Categories
Memorable Events

A Wedding – Of Brothers And Sisters And Being Emcee

The brothers and sisters of Jason and Selrol's wedding

Caption of the picture above: On the far left is me.  The lady next to me is my counterpart in Mandarin (the other much better looking emcee).  The rest are the sisters and brothers who guarded the gate and crashed the gate respectively in an early Sunday morning.

Part 1 of 2: Of Brothers and Sisters

I guess you can’t really say “brother, I will take a bullet for you” without rising up to the situation when called for.  So when my buddy Jason dropped me an email three weeks before his wedding titled “Band of Brothers”, I was like: wait a minute, I thought I have only signed up for the emceeing job?  Since it was my first time being one of the brothers or witnessing the morning wedding activity in Singapore, I was actually excited for the opportunity.

Note: In a Chinese wedding, the groom needs to make a trip to pick up the bride at her parent’s home.  The sisters handpicked by the bride are supposed to set up a few challenges and quests for the groom to handle and solve before getting his ultimate reward – the bride.  And to help the groom in accomplishing these meant-to-be humanly impossible tasks, he selects his own band of brothers to take on some of the challenges.  After all, the brothers are dispensable to a larger extend.  The groom is not.

The night before, one friend of mine shared some of the horror stories of what some of the brothers have to go through in crashing the bride’s gate heavily guarded by the sisters.  I was like …

OK, so long as I don’t need to put the spicy wasabi (“Japanese horseradish”) into my eyes in the MTV style, I am ready to walk on fire, cross the ocean, and slay a few dragons for my buddy.  (But please don’t wax my legs.)

The actual event was less dramatic than I visualized.  At the bride’s gate, the sisters demanded red packets (note: we put money inside the packets) like the ERP gantries on the CTE in Singapore.  The groom must be thinking that sincerity goes a long way so he gave the sisters the biggest packet he had in his pocket at the first gantry.  OK.  That didn’t work as the subsequent “backup” red packets were much lesser in value.  So when the negotiation broke down, we were left with only one way – the sisters’ way.

One sister poured out a cup of what appeared like lemonade, my mouth actually watered.  I could use some lemonade right now!  One brother quickly grabbed the cup and down it in one go.  Bravo!  What was it inside, we queried.  Nothing unusual, he replied.  Next came a cup of dark stuff, some kind of sweet drink for the groom.  Jason happily downed that with no sweat.

Then, one of the sisters pulled out a bottle of what seemed like a bright green juice for the aliens from the outer-space.  Uh-oh.  And she took out four cups for the brothers.  That stuff was bitter!  I have no idea how many bitter gourds I have “drank”, certainly no idea that bitter gourds are juicy at all.  It better be good for my skin.

The last dish was a plate of snacks creamed with wasabi.  So long as I don’t need to stuff them onto my eyes, I am more than happy to set my tongue on fire (that stuff was spicy).

The subsequent pole dancing by the groom must have set the aunties’ hearts on fire.  At one point, one auntie threw the key out of the gate, caught by one of the brothers, only to have it lost to one sister from the other side of the gate.  Dude?!  How the heck did that happen?!  In the end, one brother has to dip his naked hairy leg into a bucket full of ice cold water in order to fish out the key with his bare feet.  How heroic (and marginally gross too)!

And as simple as that, the what seemed to be an impassable gate that we stared at for what seemed like ages finally broke open.  Hooray!  But wait, the door to the bride’s door was still closed!  (I swear Selrol, the bride, must be very eager to have it opened, and so were the in-laws to be).  The last challenge was for Jason to sing a song.  Oh well, we all know how well the groom sings.

So, a piece of cake that was.

Part 2 of 2: Being Emcee

I guess you can’t really say no if one of your best buddies says, “We would be honored to have you as our emcee for our wedding dinner”.  I mean, people won’t ask you to be an emcee thinking that you are not right for the job, right?

Right?

Hmmm.  I certainly do enjoy getting involved with my friends’ weddings in some ways.  Like that one time our band put together one recorded song for the couple to play during the dinner.  And another time I was rehearsing with my buddy in my humble home studio for his surprise singing performance to his bride during their wedding dinner.

