just minishorts.

Two more days to go before I close the contest period. The Pixart book is worth RM56 each, and I've got THREE (3) books to give away just to my readers. So you know what you want to do, right?

Seeing that I still have three Photobooks and I can't very well keep them for myself, I'm going to run a simpler version of the previously impossibly difficult contest.

All you have to do is to fill in the empty thought bubbles in the photo below.

The idea is for you to try to be funny, something like the following:

Just make sure that I like your creativity, and DON'T YOU BE EVIL ENOUGH TO INSULT EITHER RAKSHA OR MYSELF WHILE YOU'RE BEING NAUGHTY. But if you must be caustic, do it stylishly.

When you submit your entries, please label them as :

minishorts: —-
rakshademon: —-

The top three most interesting submissions will win one Pixart Pocket Photobook each.

The rules
Give a valid e-mail address please, and make sure you have a Malaysian address, because the free shipping only applies if you stay in Malaysia. If you're Singaporean or from elsewhere, you're free to participate, but you have to pay for your own shipping if you win it. Each winner will only take home ONE BOOK. And another thing, all submissions must arrive in this comments box by 11.59 pm, 30 September 2006. Late entries will not dilayan.

The EXTRA Rule
I had to add this on seeing that some of you guys got over-excited. YOU CAN SUBMIT A MAXIMUM OF 3 entries only. If you submit more than 3, I will only look at the first 3 comments that you submit. The rest will be absorbed into the system as a happy guest that never made it to the finalists, NO MATTER HOW GOOD the most recent comment is.

I've just decided on milestones to achieve when I reach 55.

1. I wanna own a 1 acre land, probably use 1/3 of the land to build a nice little cottage-like house, and the remaining 2/3 will have a nice garden with one or two fruit trees on it.
2. Probably buy myself a Savanna FC, which would be over 40 years old by then. Hopefully they'll still be having some usable parts for the car, otherwise I hope to be rich enough to custom manufacture whatever replaceables I'll need to put into the car.
3. One of my kids (if I do have kids) would be ready to take over my company then (if I do manage to start my own company).
4. Would have made a name for myself in the corporate sector, hopefully. You know? Just the name 'Claire Khoo' would make people go, 'Ooooh…' that kind of thing. In a good way of course. Oh I'll probably get people who'll go, 'That bitch', but whatever. Success invites haters.
5. Still be working. I've thought about it, I'll probably retire from hecticdom, but I'll still be earning some cash off royalties or maybe my company would have been self-sufficient enough to run by itself.
6. Significantly told off religious bigots in such a big way, people would recognize me for being a major pro-interreligious understanding activist. (I actually see this happening, I'm feeling more and more strongly about the need to BE TOLERANT of each other each day).
7. In doing (6) would probably be notorious in Heaven as a 'criminal not to allow past the Pearly Gates' by then… hence resulting in me having to live with the fact that after death I'd probably be roaming the earth as a lost soul.
8. Which is fine, as long as I do whatever God calls me to do when the time comes for it. Heaven or Hell? It doesn't matter. I live for His pleasure, not because I want to go to Heaven. There is a difference, you know?

I also noticed that recently when I rant and think to myself, I always stray off to wonder what God really wants for me. But yeah, I'm saying it here. I'm doing it all because I believe there's a purpose here on Earth that He wants me to fulfill, and it all fits together. But what differentiates me from you, my dear friend, is the fact that I'm not aiming for a place beside His throne. I'm just doing it because I believe it's what He requires me to do, not because I want to enter his Kingdom one day.

I keep thinking about retirement lately. Is this a sign of fatigue?

Maybe I'm slow to learn, and I ought to have seen these coming from a mile away, but I've just seemed to realize all these. That you do get more cynical as you grow older. You get more tired easily, and you start to realize time really is precious. You can sit at a corner of Coffee Bean with a best girlfriend and talk about crushes you've had in the past, and you laugh about the stupidity of the things you used to do as a gullible school girl, and suddenly you realize the value of RM10 and that it really isn't that much and coffee bean is expensive. You start to realize you've turned more reflective lately, and a slight cautiousness has crept into the words you choose to let out of your mouth. You're more precarious now, not that it's a good thing, and you really miss the times where you used to be carefree, and was applauded for being outspoken.

A few months down the road, you find that being outspoken becomes a little bit more difficult than it used to be, and you have to try just to say what you want to say, because everything, everything gets filtered down now. And you do it so naturally because it has become internalized, so now while life goes on at breakneck speed, your mind starts to pace itself in a cha-cha step. Think, Think, Talk talk talk, Think, Think, talk talk talk. And you laugh over Flat Whites and say, 'I agree with you.'

