There's An Old Lady In White Behind You, Say Hi.

As Of The 6th Of November 2009

I've been wanting to write on this since forever. The story is as stale as a rotting fish, with little rotten fungus growing out from it's eyes. Im sure a number of people already know about the story, but yeah, I just need to get this out just so I can still revise it when Im 40.

It all started with a regular, innocent night out. We were just having our nice, hot plates of Pakapao, or Pakapau, or however in the heavens you spell it. ( Pakapao is a dish consisting of rice, bits of spicy meat, fried egg, ulam and a small bowl of soup) . Then, there came Fahim, with an invitation that sent shivers down my throat, along with mushy, chewed up Pakapao. "Jom pergi ghost hunting jom ?" . I could've said no, and make chicken sounds, but then, I predicted that it will be replied with a tight "Kau balik jalan ah mcm tu, kitorang semua gerak" . So, I just shrugged my shoulders and make hesitant nods.

A small portion of us played DotA first, and guess what, GUESS WHAT (!):DD , for the very first ( or twice, thrice but no more than 6 times ) time, I OwNEDzzZ (!!) . Used Gondar with 7 or 8 kills. With only one epic death that went like this :
"SORCERON has been killed by Neutral Creeps" . -_- .

Had a small meet up, before we're off to send the hair on the back of our necks on an acid trip. The first destination was the Seputeh cemetery. As we're approaching nearer, I can feel my guts getting wrinklier. As I step out from the car, all security blankets teared, I was like " Oh shiaaat, this is it". Fahim said the graveyard has the victims of the 13th of May massacre buried in it. So,since slain souls are not souls in peace, so therefore, they're a little teeny weeny more, err active ? . Oh crap. Crap crap. We explored the place,with an eerie background of tombstones of various shapes hiding amongst the tall grass, blown lightly by the cold night air, tall, dead trees that looked like sturdy guardians, guarding the dead, and bright, colourful city lights shining happily at the furthest plain of the background. That simply brutal murdered the whole eerie mood didn't it, but somehow it made me feel safe. It made me feel like I'm not in the middle of nowhere, oh sweet civilization :D . Me and Azman looked like Siamese twins, with fear for the other-world-ly as the limb that connected us two . We were then separated as I shed more and more chicken feathers of myself. I didn't "encounter" anything, but I guess Shak and Faye have a little something to share. Faye's story was that, he went to take some pictures of the tombstones, then he felt a breathing, stroked his neck. He thought, it was Fahim as he falsely thought that Fahim was trailing behind him. He turned around and said "Apahal kau jauh pulak ni Fahim ?" . Then, an uneasy silence followed. They all exchanged wide-eyed stares, showing that that they know "what" has just happened, but they kept quiet. A wise move. As for Syak, I caught him making the o_o look that quickly turned to "No I did not just see that" kindoff expression. I asked him, "Kau okay ke Syak ?" . A few resistant head movements, he then said "Aku nampak cahaya putih lalu belakang Fahim tadi" . Okay, saying that wasn't the wisest move. Frequent interruptions of cement trucks passing by, made us move to our next spot.




Fayegraphy :P

Below are the url's for the footage of the trip :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCweR9pvuC4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-FLxoRr1pc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP1rYwCDj94

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjadiScMeg (my interview is in part 4 :D)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk0ZExkeZoE