Emceeing is a different ball game, I soon found out.  OK, I am comfortable standing in front of the crowd.  But memorizing the scripts is another thing.  I am terrible in that and it took me hours and nights trying to memorize my few lines.  Seriously, I am one of the few in this planet who just cannot memorize.  The good thing is, it did make my job a whole lot easier on stage with the printout of the scripts as prompts and my lines at the back of my head.

The most nerve-racking portion of the evening, to me, was the storytelling part.  The couple suggested that I shall tell a story since I was “part of the process”.  And I soon realized that the words in my head, and the words I write, and the words I speak are all very different from one another (note: need to work on that in near future).  I spent days and weeks thinking of what to say and it seems so easy just thinking about it.  Then I spent days trying to write my thoughts onto paper and boy, that was tough!  I had so many versions of the story that it was no longer funny.  In fact, I learned that what I write is not exactly how I should speak.  Gosh!  I wonder how these talented netizens are able to create the pod-cast and video-cast in a regular basis (note: I shall start terrorizing my loyal fans with some what-not-cast).  I tried speaking to the windscreen while I was driving alone in my car and that was … tough and weird to say the least.

Maybe that’s why we have the talented scriptwriters to write the stories and the talented comedians to tell the stories in real life.

To cut a long story short, faced with a crowd from a diverse background and with time constraint, I have decided to change the script in the last minute and do a live interview to a few of the couple’s close friends.  I was planning to share an insight of what the newly wed’s love journey has been so far in an (hopefully) entertaining manner.  The best part of it all, I think, was when a birthday cake was taken out as a surprise and I prompted Jason to sing a birthday song for his bride in front of all their guests.  Selrol was in tears.

It was a lovely wedding dinner and an emotional night.  When I shook Jason’s hand as I left the ballroom, both of us were too tired to communicate.  But our eyes said it all.

So, two cakes that were – a wedding cake and a birthday cake.

Categories
Movie Reviews Romance

Definitely Maybe – There Is A Girl Whom I Really Like!

Definitely Maybe

I often marvel at how Western film titles are being translated in Chinese for the Hong Kong market (which can be different from the China market).  Take “Definitely Maybe” as an example.  It is translated into “愛情三選一” that loosely means “Choose One from Three in the Name of Love”.  OK, the Chinese title is a lot more poetic and cuter than it sounds in English.  And it definitely relates to the plot of the film better.  My favorite movie title translation is still “愛．誘．罪” for “Atonement”.  The three characters literally mean love, temptation, and crime, which sum up what the story is about.  And because of the phonetic similarity of the second Chinese character, the title has a dual meaning of “Love is Crime” when spoken, which also coincidentally reveals a slice of the story.

Back to “Definitely Maybe” – a title inspired by a line from possibly the most memorable scene – the plot is as simple as what the Chinese translated title suggests: choose one girl from three.  There are a college sweetheart (Elizabeth Banks), a reporter (Rachel Weisz), and a copy girl (Isla Fisher).  On the day Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) receives a divorce paper, his 10 years old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) suddenly gets curious about what her daddy’s love life is like after a lesson on … sex education.  To make the storytelling interesting, Hayes uses fictional names so as to keep the story engaging for Maya, and the audience I suppose.  The film extends beyond the flashbacks into the present time of Maya and Hayes.  By and large predictable but has its charm with a rather engaging, unusual, and entertaining storyline.  There are quite a few memorable scenes as well.

I missed the little girl Abigail Breslin’s Oscar nominated film “Little Miss Sunshine” and she may be too young for me to remember her performance in “Raising Helen” and “The Princess Diaries 2”.  I did enjoy her role as Zoe in “No Reservations” and am still a big fan of hers.  Her role as Maya in “Definitely Maybe”, I guess, is rather limited.  That’s one of my complaints (and I don’t really like the guy too!).

When Cynthia, TK, and I walked out of the movie theatre, we thought very hard on who Isla Fisher is.  Out of all the (grown-up) girls, Isla Fisher is my favorite.  When Cynthia mentioned “Wedding Crashers”, I still have no recollection.  At home I did some research and ah-ha!  She was one of the sisters in “Wedding Crashers” – the sex mania.  OK, now I remember that I did like her in that film too.  She has also acted in the famous Australia soap opera “Home and Away”.  Looking at the period of time she was involved in that opera, very likely I may have watched some of the episodes back in UK when the series was (still is?) pretty big over there.  Maybe memory does play funny tricks to us sometimes.

