Please launch your favorite browser, fire up Google and search for this – ‘Fuck Earth Hour’.

If for some reason you’re too fucked up and unable to do that, check out the screenshot of the result below…

Awesome, isn’t it?

Now who would have thought, that there are so many pathetic dumb fucking asses at this very century, this very maturity, who think that the majestic art of turning shit old dinosaurs into light is a stupid boner? Our ancestors during the cave days would have traded their wives and all their precious animal hides for an hour worth of light without a second thought, and it would have been their ‘light hour’, and they would remember that hour for the rest of their lives.

Earth hour should be aptly renamed as Stupid hour.

I saw a program on TV the other day about the lives of group of tribal people in some remote part in Africa. In any other time, it would have been just another program on TV for me, but the recent spate of job seeking efforts have made me plunge in such low state of mind, that I started to wonder how different it would have been if I were to be one of the tribal dudes dancing half naked like jackasses, totally oblivious to all the fuck ups in the world…

I can come up with at least 10 reasons, why being a tribal man is better than a modern man:

1) A tribal man does not depend on the economy to survive. At any given time, a tribal man only needs to tend to his livestock because everything revolves around his livestock. He gets food, status and respect by having healthy and more livestock. A modern man has to please people he doesn’t like, do things he hates and waste the life he treasures to gain a small place in the huge ass society that runs everything related to his life, which totally depends on the mood of the economy.

2) The chicks in a tribal man’s community are already naked. That’s like, 50% work already done for. No surprises (cellulite, excessive dimples, varicose veins, etc). A modern man has to go through a painful process of courtship, spending shitloads amount of money and effort to obtain enough trust, only to get a first glimpse of his mate’s naked body, which is usually full of unexpected surprises (big bush, bad BO, huge ass lovehandles, et al)

3) When a tribal man wants a land or a house, he only needs a machete and a hoe to get the job done. Just clear the jungle and the land’s his. Get some straw, build himself a house of any size. If he needs to expand his land to fit more livestock, just hoe the place up. A modern man has to regurgitate a sum of deposit, secure a lifetime’s loan and pay his ass off for that mortgage possibly for the rest of his life – just to get a place to live.

4) A tribal man does not have transport problems. He goes around by running and if anything comes into his path, he’d spear the shit out of that thing (lion, hyena, etc). If he has many kids, his kids run with him. A modern man has to go through the almost similarly painful process of getting a house to buy a decent motor transport, and contend with fuckloads of idiots blocking his way to go ANYWHERE for the most of his life (known as ‘traffic jam’). If he ever gets more kids later in his life, he has to repeat the process for a BIGGER VEHICLE and contend with more fuck ups.

5) If a tribal man wants a girl to be his wife, he just needs to give some livestock to the girl’s father, and he’d get the girl. He needs not to impress anyone with his looks, his dress code, or his table manners. He just need to have enough livestock, anyone will give him credit for that. A modern man needs to look good, be reasonably rich enough and have a good personality to get someone interested in him, and use his skills to impress the girl’s parents and satisfy their every whim to get the whole thing to work, before he could even mention about getting married.

6) When a tribal man’s in trouble, there’s nothing the witch doctor couldn’t fix. Just cut up one of the cows or goats, let the village witch doctor probe its intestines to predict the magnitude of the fuck up and determine how many more cows/goats are needed to be sacrificed to even up the odds, then dance around like an idiot and you’re off. When a modern man’s in trouble, it usually means more trouble (depression, alcoholism, divorce, more money for doctors/consultants/shrinks etc)

7) A tribal man kills his nemesis, he becomes a hero. He gets to commemorate the heroic event with a cool tattoo and honorary dance from his drinking buddies. If a modern man kills his nemesis (his boss, backstabbers, office bitch, etc) or anyone, he goes to prison for the rest of his life and gets non-permanent tattoos from blunt meat shafts up his ass in there.

8) A tribal man does not have problems with his dress code. He can walk naked anywhere he wants. If he chooses to wear a holim, he can coolly kill a buffalo for it. A modern man has to worry about what he is suppose to wear for different kinds of occasion. If he ever gets naked in public, he gets beaten up, goes to prison and gets non-permanent tattoos from blunt meat shafts up his ass in there.

9) Vanity is not an issue for a tribal man because everyone’s ugly. A tribal man may occasionally need a tattoo or piercing to complement his ego, but there’s nothing a village elder can’t fix. If a modern man is ugly, short, fat or not intelligent enough, he will be cast aside in the society, discriminated and gets very little attention unless he earns enough money to buy himself what others can’t afford to buy.