And our next spot was Kemensah Heights. The story behind this spot was that, once, there was this insane doctor. To a point where he was too absorbed in his work, he actually sliced up his girlfriend/or wife, I'm not so sure, to 18 parts just for the sake of his experiment or whatever nutjob. Then, he killed his son by throwing him off from a small hill which the house was built at. The doctor, then ultimately ended it all by committing suicide. The maid, then soon after, got back from her vacation and was welcomed by the gruesome sight, triggering her trauma, making her tie a dumbbell round her neck. Then she threw it downhill, causing her neck to snap.
Thus, the story of Dr. Frenzy. Out of all the places I've been, this has to be the most balls-shrinking spot ever. The entrance itself was gloomy enough, with dead tree branches, and tall grasses covering most of it. As soon I was inside, I felt this surge of uneasiness immediately as I caught the sight of the place. Yes, it's old, and it's trashed up, like any other horror-movies would cook up. I can't explain this, but there's just something about the place that gave me the creepiest of creeps. In order to get to the house, you have to go down a flight of messed up stairs. Syak, Faye, Azman, Najee, Os and Fahim's friend went down into the pitch-black abyss. I can't go down because I'm not wearing shoes, and the place is too dark to even see the pile of debris and scattered glass. Or in chicken language, LET'S GET THE HELL OUT OF HEREEE ! . Which I did, as soon as I heard the sound of someone throwing a rock , hitting the roof. NOONE WAS THERE. NOONE COULD BE TALL ENOUGH, OR HIGH ENOUGH TO DO THAT. Fahim felt restless, as he recalled an experience from that dreaded house. But he refused to tell it on the spot, we understood why. Later, the six, alive heroes went up and told us that they tried to go down further but they just couldn't, like they're blocked by some kind of invisible barrier or something. And they saw a Pentagram, you know, those star-with-circle drawing which black metal followers would draw. Sick. We went into the car, as Fahim, finally unrolled the encounter he had at the place. One time, he went with his friends, with one of them having a bad, unfiltered mouth. Causing him to say "Kenapa kepala aku rasa berat ni ?" when they all finished exploring. Leave it be to your beliefs, but Fahim said he saw a Langsuyr parked on top of the foul-mouthed dude's head. Epikk Sikk.

To cool our shivering nerves down, we head off to this open eating place. I ordered a deer+otak-otak burger from a stall nearby. Screw the no midnight meals diet rule, you don't see a deer, or an otak-otak beef patty everyday. AND ! , the sheesha there has to be the best I've ever tasted yet. The smoke, followed the taste of the chosen flavour really carefully.

You'd think, a merry round of shisha pass-arounds, would mark the end of the expedition. Oh no, we've one more spot to seek some spiffy spook. The next spot was the infamous Highland Towers. You heard me right, it's where one of the apartment blocks tragically crumbled down, leaving innocent lives to be pummeled under the rubble. As told by Nelza, the story was, when the search for the bodies was carried, only two bodies were found, whereas the others weren't. Bound with no more options left, cement was poured on top of all the mess, indicating a burial. Yes, we all practically stood on a ground, with bodies underneath us. What kicked my courageous side of me up, was that, the way Nelza told the story, it was as if, we're gonna search a plain of rubble, debris on a plain cement since, the apartment has fell down. As long as it's not enclosed, it's not gonna be so bad. Claustrophobic, not really. But an enclosed "infested" area, compared to an open one, the open one is much gentler on the hair on the back of my neck. . Then as I arrived at the spot, mother mercy, there were still two apartment blocks standing strong (well, not really). How the boys slowly raised their necks up, with eyes prying on the most top floor, there could only be one way to interpret that. "Okay dudes, we're going up" .

..Uh'Oh. Oh dear Lord, what did I just let myself into.


A quick read of the Ayat Qursi, I headed up with the rest of the guys. I remembered someone saying , "Kita tengok tingkat 1 je la dulu harini, hari lain kita naik lagi" . Man, ain't that a good idea :D . But noooooooooo, curiosity laid us a bait on a string and it pulled it all the way to the top floor. Yes readers, we went all the way up. Halfway through, suddenly out of the blues, we heard someone's reading ayat Qursi. HOLYYYYYYYYYYYYY, it turned out to be Os's phone. That scared the living ba-jingles out of me. But why he turned it on, remained scarier. He told us later, that he saw a black figure, swiftly dashes infront of him. Uh-hm, yeah. The floor stretched up to the 12th. The view from the top is nice, only the view below isn't, moreover with no balcony railings or whatsoever. And the floor was slippery, one false slip, you'll automatically be a resident of the Highland Towers. If you get what I mean. On the way down, as we're about to leave the block, we hear something fell from the 1st floor (we were on the ground floor already). I'll leave the rest for your imagination.


Both were taken on the topmost floor.






