the bernoulli's principle

i was in kuching over christmas and new year, and here are some not-so-random notes about the holiday.

back to kuching means being back to the town where i grew up. it means being back to a city where modern ibans and bidayuhs and kelabits have icy cool sounding names like casey cassidy, jessica jerome miller, traciea peters, luke anthony, aquanz patrick gilbert, jacqueline amber michelle, gasp! peter pan. i noticed that kids born in the 70s have an English twang to their names, compared to those born in the 80s whose names are more American-ish.

i don't get the thing about the cat. kuching, for those not from this part of the world, is the malay word for cat (which is correctly spelt kucing), and kuching has been known as the city of the cat. the problem is, as a sarawakian and true blooded headhunter (ok, my ancestors were headhunters), i don't know the real origin of the name. some say it was due to the abundance of buah mata kucing or longan found in the riverbank, some said when james brooke asked for a name of a settlement near the river (rumah panjang), someone mistook him to pointing to a cat, and answered kuching instead, and finally, the city was named after the abundance of wild cats found in the jungle near the riverbank. whatever it is, kuching is a lovely city, and the river that runs across it gives it a warm character.

the food, homecooked food was great as usual. but there's always the iban karaokes and vcds and tapes and cds that my family always play. now, i don't have a problem with iban songs or iban singers, but a few things intrigue me about them. first, most of the singers are based/and or recorded their albums in sibu. i've never been to sibu, but i think sibu is, errm, the size of mid-valley megamall in kl. secondly, iban music is, just 'weird'. the music is not reggea but it has a reggea-ish tune, it is not pop or rock or twist or a go go or even remotely similar to malay music and songs, but it has all that. and it is not even traditional iban music. seriously, i don't know what it is. all i know is that iban music belongs to its own era, and i don't know where or which era it is.

oh yeah, the food: i had my favorites of leaves: fried battered-tapioca leaves (my favorite!), and pucuk miding or fern leaves. i didn't get to eat daun paku (another type of fern leaf). then there were the fish, mostly river fish (which was bought still live and gasping for air from a market in serian).

did i mention that my drink du jour were beer (heineken!) and whiskey (chivas!) everyday of my holiday? oh i didn't? well, everyday was either a beer or whiskey day.

driving in kuching was fun. this was because every driver was kinda courteous. and so, whenever i encountered drivers that cut queue, or parked/stopped their cars by the side of the road blocking off traffic i wasted to chance in blurting out insanely annoying and long f**k you honks. heh. this is because no one else seemed to be doing this. heh. i wished some would start a roadfight with me but, everyone was so courteous. heh.

i watched an awful lot of tv, mainly the sports channel and channel-v and mtv in between. the thing i don't get about channel-v is that they still have that anorexic and aging rabbit (paula malai ali) as veejay. and to make matters worst, she seems to be the only veejay that they have. come on-lah! what happens to the other pretty, sexy, luscious and alluring local girls? paula is not even local man! mtv, as if to compete with channel-v, has denise, who is an anorexic ostrich. and she has an insanely flat chest.

talking about chest, do you guys know that most, if not 98%, of chinese girls in kuching have a-cup breasts? you can't hardly find one with a c-cup there. size wise, kuching girls (the chinese) are more petite than their counterparts in pj or kl. addendum: i meant no offense whatsoever against chinese girls because i still think that they're the sexiest. i'm just saying that kl/pj girls have slightly bigger protuberances than their counterparts in the east.

did i mention that my drink du jour were beer (heineken!) and whiskey (chivas!) everyday of my holiday? i think i did.

last but not least: i watched a couple of movies: chronicles of narnia: boring. hope the next one will be better (and more airtime for cleaveage, please). king kong: oh kamon-lah peter jackson! do you expect us to believe that that ship can carry kong all the way to new york? how the hell can ann survive the g-force when kong hold her in its hand while being chased, chasing, fighting, kicking, jumping,clinging, hanging, somersaulting, kickboxing, ballet dancing in the forest? the fx were great, but please don't undermine your viewer's intelligence. and oh, we all know you recycled sets and music from lotr.

allright, i'm off. it's time to hit the gym go yatch racing with the demon!

listening to: sleater kinney - wilderness