I was apprehensive when I first heard that the filmmakers are making a film out of my favorite chick-lit series “Shopaholic”.  When I read that Isla Fisher is taking on the role of Rebecca Bloomwood, all my worries have melted away.  Now, let’s hope that the scriptwriters are not going to screw up the plot.  “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is only the first installment from Sophie Kinsella’s 5-book series (so far).  The chance to see Isla Fisher more on screen is a definitely maybe.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Mara And Dann By Doris Lessing – An Adventure Of A Sister And A Brother During The Next Ice Age

Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing

Having read a few of the books by the Nobel Price winner in literature, Doris Lessing, I am curious about her another genre that is not popularly accepted by the critics – science fiction.  So I picked up “Mara and Dann” (year 1999, 407 pages) from our National Library.  I have not read all of her thirty over books yet but if the book publisher describes the heroine of this book as “one of Doris Lessing’s most appealing heroines”, I would gladly take their words for it is a nice departure from the rather dark and depressing titles of “The Fifth Child” and its sequel “Ben in the World” whereby the main character is more or less a monster living in our own world.

Perhaps human condition regardless of time is depressing.  Life is hard.  And the saving grace throughout the time continuum is love.  In “Mara and Dann”, the story is set somewhere in the distant future when our Earth is covered in ice – except Ifrik (equivalent to our modern day Africa).  Dotted in this continent Ifrik are civilizations of different progression (stone age, medieval, military, religion, and science), people of different shapes and colors, richness and the poor, and in the diverse race of the Mahondi,  the Rock People, the Hadrons, the Hennes, the Agre, and the Albs, nothing escape the sharp eyes of Mara who is always hunger for knowledge.

Abducted since young, Mara – a Mahondi by birth – began an epic journey traversing Ifrik together with her little brother Dann.  The main plot evolves around Mara with Dann coming in and out of Mara’s journey.  In “Mara and Dann”, you will get to experience Ifrik first hand with Mara.  You may even feel the thirst and hunger of Mara like I do, and the joy and desperation.  You will certainly see how the characters grow as they aged, how their bonding gets stronger as days go by.

What some may see lacking maybe a main quest within the story.  What propel me to continue reading the book, however, was simply: what will Mara see next?  In such, “Mara and Dann” is a different type of page turner perhaps more appealing to those who are drawn to the world of scare resources, slavery, conflicts, racism, and sexism.  My main take home messages are two: (1) we always expect things to remain the way they always do (which they don’t) and (2) we can’t truly understand something unless we experience them.

A timely read as we ourselves are faced with the challenge of climate change, today.

Related Entries:-

Categories
Travel Blog

Photos From My Petaling Jaya Road Trip – Of PJ Hilton, The Curve, And More

PJ Hilton

After my rather unexpected encounter with the Malaysian Custom, my next challenge was to locate “PJ Hilton”.  I had no clue how exactly to get there.  It’s been donkey years since I worked in Petaling Jaya and how the whole place has changed!  There are new flyovers, streets turned one-way, new shops spawned from nowhere, and already humongous shipping malls duplicate into twice the size.  This interesting satellite city of Kuala Lumpur has officially gained a city status just two years ago.

Photo captions from left to right: (1) A slice of Petaling Jaya, (2) PJ Hilton, (3) View from the hotel room

Truly a weird feeling not sure if some of you could relate, pieces of memory of the street layout that I was once so confident in negotiating from one street to another seems to have vanished in thin air.  I have zero recollection on where is where in PJ.  OK, I do have a vague idea that PJ Hilton is along the Federal Highway but how to get to the highway?

New Paris Restaurant and the Curve

Photo captions from left to right: (1) New Paris Restaurant at SS2, a must try! (2) interesting dish with champagne braised chicken that has a sour taste served with balls of water melon!  Say what?! (3) Finally, “The Curve” signboard after a 2 hours drive … the return trip was barely a half-an-hour trip.

Fortunately, what we humanly not possible to accomplish – in my case, the revival of my faded memory – technology made possible.  Nokia Map is a great tool, though I must say the screen size of my N95 is a tad too small.  It is pretty much like a computer game to me.  There is an icon marked as my destination.  And there is this blinking cursor telling me where I am via the global positioning system established between my tiny phone and the far away satellites above me.  All I need to do is keep driving till the blinking cursor coincide with the target icon – in theory.

