Hello!

I am so busy with everything GST-related since I got back from Jakarta so I kinda forgot that I only wrote just one part of my Jakarta trip hehehehehehehehe. I'm travelling again tomorrow so here's to hoping that my ass won't be as lazy to write as before.

Hipster trip part numero uno

I have long believed that we Malaysians have always been fed with mediocrity and we fork an outrageously absurd amount of money to pay for that mediocrity. Over the time, that mediocrity has integrated so much into our lifestyles that we have accepted that as something akin to a norm. Most people are more taken with the hype surrounding a new thing instead of weighing in its quality. How many of us have stopped batting an eye when it comes to paying for an RM18 latte that is so average that even my clueless ass can come up with? Outrageous I tell you.

My recent trip to Jakarta reaffirmed that. Here's an obligatory gambar awan from tingkap kapal terbang.

Before I start, let me tell you something about me. I like coffee, but not take-lots-of-photos-and-post-them-on-Instagram kinda like coffee. I drink at least 4 or 5 cups of coffee everyday because I need lots of caffeine to get me through the day. I'm not a coffee snob, I never was choosy about my coffee, although I avoid certain brands and 3-in-1s sometimes. I like my coffee a bit bitter than most Malaysians do, but that's it. I like going to cafes in Klang Valley just to try things out, but due to the distance of my home and most cafes, and yes, my laziness, I never got to cafe-hop as much as I'd like to.

I did that in Jakarta, the cafe-hopping and oh God, it was an eye-opener. After my first sip of coffee in our first stop, Koultoura Coffee, I felt like I've been drinking liquefied turd in most cafes in Klang Valley. The difference was striking, even to someone as clueless as me. I'm making a list of all the cafes we went to in no particular order and I will try to write as much as I can about each cafe, so here we go.

Koultoura Coffee

We went to Koultoura straight from the airport and we managed to get there before the lunch crowd. Of all the cafes, I personally rank Koultoura the highest because; i) taro latte, which I discovered is my favouritest latte in the universe ii) friendly baristas, iii) free coffees because I'm a Malaysian, and Malaysians and free stuff ibarat isi dengan kuku.

That taro latte was mine, Filzah ordered cappuccino and espresso, and we shared that delicious egg on beef  and potato thing. I'm not good at waxing lyrical descriptions about food and beverages so you have to bear with me hahah. After that, we ordered piccolo and another espresso I think but I forgot to take a photo of them. Everything was soooo goooood but that taro latte was so exceptional, I dreamt about it sometimes. In case you coffee snobs want to know, Koultoura was using beans from Dutch Colony and house blend I don't know from which roaster. If you're going to Singapore, please please please buy some Dutch Colony beans for me. I can't stop thinking about those beans.

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I'll stop here and tell you about the coffee appreciation class I went to after this because I'm getting lazy.

Make that Work. Work.

I planned to write about my trip today but I had to go to work and only arrived home around 5pm. I was too tired to do anything after that but I couldn't sleep so I finally got around to watching Fargo while willing myself to get some shut-eye. I don't know if it was because I was too tired that I couldn't sleep (fucking jet-lag is messing up with me) or Fargo is thaaaat good but I got hooked after a few minutes so I'm currently binge-watching Fargo, oh and I'm meeting a friend tomorrow so yeah the 2,3 kerat of you will have to wait longer for my posts.

An Announcement, if You Please

I'm embarking on a ~hipster~ journey this Saturday, so please wait for un-funny pretentious posts after I come back.

Here's a hipster photo of my make-up bag as a teaser chewahhh poyo.

So that you can see my MUFE HD foundation and powder, my Tarte primer, and my Sephora eyeshadow and blusher because ~hipster~ . Am I doing this right? Hipsters like to brag, am I correct? That's why I didn't mention my RM20.90 NYX lipstick that you can clearly see in the photo in the previous sentence.

Oh here's another one.

Ahahahah even the photo just screams "HIPSTER!", you know, only the focus of the attention is clear and everything else is blurry? No? What do you mean, "no"?

Damn being hipster is hard.

