p r etty+d e c e n t+obsess i o n

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An old friend once bumped into me somewhere in KL. He was with another guy, whom he proudly introduce…’Fini, meet my friend, he’s the son off …(SOME Malaysia’s BIG SHOT)..’ While my friend obviously couldn’t suppress his pride to be ‘caught’ with such a famous guy’s son, his friend squirmed in obvious discomfort…heck, I would myself. I couldn’t even remember if he mentioned that poor guy’s name.

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All in my life, I couldn’t comprehend status–quo. I couldn’t comprehend the obvious desire of some people to feel that they’re above others… I totally didn’t get all that hype about being the ‘in’ crowd…You know those guys who think they’re so famous and cool because they do stupid things like smoking and cutting classes. Or because they looked like models coming up from run-ways. Or because they can buy Prada as nonchalantly as you buy cendol. And I totally can’t get it when they still bragged about it when they’re in their 20-s…I thought people become mature with time…but obviously some people chose to remain stagnant.

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A friend once boasted to me about that other guy back in our high school…who so desperately wanted to join his ‘group’, he pretended that he’s been smoking since he was standard six. Sure, that was pathetic, but at that same instance I lost respect for the friend himself, for his inability to see that that was totally not a thing to be impress about.

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Do we have to wear Manolo Blahnik to earn respect? Does pakcik in kampong who only wear slippers, who everyday struggle to feed his children doing all sorts of chores from sweeping the sidewalk floor to risking his life in the midst of the deep ocean for a halal rezeki don’t deserve our respect? Would we introduce our friend whose father is a petty farmer with the same pride we introduce our friend who’s a minister’s son? Would you admit your father is a fisherman when all your friend’s fathers are businessmen and corporate big shots?

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Would you crinkle your nose and thought lowly of someone who only have SPM and work in a factory, when you are an Engineer in a top company, who make triple his salary? Are you certain that when you die you’ll be sent to heaven first that that ‘dumb kampong guy’ who unlike you, scored only Grade 3 in SPM; and who, unlike you, spent his nights at masjid, rather than in front of your laptop at your office, targeting to be the employee of the month?

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Money is not everything. Status does not impress me. If you got straight A-s in all your subjects, good for you, but no need to look down on others who didn’t score, or who didn’t go to oversea varsity like you did. If you prefers Victoria Station for dinner, that’s fine, but no need to smirk at people who prefers to eat at gerai tepi jalan. If your father earns millions every year, have a Prof Dr what-ever up his sleeve, and received Nobel award, you should be proud for his achievements, but not to the point that your friend whose father is only a carpenter become second-class person in you eyes.

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Look into our heart, and ask ourselves, is that what our life is about? Everything we’ve gained, from great jobs, great cars, great academic results, status, and money…does it really come from us? Do our parents really earn it by themselves? Or is it just something Allah borrowed to us, to test whether we are grateful or not? Even a single atomic size of pride will forbid us from heaven…as the Holy Quran said. Moreover, if we count our sense of self from the status we gather, don’t freaked out when everybody leave us when someday all those things were taken away from us.

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We do, after all, only borrow it for a short period of time.

Pretty interesting story tonite…on National Geographic at TV3. It tells about what the narrator called ‘the worst structural failure in the history of building’…which refers to the tragedic collapse of Sampoong Shopping Mall in South Korea…where 5 storeys of shopping malls collapsed in just 20 seconds without clear reason why. As i watched the story, I shuddered to think of what had happened to those people, where thousands were trapped under rubbles of perished concrete. The building looked so typical, not unlike the malls we usually find here in Malaysia. Looked so common, and safe…yet it suddenly vanished in a few seconds, that even the engineer visiting the site found it hard to believe that there was once a 5-storeyed mall there, where thousands of people shopped everyday.

The story analized what could possibly triggered the collapse. The building was built with the ‘flat slab’ concept, which is the most conventional concept ever. Heck, I’ver been involved in a handful of projects using this concept. In this type of building, they used concrete column reinforced by steel bar, and then poured the concrete mixture over, one storey after another.