The Curve at Petaling Jaya

Photo captions from left to right: (1) “The Curve” is a new shopping mall with little stores along the middle of the street, (2) TGI Friday!  I wonder if they will return to Singapore one day, (3) There is … Cineleisure at “The Curve”!

And because I do remember and know some of the landmarks and eating spots in PJ, finding them in my phone is relatively easy.  Getting there, took time.  At one point, after going round and round in circle and Cynthia and I were excited to see that our car was finally heading directly to the new shopping mall “The Curve” only to realize that it was a dead end blocked by another highway.

Also unexpectedly, I have decided to call up my good old friend Catherine and her husband whom I met back when I was working in Mauritius.  Their daughters are so cute!  And they have grown up so much.  Amazingly adorable they are.

My friend Catherine and her family at PJ

Categories
Music Reviews Pop Rock & Alternative

HAARP – Muse Live Tour – Full Of Light And Sound

HAARP by Muse

We have watched the Muse concert at Fort Canning Singapore back in January last year and that, has blown our minds.  Can HAARP – a CD and DVD collection recorded at Wembley UK on June 16 and 17 respectively – blow our minds too?  The answer is a definite yes.

I won’t go through much of the details here because my previous journal has (surprisingly to me!) captured more or less the essence of what you would expect in terms of sound and visual (ahem … a pat on my back).  What I will cover here is how I perceive the post-production work involved in creating HAARP.

Let’s start with the CD.  Muse is a 3-piece band with one to two additional musicians to help out on selected songs when on tour.  The live recording of the music tracks are surprisingly clear given how hard it is when sound tends to flood over from one track to another.  And the sound from the audience is crisp and nicely mixed into the recording too.  You can actually hear some girls screaming “I love you” in the background.

To me, the CD is great.  But the DVD that contains a few piano tracks amongst others that are not found in the CD is the real gem of the package.  Cameras whirling around the light filled stage, special visual effects with subjects of interest blurring in and out of focus, seamless cut scenes in tandem with the beats of the music – all of which aim to bring the electrifying live experience right into your living room (depending on how loud your audio system is of course).  Their interpretation of the song “Feeling Good” is a pleasant surprise to me.  Below is a clip of the song “Hysteria”.  Enjoy, and don’t forget to turn down the volume a bit!  If you are already a fan, there is little reason why you should give this collection a miss.

Related Entry: Muse’s 2007 Tour at Fort Canning Singapore

Categories
Drama Movie Reviews Romance

The Other Boleyn Girl – How Accurate I Wonder

The Other Boleyn Girl

Knowing that I was about to recover from my flu, Cynthia tapped onto the Sunday morning paper and said, “I want to watch number 1, 2, and 3.”  “What’s number 1?” I asked.  She said something and I replied, “Huh?  What boleh girl?” (”˜Boleh’ in Malay means ”˜can’, which ironically is not too far from the plot).  It was not as hilarious as my friend TK whom we met later at the cinema.  He joked: The Other Boon Lay Girl.  (”˜Boon Lay’ is a small housing estate in Singapore.)

“The Other Boleyn Girl” has both the talented Natalie Portman (TK and I are big fans of her) and the beautiful Scarlett Johansson as the main actresses.  To top it up, Eric Bana (my favorite Hector of Troy!) played King Henry VIII.  I had no idea what to expect from the movie and I came out of the theatre feeling a bit more aware of some of the important events in England such as the breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church and the birth of Queen Elizabeth I.  I certainly had no idea the importance of the role played by Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn – the sisters acted by Natalie and Scarlett.

The life of King Henry VIII is rich and complex.  Married six times and having a few mistresses of his own, “The Other Boleyn Girl” portrays only a facet of his life – his affair to Mary Boleyn and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.  If the film sticks to the original intend and tell a story from the other Boleyn girl’s perspective – that is Mary played by Scarlett – it may have been more focused and intense.  But we all know how captivating Natalie’s acting can be and she does have a lot of air time in the movie.  In that sense, I am not sure if I was watching The Boleyn Girl instead.  Validity of the historical accuracy aside, I too find the casting of two Americans and an Australian with little or no British accent to play these main English characters odd.

