I'll have to postpone my '50 reasons to *heart* Malaysia for the time being.

This is a shock. Another shock that is.

Another lecturer of mine just passed away suddenly this evening at 5.30pm. The information was very hazy, but it was said that she had an accident in the bathroom especially since she just broke her leg last week.

And she is one of the most influential lecturer in the Malaysian veterinary industry, our faculty and the university. We lost another good teacher in the ruminant industry and important large animal sectors.
Many of us remembered her as the coordinator for our Veterinary Medicine, some of our Ruminant Rotations and Morning Rounds, the Timbalan Dekan for Academics few years back and also the supervisor of multitudes of final year projects on ruminants for over 20 years.

And she was selected as one of the finalist for the most excellent lecturer in the country.

In Memory of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Che Teh Fatimah Nachiar Iskandar, whose over 20-over years of experience will never be replaced by another.

May God rest her soul.

Please say a prayer for her, or the Yassin if you are a Muslim.

2007 is definitely a jinxed year. We are losing alot of some of our good lecturers in the faculty lately.

What the hell is going on here?

29. Adult children still exercise filial piety to their parents, upholding our Eastern values despite all the westernization lah, globalization lah, glocal thingy lah. I irk whenever I hear my ang-moh friends calling their parents or older relatives by their first names when I was in Britain. I don't believe in putting your parents on the same level with you since they makan garam lebih dahulu, they deserve more respect since after all, in God's Ten Commandments, we must obey (and thus respect) our parents. Heck, even my dad gave up his beloved 20-year old Mitsubishi so that my late granpa can use it for his hospital trips back in my kampung. People who stepped over their parents, are in for that thing called 'tulah' or bad luck and bad reputation for the rest of their lives.

28. Most taxi drivers here (except for the few ceke~k darah wan) are pretty talkative and easy to talk to. I just got to know this afternoon about a glimpse of the life of one who was an ex-cop, has a son who's an officer in the Health Ministry and constantly brings his parents to East M'sia, admires pretty Sabahan sino girls and likes to eat seafood in KK and the foodstall areas in Satok, Kuching. All that in just a 20-minute drive from South City Plaza to my flat! A good customer service rapport lei for Visit Malaysia 2007.

27. Sarawak Rainforest Music Festival! Dammit! After 10 years, I finally got the money to go, but no time to do so! Shouldn't have come back to uni last week... *cries buckets and buckets*

26. We have Seekers, Friday nites in NTV7. Freaky in a way especially when you mix an overreactive imagination and reactions by the 'victim' that sometimes goes overboard. Something like seeing the progress of hysteria or real-life local exorcisms on t.v. though most of the time it was quite lame la especially when they have the host resembling a 'hantu pocong'.

25. I *hearrt* x 1000000000000~~~~ Cameron Highlands especially when travelling in a not-so-big group of vet friends, on a low budget and manage to pull some strings to stay in one of the Boh tea plantations! Especially with all the crazy stuff we did up there. Like driving through that steep beside-the-hill roads going up to our hostel in the dark (! dangerous you know...we only realize how far down they go the next morning), 'professional' photoshoots among the tea bushes, pretending to be tea-pluckers by borrowing their scissor-like collector thingy or go eating strawberries with hot dripping chocolate! Warhhhhhhhhhh....

24. Kancils that super-modifiable (not ah bengs wan!) and healthy on low-income pockets. And also easy to weave through traffic and park in tight spots. Plus it's Malaysian-produced with their own Perodua centers! So easy lah to get spare parts or cheap repairs from these trusted sources.

23. Cheap oil palm cooking oil! Better than spending loads on butter or olive oil just to cook sayur goreng compared to other parts of the world.

