The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

In a life that full with questions and sometimes without its answer, I do ponder, whether our life was paved in the best way that it should be. Whether you have made the correct choice of choosing for who you wanted to be. More or less than what you were destined to be.

As my memory served correctly, I did still remember Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken in my high school year. In the poem, the writer choose to the less popular choice. God knows whether he had made the right decision, but he seems to be content with his choice.

Even though my brain certainly not a genius one like Sufiah (who went to Oxford University in a tender age of 13, and became a professional prostitute. I am like, "Wow, how genius is that?"), I am very fortunate to be given such diverged offers (chemical engineering after my high school, law, business, accountancy and medicine) to decide where should I lay the rest of my life with. But till now, I am still asking myself whether I have made the right decision. I guess we never be entirely sure.

Life is full with surprises. We never know what is around that corner until we face it ourselves. We are here today, as a result of what we had chose to be. We decide our own life, and we have to live with it. Sound harsh, but if we try to make the most with what surround us, we might have be living the life that we supposed to live.

The first thing you need to understand is that you cannot make a LIFE decision with the outer mind and will. It must be a decision that comes from within, from the Conscious You itself. However, neither can you bring about a LIFE decision by passively waiting for it, thinking it will one day happen by itself. - Real Jesus - How to Make a Life Decision

Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray. - Al-Fatiha, the opening chapter of Al-Quran. Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali

So, as usual, give us your opinion. I always believe that any personal story is interesting because, well it is personal. To guide you (in case this post is very confusing and had little to comment on - it's ok. It happen to me sometimes :) these are questions that you could answer:

• What is your childhood dream? Did you achieved it? (I want to be an architect, my parents want me to be a doctor. And I ended up being a chemical engineer)
  
• Are you making a right decision in your life?
  
• And how do you know it's the right one?

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Today, I received an interesting tag from Rizal. Something about the age I want to go back to. I would love to do that tag now but I have to search for my old school pictures first. I am pretty sure you guys will be surprised for what I have look back then. Anyway, this week, I wanted to write about a heavy topic like my previous posts (such as Nature, Politic, Love, etc), but I was still entangled with my holiday mood. Thus, I decided to post my new addition to my undying dying Hot Shit Form Here.

I thought Hot Shit Form Here needs a mascot to cater my demand of advertising and attracting new readers and keep my current visitor glued here. I know these picture are not sophisticated or beautiful enough compared with my fellow Mangosteenskin, Emila and Rizal (just to name a few), but I did try to make my Photoshop useful. So, here two of it:

At first I don't know what color should I paint him.
Then, I decided to paint him blue (to match my name of course :)

I called him, Blueman! Bluecrystaldude's alter ego. And in case you're wondering, yes, Blueman sit on the toilet bowl. Hehe. Oh, and the top most picture is just some of the stuffs I did just to kill my free time. Feel free to comment!Continue Reading

My butts are killing me. After 9 hours sitting on that bus, I really glad (honored, happy, highly happy, ecstasy-ly happy and every single words that could describe a positive feeling). After about 3 month not going home, I love being able to jump on my comfortable bed without any sound of cracking to be heard, love the fast and reliable internet connectivity, eat everything that I want without thinking about the price, watch television with its remote in my hand and lastly just feel belonging. Oh, and I love my cat too!

I have a cat name Heejeerah which means “moving from one place to another”. It is an Arabic word and we modified its spelling to suit our family (my siblings and my name was spelled with double letter, e.g Haaziq, note the double "A"s). My family bought him for USD120 about 5 years ago. Now he still single (as my family decided to sterile him). I took quite a long time to determine my cat breed. Whether it was American Shorthair, American Bobtail or American Wirehair. The pet owner said he was American interbred with Persian, all I know that he was an American cat that has longer fur than normal cat and his face is not so scary like Persian cat.

One of a bad thing about him is that he likes to chase (and bite) anything that is moving, whether is was an innocent animal, or my leg (ouch!). As you may heard like any pet story, most of them had done honorable acts such as saving the owner, chase down the burglar, bite the owner when he's hungry and so on like what you could see in Animal Planet channel. I always thought that they just making them up or exaggerated the story to become more heroic than the reality. However, my cat did couple acts that were honorable.

