Atokkk Jugakkk..

ermz.. thatz my Princess' favourite quote..

I just got back from Shanghai yesterday.. no pics this time coz I think I had taken enough pics of that place for now..

spent the entire day sleeping, and I headed out for dinner at 6pm, and then to XiangYang market to get some stuffs for my mom and thatz it..

read Michael Connelly's book, Blood Work, from beginning till the end, in a single night..

damn.. I'm totally addicted now.. bought 2 more of his books just now..

thatz it for Shanghai..

and to update the past week..

I had managed to change my flight away to do a Melbourne flight as my mom was flying back from there.. and I had the chance to take care of her for the first time at work..

We had guests invited over to commemorate my brother officially receiving a Permanent Residency in Australia..

and now they are bugging me to start making plans to move over..

so my mom cooked briyani and we had abt 80 family friends with us.. and we celebrated my 2 nephews, Iskandar and Ameerul's 9th and 8th birthday, respectively..

so much work.. and luckily we had someone to supervise the event that day..



Macam construction site foreman..

ok.. and this is how she is when she's off duty..



and ShaSha the Cam-Addict.. she refuses to let anyone else use the camera at this point and kept on snapping pics of herself..



Nadra, ShaSha's best friend.. itz hilarious listening to the two of them having a conversation.. baby-talks that only the two of them understand..



one of my close friends, Syariffa Radiah.. who had gone to Melbourne recently to take a degree in how to be a storewoman.. doing Logistics..

heh.. she felt out of place coz she's the only one without a tudung.. all the women and even the young girls had tudung on.. wahahaha.. kesian.. I didn't expect that either.. but it will be funny looking at her with the tudung too I think...

I think I'll spend the entire night laughing..



and here..



another treasure of my family.. Yayat.. or Alauddin Riayat Shah.. my bro is a history freak and we were shocked when he really named his first son that..

I thought that he was just kidding when he suggested that name..

so now we call the kids by numbers.. itz easier that way..

Iskandar Zulkarnain a.k.a No.2, 9 yrz old
Ameerul Mukminin a.k.a No.3, 8 yrz old
Saifullah Hil Maslul a.k.a No.4, 5 yrz old
Sayeeda Nafeesa a.k.a No.5, 2 yrz old..


Yayat, a.k.a No.1, is turning 10 soon.. and his good health is a miracle for us considering the fact that he was 2 months prematured and spent his initial months of life in an incubator..

Being the oldest child, he takes in the responsibilities of taking care of the house and his siblings..

now.. that's a proud uncle..



Me and No.5



Me and Omar.. our close family friend in Melbourne.. he's a Pakistani as well.. but born and raised in Melbourne..



Some of the guests.. the rest of the guys filled up the garage where we had another set of food..

The fella sitting closest to the camera is a distant cousin of mine.. and I didnt know it till after he left that he's my cousin.. coz i couldnt recognise him now.. the last time i saw him was when he was 5 and abt 1/10th of his current size..

ok.. had an exhausting nite.. and i hate winter nites in Melbourne coz I have to take a smoke outside.. and it will be freezing.. it was abt 5 degrees that nite..

had to leave for flight that morning.. with my mom on board.. and I managed to get her the closest seat to the galley so she was under my constant watch and care..



family pic.. I was already on board the plane at this time..

from left..

No.1, No.4, My Brother, No.2, No.5 in tudung, No.3, My Mom, and the Mother Of All Numbers.. my sister-in-law..

and this is my fav pic of her..



My youngest brother, Azlan, will be getting married tomorrow.. and that will make me the only unmarried one among my 9 siblings..

eh.. I got 1 elder sister whoz mentally handicapped.. so that makes 2 unmarried ones..

but I'm the only unmarried sane one.. I think..

Perth, Podcasts, Politicians and Baby Kissing Pictures..

just got back from Perth this afternoon.. and so stoned out now that i fell asleep while typing out this posting.. heh.. so this one was written within 3 hrz.. with a good long nap in between..

i was looking forward for a day of catching up on my sleep in Perth, till i met a good friend of mine, Miske, an Indonesian crew, travelling as a passenger on my flight..

so i knew.. ok.. i'm not gonna be sleeping that much..

but itz ok.. Miske is a good friend.. and we actually had fun doing a flight together to Los Angeles several months back, where 6 of us on that flight clicked and had fun partying and spent an entire day having a hangover in Disneyland.. so I was looking forward to meet up with her and catch up on the several missing months..

so we made plans to meet up for lunch.. i got abt 4 hrs of rest after i checked in.. we met at 1.30pm, and headed down to Fremantle for a Fish and Chips lunch at the beach..



The restaurant..

and..

by the way..



Dont feed 'em.. or they'll shit on you..