22. Never underestimate jungle vegetables. For example 'midin', or also known as Paku Bidayuh which can only be found in the wild especially in secondary jungles. Everytime I try to explain that this plant resembles fern leaves here in Peninsular Malaysia, I always get this weird reaction saying 'You eat ferns?'. But this plant itself could save you from starvation okay. When I was a kid, I like to watch in awe seeing the aunties that went into the small jungle next to my old house carrying empty weaved baskets and coming out around 3-4 hours later with small bundles of 'midin' rolled within banana leaves and tied with strings of roots from a tree. Sedap to cook either with belacan or oyster sauce. The ones in Peninsular are hmmph...how to say...too hard and 'stick'-y, not as soft and gooey like the ones in the East Malaysia.

21. We have gases in tongs instead of gas pipelines like the ones I've seen in Britain. Felt it's more safer since we won't have more risk of leaked gas or exploding homes(unless your rubber stove pipes are faulty la) and easier to control.

20. Raptor watching at that time of the year! Cool-eh, especially when you get to watch up close birds of prey like the Japanese Sparrowhawk at Port Dickson since that place is the closest to Sumatra compared to other points of the country.

Another 19 more to go! Sorry la...busy with the begining of the semester. What to do...final year mah... :D

My centennial post! Yey! Now, continuing with...

39. Processions everywhere! There's the Kuching City Day parade (damn, I really missed it), the Thaipusam kavathi(?)-carrying procession, the Lion dances etc. . Added with all the mini stalls at the side of the road with their own delicacies for sale ... Yammm...

38. The 'mountains and mountains' different traditional kuehs from different races. Will never stop chomping down on one.

37. The country with the most holidays in one year, I think. And every state also have their own individual unique holidays to celebrate the birthday of their Sultan, or Yang Di-pertua, or other ritual-related holidays like Gawai, Keamatan, Deepavali, Thaipusam etc.

36. There has to be one session during the primary school years where kids (usually Primary 1 to 3) will be squatting beside the drain, brushing their teeths after school recess with their little cups while the school dental nurse holds up that teeth prop and demo with the mega-big toothbrush. Love that moment since we get to compare the little cups, which one is the cutest or the biggest, and line 'em up every morning on a book shelf behind class. Oh, and running away and hide somewhere behind the staircase or in the Pusat Sumber during the roll call for the routine dental checkup. How ironic since my mom is also a dental nurse...LoL..

35. Getting to observe wildlife in their natural surroundings or amalgamation of human settlements with the jungle. Where else can you see wild boars and proboscis monkeys going around with their own business except in Bako National Park, or getting to see macaques, porcupines and wild jungle birds in Belum National Park?

34. Cheap computer hardwares and accessories (I'm not talking about pirated CDs arr), and the price trend that keeps on going down every week. Imagine a 1G thumbdrive the price of only RM20-30. Far cry from it's previous price of RM500 a year ago.

33. Badminton. I'm a badminton freak. I'll be glued to the TV during badminton season especially when the men doubles are playing, or rip out the back part of the newspaper that are devoted to badminton. Like China to their athletics, America to their basketballs and baseball, NZ to their rugby, we have badminton on our side. YEah... MAlaysia RULEZ...

32. Ice kacang. Air batu campur. Cendol. Mixed together with mango slices, or nata de cocos, or that buah kamci(?), laici or longans. A must to eat by the roadside or under the zinc shed during a hot afternoon. I love the one near the Batu Lintang Teachers College back in Kuching, they still use that old traditional green ice shaver.

31. A plate of piping hot nasi lemak at 12 midnight or at 8 am in the morning. Each with their own unique sambal, especially like the ones made by a Malay makcik near my flat here in Serdang. Can even tapau, bring and eat it in class to make other people jealous :D.

30. A nice hot cup of Neslo (Nescafe + Milo) to settle in especially after being drenched by the rain.

Another 29 more to go!

Spurred by Life's Legalities challenge on finding what makes Malaysia home despite all the hoohahs going on around here (link) . So here it goes! I'll just put it randomly har...

50. Well, we literally have "summer" throughout the whole year, with the occasional monsoon, haze and fruit season :) . So no need to fork out extra RMs just to buy more jumpers or go to tanning saloons since we can do so here for free!