Anywayyy, since ~hipsters~ only read critically-acclaimed, hard-to-understand books (it pains me to type that because I really love Hilary Mantel's books actually) so I was thinking of bringing these books with me. But after 2 minutes of entertaining that thought, I said screw this and then I saved a few Nora Roberts' and Neil Gaiman's e-books on my phone just because I felt like it.

Oh and then I tried to find a few obscure music acts to listen to while I'm there but after a while I caught myself saving all the songs from One Directions' album Four. Seriously, I didn't even notice I was doing that! It just happened. My playlist has this song though.




.....and all songs from So Long, See You Tomorrow because it's awesome.

And because I think I'm being a ~hipster~

It's getting better

I read Ateem's blog from time to time because I'm missing her. The only reason why I haven't deactivated my Facebook account is because everytime I think of her, I go through her photos and her posts. I hope everything goes well for her on the other side.

I really, really miss her.

Kuah

My Mom likes to talk. A lot. She smiles at and greets everyone who crosses her path. She doesn't like it when things get too quiet so she usually initiates the conversation in almost every situation. She gets her stories mixed up sometimes and forgets all sorts of shits, but hey, everyone does.

Like i said, my Mom is a talker and she has a habit of telling people pointless things just to fill up the silence. She is always conscious that people will make a comment on every action she takes, and as someone who doesn't give a lot of shit to other people, I do believe that she's just imagining things. Because she takes what people think of her quite seriously, she also has a habit of explaining things unnecessarily.

If you're my friend, you've heard of this story numerous times. My family and I went to Ipoh late last year and planned to have nasi ganja for lunch. Each of us had a big breakfast so the 7 of us shared 3 plates just to have a taste of what was it about this nasi that everyone was raving about it. While we were ordering, my Mom had to tell the mapley who took our order that we only wanted 3 plates because "pagi tadi masing-masing dah makan nasi lemak dengan roti bakar" because she was afraid that the mapley would think badly of us because we didn't had much. That mapley just looked at her strangely as if thinking, "இந்த பெண் என்ன பிரச்னை?"

Another example is when she buys a large amount of food, be it nasi lemak or tom yam or kailan ikan masin, etc etc everytime my relatives from kampung come to our house. She always tells people things like," Kakak saya tengah ada kat rumah ni dengan anak-anak dia itu yang saya beli 25 nasi lemak ni". I always told her that people don't care but yeah, you know lah like mom like daughter degil nak mati.

So anyway, I had to go to the office today (today is Saturday btw) and I bought 10 pieces of roti canai for my colleagues. When I was about to pay, I told the mapley who manned the cash counter, "oh saya masuk kerja hari ni jadi belikan untuk kawan kerja sekali". That mapley looked at me strangely and then just smiled.

Today I realised that I'm turning into my mother.

A fitting farewell

I still remember the first time I watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring like it was only yesterday, not 13 years ago. I went to watch the movie with a school friend at TGV KLCC and we waited in line for more than an hour. The queue was so long that it went around the escalator. I remember that the first showing was during the Christmas week. And I remember that I paid RM9 for the movie ticket.

I paid RM28.50 for The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies last Friday.

I went to see the movie in IMAX, because I figured for the final instalment for the series of movies that have a huge influence in my life, it deserved to be seen in IMAX chewah poyo. And to me, that RM28.50 was totally worth it (which is a huge deal coming from a cheapskate like me). Yes I was pissed at the pacing of the movie and at every Tauriel scene but watching the movie made me so emotional that I teared up a bit at (SPOILER ALERT!) Thorin's death scene. And then I teared up again during the credit because I felt like I was saying goodbye to a friend that I've known for half of my life. Yes, I know. I'm a hypocritical, pretentious prick, you don't have to spell it for me.

This gif is to distract you from the fact that there are no Hobbit-related pictures in this post. My ass is too lazy to google and choose which picture to post and whatnot.

Anyway, it's hard to reconcile the love I feel towards the movie series with the intense dislike I have towards the books. I'm so grateful for the creation of the Middle Earth and I somewhat like The Hobbit because it's only about 300 pages long but I fucking hate the Lord of the Rings series. I still can't believe that J.R.R Tolkien made me read a description of a tree.....in 11 pages. Why the hell would you describe a tree in 11 fucking pages? Good Lord I'm still mad about that. Even after all these years, I still don't like reading anything too descriptive because I feel like it's ruining the charm of a story (translation: I don't have the patience).

