ramli rules

i asked my host to describe the McD burger he was having to me, to see if he can handle talking about food without boring anyone.

he said the people here really loves their ramli burger, which is more gooey than the McD's, which a lot of people says taste like cardboards.

i said yeah, i totally agree with that.

2 days later, it occurred to me how a lot of people actually knows what cardboards taste like.

save the storm, the thunder and the heads please

it is the month of may again.

the gunners finished badly again. well, not that bad but if you are a fan, not winning is bad.

it is the month of may again.

it has been a year since love left me, officially. i'm not sure of the exact date though, hoping it won't hurt exactly. ha.

but lately i almost felt it again. love. a four-letter word i sometimes incorporate with another four-letter word, fear. and i think this time round, the latter emerged victorious. no ha.

or was it because the passion i have for the object of my affection wasn't strong enough. well, i guess a mouse would learn to outsmart the trap only to find itself cheeseless or flatten. only a handful would get away with the cheese and become immortal. i am a mere mortal.

but what really defeated me were two things. one that strengthens my philosophy and the other...well, the other was just, me...

i never fail to get disapproval when i say religions divide people more than anything else. far more than the digital revolution. at least the digital gap is getting smaller by the day.

when asked if a christian would marry a non-christian, the answer was well, there's no rule that says you can't, but it'll just complicate things, and a conflict of interests would follow suit. and good christians won't do it.

so why bother looking outside the circle? just marry a fellow christian and we can go to heaven together when we die, cause that is the only way to the pearly gates. christianity.

please send my regards to flanders when you get there ya. cheers.

'NO' was the quickest answer she could think of, when i asked if there's a possibility of her marrying someone outside the church. determined answer from a determined christian.

case closed.

i guess if this happened to me when i was younger, i wouldn't have let the case close. i would be determined to win her over, come what may. storm would come and i would somehow learn to ride it. thunder would clap and heads would roll. and i would be holding her proudly in my arms, having to survive the battle, in the end. but the price had to be paid. the storm, the thunder, and the heads would leave such horrible aftermath. and the clean up would not be pretty.

and so, since this happened to me now, all the unnessary would be done away with. save the storm, the thunder and the heads please.

a perfect evening walk after dinner would be as good as it gets. spend the whole night talking, yacking and chatting. no movies, no clubs, no sex. just verbal interchange. and walk. keep walking, it's the best form of exercise after swimming. go into a 24-hour store and get some drinks to keep the throat moist. supper? well, we can stop by a ramli burger stall. we can then find ourselves a quiet place to eat, and i'll conveniently slip my hand into my pocket and take out my sony ericsson to candle and croon us.

after that we'll keep walking. and lose ourselves into the conversation. if thugs come to rob us, we'll tell them our story and they'll promise to clear to coast for us that night. and we'll keep walking.

we'll keep talking till the subuh azan comes and goes. and then we'll part, before that making a promise to stay in touch and to meet up again. and then we'll never see each other in our lives again. the last thing that we'll both remember is the first light of the day before we go to bed, and wake up resuming our lives.

jarum halus

aaron: look at him, dun even wanna look at me after last nite
khairul: biasalah beb, dia takut orang tau..bersabar lah ye....

aaron: err...a bit wider pleezz


megat: no!! dun shoot me!! i'll have to fall onto the car and mark is going to spray blood on me jus in time for khairul to get it on camera, AGAIN!! i've had enough!!


jude: yeessss...nice and slow, or else ur victim will feel da blunt pain of a blunt object hitting their neck...k now, victim, u shldn't smile, it's pain, remember?..pain...


you leave me wif no choice


you said you'll only read my palm you..you...


fiona: faster la, i wanna get back to my book..oh no, before that i hav to check my sms, it's been 3 minutes since i last check...


hmm....who is she looking at?..has the shoot started? are they not waiting for me? why am i maintaining this position?


fiona: c'mon guys, photo again? i'm here for food. is christien squinting his eyes for photo again?..urrgh..


razif: bro, u gotta listen to me...sitting on the floor won't help, if u want ur ribena u gotta ask nicely, and dun squint ur eyes when i'm talking to u, i hate it..


min yw: all these menstrual theme is not helpin my period la..urrgghh.. cramps again....jus..jus let me rest for a while, i'll be fine...


mark: no, you can't sit wif us..you poo poo in the hall, shame on you...go clean up first...


aaron: i hope he doesn't realise i'm just taking insert shots of the bed post...


this town is only big enough for one of us, so wat's it gonna be, punk



khairul: i think colin is losing his head again, really...i saw it happened, twice
just finished watchin spidey 3..and razif has lost his beard?! is it that bad that he went to shave in between?..


stephanie: yeah, u try to look tough, someone is comin over to giv u a punch, and it's not the one u drank at high school

fr the 17th april 2007, for more or less two weeks i was involved in an indie feature film named 'jarum halus'. i was doing location sound for the project, which produced by eleanor low, directed by this young chap mark tan who apparently is still a student. so in a way it was a student film, but unlike your typical student film, this had much more budget and more inpressively, a slot in gsc cinema come september. cool.

'jarum halus' is an adaptation of shakespeare's 'othello' set in modern-day kuala lumpur. mark tan the director actually shot a pitch video and showed it to gsc before they agree to give him a slot. mark tan is only 22 years young this year, making him the youngest director i'v worked with. the shoot was a lot of fun, in a way i guess it's because it was an independently funded project, so you don't have tiger-faced-flesh-eating producers yelling the house down when we took more time to finish something. it was as relaxing as you can possibly think of, most of the time i didn't have to do anything for more than 1 or 2 hours from the call time.

all the locations were in kl itself apart from one romantic scene in bagan lalang. but the beach was so bad damaged by the construction nearby i wonder if mark can save it on screen. one of the main location was mark's house in bkt damansara and i really liked the house. it had so much family feel in it and in a way i think it made us all feel like a big family in a vacation house. well, at times i guess.

two days after wrap we went for a futsal game in pj. some couldn't make it but we still had so much fun. some went home with bruises, some with twisted ankles but all went home with a warm and sweet memory. ha. to add icing on the cake, one day after futsal mark's father bought us all tickets to watch spiderman 3 at midvalley. he 'pao' the whole gold class hall and again we had fun. but the movie it self is another story, i think most of us thought it was just so-so.

after the movie we went for our official wrap dinner at his buffet place called 'talipon' in kelana jaya. they have a stove on each table and you can choose to grill or steamboat your food. it is very unhealthy and i can already feel i am 5 days shorter of my life. but again it was much fun. ha. after that we had a quick visit to bar blonde along the asian heritage row. generally the music wasn't much of my cup of tea, and the crowd wasn't that happenin also. we left about 2am and eleanor suggested that we head back to mark's place for some card games and more drinking. when we got there, there were only eleanor, mark, aaron and mua. the rest had decided to call it a night. so the four of us played some 'cho tai ti' until church got the better of mark. he really wanted to go home cause he has to wake up for church. understood, it's sunday and i really think we should thank god for this production to go so smoothly.

Jarum Halus

producer :eleanor low
writer/director :mark tan
assistant director :khairul
production manager : ben

cast :christien new, razif hashim, juliana ibrahim, farah putri, megat, justin, stephanie chai, dato rahim razali, helmi, etc


acting coach :colin


director of photography: aaron chung
gaffer :lim min yw
grip :jude
location sound :ken kin (soundwise)
conti :fiona tan
make-up/wardrobe :yoke ping, belle
production assistant :angerine, siou yu