10) A tribal man gets healthier by tending his everyday needs. He gets ample exercises by running to commute, working on his livestock to feed himself and his family, or dancing with the guys to pray for a better harvest. A modern man gets out of shape, his arteries clogged, his blood pressure shot up and his organs expired by sitting around getting all the tension, just to earn enough money to feed himself and his family. He then has to spend more money to fix his health up (doctors, gym, etc) to be able to do that all over again.

*****

Being a tribal man simply means less worry, don’t you think?

I have always wanted to write a short guide about buying apartments/properties, but have the reservation to do it. The main reason is, there have been many good guides out there written by savvy professionals who are more experienced than I can ever be (I know nuts about buying/selling properties), and they probably are gonna laugh at my ass for writing craps that they know best. But today, I decided to say ‘fuck them’, and write it anyway, because I have nothing to do at work today. So here you go.

Water pressure.
When you want to buy an apartment/condo, make it a habit to check the water pressure. Water pressure is fucking important. I’ve seen places with water pressure lower than my own piss and it is basically impossible to use a shower at all, especially those with a water heater… unless you get one with a built in pressure pump. Bathing and washing with low water pressure is just the saddest thing ever and you have to make sure you don’t pay for that.

Balcony / main entrance is in a direct line
I think this has to do with fengshui in a scientific aspect, I don’t know. When the balcony is directly opposite the main entrance, it will give an easier path for the air to pass, thus will give the place an ‘airy’ feel and in turn, better ventilation. I’ve been to apartments/condos with poor ventilation, and boy do they stink and musty. And for some weird reason if the apartment/condo you’re looking at does not have a balcony, don’t buy it.

Waste disposal system
Many modern apartments/condos do not come with a garbage chute like what we have in the old days. The tenant will have to dispose the trash at the dump located somewhere out of the apartment compound, which causes the elevator to stink like hell after a period of time. Quite contrary to popular belief that this is the ‘modern way’ to dispose trash, trust me, it is not. The reason for that is cost. It costs more to construct garbage chutes, and also to widen the road for garbage truck access. So to minimize cost and maximize profit, most greedy developers opt for this ‘bring out your own trash’ solution. Not a good idea. If possible, find an apartment/condo with garbage chutes. It is more convenient, and you won’t get to smell other people’s trash in the elevator everyday.

The number of elevators
Enough elevators for your block, that is. I’ve been to an apartment with 2 elevators, but fuckloads of floors and tenants. I had to wait longer than the wait for a public bus just to haul my ass up to the desired floor. And I also hate to smell some assholes or old people with strong BO in the elevator, and the fucking elevator would keep stopping at every goddamn floor just because the block does not have enough elevators. I’d blame this on greedy developers. Make a rough calculation. How many floors and units versus the number of elevators – you’d get the rough idea how many people are going to use the elevator during the peak hour spike.

Proximity of places of worship
I’m going to be honest here – if there’s a mosque, Chinese or Indian temple, church nearby, there’s a high chance that you’re not going to live a peaceful life there. Mosques will wake you up. I lived next to a mosque before, but I had no problem with that because I needed to wake up early and it kinda helped me – but I can’t imagine if I were to have an infant who needs an ample amount of sleep then. It would be catastrophic. Chinese/Indian temple – when they have celebrations like July hungry ghost festival or Thaipusam, you’d get the effect of a hundred mosques combined. And also, you’d get all these incense fumes etc. Church – you’d get assholes parking haphazardly around because they wanted to be with their god and they do it every Sunday just to make sure your weekend is fucked. Ergo, places of worship = troubles. So, in my opinion, it is best that a residential area/building has at least a 2km buffer from ANY place-of-worship. If you believe in god, then you must also believe that his wide-area-network extends beyond that measly 2 – 3km. (he covers the whole planet goddamnit!)

Proximity of a vacant land
A vacant land next to your apartment building is like a sleeping volcano waiting to erupt. Why? You don’t fucking know what are they going to do with that piece of land. If someday someone decides to build a fucking highway through it, there goes your property value. Or a water treatment plant to stink up the air quality (my father in law learnt this lesson before). Or another bigger condo with not enough parking space that causes its tenants to double park the fuck up the entire street. Or even, a place of worship! Your happiness level will be summarized in a 2 syllable word : HAILAT. Look out for those.