There is little doubt that the acting is great.  And Natalie Portman is such a versatile actress.  If you try not to think too hard on what one man would do just to get a baby boy of his own or how all of these was a bloody mess due to one man’s lust, it is actually quite an entertaining romance drama to watch.  “The Other Boleyn Girl” does seem to me like a prequel to the more epic movies “Elizabeth” and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”.  In such, the reminiscence of Natalie Portman’s role as Queen Amidala as sequel to the epic movies of Star Wars episodes is quite startling – to me at least.

Somehow there is a yearning within me to learn what exactly happened to Anne and Mary’s lives during their time.  The plot of the movie may not have done the history justice.  And I wonder, will the filmmakers hundred years down the road be fascinated by the stories of Prince Charles and Princess Diana and make a movie out of their lives?  One thing I am sure is: royal scandals sell – especially ones that come with sex and blood.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Remember Me By Sophie Kinsella – A Calculated Risk That May Or May Not Work For Some

Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella

Fanboi talk aside – as I do have read all eight of her novels – “Remember Me” is an interestingly subtle departure from her time proven success with the Shopaholic formula.  First, let’s recap.  Be it as Becky Bloodwood of the Shopaholic series (5 books), Samantha of “The Undomestic Goddess”, Emma of “Can You Keep A Secret”, or Lexi of “Remember Me”, the author’s heroines have always been an embodiment of someone who is flawed, optimistic, and passionate towards family and friends.  The formula extends beyond the main character herself.  There will be lovers involved, parents, best friends, best friends who are no longer best friends, bosses, and a sister in some cases, and to top it up, Sophie Kinsella’s books are always a fun read that make you laugh-out-loud drawing suspicious glances from people around you.

The bottom line is: does the world need another book from Sophie Kinsella?  For those who worship the Shopaholic series, “Remember Me” may come across as less entertaining.  It has lesser laugh-out-loud moments per page flipped.  For those who find the Shopaholic series too shallow but enjoy reading her standalone novels instead, “Remember Me” may come quite close to “The Undomestic Goddess”, which I still think it is the author’s best work today.

There is a novelty in the idea itself: imagine what would happen if one day you wake up and three years worth of memory has just vanished?  And you wake up with a new job title, a new look, new set of friends, and you realize that you are married to someone who is a stranger to you.  Through the character Lexi, Sophie Kinsella explores the condition of amnesia, and more so than any of her previous works, I think there are a fair bit of planning in order to make the storyline works – set aside the need to have every small details made sense to the readers.  To that, I think Sophie Kinsella has done a great job in delivering a relatively more complex storyline with relatively more character development for those who surround the main character.

“Remember Me” is still a page turner and prompted me in thinking: perhaps all these efforts of upkeeping my own blog site are not too bad an idea just in case one day, touch wood, I bump my head onto something and lose a chunk of memory.

PS. I tried to place a reservation at our National library but I gave up after seeing the queue.  I was close to number 250 with just over twenty books available for lending.  And knowing how long it may take for the paperback to hit the bookstore, I go for the hardcover instead.

Related Entries: Can You Keep A Secret?, On Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic & Baby, and Undomestic Goddess – A Good Read

Categories
Diary

My Doctor Prescribed Nanotechnology Enabled Medicine For My Jaw

Flexogan

I couldn’t open my jaw.

OK.  I could.  But not without the strange bone cracking sound from within my skull, and the pain.  It started when I was in Malaysia and it didn’t bother much till I realized that I couldn’t really sing without being able to open my mouth wide.  And I couldn’t yawn properly during my rather tiring return trip on the Malaysian highway.  Took me forever to finish eating a sandwich.  When I told my friend JL my little problem, her response was: you were speeding on the highway with the window down and your mouth wide opened, izzit?

Ha ha ha.  Farny.

Since I woke up feeling sick, I was motivated to see my favorite neighborhood doctor whom his core competency is to give out medical certificates – and I hope to have my jaw fixed.

We were like long lost friend inside his consultation room because my last visit was on December 2006.  “So you’ve changed your job,” he asked.  I nodded and he told me that I looked more relaxed and less stressed.  Really?!  And I shall trust a doctor’s observation.

“What can I do for you today,” he asked.  I told him my jaw problem.  And I told him that I may be coming down with a flu.  He said he would give me some lotion to apply and some painkillers for my jaw and my flu.