49. The number one undisputable Kuching KOLO MEE! A whiff of it is enough to make me cry for more, especially the ones with the red pork sauce. Slurrrpz... Add soup, and you have a nice hot bowl of Kolo mee soup!

48. Sarawak Laksa especially the one from the chinese kopitiam near my house. The aunty make it super duper harum and so fresh worrr. Never failed to tapau it back to KL at the end of holidays. Don't challenge me with the crap that Penang or Johor Laksa is better. Sarawak's one is one of a kind, you will never be able to compare it with other laksas.

47. The land of the Durians, Rambutans, Buah Mata Kucing and (confined to Sarawak) Dabais. There's the processed products again...durian dodol, rambutan drink, durian ice cream. Yammm.... Oh, for those who do not know, Dabai is a black-skinned fruit smaller than Ciku and can be found during certain seasons. I never tried eating the whitish content of it (usually people here eat it with salt), but I usually go pick and eat the contents of the seed. Once you taste it, you'll never let go of it.

46. Can you find sago worms anywhere except here? Enuff said. Yeah, they look freaky, but they taste like fish.

45. The constant free buffets and kenduris everywhere. You can even barge in (dengan muka tidak malu) and load up your plate to the fullest and not having to pay a cent for it! Yeah, we Malaysians are food-lovers.

44. Kuching, the land (not cats!) of mega roundabouts the size of a football field with a name that even the 2 metre signboard couldn't fit. Where else can you find a roundabout anywhere around the world with the name "Bulatan Datuk Patinggi Abang Haji Abdillah Bin Datuk Bandar Abang Haji Mohammad Kassim"? (ilham Kenny Sia)

43. Scrunching away on kuaci (sunflower seed) while watching your favourite movie or Chinese/Indian/Malay soap operas on tv.

42. Waking up in the morning hearing to the beautiful tunes of a wild common mynah or occasionally oreoles outside your window sitting on tree tops.

41. Peace. Being able to walk around without worrying of being shot for being different (legally la).

40. How we always to manage to end our sentences with the lahs, kahs, kans, bahs, bohs, wor, or the occassional mixture of other languages. I mean, where else can you hear someone conversing halfway in English and suddenly mix it with a little of Iban, Malay and Cantonese?

next 40 reasons, coming up in the next post.

Verdict for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie?

Hmmm....I'll just give it a 3 out of 5. One point for the cool but very extremely short battle scene at the end (and my bladder just have to scream at that moment..chih..geram).

The rest are, hmm... okaylah, quite bland at some parts, some parts didn't follow the book and some are left hanging without proper explanations. As though something is missing in the overall picture. So much for the hype with the teaser trailers and all. Better not release the details lah here, don't want any movie spoilers :D.

And the movie does not appeal to kids below 12 (obviously since the whole plot is so dark, and some bloody idiotic kids with no parents to discipline them were making so much noise in the front row). Plus, considering today is the premiere, the screening quality at the cinema I went to were...how to say, not up to the par from what you expect from a HARRY POTTER PREMIERE SCREENInG.

Maybe I should have gone with Mark and watch Transformers and oggle over Optimus Prime.

And yes, I'm back in Serdang. The finale of all years being in UPM.
One year from now, hopefully, I could hold up happily that scroll that labels me as a veterinary surgeon.

It's 07.07.07 today!

Happy license-to-kill-day people! Kill off first by buying 6D number!

Oh... And one memorable note for today. I carried a baby grey gibbon today! So cute wan! Got little black furry 'cap' on top again. And it keep on licking his hand after we fed it Nutrigel. Cuteeeeeeeeeee gila babis! Like a little human baby and his name is Abun!

Yeah, it's a protected species under CITES, and it's currently being under the threat of extinction due to all the loggings around here. So DON'T GO BUY GIBBONS unless you apply for a license from Perhilitan or the Forestry Department to keep one.