an ode to barcardi!

i'm not a virgin anymore. my throat that is, to ultra hard liquors banned in singapore. attended a clubbing event down at metro city called the asian cocktail party. while a healthy turnout of hot asian babes qualified the first part of the event's description, but to me at least, describing the night out as a cocktail party couldn't be further away from the truth....





started the evening with a round of pre-clubbing drinks in my room. the cheap and fast way to get high before clubbing - the poor undergraduate style

somewhere between the games of five-tens, we ran out of coke (by that i mean coca cola), so it was Jack Daniels straight up. not bad for a start. in our stupor, we somehow manage to get our butts down to metro city. the event was really some decent shit. metro is a predominantly r&b club and its niche lie in the fact that they have both djs and professional dancers on the stage to lead the crowd on. last night for example, they got a busker from hay street mall who could do the moonwalk and some pseudo-slow motion steps. by having the teeming masses dance to the rhythmn at the behest of the dancers on stage, it makes the entire clubbing experience seem less of a poseur-ish, insular endeavour (which ostensibly was what i felt when i was at centro back home) than a genuine desire to simply let yourself go and have fun, which is probably why i enjoy mambo night at zouk with all the podium groupie shit.
anyway, the highlight of the evening for me was when i downed my first shot of barcardi 151. i have no idea what it is except the fact that like absinthe, barcardi 151 is banned in singapore. upon googling today, i had the stark realisation that barcardi 151 was actually used for firebreathing. that probably explains why i had a cooling sensation on my hand when i spilled a few drops of barcardi that felt exactly like those alcohol swipes you get before an injection. while sculling the barcardi, it sorta burnt my throat. there was no taste at all, just sensation. i was already pretty tipsy and slightly nauseous before i downed the barcardi so i figured if i was gonna puke anyway, i might as well down the toughest drink available before puking. to my surprise, the burning sensation from the barcardi actually had a sobering effect. it's was like a gradual return to reality from surrealism. for a good 30 minutes i was rather aware of what's going on around me and the nauseous feeling was gone. the kick only start to get in after around 30-45 minutes. i'm not to sure how to describe, it's a somewhat happy feeling, a high without wanting to puke. i have no idea why, but me, shiwei and christopher (who's usually very poised) who all had barcardis that night were just laughing away all night. it's a happy potion, and i like it.
at the end of the night here's the grand tally of what went up my brain.
-lotsa JD
-a bourbon coke
-2 unknown cocktails
-a barcardi 151
-2 tequila shots
i did survive somehow, and managed to head down to city garden for a chinese supper to end an awesome evening.
next stop, green absinthe. for someone like me who has little capacity to quit addictions (my 2 empty cartons of marlboro stand testament to that) and hence huge impetus to avoid drugs (some of which like weed and cannabis are legal in australia), i would say trying a quasi-hallicinogen like absinthe or a happy potion like barcardi 151 offers a compromise between fulfilling my curiosity, getting high while staying within moral acceptability. Stay clean.

margaret river...what river?

streets of margaret river...the town that is

just returned from a short trip down south to margaret river. it was perhaps more of an escapade than a real trip. nevertheless, i can't help but to feel super excited at the prospects of planning out a trip, getting there entirely on our own. it's the process more than the destination that gives the thrill. it's like a field trip kinda thing. as a kid i hardly went on a real excursion without any authoratative guidance. i am a derprived kid it seems....


we rented 3 cars, a hyundai trajet (an station wagon), a black lancer (what we refered to as the 'black stallion' and a hyundai elantra. both hyundais are white so that really made the lancer stand out, notwithstanding the fact that the guys in the black stallion were doing most of the navigating.


the shire....we're back home mr frodo!!!!

so fours hours drive and 300 odd km (50 of which is a result of a 'temporary displacement') later, we reached the promise land. margaret river. the first thing that hit on me was, 'ok, so where's the river?'. well apparantly, margaret river was more of the name of the town than that of a river. there probably is a river, but it's too far out and dun think people usually go there. it's the wine that everyone's here for. after all the chivas, jack daniels and jim beam i had over the past month or so, it's good to try to feel a false sense of sophistication trying to grapple with the essential differences between a merlot, a chardonnay and a sauvignon. to me, it was quite simply 'excuse me, what's the sweetest wine you have?'



lunch at a quintessentially hill-billy country bar

our home for the night



xanadu winery, the first one we visited. left with a whole cask of featherwhite - a sweet white...at an unbeatable A$12.58 per bottle after discount, or so we thought...
lesson to be learnt, limit yourself to a bottle at the first few wineries, there'll always be a better deal.