First incident:
It happen a week before Hari Raya Aidilfitri (a festival celebrated by Muslim after a month of fasting) few years back. My maid was boiling water in early morning and then she felt asleep. Suddenly, I woke up after I heard my cat rare purring. That was when I saw my room on the second floor already filled with smoke. Thank God nothing severely burnt.

Second incident:
My house was broken in by burglars. All of my family members were tied up and gathered in one room. Although we lost quite a fortune that night, we still thankful to be alive. When did my cat came in the story? He was bravely struggled away from those burglars to save himself. Haha. At least, he wasn't kidnapped right?

Anyway, that all about my cat. Think twice before you taking any cute and adorable pet. We need to take care of their health, food, happiness and cost of maintaining them and you should be able to treat them just like other human being. Think also about your neighbors opinion. I used to have a dog named Jackie. But he died after being shot by Animal Control Officers as one of my neighbor complained to them Jackie wasn't suitable to be in the our Malay neighborhood.

Here are pictures from my brother personal collection about a cat that was kidnapped strangely enough by MONKEYS that thought the cat was one of his own kind! Just click the link below! (it's javascript - won't take you away from this page :)


How about you? Do you have or used to have a pet? I am sure my readers would love to hear more!

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Next week, I will start my examination. My exam schedule is quite hectic as I took 7 subjects and have to finish all the exams in 2 weeks! (usually around 3-4 weeks for 5-6 subjects). So, I try to make the most of my study week.

When I study, I love to hear music. It makes me forget how sleepy I was and keep me alerted. So, bored with my mp3 selection, I will tune to local radios. With songs range from rock to classical to bubble gum song that is so sweet until sometimes I was covered with guilt as it makes me feel like a pervert peeping under age kids (!). Seriously, what do you feel when listening to lyric like this;

I dream driving a space ship crossing the galaxy to find love There are many super heroes that I met Hot and tough far from the reality I dream jumping from sky to sky sweet like a cotton candy suddenly came a hero from above and he thinks I am an angel

Plus, something sound like "Pop... Pop.. Pop.." here and there. Well, maybe not that bad and I did intentionally mistranslated couple of words. But I do enjoy its music. Click here to read the lyric of the real Malay song.

And one of local radio here has a segment where you could ask anyone to be your date live on air. Although some said that it was so pathetic and Malaysian people are too shy to send their entry, I do managed to collect some of the interesting entries here:

Case 1:
A woman who wants to date her new close friend. She said that they both have flirted for quite a while, and thus, she wanted to know how he feels towards her.

The result:

He said, he was only flirting with her because one of his friend said that this woman is womanizer, promiscuous, always flirting with men (or in Malay, we called her as 'gedik'). Considering it was played on air, the woman did get mad and teet, toot, tettt (censored) she demanded back her perfume and all her gifts to him (Aiyo. Buruk siku maa..) The oh-I-just-play-with-her-man replied by using words from Beyonce's To The Left by saying, it's already in the box, waiting to go (to the left, to the left..)

My opinion:

What goes round did comes around. Just pity her for getting back the karma with million listener hear it live on air.

Case 2:
This young male was on the show once. The last time, he tried to date his colleague, but was rejected. They said maybe because he is fat. This time, a girl participated in the show and wants to date her! She said, he was very nice with her. One day, her car broke down, and this gentlemen help her to send her car to workshop and even offered to take her to the college!

The result and my opinion:
As the says go, Fat person does has a big heart (forgive me for my language). And this time, the boy accepted her date with an open arms. He is so nice!

Case 3:
He has known her for 17 years and one day, he woke up and think that she was so nice to her and why they didn't date each other. So, he called this radio to ask her to go to a date with him.

The result:
She bluntly rejected him! She prefer their relationship stays as they are, as a close friend.

My opinion:
It's not a news when you suddenly fall in love with your close friend. I was trapped into this matter once ( At least I not asking her for a date on the national radio). We tried to date each other. But the feeling of love is not there. So, in the end, we both decided to called it off and continue as a friend. We still cherish our relationship now and laugh about our dates as we remembered them.

Case 4:
They have been a couple for quite sometimes since college. Then, she wanted to marry him. However, her boyfriend didn't think it was a good idea. He still not financially stable and she also hasn't found herself a job. Nevertheless, they still be a pair. However, it takes a turn several months later. She got a nice job in Singapore. She moved there, and being busy with her career life. It has been 3 days she hasn't replied his calls, text messages and even his instant messages through MSN. So, he called the radio with an intention to propose to her!

