Gone are the blondes... bring on the brunettes!
CBS was showing Miss Universe earlier tonight, and it caught my eyes as I was trying to eat my dinner and channel surf at the same time. Being attracted to tall, leggy beauties, I decided to watch the rest of it.

Overall, the contest was less cheesy than I thought it would be. It was quite dry and uneventful, and the hosts wasn't that charismatic. I didn't figure who the male host is till later - NFL's Phil Simms, but Daisy Fuentes was alright. She's definitely good to look at, even among all these beautiful, gorgeous ladies from around the world.

Maybe I haven't been watching enough beauty pageants lately, but I was kind of surprise to see only a couple of blonde hair, blue-eye contestants. Most of them are dark-haired brunette. Also, what seemed to be very popular is the South/Central America look: bronze, tan skin with medium brown hair; and also the East Asia look: Olive skin, sharp nose, deep set eyes. I guess times has really change. I remember just a couple of years ago, the all-american look was the in-thing. Not anymore. Just a quick roundup of the results: 3rd runner-up: Venezuela, 2nd runner-up: China, 1st runner-up: Panama, Miss Universe 2002: Russia.

But still sometimes I wonder, when are normal-sized women going to be featured in beauty contests such as this? Or maybe due to the fact that this is a contest, only outstanding looks / personality are eligible??? Hmm. My mind is just wandering everywhere.

--- Time to change the subject ---

Memorial day weekend was pretty uneventful. I was going to make fun of my family and friends in Malaysia because we have monday off and they don't... turned out that it was Wesak Day on monday and thus everyone there had a day off anyways. :p

I spent saturday gobbling and lickin' some good olde fashion BBQ ribs at the America Rib Fest in downtown St. Louis. The food was sooo good, the meat was practically falling off the bones. Couldn't ask for a better meal than that. Too bad the beer costs $6.25 each *expensive!!!*, combined with a slab or two, it has easily cost me $30.

Work has been crazy lately. I suppose it's a good test to see how well I handle stress, or how easily I'll collapse. So far so good. Although I've been having spliting headaches every night. Bah. I can't wait till this is all over... I want to spend my weekend thinking about the projects I want to work on, not all the work stuff that I needed to get done.

By the way, the netcomments is crashing more often than I do on any given day. Anybody has any idea what's going on?

Busy in KL
I finally arrived in KL after 3 layovers in Memphis, LA and Taipei, and after a total of 33 hours of flight + airport layover time. Argh!

Anyway, that misery is now over and I’m fully enjoying myself over here. Had a quick “tah pow chap fan” lunch after arriving home from the airport while unpacking my bag and watching my sister and brother enjoy their gifts. My sister was the “kastam” officer as usual, ransacking through my clothes for anything that she likes (and thus would potentially and eventually assume ownership). It turns out that my brother was really into the song “Kung-Fu Fighting”, so that little Kung-Fu Fighting Hamster that I bought for him was just the perfect little gift! I’m so proud of myself. :)

I was feeling sleepy after all the packing (jetlag starting to set in), so my sister, brother and I all went for a swim. We swam a couple of laps each to warm up, and then it’s just fun time with the beach ball for about an hour. (Too bad it was kinda cloudy, otherwise I would’ve had a nice tan by now.) I was feeling terribly drowsy after I took a shower, but it was dinner time so I couldn’t take a nap. We went to Mid Valley Mall for dinner and some light shopping (would you believe that I was feeling extremely sleepy while shopping, and that I actually requested to go home early?! I never thought I had that in me!)

But anyway, as my dad was driving us home, Michael called. He and his friends were going clubbing that night, and he managed to round them PLUS their girlfriends up so it was going to be a very large crowd. Now, for those of you who know me, you’ll know that going clubbing is something I never pass up. I tell you, I have learned a very valuable lesson about myself – I would faster pass up shopping than clubbing. (Does that say anything bad about me?) I managed to get my sister to go with me as well, so that was cool.

We met at Alexis Bar in Bangsar, and had a round of tequila shots for the nine of us. It was the first time my sister drank any alcohol too, so I was feeling terribly responsible for any kind of outcome (good or bad – but don’t worry, I made sure to tell her all the responsible stuff, e.g. “Play hard, Party hard”, “Everything in moderation”, “Make sure you drink responsibly” … you get the point). Then it got kinda boring, so we proceeded to downtown KL to see which bars were happening.

It was either The Beach or Nouvo. I could tell that most of Mike’s friends were not into trance at all, but my sister (who likes trance) for some reason was making an impact on the decision-making of the night. (And let me tell you, with these guys, decision-making is a very arduous task.) So Nouvo it was.

I’d had never guessed there was an art to appreciating trance. But my sister enlightened me, and soon enough we were dancing into the night. As usual, I would dance by myself even if the others have quit, and I was glad my sister is like me in this aspect, so I had some company on the dancefloor. We danced non-stop for about an hour, finished up the bottle of Hennessy that the guys had purchased, and proceeded to get some food at about 2:30am.

Did you guys know that some Indians in the OUG area speak really good Cantonese?! I mean, like better than some Chinese people I know (yours truly)? We went to this place called Steven’s Corner for supper after Nouvo – you should’ve seen how enterprising this little mamak is. The Indians who run the place have picked up a “foreign language”, and even have a website! http://www.stevenscorner.com.my/ (Why on earth they have a website is still a mystery at large to me.)

My sister and I got home at 4am, when I had officially not been sleeping (at least not very well) for the past 48+ hours. As I predicted, I had a gooooooood night’s sleep … and proceeded to wake up at noon the next day, which my mom yelled at me for (which I predicted as well, by the way). :)

The next day's adventures to be continued .....