52 Things to do in 2011

A friend of mine, at the beginning of last year created a list of 52 things he aimed to do in 2010. Theoretically, getting one item done per week every year.

They ranged from stuff such as "not shaving for a month" and "disable facebook account for an entire month" to things like "sign up to be an organ donor" and "participate in a walkathon or some kind of running event".

To those who have been following my blog and actually read it, you might have come across some posts about my own to-do list, which was a huge failure since the very idea of me interrupting the quality semester break period is not really a smart thing to do. That, and of course, the issues I have with discipline, especially during semester breaks.

This time though, I will not force myself to do everything in the list. And I don't even care if I fail to do half of them. Cos unlike the previous list, completing this one will not turn me into a proper adult. And I'm experimenting on some reverse psychology theory cos perhaps I might do better if I don't force myself too hard. :D

The list below is part stolen from my macha's blog post, Mr. Shan Vellu. And I changed them a little, of course.

1. Read 12 different books.
2. Go on a solo trip to anywhere.
3. Hitch-hike a ride.
4. Buy something from 7-Eleven every hour for 24 hours.
5. Write 12 songs.
6. Use a fire extinguisher.
7. Cook someone a proper meal.
8. Chat up one stranger each day for one week. (Bonus points if I can get their numbers).
9. Drive around early in the morning and catch the sunrise at Kuala Perlis.
10. Be mute for 24 hours.
11. Sing karaoke.
12. Beat 10 different people at chess.
13. Donate blood.
14. Go vegetarian for one week.
15. Cycle to C-Mart, buy a few stuff, and cycle back to Taman Sri Wang.
16. Not swear for 24 hours.
17. Read 12 finance magazines over the year.
18. Eat different types of dish for lunch and dinner for a week.
19. Go bald.
20. Watch a play/theater.
21. Dance in the middle of the road when the traffic lights turn red.
22. Get all A's, or a mix of A's and A- for my exams.
23. Speak proper, SPM A-1 level Bahasa Melayu for five days straight.
24. Buy something completely in coins.
25. Offer to buy a stranger a drink.
26. Don't shave for a month.
27. Not eat for an entire day.
28. Play paintball.
29. Turn off my phone for an entire week.
30. Disable my facebook account for an entire month.
31. Beat a cat at a staring contest.
32. Kiss a girl.
33. Watch a football game at a stadium.
34. Not sleep for 48 hours.
35. Send 10 random people personalised "Just Because" cards.
36. Send a message in a bottle.
37. Drive around in a pair of boxers.
38. Be on TV/newspaper/magazine.
39. Shake hand with the UiTM Perlis director.
40. Go camping.
41. Help an old/blind lady/man cross the road-ish.
42. Meet a famous person.
43. Break the UiTM law.
44. Give a street performer money.
45. Give wrong directions to people.
46. Invent a rumour.
47. Get someone to believe a made up fact.
48. Just use my left hand for a day.
49. Make some money in the stock market.
50. Go street performing for money.
51. Play Football Manager for 36 hours solid.
52. Buy a new phone.

I guess it's not too late to wish everyone a happy new year, since the Chinese one is a week plus away. So... Happy New Year folks!

The Year That Was - 2010

In keeping up with the tradition of this blog - which is to write a post to recap the stuffs that made the year memorable, as the final post of the year - I am now fending off my unnatural urge to sleep in spite of not being in the mood to blog at all.

**For future reference Zaid of the future, your sleeping pattern was disturbed and you should've been sleeping while you were posting this stuff at 9.15pm :| **

Since I'm kinda sleepy and there's not much time left until 2010 passes by under our pretty noses, I have elected to write a gung ho style post, highlighting my (somewhat deviated) journey to becoming a proper adult in 2010 into one single post. Unlike the previous years, I believe this one will be rather short. But who cares. Here goes :

January :

Malaysian politics is very colourful, it's blinding. And one of the reason was the hullabaloo surrounding the dispute whether the word Allah can be used in a Christian publication in Malaysia. I was engaged in a cyber war with a senior from my uni regarding the issue, and I was surprised as to how smart I can be in my reasoning skills. Refer to my January 8th post and marvel at my smarty-panty-ness in the dialog attached if you have a lot of time to kill.

I was also in the middle of a cross road back then, when I was contemplating to either continue

my studies in the UK, or continue my degree locally and grad one semester ear

lier. I chose the later, and I'm not regretting the decision. Though the only way now if I am to want to continue abroad is to study my ass off (again), get a stellar CGPA and do my masters there (and getting a scholarship). Masters? Yea rite...