At the counter, I stared at the lotion and it says: nanotechnology.  I was amazed!  Although nanotechnology is not new, its application to our commercial world is still at its infancy stage.  It will be years before those nanoscaled swarm of microscopic machines become a reality as depicted in Michael Crichton’s novel “Prey”.  When that time comes, I don’t know what the world would become.

My friend SF asked me out for lunch and she saw the tube of lotion.  She asked if I was OK.  I waved the tube in the air and said, “This, has enough nanorobots to keep me happy.”

“There is no nanorobot inside,” she laughed.

OK.  I know she is a bio-science graduate.  But still …

“Yes, there are,” I insisted.

“No, there isn’t,” she shook her head.

“Look,” I began.  “Look,” she interrupted.  I continued, “Look, there are things inside this tube that are manufactured, programmed to carry out a certain function, and they are super tiny.  Therefore, these are nanorobots.”

“They are not nanorobots!” she reinstated.

Whatever they have inside the tube, it doesn’t seem to work wonders.  It smells really bad (bad bad robots!) and I think the painkiller does the job just as good.  In the evening, the flu virus seemed to be ahead of my willpower by a nanometer so I have decided to take the non-drowsy flu medicine my favorite doctor prescribed.

At first I felt terrible.  Then I felt like puking.  My head was spinning.  I vaguely remember such an experience.  This morning I woke up, I did a search of “cough pills” in my own site and I found this post.  OK.  For future reference, my body doesn’t go well with Dextromethorphan (or Dexcophan).

Bad bad (+)-3-methoxy-17-methyl-9α,13α,14α-morphinan or whatever it is.

Related Entry: Cough Pills

Categories
J Pop Music Reviews

BoA – The Face – And The Conquest Continues

BoA - The Face

To tell you the truth, I am more thrilled by BoA’s phenomenal success in the music industry at the age of 21 than her music itself.  Straddled between the Korean and Japanese markets, her 11th studio album is a Japanese release that attained the number 1 position in the Oricon chart the 6th consecutive time (only Ayumi Hamasaki has done it before with now a record of 8 consecutive number 1’s and stops there).  To enjoy such a strong fan base in Japan as a Korean is remarkable.  To enjoy such a commercial success as a 21 years old, I say it’s phenomenal.
 
I often admire BoA’s ambition and energy.  There are not many artists in the world who relentlessly release albums that target at two different local markets, in two different languages, simultaneously.  Her appetite, I believe, is not only in these two countries.  Rumor has it that she is currently putting the Korea market on hold and planning to venture into the US market.  I am concerned over her English pronunciation but we shall see.  And she has released a few songs in Chinese as well.
 
“The Face”, like her previous albums, is packed with the typical electronic sounded pop music that you can happily bop to.  I personally think that these bright and youthful songs are great to be seen live as BoA is a great entertainer on stage.  Just by listening to the album alone, something does seem missing.  Perhaps the music is not as memorable as I would like them to be.  Perhaps those complicated dance beat arrangements are meant to shine during live performances.  Hence, like her previous album “Made in Twenty (20)”, I actually appreciate the DVD better than the CD.
 
“The Face” comes with 2 DVD’s.  One with music videos from the single releases as well as an interview session that I don’t understand.  Another one is packed with live clips from two different concerts filmed in year 2007.  Those live clips are beautiful.  It has the classic BoA-and-the-piano-and-the-orchestra kind of performance.  It also has the BoA-and-her-hot-dance-moves kind of performance too.  One year ago, as written in the previous review, I was trying to get used to her voice.  Today, I still try.  At times her vibrato sounds a bit mechanical.  Perhaps, I will get myself BoA-ized one day.  Below is one of her singles “Lose Your Mind” with the making-of clip.  If you enjoy slow songs, try search for her another single “Love Letter”.

PS. Is it just me who feel that BoA looks more haggard judging from the live videos these days?  She has definitely lost some weight.

Related Entry: Made In Twenty (20) – Another Japanese Album By Korean Singer BoA

Categories
Silly Me

The Stupid Things I Did At The Malaysian Custom

A supposed to be surprised MMS to Cynthia but the telecom network failed to deliver

You wouldn’t believe what I did at the Malaysian Custom last Friday.

When I was young and needed to travel overseas on my own, my dad always made sure that all the new items I carried across the border would have the original packaging removed.  Each and every item.  As I grow older, I deduce that if the items are for self use, it is OK to carry them over from one country to another.  Where does the line being drawn?  I have no clue.  I am sure travellers visit places overseas and buy souvenirs for friends.  Some are pretty big ticket items (like the Swiss watches).  Who would shop overseas and declare all their goods at the Custom and get themselves taxed?