Proximity of a school
If you want to have a good life, you should avoid living near a school like a plague. For one, the school buses are going to fuck the air quality up real bad. Secondly, the parents are going to fuck up the traffic, really really bad. Thirdly, the school children are going to fuck up the neighborhood (vandalism, gangsterism, mat-rempitism, etc). If you want to live near a school, make sure the apartment has a helipad and provides free helicopter service to bypass the fucked up traffic with a helicopter – otherwise, it’s not worth considering.

******

That’s about it, the important ones. I’m sure there are many more, which you can read them off the net. But these, are stuff that none of those people are going to tell you. You’ll have to thank me for that.

Recently, there has been a spate of events to promote ‘save the environment’ by various organizations in Penang. Company X, being a known media whore, has been quite active in these environmental activities. Amongst the chic-est thing to do nowadays (that I noticed) is – throwing mud balls.

I don’t really know how these things work but according to some vague facts, these balls could make our rivers clean again or something like that. So, if you have a really sad looking filthy ass river, just dump some of these balls into it, and it will be cleaner. More mud balls = cleaner water. At least that’s what most people perceive anyway.

That actually got me thinking – if the mud balls are so effective as claimed, then why don’t they just focus on mass producing these mud balls and dump them by the truckloads into all the rivers? Why save the mud balls just so that these people can play a part to throw them into rivers? What’s the rationale behind all these acts? What’s holding them back from mass balling these rivers back into their former glory?

One answer: media/attention whore. I think these balls are nothing more than pure bollocks. Maybe they are good enough to clean your koi fish pond for a limited time… I don’t know. But I don’t think it is able to restore a river that looks something like the picture on the left. Might even make it worse, I reckon. As you can see in the picture, there’s already a limited flow of water in the river. Balling it with mud balls some more will probably cause more sediment to deposit… and before you know it, it will become a dirt road instead of a river… no shit (ever wonder where does the ‘mud’ in the mud ball goes?). The only way that’s able to make the river clean again, is to go to the root of it – get rid of the main causes that made the river polluted in the first place. As simple as that. Mud balling isn’t going to help. (try to mud ball a bucket of used engine oil, see what happens…)

Well, the only thing that can be of help is probably the psychological relief that it brings. Makes one feel good for doing something – albeit imaginary – for the environment. But we can exploit even more value off the mud balls in my opinion. Instead of balling them into the river, I’d say we should fling them at our bosses. Maybe make them line up in tandem, and have them all blindfolded and we all take our best shot at them with mud balls! Might not clean up a lot of filth but it sure is fun, probably going to psyche us up a little, converting the energy into some productivity… and who knows, the productivity spike might lead up to some effort to do the real work to clean up a river…

I was asked by this career consultant the other day – “How has Company X changed you over the years?”. Well, that actually got me thinking – being with Company X for more than a decade, I surely must have evolved at some level. All living things evolve. (this is different from ‘what have I learned’. This is something that changes you subconsciously, just like an evolution). So after cogitating hard about that question, the first thing that came up in my mind was (which I gave as an answer at the same time),

“Acute tolerance to shitty food!”

That’s right. The one thing that I can name. The food in Company X cafeteria is the worst I have ever tasted. They’re sometimes tasteless, occasionally too salty, always cold with congealed grease, not to mention expensive! And if your stars are not congruent with the cosmic energy of your Chinese zodiac animal’s reproductive organ, you’re going to get a badass food poisoning and purge slime for the rest of the day as a bonus.

I was once even in the Company X cafeteria committee (I was forced to join the committee for complaining too much to the boss), and had the access to some of the audit materials. The experience of watching the kitchen audit pictures was worse than watching that ’2 girls 1 cup’ coprophagia video clip. [*starts to convulse violently and about to have a fit*]. It was so bad, that the committee had to keep the audit shit classified! Goddamn!

I don’t know if this is more for the good or the bad for me. I realize that I appreciate food more outside of Company X, and hasn’t complained about my wife’s cooking for many years. And likely even developed some kind of immune to food poisoning, as my body got used to eating filth and crap all these years… To give you an idea, I accidentally ate a bug the other day. I thought it was just the normal shitty food. Only realized it was a bug after found it to be abnormally crunchy and spat out a leg. Fucking sad, I know.

So when I say Company X ‘changed’ me a lot, I really do mean something even deeper inside.