Seagulls fighting over some chips at the table next to us..



one of 'em.. close up..



this is what will happened when Seagulls have a lil bit too much to drink..



view of the Pier from where we were seated..



the coastline at Fremantle..

so after lunch, we headed back to the city to have coffee and dessert.. was almost 5pm when we got there.. and we sat down in the chill.. at abt 10 degrees..



the City..

after coffee, we got back to my hotel room, and had a chit chat session with my Inflight Supervisor, John.. while keeping tab of the time..

Miske left just after it got dark, and me and John continued for a lil while longer before we end the evening..



Sunset, view from my room..

so our conversations revolved ard the topics of the day..

one of which i'm gonna talk abt now..

Politics.. Oh GAWDDDDD..

Election mah.. so i'm gonna just say my piece on it.. and coz i have not talked abt it so i dont need to take a licence from MITA for it k.. coz this is a one-off comment from me, a voter.

Actually.. ermz.. i did talk abt The Election once before.. but it was a Pro-PAP entry.. so if i lash out a lil bit on the PAP now, i think it should be ok.. balance things up a lil bit for my inner self..

The Election and the James Gomez issue..

Dont u wonder why when they posted pics of James Gomez, he always looked like he have a sorry face..

He dont really look like that in real life.. probably in recent months he had put on so much weight that he pouts.. but no.. he dont have a sorry face.. and please dont think that he felt so guilty coz of the incident that he perpetually have a sorry face..

he doesnt..

I had gotten the chance to know James in my personal capacity.. as he is a good friend of my brother in Melbourne.. and he has a good character, he's smart, and he's honest..

and he dont have a sorry face..

Dr Chee Soon Juan is a friend of my brother too.. and for those of my friends here who dunno who my brother is, ask me privately and I'll tell u..

and I had the chance in knowing Soon Juan personally too.. and like everyone else in Singapore, I didnt have a good opinion of him.. I mean.. what kinda Singaporean politician in the modern era would go on a hunger strike?

till i talked to him.. and got to know him..

and not only i found out that he speaks with intellect.. he's a nice guy too..

and he dont have a perpetual defiant face as how his pictures are always published in the papers..

in the papers, he always look like he wants to get into a fight..

sure.. he might be stern in the way he speaks.. but it doesnt mean that he wants to beat up someone..

I think that if I dont know him personally, and in recent years I had been looking at his pictures in the papers, I'd regard him as a rogue..

damn.. he even resembles a Pak Hai Tong headman that i used to know..

really..

but c'mon.. the man is a Neuropsychologist.. most of us cant even pronounce the title of his job.. how to regard him as silly?

and he's not silly..

look at the pictures of PM Lee.. his pictures always show him with a lil bit of smile, but not too much, with a his forehead raised slightly, to portray a thinking person..

Dr Yaacob Ibrahim is always laughing at something, his arms outstretched..

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.. ermz.. ok.. he always look pleasant.. i dont think anyone can say anything bad abt him even if they really really really try to..

i'm sure these ppl are nice ppl in their own capacity.. just that we dont get the chance to know them personally.. so we rely on the media to show us our leaders.. and they show us what they need to show us..

i'm sure they can get a picture of Dr Chee smiling..

i'm sure they can get a picture of James Gomez hugging an 80 yr old hawker and getting good luck kisses from her..

itz election time man.. baby kissing time.. every politician will be kissing even the not cutest of the babies in their constituencies.. try to get a fair picture of them doing so.. so we compare pictures of who looked the best when they kissed the not cutest of all babies..

get all of the politicians to kiss some babies in their district..

then let them walk further to hug 80 yr old hawkers and take pictures of that too and we compare..

the one who can smile thru the ordeal the longest wins the vote.

the Election Committee made podcasting illegal..

And an opposition candidate (either SDP or WP.. i cant recall which one) was quoted saying that he dont know what podcasting is and he dont know that therez such a ruling..

and he wants to stand for election?? not knowing the basic of all buzz surrounding this current Election?

what the hell?

and so, the Government said that we dont have a First World opposition..

dammit.. we dont even have a Third World opposition..

the very limited ppl who qualifies to be of a good standing to challenge the government's ideas are the very same ppl that they are pushing down.. but then again.. itz politics..

if in a parallel universe, Dr Chee and James Gomez had been in love with the PAP.. they might be Ministers now.. they have the intellect and qualifications..

he might even be Rear-Admiral (NS) Dr Chee..

or a BG (Ret) Dr Chee.

itz illegal to post up articles abt politics.. supporting a specific party.

i'm supporting no one.. i'll vote whoever who seems the best in my constituency.. and at the moment, the SDP GRC candidates in Tampines definitely dont look even close to be it..

my vote sticks to the PAP for now..

if James Gomez fights here, i would definitely vote for him.. even if i didnt know him personally..

i'm ranting too much abt politics..

and i hate politics..

dammit..

let's get this Election over.

then we all can talk football.

Chelsea won.

we lost.

we, meaning, the Manchester United-loving-world.

and on the good side of the current depressing world..

X-Men 3 is coming out on 25th May.

Superman Returns in June.

and Brasil will lift the World Cup once again.