The truth is, sometimes I lose the topic, I forget what we were laughing about, but I try to make it a great disguise, I try to refine that art of seeming as if I understand.

Occasionally you remind yourself that you need to stop, smell the roses, but nowadays, with technology and practicality, you thank the geniuses behind Crabtree and Evelyn who make Rose-scented Hand Creams. Great for the times in the office when you need to rehydrate your skins from the air conditioning. It's called killing two birds with one stone, you stop to moisturize your hands, and you smell the roses at the same time!

And then you remember, that all these is going to take up years and years of your life as you walk towards the great 55, and retirement seems so far away.

In recent weeks I've met up with Mr Jeff on a weekly basis just to iron things about a co-project we're doing, and after so many times, I've yet to stop marvelling at the fact that this man is so very different from the Mr Taikor Manberries (to borrow a quote from the Cowboy) of the M'sian blogosphere. It's really quite amazing how words can betray a person's character. And yet for some reason, each time I meet up with Jeff, my mind tends to stray towards the 'important' stuff that shallow girls like me usually try hard to avoid. You know, politics, religion, issues, the like?

And then of course I'm talking about what Mr Harry Lee said about being Chinese and marginalized, which is the hot topic that is being discussed on the very front page of Screenshots right now.

So we all know the strange categories are there all along, every where you go, you're a minority in places, a majority in others, and sometimes, it IS all about picking out and realizing which ones will aid you to the place you want to be. And of course in Malaysia, if you're Chinese, or Indian, or Malay for that matter, you just happen to must belong to a particular category that will allow you the rights to enjoy certain privileges that makes you 'special' in certain cases. Or in some cases, like mine, some 'disprivileges'.

Of course, for people like me who've been ignorant of the property market until recently (pardon my childishness), I just realized that Bumiputeras now enjoy not only 5, but 7% discount on brand new house purchases. But but but, because my surname is Khoo, if I choose to go and buy a house in Penang, for instance, I could opt to purchase houses under a particular development program and get to enjoy 10% discount, because my surname is Khoo. My Mum, who is an anak Kelantan, has better privileges than me, even though she's not anak Bumi. Did you know that if your birth certificate says you're born in Kelantan, you get to buy and own a house in Kelantan? I can't do that because I'm not Kelantanese. There are special scholarships for people from different states, say you're from Pahang, you could get an extra opportunity to apply for a Yayasan Pahang scholarhips. Or lessay your dad works for a huge company like Tenaga or TM or Petronas for instance, you get extra chances to win a very lucrative all expenses paid three year study program borne by your dad's company. Things like that. Marginalization, in all its beauty.

Sometimes I like to kid myself that because I was born in Singapore, one day, should I choose to get sick of M'sia, I would have easier migration paths into Singapore. Not that I want to be called Singaporean at all of course, and I'm very well aware that should I go there one day, I'll have to suffer another kind of pengetepian, you know?

OK, I'm showing my peculiarly wild and optimistic side as usual, of course, and it's grating, ain't it? Actually, I'd just like to mention it here, that for some reason, there's this other side effect coming out of all the Bumi vs Non-Bumi things that we all have to live with over here in Malaysia. Which could be a positive side effect. Its the one where people just assume you're smart just because you're Chinese and you had your education in a local university. Maybe I graduated from local uni early enough from a period of time where local graduates were still considered a pretty good layer of cream.

Until today when people ask me where I came from and I say 'oh that dreaded UPM', I get responses from all walks of races and life going, 'OMG, you went to local uni? You did STPM? And you're Chinese! Wow. Must be tough, getting into local uni.'

'Was it tough? A bit lah. It was tough in the sense that I knew that it was either local uni, or quit my studies and head out to work because my parents were too poor to afford me a private education. Do or die thing. But entering the university isn't really that difficult as you would like to believe.'

That of course, is my usual response.

'Oh no lah. You Chinese. Sure very hardworking one. I bet you must be really smart.'

That, is the usual, very glowering, actually untrue compliment. And they actually believe it when they say it, so in the end it's better to accept the compliment with a 'thank you'.

I don't mind being called hardworking, and smart. It's a two-in-one positive exchange for all the 'marginalization' that I've had to 'suffer'. It's not a bad thing really, because, hehe, in truth, I'm quite lazy, and not very smart.