February :

World peace is hard to achieve when there's a feeling of dislike towards one another, mutually or otherwise. And I have my own list of people I don't like in my life (aka enemies), and one of them made a return to the place he was not meant to be, where I thought I had seen the last of him a couple of months before. Need a clue? He's the closest resemblance to a swine in the whole batch physically and such an attention whore.

I had a very cool lecturer who taught me presentation skills that semester, Mr Azahari. He looks like Ramli Sarip and has a good sense of humour. I like him, I wanna be like him.

February was also the month where I genuinely fell in love with a girl while taking the train

home. She's from Kemunting.

And I discovered the joy of wintermelon juice :B

March :

I was planning to celebrate my 22nd birthday at The Curve, enjoying the tunes from Kings of Convenience as they toured to our country during my birthday. It was not to be as I had to join a "Personal Development" trip (it's a course work at the same time), and Encik Roslan Ariff will forever be remembered for taking KOC away from me.

I also discovered that Nasi Putih Daging Merah tastes like feet.

April :

Miss Syikin who taught me Corporate Finance sent me a facebook PM telling me to actually start studying during the final weeks leading up to the final exams. Kinda disturbing.

May :

I was experimenting whether discipline is part of my trait or I'm a complete asshole by dragging myself into a mess called a to-do list, which is inspired by Mike Gayle's book of the same title. Which I haven't finished reading yet. Until now. And about the list itself, it has 79 items in it, created to keep me occupied with stuffs that supposedly make me a functioning adult and to spend time better during the May/June semester break. And in spite of bringing the list forward to the Nov/Dec holiday plan, I still haven't gotten half of them settled with yet. Aih~

June :

The World Cup was boring. The Vuvuzela single handedly destroyed the World Cup with the nonsensical monotonous din coming out from the stuff for the entire 90 minutes of each game (barring the Diego Forlan goal, Uruguay vs South Africa), and the entirety of the tournament. I wasn't even bothered to watch it on TV because of the noise. The worst World Cup I've ever seen in my 22 years of living. And Italy sucked.

Then there was this problem where the UiTM server went nuts and I (and thousands

other)had to wait till the next day after the supposed date where the final exam results should came out cos of technical problems.

July :

Discovered that Nazrullah from Marketing is a super hero as he single handedly drove the legendary white Nissan (or was it a Ford?) van around Kedah/parts of Penang (air panas, air terjun, shopping mall) from Friday noon to morning the next day. The van had 15 passengers (I think) and popular belief suggests that Naz stayed up for 22 hours straight!

August :

Not much that I can remember.

September :

Got a car. Hyundai i10. Baby Milmo arrived! :D

October :

Baby Milmo's first scratch.

Second solo trip to Langkawi. And if not for Wan, the trip would've been a one day retreat to paradise. Instead, I had to spend a night there as we missed the ferry, and a few hundred ringgit more.

November :

Got a first hand experience of being a flood victim. No clean water supply forced me into taking drastic actions such as skipping baths and being stinky. And trying not to poo took it's toll too. And it all hapened during the final exams.

Wikileaks has become a diplomatic land mine as sensitive issues such as security and Anwar Ibrahim being gay are leaked.

ISP Liability Act suddenly ruffles my ass feathers and many others as the parliament might discuss it and pass the act, and rob us of internet freedom we've been enjoying for the past 10 years.

December :

Got into a fight with some Indon people on Twitter after the 3-0 drubbing of Indon by Malaysia in the first leg of the AFF Suzuki Cup and at the same time, discovered the joy of using twitter. It was fun when the most the Indon die hards could do was sitting in front of their PCs threatening to kill me with their self-consoling retorts.

Malaysia won the cup and Khairul Fahmi is now the craze of a few thousand shameless Malaysian females.

Alright now, gotta sleep. :B

Yes Guys, I Listen to Japanese Music.

It seems that Football Manager 2011, like it's predecessor, Football Manager 2010 is not made for my laptop. The same problem persists, even after I installed the original Windows 7, which led me to think that I either have to bring it to the shops and ask for what exactly is the matter (and costs me money to get it fixed) or give up hopes altogether and save money; simply play the first season and delete the file and imagine what could've been if I can get a few more seasons going which the laptop isn't giving, which is of course, depressing.

And so I decided to take a break from being a football manager and have a serious online session. It has been a long time now since my last serious internet session. Ever since I got home for the semester break, the longest I went online was 4 hours, and that was an odd one out since I only got online like an average less than an hour/day, everyday since I got home cos of my Football Manager addiction :B

That's when I opened up the WMP, set it at random and suddenly it played a "Brilliant Green" song. It was bliss.

