Freeloading: Epilogue - The Now

It has been a long, long week. However, it has been much longer for some of us. Some that have been through longer weeks. Longer struggles. Longer dedications. This is the story that not much has privilege to. Not the story of the Infamous Rockstar. But the story of

Freeloaders Inc.

This time the Infamous Rockstar’s taking a back seat.

*Awaiting the pictures to come from various sources! Bear with me, lads!*

P.S: I should be watching Iron Man in an hour’s time, providing that there IS a sneak preview. But no. Someone had to be born tomorrow.

Carpet Bombing

Always wondered why they decided on carpet. Started understanding the term when I see old films of whole towns/cities getting decimated with semi-precise nukin’s. However, that’s not what I want to talk about in this post. The reason I named this post as such is because I’ve got loads of stuff to talk about.

Honestly, I respect V’s advice to Wing Hoh regarding blog-posting/essay writing but I think I prefer a bare-all, balls-out approach. And thus, I begin!

The Promised Dash

Strangely enough, I AM still playing Cabal. It’s probably almost been a month now since I started and I think I’ve advanced pretty far. I’ve pretty much left all the kids and noobs behind me in Desert Scream/Green Despair/Bloody Ice and went on to Port Lux. So far I’ve attained my Battle Mode 2 – Grappler mode which gives me Wolverine-like claws that let me 1 Hit KO any poor sap that ticks me off. Providing that I am in a Player Kill channel.

Bah, enough of this Cabal jargon, on with the screenshots!

In my Silk Martial set. Seems like so long I was sitting there in Desert Scream



Just seemed like a really cool screenshot to take



This just looks epic...



Fast forward 20 levels, here I am in sunny Port Lux with an Epaulette of Guard +4



Take a good look at the Bluestin armour

Oh yeah~ Digital hotness. I have to give credit when it’s due. The Koreans know how to please MMORPG fans out there. Guess that’s another Asian country that’s gonna be well-known for something. China for being huge consumers. Japan for their anime/manga/ hentai. Malaysia with piracy and S’pore with their “there’s something in my rear end” uptightness. And now, Korea, for producing one huge ass amount of MMORPGs.

As you can see from the little words above my avatar’s head, yeah, I have joined a guild. Seems to be a fad catching on with MMORPGs these days. WoW with their raiding parties and Guild Wars with their, well, guilds. The Osmium Faction has been treating me nicely so far. Really funny bunch of people with quirks. They take care of their own people and shit but from what I saw from the “Retirement” thread at their official forum, there are people who get shunned aside (intentionally or not, I have yet to come to a conclusion) but what I could tell from the guys reaction to the Captain’s replies was that he was a punk-ass bitch.

*cough*

Next~

Seafood, Coconut Flower and Unker Lam Hong

Recently Unker Lam Hong came over to Sunway and took me and my brother to have a seafood meal somewhere in a god-forsaken place known as Tasik Gong. According to him, it used to be famous for the seafood (which was FUCKING amazing) and their “patented” Coconut Flower fermented coconut alcoholic beverage.

I don’t know how one would react to the thought of fermented coconut drinks, but trust me, it reeks of hell. It smells like piles of garbage with at least a week’s worth of thrown away food, left in the rain for days to rot. It’s THAT bad. And my uncle downed like the whole bottle, mixed with some Guiness beer. Urgh. Nasty ass shit.

Good Friends Seafood Restaurant - In the middle of freakin' nowhere



I wouldn't expect much grammar in such a place =P



The freakin' "Coconut Flower" alcoholic beverage. Yeech...



Had a li'l PLAIN coconut for afters



Was bored so I stuck a whole bunch of toothpicks in my coconut

Note to self: Never try fermented drinks. EVER. AGAIN.

Working On My Left Brain

I’ve been meaning to cram some form of literature/music into my head again after awhile of listening to mind-numbing man-made beats of the Step Up 2 OST so I went around the 7th floor and grabbed everyone’s playlist. Oddly enough, only Swedish melodic death metal, something rock and pop rock made it into my playlist. Namely, In Flames, John Mayer and OneRepublic.

You might be going, “WTF, death metal?” No, seriously, it’s not always about self-mutilation, death, drugs, booze and worshipping Satan. This… well, so far, no. Or maybe in the past, In Flames has done such things but the stuff I’ve been listening to is tight. Yes, he sings like he’s screaming for his life but overall, it’s tight.

A solid album. 5/5 Nuff' said, bitches!

John Mayer… Never expected me to listen to him. I do surprise myself. All I have to say is that his songs are excellent for late-night drives and a li’l R&R. OneRepublic… I WILL classify it as pop rock but their album is solid. Nothing cheesy, very talented people in that band. Stop and Stare, which is probably on the verge of being overplayed is of course, tight. All Fall Down, Mercy and the original Apologize is just… amazing. Well-thought and composed. Another album excellent for night time driving and for chilling.

Will find time to engross myself in it



NSA's dirtiest secrets almost gets spilled!

