Caught this last Sunday while I was out in the city. The domes belong to Jamek Mosque in Kuala Lumpur (tag).
The mosque is probably the oldest mosque in Kuala Lumpur. In my opinion, it’s the most beautiful mosque in the capital.
Alright. I’ll admit this. Most of the times, I post photos because I can’t think of anything to write about. Or I have trouble putting my thoughts into words. So, here it is. Another lame picture for you to suffer.
It’s a kind of evergreen plant my mom planted in my family little yard.
And bah. I wanted to meet some people from Bank Negara today but they weren’t where they were supposed to be. All that walking in the rain with a splitting headache was for nothing.
When I was in Ann Arbor, I took pleasure in spotting symbols all around campus. Many of them were political in nature while others were simply pranks. For instance, the math building was scarred with small black hammer and sickle. By the Diag, there was a drawing of a sad primate standing behind bars while one of the more amusing ones is this:
The weirdest however is Gnome Liberation Front (GLF). A mark of GLF’s guerrila campaigning could be seen near the C.C. Little building bus stop, if it’s still there.
When I first noticed the mark, I thought it was a joke. After all, college is the meeting place of weirder of the weirdest. Controlling for population size, unless you’re in Japan, I dare bet that the probability of seeing or hearing something totally out of place is higher in college than anywhere else. Almost nowhere else in the world where one could find a naked person running in the snow in the middle of the night or wearing a complete set of scuba accessories minus the tank while sitting for an exam (while, it was Halloween). Or, a couple students assaulting police officers with snowballs and almost got charged with felony. Or even an open worshipper of Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or, hell, rioting merely because of football, winning or losing, regardless. Know who they are, you do.
GLF craved a smile on my face but I really didn’t know what the supposedly-joke was about. At the same time, I’m familiar with Earth Liberation Front, an organization with a cute acronym – ELF. Those that are unfamiliar with ELF might mistaken it as a docile organization. On the contrary, ELF is one of the few known active and elusive ecoterrorist groups (heh, FBI is having a hard time tracing them – it’s easier to trace Al-Qaeda than ELF. Hell, ELF members don’t even know each other. Ops…). I remember during one May near Ann Arbor, an luxury house was burnt down to the ground and ELF claimed responsibility. A better known arson case is the of burning Hummers in California. So, I thought, GLF was a parody of ELF.
Well, guess what?
Gnome Liberation Front is a legit political movement aimed at freeing all gnomes from slavery. At first, I thought that this was an elaborate hoax but no – it’s a serious movement. As serious as PAS could be.
What GLF Front does is simply this: kidnap stone gnomes from gardens and then break them up in order to release these gnomes (their souls I presume) into gnomes’ natural habitat. This still couldn’t accept the rationale behind the movement upon learning this. It seemed that this was simply a lame excuse for vandalism.
The final twist however made me gives up and accepts it as it is. Why? According to Wikipedia further, on gnomes, legend has it that “the sun’s rays turn them into stone.”
Interestingly enough, the largest movement happens to operate in France under the name Mouvement d’Émancipation des Nains de Jardin, or, MENJ. What? Oh. Yeah, I know. A whole new perceptive, isn’t it? Those French…
Now, I’m a green yes. There are a lot of not-so-mainstream political beliefs that I hold to but I’ve my own benchmark of what is ridiculous. GLF is one of those that fall into my I-thought-this-was-a-joke list.
p/s – ladies and gentlemen, the first ever vblog to make it into the __earthinc’s blogroll. Presenting to you, MobuzzTV. Karina, I wanna have your babies!!!
Another photo from Malacca. This one was taken at my grandma’s place. It’s an old Malacca-style Malay house. After so many years, it’s a pity that I only began to appreciate the Malay architecture only after I returned to Malaysia from Michigan.
The orange columns used to be less fiery and they were coated with light green. In similar way, the original photo is less striking. Reason is, I did some manipulation in Photoshop; I contrasted the colors a bit. Too much manipulation to my own “purist” liking.
And see the two huge black spaces? They aren’t the result of cropping. The lower space is a wooden beam while the upper one is actually the house ceiling. Not quite a ceiling but I can’t find the right vocab for it. In fact, if you observe closely the upper black space, you’ll see how wooden beams have been laid out to support the house.
The opening is not a hole either.
Still, the whole thing looks a bit too dark. Oh well. Buck the Fuckeyes.
p/s – went through my folder and found a sharper image for yesterday’s subject.
I like yesterday’s orientation better though.
I love flowers but I don’t quite go ga-ga (and wah piang! Boy, that exclamation left a deep impression on me) like girls do. Why do I like them? It’s just they’re part of green behavior kind of stuff. By they, I mean, the flowers, of course. Live flowers, not dead fresh flowers to be precise – I have a slight irritation with people that love to pick flowers. Hey, I’m a mad treehugger. What do you expect?
I paid Malacca a visit yesterday. While I was there, I noticed a few species of wildflowers which I can’t name. They grow near some bushes by some road near the town of Tampin.
I also learned that the Malaysian Prime Minister is due to visit that part of Malacca today (Alor Gajah if you’re wondering) while the Durbar is set to be held in the state later this year. There’s a better article about the Durbar at Malay Wikipedia. Maybe I’ll transwiki it later.
Back to the topic:
The focus is off by noticeable degree. In fact, I had no choice since my camera is unable to focus properly while the object is too close to the lense – yet, another reason why should get a new cam. The reason that I had wanted to get the object as close as possible to camera is, I wanted to fill the photo with the four clusters.
Much to my surprise, it was quite hard to manage. So, I settled with what I think the next best thing – focusing on the second nearest cluster of flowers and then fill available space with the nearest cluster.
Finally, could somebody identify the flower? Each cluster is as large as one’s thumb. My thumb anyway.
And yeah, Buck the Fuckeyes!
p/s – added a fellow Malaysian Wolverine into my blogroll. Poke her!
pp/s – Roni, one of the guys that I used to play hockey with at Michigan, writes songs!
ppp/s – Australia made it to the 2006 World Cup. What’s next? Penn State winning the Big Ten title? Wait a minute…
p4/s – Malaysia and Singapore might squabble like kids, but Mexico and Venezuela have refined the benchmark.