Nelza and Katin, thought it was safe to stay downstairs, near the cars. But they didn't exactly missed out on the "excitement" (?) . Yeah, cause Nelza said that he saw Faye heading to the car, when infact he's up in the apartment. Doppelganger ? . WTFFFFFHKLJDSKL, go figure. And as for Katin, she said that she felt her tongue was cut short, making her to not be able to speak so well.

Hmmm. As for myself, I'd tell you on the next post.

What a night, what a night.

Holy Crappity Crap.

Man, I haven't update my blog for like, forever, and it's getting as dusty as that little house Snow White found in the middle of the forest before the seven midgets and her animal
friends clean it up. Anyone miss me ? :DD . *crickets* , anyone ? *the crickets go silent*. Err, okaay.

The main reason why I haven't touched my blog for the longest time is to be blamed on the absence of my computer. And I don't feel that "flow" of writing whenever I'm at a cc with booming
techno , and jiwang karat songs in the background. Heck, I'm writing this at my college's
computer lab. Oh and another thing, I can't write with that feeling of thinking all eyeballs are on my screen. Yes, this is just squeezing santan (perah santan, perasan) , and I know I'm thinking too much, but I can't kick off this feeling like how I can't kick a straight ball.

So till then, this is just to relieve the urge of just merely "updating" . The real updates are due on the arrival of my new, repaired computer :) . The pictures for a few of my hanged posts are inside the pc anyhow, so yeah, hold on :)

That Week Of Wreck Pt. 4

Photography Assignment Pt. 5


For this one, I need to frame up three of my favourite pictures that I've taken throughout all of my photography assignments with mounting boards.

And I, being the "everything will work out just fine last minute" guy, misjudged on how easy did it sound. It is not that simple, as I painfully learned later.


The flow of this hectic day was like this

Me going to class to find out that today's the ultimate deadline -> Me and Faye went to Summit to send the pictures for printing -> Faye took some pictures for his assignment 4 -> We both went back for a while, so we can do our assignments -> We went back to Summit to take the pictures that we sent for printing and bought mounting boards along the way -> Went to college to mount the pictures up.

Okay I'm gonna interpret the "went to college to mount the pictures up"

As I arrived at the class, I saw a small fraction of the students, rushing to mount up their pictures. Mounting boards bits layed all over the floor. Messiness adds up more to the whole tension. The only thing that if left messy, but does not clutter my mind, is none other than BOB :D .

I sat around and searched if anyone has a spare metal ruler and a cutter, but too bad I've to wait for my turn to use it. So I waited, and waited, and waited. All requests for rulers and cutters after that, only replied with silent nods, or worse, no respond at all. This supposed to drive any other normal beings to shout "WOI AKU NAK PAKAI PULAK !" , but noo, I remained stupidly calm and easy. I know I'm not, the tension's building up so fast, it's not even funny. My outer physical reactions don't usually match the going-ons in my brain, and I still wonder why.A real tight slap will help I think.

The day ended up with the lecturer going back leaving all the hardships from the students, to sum up to none in return. And I only managed to frame up one picture. And it's crooked. Predictable, very. However he did extended the deadline to Monday morning BEFORE 11am. This was no joke, a friend of mine told me that whoever sent their pictures beyond 11am, the lecturer will cut all the totaled-up marks (nope, not for the assignment 5 only, as in the real TOTALED-UP MARKS) by an insane 50% rate. And I passed up mine on 12 something. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh the humanity. Dear God, let the lecturer be JK JK LOL , for 50% is too much. It's too too much. All of my hard work, shared with my little sister's pink cybershot, to be paid with this outrage ? I hope frikkin not :(

Oh and btw, the three pictures I chose to frame up :) :












And for the rest of the pictures that almost made the cut (or not), you can check out my flickr at

www.flickr.com/ashtaroth168 :)

That Week Of Wreck Pt. 3

Photography Assignment 4


I think I already explained on how this assignment works on part 1. Err, so yeah, 10 pictures that tells a story or somesort.

