just minishorts.

… is yet another rip off the Mix Breakfast topic. Yes, yes, I listen to Mix FM every morning (how's that for online endorsement of an already popular radio show?). I used to like Lil' Kev and Fly Guy, but I suppose, people age, and after a while, I had to migrate from 92.9 to 94.5 so now I'm hooked on Richard, Shaz and Ika every morning. The topics usually don't disappoint, except unfortunately, I've got only less than 1/2 hour to amuse myself with the callers' responses.

So anyway, Ika and Natalie the guest asked the listeners this today:

'Will money help heal a broken heart?'

(Can you tell? I'm terribly interested in topics that involve boy-girl relationships, oh silly me!)

Every caller I heard (all three of them) said, 'No.' When your heart is broken, you can't heal the broken heart. A girl even said, 'It's never going to change, once your heart is broken you can't change ever… not ever going to be healed.'

Blah. I happen to think that money DOES help to heal a broken heart. Because I've been there, I've been through this. Money will help to provide all the medication you need to keep you busy, to keep you motivated to go out and meet more people, and after a while, you'll realise, money plays a very, very, important role in help changing the way you look so that you can move out of that rut you're stuck in since getting your heart broken by the last bastard who told you he loved you.

That's what I think lah. Cos I've had my share of broken hearts, once when I was still studying and poor, and the second time when I was already working and earning my own keep. And I'll say this, it's a hell of a difference. When you're living mostly off what your parents can afford you, there's only so much you can do to keep yourself busy. Because your parents pay for the bill, you can't get out, you're stuck in the curfews and requirements your parents have set for you. Apart from having to endure the immense pain of being left out alone, you still have to be the obedient kid so you can't very well splurge, nor can you spend the whole night out with friends, nor can you decide to throw and destroy things just to feel better. You're required to mend your bleeding heart by your parents' standards, and trust me, its NOT easy.

When you're independent, and you control the money you earn and own, it becomes different. You can choose to spend and overshoot your credit limit, who cares? Purchase-binging is awesome therapy when you've got bloodshot eyes and a tired chest. The last time I broke up I spent a bomb on books. And then after a while of splurging I got broke, and left with a pathetic figure in my bank account I had to do something in order to earn the money I lost. That's when I threw myself into the work and concentrated on getting money.

So of course, money speaks a lot about how you manage break-ups. Having a lot of money affords you the luxury of retail therapy, and you can choose to pamper yourself with spas and facials and other things to make yourself feel better. Even a trip overseas (I've seen friends going on month-long breaks just to mend a broken up, you think if you're poor you can do that?) If you had no money, you'd be motivated to work hard. You should be motivated anyway. And throwing your heart and soul into your work helps you take your mind off the pains of a bad break up.

That's what I think anyway.

I was listening to Ika on the Mix-Breakfast today. Topic was cute.

Do you believe in finding love, or do you feel that love has to find you?

Anyway, THAT was the topic. The callers who called in were all men though, although I only listened in from 7.30 to 8 am onwards. Thing is, one of the guys who called in was amazingly thick.

'I don't know why lah, but love always seems to find me. I'm married already but love always seems to find me.'

Heh? Perasannya.

Of course, the DJ was nice. 'Really? And you're married? And your wife doesn't mind?'

'Well, of course she minds.'
'Then what do you do about that?'
'I can't help it. I just go out with these women lah sometimes, she can't do anything about it. Not all the time lah.'
'Really? What is it about you that makes you so desirable?'
'Well, I think it must be because… I'm good looking!!'

*Puke*

But anyway, since I really liked the question, when Eric called I decided I had to ask him the magic question, 'Eh… ask you something.'

'What?'
'Did you find love or did love find you?'
'What type of question is that?'
'Ok ok sorry I rephrase. Did we find love or did love find us?'
'Erm…We found love and love found us… we found each other…
'Wah lau…'
'And then we come together!!!!!'

Trust Eric to sesat-ify my Monday morning like that.

Topic tadi terlalu hangat, terlalu sensitif, my apologies, so let's enjoy a little 'commercial break' for a bit.

Please note that in no way have I been paid for the following 'endorsement' of a particular restaurant. Shanghai-10, ???, resides at Telawi 2 in Bangsar, near where I work and it's my favourite Chinese restaurant at the moment. April blogged about this two weeks back, and since then we've gone back there twice. And oops, apologies for its being non-halal, but if you don't mind non-kosher, trust me, the food is really smacking good. With reasonable prices too.

I'll let the photos do the talking.