Introducing The Brilliant Green (pix from http://columbiajpmusic.blogspot.com/2009/02/blog-post_23.html)

For those who are alien to Japanese pop culture and music, or even if you are a fan (cos there's a good chance you have no idea of who they are, they're like a Jpop/Jrock best kept secret, I think), the band consists of 3 members. 2 guys and a girl. I can't remember the name of the guys but the female lead's name is Tomoko Kawase, one of those serious celebrity crushes I had when I was still an innocent school going kid. She's like the ultimate cute rock chick out there. Every aspiring rock chick out there should shun away from Avril Lavigne or Miley Sirus(sp?) cos Tommy (Tomoko Kawase) sets the standard right. Like seriously.

Moar Buriguri goodness!!! (Pix from http://ca.c.yimg.jp/music/20080808_191306/img.music.yahoo.co.jp/images/magazine/spt/20070815_001/spt_gall_art_004.jpg)

Tomoko Kawase is love... (from http://pv-downloads.blogspot.com/2010/11/brilliant-green-blue-daisy.html)

And since I just rediscovered the band after a long while, she has now returned to my personal list of babes I seriously consider wanting to get married with (which is a top 5 list that changes periodically according to time and taste, and Megan McCormick of Glob Trekker fame and Lisa Surihani are currently battling out for top spot :B ) after a long hiatus.

Anyways, it has been a long time now since I last seriously listen to Japanese songs. And I welcome this return to "Japanese-ness". The band was my favourite during my high school days. That and Radiohead. And with that it brings nostalgia. It seems that I have gone a long way now, music-taste wise, in that the laptop and the CDs in my car have been playing post-rock, alternative, down tempo electronics, alt folk, experimental pop, prog, blues, classical and jazz (how musically eclectic I am surprisingly, though there's still no room for hip hop(barring Asher Roth. Hey look, a bracket in a bracket!) and trashy MTV fodders) over the years since then.

I remember that this is one of the earliest bands which music I downloaded online (remember 2003/04, the days when Streamyx was awesome? And the now defunct Kazaa?). I used to have all of their albums in my music library and I used to scour the music stores to see whether they sell The Brilliant Green CDs, which if they did I would've already owned legal physical copies of them, which is of course not the case. Some of their songs are in my lifetime favourites. I remember listening to them, enjoying good honest rock n' roll before I got myself exposed to complex experimental music of Radiohead, Sigur Ros and the others over the years which is not entirely a bad thing. I remember listening to them every time I went online after school back then. I remember listening to some of their songs over and over again for weeks and never got tired of it.

I miss 2003, it was all perfect back then.

P/s : Apparently, I had missed out on Buriguri when they released an album in 2007. And they had just released another one this year! This is one of the new songs from Buriguri (The Brilliant Green). Enjoy ;D

The To Do List 2

*This is the post from the last sem break.

**The crossed out ones are either the ones that I actually managed to get it done with or it's too late already to do it.

***Apparently I failed to finish even half of the list.

****Therefore, I'll be continuing with this list.

*****Wish me luck.

"Realise that you've got a problem"

- Mike Gayle, The To-Do List

Dear all,

After four-and-a-half months of studying, lepaking, ogling at chicks, sleeping, facebooking till 3am, and went crazy trying to meet assignment deadlines and topping it all with a miserable run of final exams, I, Zaid Mohamad feels that I richly deserve a good 2 months break from anything related to studying the balance sheet, analyzing corporate finance and understanding research methodology. I'm planning to laze around the house and be completely useless.

At least, that was the plan.

But as I grow older and being 22, somehow I feel that I need to make myself more productive. In a sense that I should be doing stuffs that matters to myself. That can make my life better, even a tad bit. And that, by doing so I can actually pave my way through to becoming a proper adult, hopefully by 30. In a nutshell, I'm doing this so that I won't be putting my holidays to waste.

So now I have come to a conclusion that it's about time I joined the world of fully functioning adults - on a temporary basis at least - as of today I will be undertaking a 79-item To-Do List which I plan to have completed by July 5th (or so, till my semester break ends). So that I can in the future look back at this semester break as being the more/most productive than the past few semester breaks before it and make my transition to being a proper adult without suffering from much shocks and difficulties.

And the reason I tagged you lot to this blog post is to give me the inspiration and motivation to succeed, knowing full well that should I fail in completing a minimum of 50 tasks, I will look like a complete and utter buffoon in front of you all and will afford you the right to mock me to within an inch of my life.

See you all soon.

Zaid Mohamad.

The Semester Break Holiday To-Do List!