Second stop, the voyager estate, perhaps the most scenic of all the wineries we visited.


the rose garden of voyager estate


a pleasant surprise after a woeful shower


at the risk of sounding gay, isn't he cute!



the chocolate factory


the cheese factory. it was a great surprise to see 'bubblegum' - a really cute girl from trinity there (whom we unfortunately din get on camera). apparantly her home's here and she's working here during the break. now who says small town girls are all unattractive.

we spoke to an owner of a tea shop. apparantly he had sorta a mid-life crisis some years back and decided to quit his job as a teacher and retire here in margaret river to 'rest and relax' as he calls it. i guess i didn't grow up in a metropolis, i really wouldn't mind a country lifestyle. it's not like all country inhabitants are bumpkins so as to speak. in fact they every bit as sophisticated as the city dwellers, and i would go as far as to say, perhaps more sophisticated in that they could see beyond the mirage of material imperatives in life.


what we did at night. there was hardly any form of nightlife in the town, so the day ended pretty early (by metropolitan standards) with many many rounds of big 2 and bluff.


we dined at a really weird chinese restaurant, the only one here in margaret river. not only is the chef a caucasian, they have fish and chips in their menu...


the trinity gang


the brave 16 (excluding tom the photographer), who risked the 'economy car syndrome', and an addication for wines just to take their minds off assignments and tutorials


goodbye margaret river, hello hangover

if i ever get a burnout from the rat-race which i unfortunately have to face-off with in a couple of years time, i really wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life, living in the countryside, sipping tea in the morning, tilling my vineyard, watching the day go by, watching the sun set, drinking a glass of port after sinfully sumpteous dinner of chicken and mashed potato and then go to bed by nine. but first, i gotta get the dough (farms are actually pretty expensive), and find a wife to feed the chickens, milk the cow and pluck the fruits like all country wives do.... now perhaps i should stick to the simpler life - that of a city slicker.

Go Fucking Mind Your Own Business(TM) !!!

Mind Your Own Business(TM), MYOB(noun):
1. A main source of grief and immense frustration to first year financial accounting students.
2. An assignment based on a totally obsolete accounting software of the same name that not only do not allow your bank accounts to reconcile, it also take you days to do what you normally can complete in an hour. ...nabeh chee bye, how come my cash flow statement don't tally!!!MYOB SUX!!!! *smashes computer*


Pefectly carthatic response to a perfect weekend ruined by this assignment

Alleviation from suffering...that's how it feels to submit that one particular assignment. Hours of entering and re-entering of journal enteries, days of apprehension, weeks of resisting the temptation to simply reformat one's hardisk get rid of that accursed program. Here's a glimpse of the fateful process:



Dun this remind you of a bookie's lair? when the shit hits the fan, true friends are the one thing that you can depend on. Without their support, I might well have been deported from Australia for bashing the brains outta our course coordinator out of sheer frustration.


In my delirious state of mind, i suddenly decided to take a photo of myself which probably can serve as a pretty alternative obituary photo lest i decided to put an end to all that misery that night...

The assignment Juggling Jihad (roughly means struggle in arabic not holy war, courtesy of guest lecturers for political science) isn't over yet. One stats assignment due this friday, and the UN simulation position paper due the following week...i might well join the Muggers' Mujahideen....


THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME GOING ON:

I have a crush on someone. Just an itzy bitzy weeny one. probably the first one since i was eleven....(but that's a different story). Seeing her face brightens my day. Her demure smile, her gamine charm. Her engimatic charima, that at times seems ostensibly the girl-next-door, and at times a gorgeous hermaprodite martial arts exponent. She was the most beautiful thing in the world.

She is Lin Qing Xia (circa 1970s-80s)











I never liked Qiong Yao movies. In fact, I used to cringe in disgust when I was a kid when mom tuned in to some of these Qiong Yao taiwanese tearjerkers. They were totally unrealistic (the male and female protagonists never ever have to work), their storylines are probably more cliched than Bollywood movies (it's usually the long-lost siblings falling in love, only to be separted upon revelation of their incestuous relationship by their promiscuous parents kinda crap - by societal standards then at least)
But Lin Qing Xia might well change all this. Had I know that QY dramas feature such a sweet little thing, i would never have locked myself in my room when ever they watch QY on tv. How i wish i had met Qing Xia (circa 70s-80s) earlier....sigh...
When her presence graces the screen, she brings a totally new dimension to QY dramas, beyond that of being just a 'tear'-jerker...go figure the rest yourself....

Even now, 50 years young, Lin Qing Xia is still probably one of the hottest actresses when age is factored in. She's THE MILF, second perhaps only to Jane Seymour in the 50 y/o MILF category. The anti-thesis to myth that ladies have to be young and nubile to be beautiful . The shining beacon of hope to all young men wallowing in the darkness of their collective Oeidipal Struggles. Respekt to her. That's why I love older women, don't you?