Now for the literature part. I finished Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress a few weeks back. Amazing stuff, I must admit. I just bought Deception Point but can’t really find the time to read it. Pity pity. However, I did manage to pick up 2 Iron Man titles that I had my eye on for quite some time, one post Civil War and the other pre-Extremis, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D and Hypervelocity respectively.

Hypervelocity - One of the freakiest and high-octane IM stories I have read

Director of S.H.I.E.L.D focuses mainly on how Stark has been handling a military super organization as a company, the rise of an old enemy and grotesquely gruesome art. Phew… Amazing stuff. Hypervelocity… is one heck of a story. For some sick strange reason I fell in love with the Absynthe character in the story. She may some masochistic, suicidal and pierced chick but somehow, that really, REALLY turned me on. I must have a fetish for chicks like that. Damn.

Phew. End of the line. Long ass post, I know. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Peace out y’all.

P.S: Check me out at Monash Street Carnival on the 26th of April.

Breakfast Table Conversations

I’ll have to confess that I do have interesting conversations with my mum during the mornings, despite the fact that she’s usually a complete klutz and resorts to hare-brained ideas to get through the simplest situations. But, I digress.

She was telling me how pissed my brother (who is currently pursuing MUFY, the crash course version, March intake, for god knows why) was because during his mid-term break, which was supposed to be a month long, has been reduced to mere cinders. 1 week. 4 weeks to 1 week. If it was CIMP, I’d be like, fuck yes. But MUFY, damn… as of now, a gross and graphic comparison fails to jump out of my head so I’ll leave you ex-CIMP-ians to mock the other pre-u/foundation programmes for being, well, themselves. Lame.

NGYAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

*cough* *cough*

Damn haze…

Anyways, the reason he’s staying back is because of the LAN classes. Or the Sejarah classes. History, for the non Malay-educated. 3 weeks of that bull. Damn man… and then the conversation veered into the interesting part. I made a statement that would land me right next to the HINDRAF leaders if I wrote this down here. But let me just give that little spark to your mind to ignite the idea. The majority of what we learnt in Sejarah. SEJARAH, the subject, not HISTORY. Remember? In the middle of it all. The long-winded articles… Oh god. I can’t bear the brunt of that again.

*ahem*

Anyways, it’s like this. How did Sejarah mess up History? Was it the content? Maybe, you tell me. I’ve heard the same stories from Shakir, Rushdi and Taqi and it doesn’t sound like baloney. Was it the presentation? Fuck yeah.

A HUMONGOUS FUCK YEAH

See here… give me a tome of things that would be remotely interesting, I’d have used it to whack all the teeth outta your mouth and feed them to your mum. Give me a movie, or even a well-written story about those things in the tome and I’ll kiss you on the forehead. But not your mum. I don’t love your mum that much.

POINT IN CASE! I MEAN, CASE IN POINT!

Sistine Chapel? The Vatican? Who the hell is that? Is that a new Halo expansion? Noo… Those things are one of the most important things to Christians. I think. Spare thee if thou art wrongeth. Anyways, it’s something like that la. How did I learn this? How did people even start noticing without watching National Geographic or the Discovery Channel? Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code. Angels and Demons. Two tomes of facts and incredible story-telling rolled into one. People started getting interested. People started LEARNING, motherfucker!

See?! It works! Now, that was a case of putting something BORING into an INTERESTING media. How about putting something INTERESTING into a form of BORING media? What would be a good example… maybe, a text book? No colours, no pictures, no little pop-ups. I doubt there’s such a thing out there but imagine, your favourite superhero, saayy… Batman. Okay, that’s the DC side. Umm, Spiderman, from the Marvel side. Superman doesn’t count ‘cause he’s a cunt. And so is Tom Welling. There, I said it. Hit me.

Alright, let’s put aside the insults. Say, the history and fictional biographies of these characters were put into text books. Paragraphed, in point form and graphs. Jesus, mate. That’s like a nightmare, innit?

So, my point is that… No, not that boring things can be interesting if represented in an exciting way. Wait, that IS a good point. Okay, take that one. But the ONE point I was trying to get across is that the Malaysian education (or any other country’s, for that matter) need to ante up their game and start making learning fun! Alright, that sounded clichéd. Do keep in mind, I’m trying to stay out of jail so just imagine all those words coming outta my mouth in all my swearing glory. There you go. Wasn’t that hard now, was it?

Thanks for reaching this point. =D

On other matters, the post-Cultural Night event update that I promised will have to be cancelled. Seems that one must be discreet when in possession of such knowledge. So, whatever that may come next on Beneath the Thorns will probably the same old rantings and a dash of Cabal, as always.

Peace out y’all!

Colours of The World - Pure Photo Post

Hot off the press! More like hot off the download tray. Anyways, got my hands on some of the Cultural Night pics and decided to post it quick before I decide to procrastinate! Credit goes to Fathima for providing these pics.

Here we go~!