1. Clear the desk so that you can actually put your laptop on it.
2. Arrange my bags, books and stuffs on my desks and shelves in my room into something resembling an order.
3. Restring both guitars...
4. And relearn how to play them (and break the 'tone-deaf' ceiling).
5. Talk to those people you haven't spoken to in YM/Facebook.
6. Clear my music library from broken-files songs/ songs that I accidently downloaded twice.
7. Learn basic Italian.
8. Download Google Earth...
9. And Windows Live Messenger.
10. Get rid of useless files and downloads from the hard drive.
11. Expand vocabulary (one word per day).
12. Arrange my academic/co-curricular certificates into chronological order and put it in a file.
13. Work out how to make function the laptop camera and mic with Windows 7.
14. Do something with Winamp music library artist organisation.
15. Learn to cook proper food.
16. Keep hair as long as possible.
17. Come up with a 5 year plan.
18. Learn to identify plants/vegetables/shrubs.
19. Go jogging.
20. Find more news on scholarships.
21. Learn how to use Adobe Photoshop.
22. Plan a final meet up with the DIIA kids before or after convo.
23. Remove my name from all emails newsletters subsription services that I unwisely signed up for.
24. Keep up with current affairs.
25. Create a new email with a proper name for official use.
26. Establish yourself at the last.fm forums.
27. Brush up your fardhu-ain knowledge.
28. Delete useless emails/junkmails and keep them organised.
29. Make it a habit to check your email everyday.
30. Learn to appreciate Metallica.
31. Go to mosque for regular daily prayer (that is, barring the Friday prayer).
32. Get a proper IQ test...
33. And personality test...
34. And career test.
35. Try to appreciate Pulp Fiction.
36. Give Harry Potter a chance.
37. Watch American Beauty...
38. And Juno...
39. And In Bruges...
40. And Leon...
41. And Pineapple Express...
42. And Rec...
43. And 500 Days of Summer...
44. And This is England...
45. And Role Models.
46. Learn to curb my tendencies in using "..." in writing messages...
47. And learn how to write a proper sentence.
48. Give PJ Harvey a second chance...
49. And Tori Amos' Boys for Pele...
50. And Pizicatto 5.
51. Try to understand George Carlin's jokes.
52. Learn a dance move just in case I might need them in the future.
53. Find out how the capital market responds to different economic indicators.
54. Try to like reading BNM/Bursa Malaysia/Economic sites.
55. Decide if you're really ever going to watch Bangkok Dangerous...
56. And Initial-D...
57. And Inkheart...
58. And Fight Club.
59. Know about the solar system.
60. Know who's who in the government.
61. Find missing CDS like Oasis' What's the Story [Morning Glory?]...
62. And Audioslave...
63. And The Darkness' Permission to Land.
64. Catch up with Bonana...
65. And Tun Syakirin...
66. And Hafiz...
67. And Syarku+Mimi+Anas.
68. Ask Faiq to save me a pair of Arau Open T-Shirt+goody bag.
69. Investigate what exactly does a remisier/dealer/broker do.
70. Play chess more.
71. Relearn chess moves and strategies.
72. Stop eating McDonald's. Or have once/month max.
73. Get a girlfriend so that she can give your life purpose and make you more organised.
    
74. Learn how to impress girls.
75. Have a indie-music moment.
76. Join the library.
77. Sample every nasi kandar restaurants in town.
78. Register myself with the Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya so that I'll be eligible to cast some undi-rosak in the next election.
79. Watch every World Cup game without fail.

I Am A Flood Victim

No clean water, and I can't bathe and shyte in peace, and I can't cook maggie mee.
I am running out of food stocks and almost every shops are closed. I'm starving.
I am running out of phone credit and I can't call my mama.My car is running out of petrol so it's hard to go places without fear of the car stopping midway, and I can't even get out of Arau cos the flood is blocking all the roads to Kangar/other places with a petrol station.
That, and I need to stretch my RM7 until tomorrow evening at the very least cos I'm running out of cash :B
And I have an exam (Malaysian Derivatives) tomorrow morning.

I am now officially (and for the first time) a flood victim. Damn!

This is what I intend to put in my Facebook status. But Facebook said the maximum I can put in a status is 420 characters. This is 600++ characters.

I just bought 2 rolls of tissue paper so that I can wipe my arse tomorrow if need be, cos there is no clean water coming out of the taps. Or any other taps in Arau. And oh, I have 3 weeks worth of laundry to settle, and I can bet my car that the laundry shops are closed. I have a feeling I will not bathe today and even tomorrow.

I'm gonna stink.

P/s : Pictures taken without permission from Kopi O Ais.