At first they assumed that the concrete could be at fault, that perhaps to much water was used when mixing. They tested the conrete under intense load, but the concrete hold. So the material wasnt the prob. Until the forensic engineer opened the blue print and detect the history of the building structural design,and uncovered a few petrifying info about the structure of the shopping mall.

The building was suppose to be built as office building, before the developer decided to change it into shopping complex. The existing consultant disagreed to this, and at the end they were sacked. The project was then being handed over to the in-house engineer, who saw nothing wrong with using the same design for the new function of the building. The series of communication between the owner and the engineering team are termed to be ‘too casual’.

As the forensic engineer dwelled deeper into the history of the building, flaws and mistakes began to came up from the blue prints. Among the building mistakes were:

1. The concrete column are vital part of the building, it transfer the load from the concrete slab to the earth. A column is specified to hold a calculated burden based on the function of the building. In Sampoong case, the engineer reduced the size of pillar of 25%(!!!), and even cutting a few column out to install escalator, and reducing even less dia of the column closest to the escalator….(i got goosebumps when i saw this!!!!)

2. The bulding was supposed too be only 4 strorey, but the owner added another storey - more storey, more spaces to be rented - more money comes in. Yet, they failed to reinforced the building to additional load carried.

3. 5th storey was rented to restaurants- which had many heavy cooking utensils. They even putted an additional 1 foot slab to supply heater. The air conditioning was placed on the roof, with 87 tons of load during summer time-4 times more the size of load that the roof was designed to carry

4. The distribution panel that channel the load from the slab to the column, which then to be channeled down to earth was not properly build. They showed an analog to the function of the distribution channel, in which they put up a few sticks to act as the column, and put small paper cut-outs on top of the sticks as the distribution panel. Then they put a box on top to signify the slab. They then poured water into the box to signify the load. Suprisingly, the sticks can still carry the box, even when one stick was taken out. The same test was done again, without the small paper cut-outs. As the water pouring in, the box couldnt hold the load, and the area around the stick become cracked and suddenly the whole boxed felled down, but the sticks still stood. Just like what had happened at Sampoong.

5. The owner bribed the goverment rep inspecting the building…(suprise..surprise..)

In the end, the owners and the goverment guys were all send to jail. But can it replaced back the 501 lives taken? Apparently the sign of distressed from the building was known and detected. Heck, the roof was literally cracked down. They even got pictures taken one day day before the incident of the cracked roof. Apparently, they had closed down the air-cond and the 5th floor was shut down. But nobody guessed that the building was coming down. The owner, who evidently knew about this, chose to be quiet. And he didnt closed the mall. It was said that the mall was making hundreds thousands of profits everyday. And i guess what one of the survivor said was right, in the end, it all comes down to one person’s greed. One person’s greed that kills hundreds of innocent lives.

Working as a in-house landscape architect in a shopping mall and housing developer as I am..i prayed that human instinct for love of money never comes first of public safety and ethical proffesionalism. InsyaAllah.

(pics download kat yahoo search..sanggup tu carik)

see anythiNg inSide??????

see………………………..??????

……………………………………………………….NOPE, i guess

3.00 a.m. I still cant sleep. I wonder what he’s doing now. Perhaps snoring comfortably on my beloved linen bed spread. Damn!! I paid a fortune for that stuff. I stretch my aching arms…gosh, what’s that sound??? My ribs sound like its broken or something….but it feels good. I reach for my half fulled cup of home-made latte, made two hours ago. The already cold concoction tasted too sweet… almost like the cold left over milk in a bowl after you finished up all the breakfast cereal. My mind drifted to him again. Damn!! Stop thinking bout him!!!