I hardly do food reviews unless I like the food, but I'll give this place two thumbs up. One for being having more reasonable prices than the more expensive Dragon-I, and for having super yummy Xiao Long Paus with unbreakable skins!

Word of Caution: If you're strongly Charismatic, or you're living your entire life waiting for Christ to ride in with the clouds, please forgive my rant. My blog after all.

A few months back, a friend, well, a friend of a close friend, fervently Christian no doubt, came declaring to our party of girls, declaring that the Good Lord had sent her a vision.

'And then I looked up into the sky, and the heavens and the clouds had parted, and then I saw a chariot led by horses, and I looked down, and I saw the grounds break apart, and the flames of hell lashed out from beneath… and the horse-led chariots went down to battle the demons of hell.'

We were awestruck. Now I can't quite remember what the rest actually said, but most of us, out of politeness had concurred to agree with our living prophet here, not deciding to test whether her visions were God sent or human driven. Nonetheless, her decision to bear the cross for Christ was declared in great passion, and she made the announcement, 'This is sign that God wants me to battle the devil for him.'

I want to say out loud here that what she said disturbs me greatly, in the same way as every fundamentalist outburst leaves me feeling utterly disgusted by this silly moulding of God into a scary creature who casts infidels into Hell for not obeying him.

There are several observations you can gather from your nearest friend in order to start labelling him as a religious fundamentalist:

1) This obsession with the Rapture - most fundamentalists I know spend their entire lives waiting and waiting for God to come riding the clouds with trumpets sounding in background all the time. Now you ask me: do I believe in Kingdom come? Yes I do. You ask me again: then how can I insult my peers like this? Well because I don't spend every second of my life looking out at the sky waiting for it to open with a loud crash! More importantly I don't spend every minute available telling my friends that they have to be quick to accept Christ otherwise when Kingdom come it is too late.

2) This obsession with the fear of hell - The recounting and recounting of near death experiences of people who died once and went down to hell and went to heaven again and finally deciding that Christ is supposed to be. Now the strange thing is how fundamentalists can discount the fact that every religion has reported their own cases of near-death experiences, and for every NDE report, you can see the pattern somehow miraculously matches the heaven and hell that was conceptualized in the shaping of that believer's world view. So either we're all wrong, or we're all right and there really is a heaven and hell for all of us. The point is, does it really matter? Did God say that we live our entire lives waddling in this misery of earth and waiting for the day to die so that our enemies will burn in hell and we will rejoice in heaven? That's pretty 'loving' of Christianity, isn't it? So much for 'Love Thy Neighbour and Love Thy Enemies'.

3) The obsession with I'm right no you're wrong actually I'm right so really if you don't believe in God the way I do too bad for you see you in hell (urm, if you're going to heaven how the heck are you going to see the other person in hell?)

4) This terrifying fear of the demon possessing inanimate objects and the housecleaning rituals of throwing out inanimate objects (i.e. peace symbols, pentagram symbols, biscuits with shadowy symbols of other religions, bla bla, bla bla, occultic practises of yoga, photos that contain images of other Gods, INANIMATE OBJECTS that contain the devil!).

5) The strange fact that fundamentalists actually claim to read the bible religiously, and yet have conveniently overlooked the fact that the bible specifically mentions that demons and spirits only possess human beings and animals hence actually, my dears, your average plate that has a picture of the dragon, nah, that's just a plate, mind you. Your t-shirt that has the image of a skull, it's just a skull out to scare people. That halloween pumpkin there, it's not going to come alive and gnaw you to pieces, thank God.

6) The stupid preoccupation with the bearing of the cross and fighting the devil for God — God said, go forth and bear fruit, God never said battle the demon for me. Or did He? Ok… hammer me but I'm wrong, but remembering that Lucifer was a fallen angel, I would presume that God actually loves the devil, and it is the devil who rejects and hates God, and God casted Him out of Heaven because of this rebellion. So I would presume that since God said love thy enemy, and if the devil is God's enemy, wouldn't this mean that God loves his enemies, including the Devil too? Wouldn't this also technically mean that if one day, the devil chooses to say 'I'm sorry God for I'm sinned,' God would accept the devil? And if that is so, why would you want to fight the devil?

I think the problem is that the devil can't choose to love God because he's enjoying himself too much watching this senseless battle that's going on between the fundamentals and the liberalists (ouch I'm guilty, please crucify me). After all since all of us are worshipping devillish concepts anyway and living such pride-filled lives (remember God says pride is a sin), why should the devil want to love God? He's flourishing in his own narcissism right now.

