palma non sine pulvere

course paper, examination, interview and presentation. due date : august 6th 2008. i have been dedicating many hours recently in producing my perfect version of "tenant mix and its critical success factors". the subject might appear easy but since the industry itself couldn't find any explanation academically, i'm having a hard time coming up with my own.

i remembered having a discussion with two consultants from the land down under two years ago. they came, presented a paper and left us all in the boardroom that afternoon in awe. as for myself, i couldn't help but think that for the past 30 minutes all they ever taught was simply nothing. can you ask someone from a different country to teach you of how to wear a sarong when they have only been in contact with the sarong a mere two years ago, and yet you are going to pay them my-one-year salary?

they mentioned about our shopping behavior, impulsive vs planned, catchment area and all that textbook shit.

quaecumque vera

drunk chipmunks

The human species now has drinking partners.

German scientists have discovered that seven species of small mammals in the rain forests of western Malaysia drink fermented palm nectar on a regular basis. For several of the species, including the pen-tailed tree shrew, the nectar, which can have an alcohol content approaching that of beer, is the major food source — meaning they are chronic drinkers.

Frank Wiens and Annette Zitzmann of the University of Bayreuth were separately studying two of the species, including their eating habits. They discovered that the nectar of the bertam palm becomes fermented by yeast carried on the flower buds.

The pen-tailed tree shrew, in particular, takes advantage of it. By watching the animal and analyzing fur samples, the researchers estimated that the tree shrews consumed enough alcohol that they had about a 36 percent chance of being intoxicated (by human standards). But the researchers never saw any signs of inebriation, and from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes no sense to be drunk anyway. With predators all around, Dr. Wiens said, “it’s just too risky for an animal.”

The findings, reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the tree shrews and other animals have some efficient means of metabolizing the alcohol. The findings also suggest there must be benefits to having chronic low levels of alcohol in the bloodstream — otherwise the behavior would not have evolved.

Those benefits may be psychological, Dr. Wiens said, perhaps enabling the animals to cope with stress of some sort. Further studies to determine the benefits may help in understanding humans’ relationship to alcohol, he said. And since tree shrews are similar to species that were precursors of primates more than 50 million years ago, studying their alcohol use might also provide some evolutionary background for human drinking, he added.

It's Always Happy Hour For Several Species in Malaysian Rainforest
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Published: July 29, 2008

black coffee is an aphrodisiac

1. a friend got so horny after being scolded. and i thought to myself, is the world getting weirder or have i been abducted by some jellyfish alien in my 4th stage sleep, lost my motor skills thus experiencing amnesia, no longer approve that the world is always a weird place?

2. this feels like experiencing premature ejaculation on a first date, how frustrating can that be? don't give me that look. no raising eyebrows or mouth-gaping moment please. this is the best i could think of right now to convey the shit in my head. i'm bored.

3. sent my car for a quick shower just to brave the heavy rain that late afternoon. and from that shiny rearviewmirror, i can clearly say the guy behind me is having the time of his life. stop picking your nose like you've just lost your wedding ring in it, you idiot!

and yes, boredom is the key to the lock in your mind. crazy shit, rite?

territorial pissings

what do all the following movies have in common?

i. singles
ii. slackers
iii. reality bites
iv. sleep with me
v. kicking and screaming
vi. before sunrise & before sunset?

all of them revolve around the lives of twentysomethings. the struggle to find a place within the community only to feel like turning up like a bad penny. the misfits of their generation. the appreciation of arts and music, when getting involve in arts and music means you're either lazy or stupid. circa 1990's.

i do have a unique bunch of friends. will share the evolution and the poetic nature of my friends. after all, you are the company that you keep.

who wants to be an early bird?

enveloped in a pop-culture on weekdays, i'm behaving like someone who would really appreciate those videos of booty-shaking and fake rains. a business-handshake believer, i nod like some characters on acid trip in that "fear and loathing in vegas". more like an entertaining parrot. wish i could live my life like it is saturday, every day. hate sundays because it feels like shit knowing that tomorrow is a day called monday. don't feel cheesy blues songs is for me but they just love me. can't not value the emotional swing it carries. wish to wake up with no worries, not a single care of what is going to happen to me, my job, this world or anything. get a cup of coffee, good movies and some munchies so that i don't have to step out of the house.

can't do that, can i? would love to go people-watching whenever i'm free. whenever the setting of a july sun seem to fly me back, to the meaningful silence. to the days when silence speaks louder than words. to the days when ugly truth is not an oxymoron.

my wishlist is getting taller. but i'm one of those who hates to plan. to work on it. not sad, nor am i anything. it's like ping-pong.

i wonder, is starting a band one of employment opportunities available to us?

she's good and better than ezra

two weeks ago, i decided to get myself a whole new experience in car entertainment. front> 2 sets of 5-inch mohawk speakers, rear> 3-inch+13-inch hunter speakers, 1 lanzar 500 watt amp, 1 dynasound amp of the same capacity and 2 superb crossovers. tweeters were complimentary. and now i could only hear the good things.

opera

"It's all coming in from all these other sources... stuff that you see. Real life is so much more intense than any movie, any song, any book -- if you join up and see the right performance. It's not something you could buy tickets for. Two nights ago I'm staying in the basement of this art gallery where we rehearse, and I was using the restroom at about three in the morning. I heard these drunks in the back alley. I went to listen through the crack in the door, because I thought I could hear them better. I could actually see through the half-inch clearing. It was more intense than any movie. It was all so real. There was a beginning, middle and end. It was like drugs, violence, all within less than 20 minutes. It was fascinating."

Somehow I related to that. I think that happens more than we know. It's a modern way of dealing with a bad life.

You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who cannot forgive yourself

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam.

the day i tried to live

i haven't been writing for quite sometime. which means i haven't been able to share my views and thoughts. which means i have been keeping stuffs in, all to myself. which is not healthy at all.

i can see the change. people change. i change. i'm changing into another person. i lose my temper easily these days. especially when i'm hungry. and lately, i'm always hungry cause i'm losing my appetite again.

a friend from KL came yesterday since they're having that stupid tour again in danga bay. so we were talking about work and the accompanying bla-blas. i saw his photo while on holiday in anfield and sighed . "i haven't got the time to jerk off. let alone pamper myself for a holiday".

he said,"this is crazy. however passionate we are about the job, still, we need to get some time off from it. and you're working like seven days a week?!. bet you saved like a quarter million by now".

"mm, last time i checked which was a few hours ago, that ugly stupid machine said something about insufficient fund".

says it all

"Wide Awake" (audioslave/chris cornell)

You can a look a hurricane right in the eye.
1200 people dead or left to die.
Follow the leaders, were it an eye for an eye we'd all be blind.
Deaf or murdered, and this I'm sure in this uncertain time.

So come pull the sheet over my eyes
So I can sleep tonight
Despite what I've seen today.
I found you guilty of a crime, of sleeping at a time
When you should have been wide awake.

Down on the road the world is floating by.
The poor and undefended left behind.
While you're somewhere trading lives for oil,
As if the whole world were blind, hey
Wide awake! Wide awake! Wide awake! Wide awake!