Me and Rahul had to ruin this photo



Shradda performed some Spanish songs that night and the photos are Fathima's



The gorgeous ladies of 701 - Piumi, Nix and Nabilah



The MCs for the night - Shazwan, the rundy, some other Malay chick and Rushdi, the baap of the night



Security guys can have a sense of humour, right? =D



Ajabu, Nabilah and Taqi



Joshua, the Punjabi crooner... Heh heh heh...



My boss for the night, Nizmi



Probably the 1st time Rikaz smiled that night



Ah, finally a proper picture

Done and done, motherfucker! Well, that was easy. Hope you enjoyed those photos.

Peace out y'all!

Colours of The World

I suppose that was the tagline intended for the Monash Cultural Night ’08. Yours truly was on board the event, serving as part of the security crew. As some of you may remember, I was in the security crew last year. Wasn’t the best experience but a free event remains a free event. This year, the head of security was Nizmi and he had a more strict and professional method than Abhid’s last year. I have to admit I enjoyed the job a lot more last year than this, considering that I had done so much scoping last year of the gorgeous guests.

This year, for some reason that only god knows, he put me in charge of the freakin’ projector. I wonder why. All I had to was to make sure that people don’t touch the equipment around the area. Let’s not get into details what I had to do and what I did, but in the end, the junk over there was still working.

Here’re some pictures of the Sunway MPH (Yeah, Monash kinda “borrowed” it for the night) after the décor team was 80% done with it.

The right side of the MPH, covered with blue/turqoise and green cloth over dangling lights



Projecter screen for those sitting behind. Chairs haven't been arranged yet



A closer look at the decor



Half-designed stage, brill lighting props!



Kinda dark but the amps and drum kit's somewhere there!



Rikaz thought it'd be hilarious to label Rushdi as the "baap" of the night

I have to say that Monash DEFINITELY spared no expense on the décor, lighting, sound and equipment. They told me the figures and boy, was I impressed. The MCs for the night were Shazwan and Rushdi and their “MC partners” for the night were uh, some covered Malay chick and a non-covered chick by the name of Anita. And damn, that Anita chick is one bitch. I’m probably being judgmental and biased but shit, her voice makes me wanna slap her and bury her alive after a joy ride on a rocky road in my Vios’ trunk. Or in Taqi’s words, “Slap her? Shit, I’m going to choke that bitch”. Hilarious and straight to the point as usual. Anyways, some performances were okay like the dances by Indian and Bangladeshi performers and some were just spectacular, like the opening act, which consisted of 20-odd Malay guys and girls that look like they graduated from high school. I don’t really know the name of the performance but there were some of those old Malay instruments and all of them were sitting down either clapping/dancing or playing the instruments. There’s this one dude that struts around singing the main lyrics.

Some… were just plain horrible. Africa’s ONLY performance was in the form of a “rapper” named Ken, I believe. Since he was the only guy to turn up for the auditions, they kinda had to take him. He was horrible during rehearsals and worse during the show itself. I bet these guys put him as the 2nd act so they can just get rid of him quickly and make up with the good stuff. He came on stage dressed like LL Cool J meets Akon. Sleeveless, bling larger than your head and shades that could only belong to a pilot. Putting aside the wannabe appearance, all you could hear from the performance were the words “Yeah” and “Okay”. Nuff’ said.

There was this Indonesian or Thai interpretive dance of a boy’s journey to manhood. I don’t understand one bit about that. Another was an Indian CLASSICAL VIOLIN act. I believe that they do have a violin-like instrument but it definitely didn’t look it on stage.

AND of course. The most surprising act of all time. Possibly in the history of all Monash Cultural Nights out there, is this. A guy called Joshua. Possible middle-aged and balding but I exaggerate. He came up on stage, dressed in a traditional Punjabi/Indian/one of those fellas punya suit and started belting out a hit Punjabi song.

I swear. All my friends that understand Punjabi says it’s the real deal and they know the song. He sang it perfectly, lyrics-wise. Guess what? He came THIRD among all the other performers. There were at least 10-15 acts the whole show and he came THIRD! Now that’s the real shit right there, son!

Now the bitching starts. I’ll make it short.

It’s the job of the security to go tell people to sit down, keep quiet and all that crap, innit? But some people have their heads up their asses so far up that they fail to see that. I’m telling you that the 1000 strong crowd at the event were assholes. You can ignore the security at least but being condescending is just plain asking for it. Not only that, when food was given to them, and they didn’t like it, guess what they did? Yeap, they threw it all over he ground. The MPH has never been this dirty, not even during Sri Lankan New Year when games involving flour and water and all sorts of junk are used. When the dance floor was opened, people were slippin’ and sliding all over the place ‘cause of the oil from the mee goreng and nasi lemak. Huge dick move by Monash to give out food to guests.

All in all, the show was great and although we all stayed back until 3 AM cleaning up the mess that those cunts made, it was a good day.

Too bad I can’t attend the next but hey, never say never.

Gonna talk about some after-event happenings in me next post and a dash of Cabal as well, since the number of people that I know playing it is growing.

Alrighty then. Peace out y’all!