Look, my point is this, if you wanna go to Heaven and cast me to Hell, do it one time and leave me alone. The truth is I don't want your intrusion into my study of God or my pursuit of God. God does things in His own time, so since I've come home the prodigal daughter (took me 10 years, mind you), don't lah come along like a leech in my life and offer to babysit me so that I don't walk the wrong path. And I'd like to keep this relationship personal, thank you very much. When you choose to come into my relationship and start telling me how I should treat my Dad, that's when you're being uninvited and intrusive.

Besides, with all this talk of God is ever faithful, if I do happen to stumble along the way, I trust that He will send His angels to guide me back to the right way. So really, you don't have to be so helpful and caring.

You see, GOD is a loving God who CARES for us. Now the Bible says that Jesus holds the keys to Hell and the right to judge belongs to Him and Him alone. Keeping this in mind, it means that fundamentalists should stop extorting people into Christianity and instead focus on making things right with themselves and living in faith. Become the salt and light of the world, not become a dysfunctional intercom speaker for God. It means that when you MINISTER you don't run up to a poor disbeliever and tell him, 'If you don't accept Christ as your personal lord and saviour He will not let you enter heaven and when you die it will be too late to decide.'

The attraction in Christ is not the physical 'Heaven' he promises but the freedom from slavery that set all of us free from these man-made persuasions. Why else did He die on the cross and live again? For fun izzit? A thousand years before Christ came the whole world lived in fear of hell. Two thousand years later post-Christ we're still living in fear of Hell instead of in anticipation for the reunion with Christ. What is this lah.

You absolutely do not scare a non-believer into kneeling and trembling before God. You don't come up with strange conceptions made on a hallucinated conception that God has closed one door to Heaven and the other door is still left open so the entrance is very small right now. And for God's sake don't tell a non-believer that if he doesn't say 'OH JESUS IS LORD' asap, he will regret eternally in Hell.

Please, do us a favour: DON'T TURN GOD INTO THE BOOGEYMAN!!!

Ministering for God, living evangelism, means that you choose to walk in faith and let your life be a blessing and inspiration to others. Not preaching fire and brimstone to people who don't really give a damn about death and telling them that they have to be very scared because God is real. That's like telling your little five year old kid to go to bed early at night because the boogeyman will catch her. And the fact remains, God loves, and God cares for all of us and God is ever accepting of us no matter how far we wander from Him, He will always welcome us back. God was never the boogeyman.

Happy Feet

Nicole Kidman's voice is terribly annoying. She's a great actor and all, but I just CANNOT stand that terribly 'soft' voice of hers. Oh and the movie?

I think it was so-so. It started off quite boring. Well, actually my boyfriend kinda doesn't like movies like this and he actually just brought me to the cinema because I begged him to. So the moment he got the tickets I was crossing my fingers all the way praying and begging for the show to be good.

So the show starts off slow, a bit 'wtf' with all the 'penguins sing' nonsense… and Nicole Kidman's whiney voice was an ultra turn-off. Kidman, piece of advice, never act in a show where you're not allowed to show your face. Anyway the show pretty much picked up around the middle where there was a lot of sliding on the ice, and especially when Mumble bumped into the Mambo penguin pack. I loved those things… hehehhe… awesome.

Hugh Jackman is pretty awesome as Memphis. I loved his singing… That Mumble penguin is ULTRA Cute. Wait… if anyone has watched the show, a question: is Mumble an emperor penguin? Or did he come from a lost egg?

Casino Royale

I loved Casino Royale. I thought Eva Green was fantastic. And I REALLY REALLY liked Craig. Now it's not because of his rippling muscles, but I'll say this here: that guy can act.

Some parts of the show were wtf, as usual… but it was very entertaining.

Especially the part where he had the cardiac arrest.

Eva Green is REALLY REALLY gorgeous. Favourite scene of her was when she was getting ready for the poker start off… She looks awesome without make-up.

Actually it also helps to catch 'On Her Majesty's Special Service' just two hours before Casino Royale, to appreciate the selection of Daniel Craig as James Bond. Way, way, way better than George Lazenby (yes there was a guy after Sean Connery who screwed up the Bond character)…

I'm rattling along here… but I didn't ever like any of the Bond movies, so when I say Casino Royale was good, it means I genuinely enjoyed it. And I'm looking forward to the next show after this with Craig as Bond.

p.s. Those scripting fellas sure had a sense of humour when they decided to name the Japanese dude 'FUKUTU'.