And mine is ! :D =

( The original Power Point presentation had speech bubbles in it, you can ask me for it if you want, but for the series of pictures below, Imma put captions for em :) )




From left : Crackhead, Eggna, O. Mullet
( I never really named the eggheads in my presentation, since it doesn't have speechbubbles, giving them names will make you understand the story much easier :) )





Crackhead : Whistles*





Crackhead : !!





Crackhead : Woahhh she's hotttt (saying it inside his head)
*checks out Eggna




CRAAAACKKKK !!
*as Crackhead hits the wall harddd.




*quickly withdraws himself behind the wall, hiding his cracked (haha GET IT ?, CRACKED ? :D , ok nvm) pride.

Crackhead : "Bapak malu siaaal"





*Crack head sees O. Mullet flirting with Eggna

Crackhead : OMG, WTF !? *jealousy fills the air





Fueled with furious anger and jealousy, he charged with a frying pan and ..

Crackhead : HAMBIK KAUUUUUUUUU !!

*slams poor unsuspecting O. Mullet to a saddening splat.





O. Mullet : Errr


Eggna : .... o_o





Eggna : "TU ABANG AKU LA BODOOO !"


*Eggna losing all her femininity and splats back the naive Crackhead for he has destroyed her brother. (O.Mullet is not murdered, just imagine that there's an egg hospital nearby)



Cracked open Crackhead : B*TCH

*As Eggna walks away.




THE ENDDDD :)

That Week Of Wreck Pt. 2

Colour and Form's Third And Final Assignment


This has to be the hardest assignment for the whole semester. You have to create an illustration that includes 25 different colours, excluding black and white (because they're not colours actually) and blue, red and yellow (the basic colours) . I mean, you can use black, white, red, blue and yellow, but it'll not be counted to mark up to that 25 colours requirement. My general idea was an octopus selling ice creams to a neighbourhood of monsters. Icecreams are colourful, and monsters too, so 25 colours are achievable :D . What made it a bit tedious was that my Buncho poster colours had only 18 colours inside, minus the 5 colours, it's only 13 then, So I had to mix my own colours (Became an interesting process along the way) . Procrastination was being tame when I wanted to do this, I started around 3-4 days earlier. But then, I did like microscopic bits and bits per day, so yeahh, it's sorta like kinda the same, because it was at the last day I rushed to do all the details.


The process :












Without the outlines


Outlined


I did the outlines after Sahur on the day of the deadline itself. That was how bad my case is. But the lecturer said it would be better without the outlines, NGGHHHHHPFFTROFLWOFL -_-




TADAAAA :)

That Week Of Wreck Pt. 1

Last week has been the most torturous week of the year (so far) since, err since the last week before SPM. And after so long not handling any form of stress (other than stresses of thinking where to go, should I or should I not cut my hair, etc), you'll realize it'll just come and bash your nose twice as hard. Like getting a splash of icy cold water on a cold morning. And the absence of little things you have when you're young, like you tend to have those tiny hopes of a miracle to happen at the last minute, like, when you wake up the next morning, or the next time you go to class, you're gonna get smarter all of a sudden, or you can cram everything inside on the next lesson/review. No, matured conscience, that's not gonna happen, never did, never will.

Imagine this, , 3 incomplete assignments, 2 deadlines, and one processed workbook (or merely a sketchbook, if simplified) all need to be satisfied during that one last week before the semester ends. Woohooie, typing and recalling them back all instantly brought back familiar tiredness.


Procrastination is the one to blame and be thrown spiky rocks at. Yes I've been told days (rounds up to roughly a week), and yet this happened. Lesson learned loadsa times, but I guess old habits die hard. Or maybe it did die for the first few weeks of college where I did pass up assignments on time, so I guess habits are zombies which will die and rise from the dead and repeat the cycle from time to time.

