The Whateverlah Blog

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Ever heard of the Sanderson Hotel, London? Me neither.

It looks like the sort of thing that might be called “comtemporary luxury with a touch of whimsy” in magazines.

But all this eclectic modern sophistication is not the main point. The main point, the real kicker, is that – are you ready for it – this hotel has a “Modern Malaysian” restaurant, named “Suka” (Malay for “like”).

The menu lists such items as

PAPAYA & PORK BELLY SALAD
Slow braised and crisped pork belly tossed in chili vinaigrette with papaya, roasted jalapeno and spring onions
£11.00

LOBSTER WONTON MEE
Egg noodles cooked with poached lobster, lobster consommé and lobster wontons
£22.00

PUMPKIN TART TATIN
Spiced butternut squash tart with gula melaka syrup and crystalised ginger ice cream
£7.00

If you say, “So expenseef! Go all the way to London to eat fried rice?” then you are not the intended audience, theirs or mine. And if you (God forbid) say that we are apeing the West and still after all these years enslaving our culture to theirs, then I have nothing more to say to you.

But I’ve now added another entry to the List of Places To Go Before I Die.

How did I come across this, you ask?

I was wandering around here. (The rest of the site may not be work-safe.)

The last time Britain’s Got Talent registered on my radar, Paul Potts had just got done laying the smackdown with his version of “Nessun Dorma”.

Check out this weekend’s surprise in the form of a Susan Boyle, doing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables.

Yeah I don’t have much to write about. But I’m hearing a lot of great songs. Simple evocative piano FTW!

Patty Griffin – Burgundy Shoes, 2007

“My friend said ‘What the heck you don’t have any happy songs at all. You really should try to write a happy song.’ So I went home, and this is my first stab at happy song. It goes like this – and of course it’s got to do with shoes. And my mum.”

We wait for the bus that’s going to Bangor
In my plaid dress and burgundy shoes
In your red lipstick and lilac kerchief
You’re the most pretty lady in the world
Sun

Katie Herzig. TheGuy used to hang with her band (I think he even stood in on drums once), before she went solo. Go listen to her stuff on Myspace.

She’s in the Ingrid Michaelson / Sara Bareilles category of singer-songwriters, who have great mileage in these parts Easy on the eye, and I do believe still available! No real clues as to straight/gayness though.

The “Best (and Only – ed.) Mexican Restaurant in PD!” has an unusual offering:

Certainly, adults never take you aside and tell you that if you fuck somebody who is having a bit of a tummy upset, their stomach will make disconcerting sloshing noises to the rhythm of the back-and-forth.

Edit: Oh I forgot, it’s Valentine’s Day. Um, Happy Valentine’s Day?

Can I just say, this stuff is the shizz:

Supposedly it’s available at Jusco for RM2.70, according to the blogger I stole this picture from. But me, it seems I’ve reached the point in life where I can buy instant noodles without looking at how much they will set me back. I don’t know how much I paid for these at my local Asian supermarket, but I was stocking up and spent $15 on specialty instant-noodle varietals. I’m guessing they came in at $4-5 for the packet of 5. All I know is, I rounded the corner and the words “Mi Perisa Udang. Ho Liao!” were staring me in the face. Reflexively, I reached out.

~

Once home my noodles were a-simmering before I had time to put my other groceries away. I tossed in a fistful of taugeh and some ultrasoft tofu for bulk (too impatient to bother with a sliced hard-boiled egg and prawns). The product info says it does contain MSG but I’ve never had MSG headaches or any of the other symptoms that some people seem to get.

*Slurp slurp* ahh..~~

Ibumie Penang Prawn Mee! Full of prawny goodness!

In preparation for landing, I’ve had a lot of correspondence from home recently. And the one trend I’ve noticed is the flagrantly abusive misuse (superlatives much?) of the word “revert”. As in:

XYZ company says: “Thank you for your email.
We will be reverting to you on your enquiry / booking as soon as possible.”

Even my mother is like, “Pls revert” in her email messages to me.

So I’m like, wtf. And I go looking on MerriamWebster.

Main Entry: re·vert
1 : to come or go back (as to a former condition, period, or subject)
2 : to return to the proprietor or his or her heirs at the end of a reversion
3 : to return to an ancestral type

And its synonym? Regress.

No smart-ass observations on how this might be a Freudian-slip type remark on the state of the country in general. Please. FFS. Make it stop already! I want a reply. A response. But certainly not a reversion.

Maybe I’ll put that in my email signature.

I don’t know that two or three years worth of re-training is going to be able to undo decades’ worth of exposure to a misguided school system. Just do it right the first time already!!

SHAH ALAM: The Government has approved a RM70mil grant to retrain 10,000 unemployed graduates, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam.

He said the grant would be used to train them in skills like communication, language and creative thinking.

“Some have good qualifications but their hurdle is language. So, we want to train them in English,” he said.

(In case, you know, the word “Sex” in the title didn’t trigger any bells…)

This Post Is NSFW.

My house is fairly clean.

After being in three separate cities across two time zones this past week though, I don’t really want to go hang out.

But now I am listening to this!

And watching this!

This is at a wedding dinner (see the “double happiness” in the background?)

ai wantz lion dance at mai wedding!

The Southern lions, not the nasty shaggy yellow-and-orange northern ones.
I’ve always loved the waggy tails.

And pole-dancing with lions is so much cooler than with nekkid grrls.

Here’s a bonus lion dance for the diaspora:

~

you and what army? says: i was talking to someone about lion dance
you and what army? says: and she say her friend in NYC is researching the use of lion dance by chinatown gangs

you and what army? says: THEN I AGREE
you and what army? says: also
you and what army? says: go cross post that post to my blog
you and what army? says: please?
you and what army? says: and then add this snippet of conversation

D’ya think da censorship board buggers gonna make Bollywood ladies promise to “not wear revealing clothes”?

Partner – You’re My Love

HARD KAUR – LOOK 4 ME

I’m almost ashamed to admit I didn’t see this coming.

Okay, minor rant time.

So, I was sitting down in front of the idiot box with my breakfast. I tuned into CMT hoping that they would play something worth watching. After a couple of songs I almost dropped my plate.

The new Toby Keith video was being spun. I almost like his new song, shocking since I haven’t liked anything he’s done in about 5 years, so I left it on. The man has nerve; I’ll give him that.

If you haven’t heard the song it’s called “Love me if you can”. I’d quote lyrics but I’m too nauseous to think about it. What made me want to bow to the porcelain Goddess?

TK carrying a guitar case with a peace symbol on it. WTF?

Hey Toby didn’t you say that putting a boot in their ass was the American way?

I lost my appetite at the sheer hypocrisy. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Actually, I’m not surprised. I’m offended. If I was from OK I might be ashamed that he is from OK. Since I’m not, I’ll just say that his claim of being American doesn’t fill me with shame.

It makes me ill.