The result:
The good point is, she was very professional in her words. She refused to answer the question from the DJs when they asked her whether she still a single or not ("I refused to answer the question as it may be used against me in the future". One of the DJ jokes about whether she is a lawyer, but she just left the DJ cold and dry). Later, when his boyfriend asked her to marry him, she refused his offer of hand. She wanted to focus on her new launch career. He cried and asked her not to answer his question right now. It was really dramatic and emotional.

My opinion:
Pheew man! I don't think you should asked her live on the radio. At least not when she refused to answer all you attempts to contact her. I don't even think it's a romantic thing to do. Yes, she once wanted you to marry her, but the situation has changed, and when women start focused on something, they will stick to it until she satisfied (my mum said that)

Ok, the show does sometimes goes a little bit to far. But I guess, it's good for the rating. Not to mention you could listen to some of the most funny calls, for example a man who introduce himself to his future date as "a hot guy wearing a spectacle" or "your Jonny Benny". All in all, I did managed to stay alive through my study week, thanks to a funny dose (and sometimes drama) from the radio.

So, what do you think about all those calls? Does it appropriate to ask someone to date through radio? And whether it is a romantic thing to do? (I don't mind taking part in the show if it's o9ne of many ways to show my romantic side)

Have a nice day my readers. And remember, do not to ask any stranger or your friend for a date with you if you're not confident enough to say, "Hey, I am hot, and I wanna have a date with you!".

Bluecrystaldude

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I was April fooled! Oh no. I definitely do not saw that coming.

My colleagues and I were called for an interview as the representative for our batch. This interview was held by board of accreditation of Washington Accord, so that we would be able to work outside Malaysia. Ten of us (4 Malays, 4 Chinese and 2 Indians) were required to attend the interview at the conference room in our school (School of Chemical Engineering, USM) at 11am this morning, 1 April 2008 (Oh, how I wish I check today date first before coming). At 10 am, I woke up. Which was relatively early as it is now a study week (stay up until midnight and sleep until afternoon). There will be no classes as students are supposedly study for the upcoming final examination.

So, in the high spirit of trying to look and sound like a foreigner (the first time they visited here, the accredators were from US, Australia and Singapore), we dress formally and went to our school. Some of us even already been there as early as 10.30am. After waiting for about 10 minutes and people walking around looking staring at us, must because of our strikingly out of place attire and the fact that the only people who were at the school are cleaners (which we regretfully ignored), one of my colleague accidentally read a yellow note posted down the hallway.

The note list out all the "unlucky" students who were called for interview that was schedule TOMORROW! It originally stated today date, but was corrected by a pen and change the date to tomorrow. After some screaming and foot stomping, it finally resides in our brain that we being April fooled by our school. Well, maybe not directly by them, but we do have a wicked feeling of vandalizing our school. Thank God there are cleaners (they were laughing!) watching our entire moves.

Well, maybe it just a coincident when it happen on the day when people through out history celebrate the day by fooling others including family, friend, and enemy. Nevertheless, I still consider my mistaken date interview as one of the greatest April Fool jokes in my life. After all, by categorize it in that subject, my anger level was reduce. It only a joke man! No hard feeling!

The night before, I google the web to read about some of the outrages pranks done by others who think an April Fool day should be celebrated with a bang. Innocent people should be fooled and we should all laugh it as it's a sort of entertainment.

However, when my friend shocking us with the story of his dead (with a help from his younger brother), I know it already cross the line (or should I say, LINES?) somewhere. Fooling people with a death news is no no no funny matter. One of my friend who heard this even need to settle down on her chair and hold tight my hand. She was still in the speechless mode when that fella who pranked us jumped into the room and said, "Gotcha! You officially being pranked!".

I still can believe that we "allowed" him to walk away alive. After severe screaming that definitely damaged my hearing for couple of days, punching and hair grabbing, he just laughed it out. "With this," he said, "I just make your life easier to remember me after we gone in our separate ways." We indeed remember him till now (and several years latter, I even blog it! He must be proud).

So, where is the boundary? Or should we make boundaries at all, as intimidating people on April Fool day is consider as acceptable? Continue Reading