It’s far way over my beauty sleep time…and as I lay in the stiff sofa, my mind drifted in and out of reality. I am tired, hungry, and cold. The sofa’s hurting my back. It’s too small for me, and my feet dangle uncomfortably. The wind is blowing pretty hard outside my apartment window…and at the 9th floor, it sounded like a hurricane is coming over. I wonder if hurricane even has a sound. Well, on second thought, who cares? As I lay there in misery, I tried to make sense of what had happened last nite. We had a pretty big fight, which ends up with me sleeping in the sofa and he in the big comfortable bed. Why don’t I get the bed???? I bought it!!!!

I know why I didn’t get the bed. Cause I’m pretty damn tired. Tired of giving second chance…tired of cleaning up after his mess. If he really wanna mess things up, he better wait for the maid to come by tomorrow. I’m sick of all those things he made me do. What did he ever do that’s productive? He just sits there everyday, snoring away, while I am the one who work 24/7. And I could feel him laughing behind my back…Enjoying every minute of my suffering. Heck, I even served his royal highness meals!!!! That’s it…I’m over and done with him!!! I’m an independent lady, and he might as well respect me, cause I’m the bread winner in this house. I’m the Head of my Department, and no one’s gonna treat me like this!!!

I was mumbling incoherently to myself before the sleep starts to overcome me… ‘How dare you pee on my bed you little furry animal. No way I’m gonna clean that up again…Thank God my boyfriend will come back from his outstation job tomorrow to claim u back….’

It’s been 2 weeks of pure agony with that damn cat.

slAmat harI rAya everybody…i’ve read in the paper today that the firSt week after a long holiday is always the hardest week;)…..and the firSt weekend after the long holiday is appreciated more than any other weekend, merely because it’s the time for us to grasp ourselves for the ‘real’ weeks up ahead.. weLL.. sOmetime i guess all of us feel that oNce in a while..but this weekend, suprisiNgly i came up with a resolution that if I’m going to stuck in the office 9-6 5 days a week, i might as well do it with a big smile on my face and an open heart…after all, it’s the reasOn why i get to spend money and buy thiNgs i wanted to buy…;)

i’m writing tonite cause i got nothin to watch on Tv. and i wanna do something to take my mind off the nasty craving i had since morning for unagi sushi n fettucine carbonara……erk..japan plus italian…may sound weird to u, but sounds perfectly paradise to me!!!! plus because two of my fenz came to visit this weekend, and just left this afternOOn, the room suddenly became too big to be alone.. And dats the downside of living alone…All this while u feel perfectly fine being by urself..n when u frenz came over once in a while, u feel gloriously ‘full’, crowded..got soo many things to talk about and laugh about..sleep together in that narrow room…reminisced the good old days…and when they left, the rOOm became emptier than before. and u felt positively lonely..Plus it didnt help that my fren opened a freakily spooky vid on the net yesterday..guess tonite i’ll sleep wit the lights on!!Hahahaha…

I grew up with books. During form four, I wrote Jane Austen as my fav writer in our English class auto bio. My teacher was pretty much shocked. ‘Girl, thats plain literature!!! We read dat as textbook during TESL!!’ Heck, I read Emma and Pride n Prejudice when I was standard 6. It runs in the family..this obsession with anything written on paper. Last raya we went to a relative house, and i burst out laughing when I saw how ridiculous our family is..my nieces and nephews grabbing comics and cartoons mag, me and my sis looking at the novels, the elder ones looking at the magazine and papers!!

Soo I heard the novel Pride n Prejudice had been made to a movie, again, for the umpthteen time. And it stars Keira Knightley. And i never tell anyone this, but actually i looked forward for it more than Harry Potter the Goblet of Fire..but i cant think of aNYONE who wud in their right mind willing to accompany me to see it..atleast not anyone i know.. i feel perfectly okay going by myself, but not in a thousand years Syaz wud let me… *sigh*

I guess i’ll drag him to  accompany me this once…hope he wont look like this!!!!

one butterfLy for u….

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i love pop art..especially andy warhOl’s!!

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::poppy flower::lOvely geRbera::soup for life!!::red rOse::biG eyeS::