Seriously?

Last Friday morning, as Cynthia left our home and headed to the airport, she smiled at me and said, “See you in Malaysia tonight!”  I smiled back and said, “No no no!  See you in Singapore next week!”.  The truth was, I did not give Cynthia a firm yes that I would drive all the way and visit her over the weekend.  Call it a semi-surprise visit or an internal struggle yet to be sorted out.  I hadn’t even packed my bag that early Friday morning.

I knew she has to work over the weekend and I have thousand and one things I could do in Singapore.  But then … why not make someone happy and besides, I always love a little adventure.  I had no idea where and how to get to PJ Hilton.

So I packed my bag in a hurry (still needed to go to work for half a day), brought along a new brainless book, grabbed my Spanish classical guitar, and … that should be enough to keep myself entertained.

Except, I had this sudden urge to attempt to write some songs during this road trip and I have stumbled upon a nice neat toy a while back that condenses the entire home recording studio into a hand-held device!  I just had to buy that before heading to Malaysia!

Fast forward to the Malaysian Custom, one friendly officer asked me to open the car boot and he pointed at my shopping bag and asked, “What is it inside?”

“Erm … it’s a recorder,” I replied gingerly and already cursing my own stupidity.

He took it out from my shopping bag and clearly had no idea what it was.  It is definitely not something you can commonly see in all good electronic stores.  Carrying with him my brand new toy, he consulted his group of officers (must be like 6 or 7 of them gathering by the desk … very intimidating!)

“You need a permit for this,” he smiled.

In any other given days, I would have loved his friendly smile.  I said, “I don’t understand.  It is just a recorder.  More like a MP3 player!”

“I know, I know!  Well, you will need a permit in order to bring this into Malaysia.  But I shall tax you instead.  It is much better that way,” he said.

“Tax me?!  But it is for my own use!” I gently protested.

“Do you have a receipt?” he asked.

Now, how stupid I was?!  I could have said: no, but I remember it cost 10 bucks.  Instead, I passed him the receipt.  He took out a calculator, punched in some numbers, and said, “The tax is 30% and that will be RM 175.”

I was nearly in tears!  I pleaded with him that I bought it just before lunch and I planned to use it to record my guitar this evening (I didn’t dare to show him my mint condition S$1,500 guitar at the back seat that has a receipt inside … the best place to keep a receipt is with the item itself, no?).  I even tried to strike up a conversation with him on music.  To tell you the truth, he must be the most sympathetic and friendly Malaysian Custom officer I have ever met.

After much deliberation with all sort of analogies I could think of (he was very patience too!), he did not bulge and kept telling me that he was just doing his job.  Reluctantly, I took out my wallet ready to hand him RM 175.  He was taken aback and said, “Don’t you want a receipt?  You have to pay the tax over there.”  He pointed at somewhere far.

That’s it.  I wasn’t going to walk!  It would be a walk of shame!  And I would be haunted by this stupid moment of mine for the rest of my life!  I counter suggested that I should just throw away the packaging right here right now.  He was shocked slightly and smile, “Sorry Sir, I have already seen the box!”

“But it doesn’t matter!  I will rip the box apart.  And you won’t see it again!  Besides, I wouldn’t be able to sell that in Malaysia right?” I insisted.  OK, my heart would bleed because I do keep all my toys inside the original packages all the time.  But between RM 175 and heart pain, I would choose the latter.

As I attempted to take the box from his hand, he stopped me and said, “Let me ask my supervisor.”

The supervisor looked really cold and stern.  Actually he did look very scary.  I was not sure if I could muster enough courage to face him.

The officer presented my case.  the supervisor kept quiet at first and then let out one command in Malay.  He didn’t even bother to look at me!  The officer returned and asked, “What passport are you holding?”

Huh?!  Now only you ask that from me?!

“Singaporean passport!” I held my breath.

“Next time, please don’t do that again,” he said.  I was in such a relief that I even shook his hands!

Gosh, isn’t that a bit out of proportion?!  30% tax?!  For something that I actually use.  Lesson learned.  Always listen to what daddy say.  He has more grey hair than me for a reason.