody later that I did not pick their calls coz I was in the gym.. Most laughed and some say “oh yeah? Tell the truth lah.. where are you?” Sigh.. my friends know me so well. Perhaps round is good shape to have after all… Sure beats looking like this …….

Tsem Tulku Rinpoche .. most kind, most precious teacher ~~~

Last evening was my first time attending the Book Club Cell Group audience with my Guru, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche. The truth be told, I did not know exactly what to expect. I have finished reading the book Dragon Thunder, My Life with Chogam Trungpa but when my Cell Group buddies were throwing questions around during our own little meet before the audience with Guru, my mind was BLANK! Sh*t.. I started chanting the mantra “Don’t let Guru call on me…Don’t let Guru call on me…”. Food has always been my weakness but those delicious Dunkin’ Donuts lost all appeal to me last nite.

Our audience with Rinpoche was supposed to be at 8pm sharp but one of the Cell Group members was late as he was caught in the terrible traffic coming in. Fu*k. This is going to be a lousy start for sure. Finally, all were present and Rinpoche was informed that we were ready. Rinpoche started off with a little prayer and then he launched into a dharma talk before reference was made to the book. By the way, all these are recorded and if you are interested, you can view all these at http://www.rinpoche.tv/.

As the nite progress, we did touch on the book (a little) but the beauty of all of these audiences with Rinpoche is that he tailors each and every session according to the collective Karma of the group. We were “stupidly” expecting him to hold our hands and walk us through the book. But yesterday evening, Rinpoche chose to introduce us to beautiful Vajrayogini. Our center’s name Kechara House was Rinpoche’s intention to set up Vajrayogini’s Paradise on earth for all his students and everyone else who would want to connect with her.



It is just not possible to do her justice here as there is so much to tell about her. Rinpoche in his kindness gave us the opportunity to view her in the next room and pay our respect to her. To see her is to love her (Rinpoche was so right… I am beginning to feel like a traitor to Tara. Another story that one haha). When the evening ended (ahem morning actually as we ended our audience with Rinpoche at 3am this morning), again Rinpoche in his great compassion and kindness presented us (newbies, the name He gives to new students) with Vajrayogini Tsa Tsas (hehe wouldn’t you want one too), VCDs and books.

Wow, air-con, drinks, chocolates and best of all Dharma…what more could anyone want? I am sold. I am going to insist on being a life member to Kechara’s Book Club meets.

WOW... what a weekend for me :)

WOW… it really has been a fantastic weekend. The activities happening were just unbelievable. It started on Friday evening, despite the rain, the feeling was fantastic. Went off the minute the whistle blew at 5:30pm for work to end for the day. Rushed over to SS2 to pick up some friends and headed straight for the MINES. Did I make that sound like we were there at the wink of an eye?

Actually we were stuck in the after hour jam for almost 2 hours before we reached the MINES. Upon reaching the MINES, I have 3 nice friends who quickly volunteered to be my “models" for the nite. There was soooo much to see (haha.. for those you who missed it all, I feel soooo sorry for you. Maybe next year). My friends Mitra, Rajendra and Maggie..these are for you dearies .


On Saturday, it was rushing here and there in the day time, running errands, paying bills, doing groceries and all that was after doing house chores. The day just flashed by..but by the evening, finally, managed to put my feet up (sorry, cannot coz the guy in front of me would have amputated them off), paid 42 bucks and laughed myself silly watching the antics of my fav Aflin Shauki, Rashid Salleh, Douglas Lim, amongst the few at Actorlympics (haha..again, for those of you who missed it all, I feel doubly soooo sorry for you! Maybe next round)http://www.theactorsstudio.com.my/.

Sunday morning…woke up in a flash as I knew that this would be a long but exciting day for me. Boiled water, feed the dogs, the sugar gliders, steamed up a char siew pow, and rush off to do my volunteering work at DMT (please refer to my previous post). A rather slow morning there as people were either in church, in the temples, at the MINES or arrgggghhh… in bed. By about 2 pm, decided to be my own customer. Picked up a book, paid 60 bucks and decided to cop out of there and headed to the MINES instead. Once there, WOW.. the first person I met there was WWWWWOOOOOOWWWWW…Amber Chia. She is soooooo pretty. Took like a million shots of her but will only post one here… just to tempt you. When she came over to our Kechara booth, she almost started a stampede. The people were going “Amber, Amber, Amber”.. a new mantra?? She so kindly allowed us to take photos of her and with her.. some of the guys almost swooned when she flashed that pretty smile at them. When she left for the next booth, everybody was still talking and talking about her. We were so lucky to have her stop by and these were all thanks to our Rinpoche’s 2 students, Eric Choong and Bill Keith, who are close friends of Amber. As usual, our most kind and most precious Rinpoche had his assistant Jenny, present gifts to Amber for her visit to our booth.



I heard that the festival should have come to an end at 6pm but due to the tremendous response from the crowd, the organizers decided to extend it until 9pm. But we were there, with some other exhibitors until about 10pm. If they has let us stay, we would have stayed the entire nite til morning. But then all good things have to come to an end. Geez, what a beautiful end to a beautiful weekend … mmmm (sigh of satisfaction).