The three assignments are :

Photography Assignment 4

Photography Assignment 5

Colour and Form Assignment 3

(And one processed workbook)

Let me integrate through one and each of em :

Photography Assigment 4

I came to class on Thursday only to find out that ALL of the assignments that hasn't been passed up yet, to be passed up on the day ITSELF. And assignment 4 ain't no easy task, you have to have 10 series of photos, that tells a story in a way. Yes I already have the idea in my head on what to do, but to go back, to do the thing, and come back to pass it up, all within that limited amount of hours (lecturer's going back at 4) is, is unheard of. Restlessness wriggled through the guts like ants on a rainy day. OMG, whaaat, am, I gonna dooo. Oh yeah, and assignment 5 isn't stressed on much here, because you only have to frame up your favourite photos, out of all the photos you've taken for the previous assignments. What's hard about it is the mounting which I'm gonna talk about later.

So, to not kill anymore precious time, me and Faye dashed to Summit next door to print up the pictures, and good jolly ! , it's still closed. Darnnn-nnit. So Faye decided to do his assignment 4 first, with me as his subject. The story, summarized, was about me deciding not to fast on one fine day, and in return, I got ran over by a truck. Nice. For a little preview of the story, you can check out Faye's flickr at :

http://flickr.com/exposurepleasure


And for the rest of the assignments, I'm going to put it all in different posts. Cause you know, writing it all in one shot will make it exhaustively long, and it'll put weights round your eyelids faster than you can say "weights round my eyelids"

So yeah :)

Stuck Rhymes With "Oh F*ck"

As of the 6th Of September 2008

Like the previous days, I was still in the repeating cycle that started since the first of Ramadhan. Buka puasa, a quick nap triggered by the super-full tummy, stretched to all it's a galore, a shower, then the Terawih prayers. How should I know, this cycle was about to be broken badly with just a single stroke of a roller comb.

I put on my baju melayu, then I looked into the mirror just for a quick check-up. And at the very edge of my sight, I saw the dreaded pink roller comb. Automatically, I picked it up and started to comb my semi-wet hair. As written in the Interlude, I like to experiment. I thought that my dangling side-bangs would be nicer if it is curled in, and in a conscious relfex, I curled my hair in. And, and..OH MY FRIKKIN MERCY (!!) . Who would've known, the simplest flow of gesture, would lead to the biggest regret of the year. I tried to pull it out, to see if the curling-it-in worked. I pulled, then the motion felt abrupt. I pulled again, but still, to no avail. I was reluctant to admit this, but oh frikkin yeah..

THE, COMB , WAS, FRIGGIN, S-S-STUCK -_-


Every single step I took to meet my mum to untangle this mess, were as heavy as elephants. Because I know, the moment my mum, (and boy, my sister's upstairs too ? ) , caught the sad, sad sight. They burst into laughter. The kind of laughter that has a hint of honest sympathy, I know they want to stop laughing and express concern. But they just can't help it. You wouldn't too if you catch a glimpse of the pictures below :


EPIC FAIL



Pooorrr Bob :(



The process of untangling took at least an hour. And in the middle of the thing, My mum actually said " I think you have to cut it off la Ashraf" . My heart felt like bursting to bloody chunks as soon as that phrase was muttered out. This is not the " Bilik Disiplin" , I can't hear that anywhere else :( . No, it's too early to give up, and there are no loud, excrutiating "SNAP (!)" sounds yet, so there was still hope. Due to fact of the unavailability of any baby oil, my mum had to use frikkin MINYAK GAMAT too loosen the tangles O_O . And I just shampoo-ed my hair, now it smelt like gross sea cucumbers. Well, oh well, better than Bob having an embarrassing uneven skin patch. The pain was okay, but the mental torture was sickening. The smell too.

After what seemed like countless minutes (hours will be just plain exaggerating), the last strand that was stuck, was released, my smile grew beyond it's limit :DDDD . Then, the imaginary jump-of-joys quickly overshadowed by the harsh reality of how many strands of Bob that was snapped and plucked by the cruel comb. Not only I lost a fragment of Bob, but I also missed the Terawih -_- . Just because of the darned, pink, roller.




Other highlight of the day :) :

I passed up my second assignment for my Colour And Form class :)






The smile was before the comb got stuck incident.


Altho Bob felt somehow lighter, and the heart still remained uneasy. But yeah, glad that the comb is finally out :D . The mofo-ing stupid comb.