Anyway, that's only me. Don't let my stupid opinions influence your preference.

Back to the Battle of the Five Armies, I loved the movie. I loved every part of it, all of its weaknesses and all of the negative reviews, but even I believe that the movie would be 14000% better if Tauriel wasn't in it. Goddamn I was so pissed at her it almost took away my enjoyment from watching the movie.

Horror Story: A Nutella Edition

About half an hour ago, I needed to munch something but I was too lazy to cook. And since I need to get rid a few kilograms, most notably on my thighs, usually I avoid putting anything into my mouth after midnight. Emphasis on the word "usually".

If I were a shameless hussy, I would consider that as an euphemism.

BY THE WAY. So I rummaged through the kitchen looking for something to munch on and holla! there was a jar of Nutella sitting on top of the counter. I looked around for anything to spread the Nutella on, and all I could find were a few packets of Hup Seng cream crackers but I wasn't in the mood to eat Nutella with crackers. Suddenly, a brilliant idea came to me. If you're wondering, yes, brilliant ideas always came to me at 2AM in the mornings, which is why I seldom acted on them. 

So anywayyyy, back to my brilliant idea. So I was thinking to myself, heyyyy why don't I make a Nutella drink, something like hot chocolate, without the milk and without the 'cooking on the stove' parts because, you know, I'm too layyyy-zeeeee. So I just scooped a big scoop of Nutella out of the jar because my ass was greedy and added hot water into my mug. I took a sip and welllll.........

........it tasted like shit.

Because it's been ingrained in me from the early age to finish everything on my plate (or mug, for that matter), I took a loooong breath and gulped everything down in one gulp. I don't think I can eat anything Nutella-related for some time after this

Now I'm hoping that I don't get diarrhoea or some shit tomorrow.

Because I'm feeling charitable since it's the Christmas season and all, I googled Nutella hot chocolate for all of you Nutella sickos.

I can't take it anymore

I asked more than 10 friends what they thought of Interstellar and all of them gave stellar reviews. I wanted to ask 30 more but then I realised that I have very few friends in real life and fewer that I still contact. So yeah screw having lots of friends. Socially inept people unite!

So back to my story. I didn't like Interstellar. Personally, I thought it was a bewildered, convoluted mess. (SPOILER ALERT). At the beginning of the movie, it showed that the Earth was facing a catastrophe. Why that catastrophe happened, it was never explained. Actually come to think of it, most of what happened in the movie were never explained.

Everyone in Interstellar mentioned Einstein's theories of relativity over and over again but it was never explained why they mattered or how they were applied. Maybe I'm just too stupid and theories of relativity are something that's considered as general knowledge nowadays hence my difficulties in connecting the dots or maybe I was just being my usual asshole nitpicker but explain to me why and how dammit! And I won't even tell about that illogical flying at the horizon of the wormhole because you can google it yourself and I'm too angry (read: lazy) to link it for you. However, I can link you this though because I think it's very interesting and I wish the movie explored this further instead of just showing it just to fill in the time. But maybe that's just me.

Talking about things that weren't explored, I think that the movie put too much stock in the actors to give out raw emotions instead of exploring the topic of relationships. I don't know, the fear of never again seeing a family member should affect you more than what this movie conveyed. That's another thing I felt about this movie. Most of the things were mere fillers and they felt draggy, like Anne Hathaway (seriously I still don't understand what that bitch was supposed to be) and her talks about love transcends all and Dr Mann's scenes when he tried to kill Cooper and all that jazz. Despite all the fillers and the running time of almost 3 hours, some parts of the movie seemed hurried like the part when Cooper and Brand got back to Endurance after the disaster in Miller's planet or all the scenes towards the end of the movie. It's like Nolan himself couldn't wait to end his own fucking movie and thus only gave us a half-assed ending.

I'm so pissed at Interstellar that I'm still typing this even though the Swansea v Arsenal game has already started.

To me, Interstellar is part a poor man's Gravity and part a poor man's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I'm also bothered by the fact that I think the best movie in history about finding life in a new planet is this animation. After all these years and even though movies nowadays cost more, nothing can top this.

P/s: I'm too lazy to find pictures to post.