The Story of Terence and Amanda

When I first got to know of Terence, he was at the peak of his life. Soon to be the heir of a very large public listed company in Malaysia, he had his life cut out for him.

Whether he was going to work or not, he was going to live a comfortable life.

He drove the flashiest BMWs, frequented the VIP areas of the coolest clubs and being a guy, spent money on every gadget his heart desired. Terence knew how to enjoy money.Guys like that appear on the radar quite quickly for some of the hottest girls in the night life circuit.

One girl took notice, her name was Amanda and she was by any means one of the hottest girls that any guy would ever lay their eyes on.

She could walk from the South Court to the North Court of MidValley and at least 10 guys to turn their heads and look at her... she was as hot as this.
Amanda was ambitious.

She knew exactly what she wanted in life and it wasn't a flourishing career up the corporate ladder, it was security... financial security to be exact and she saw that in Terence.

Terence wasn't perfect and as a person had his own set of flaws like any other man, but it didn't matter... the bank account that his family came with was enough to make up for it and to be fair... there's no cry no foul for Amanda liking that part of him.

Donald Trump's beautiful wife was one asked if she would have fallen for Donald Trump if he wasn't rich.

She replied
"Do you think Donald would fall for me if I weren't beautiful?"Which hit the point exactly.

Amanda whether with her beauty or charm or personality managed to eventually hook Terence.

Months into the relationship, Amanda got pregnant.

Terence's high profile family struggled to deal with the problem.

They at one point considered having an abortion but Amanda would refuse anything less than a marriage so that the baby had a proper home to stay with.

Tied with Terence's mistake, Terence decided to go ahead with the marriage and eventually got the support of his parents. Some people wonder whether it was Amanda's plan all along to get Terence to marry her to tie him down.... but that is a question nobody but Amanda will know how to answer.

A few years later into the marriage, a crisis hit Terence's family business.... the 1997 financial crisis to be exact. Just before 1997, many Malaysian companies were on an expansion path with the KLSE being one of the highest traded markets in the world in terms of volume.

To expand, you need money and when you're a huge public listed company, getting banks to lend you money isn't too much of a problem.Now once you've decided that you want to borrow money to grow your business, the next question lies on the Cost of Borrowing or simply... the interest rate.

The interest rate in Malaysia is relatively higher than the interest rate from the many developed countries overseas so many local companies borrowed in USD from overseas banks, Terence's family business was no different.

When the financial crisis hit, the ringgit depreciated from RM2.5 to USD1.00 to something like RM5-6 to USD1.00.

That means if you borrowed RM100,000,000 before the crisis, that figure inflated to RM200,000,000 after the crisis. Terence's family business tanked overnight and his father was declared a bankrupt.Terence's life was quick to change. He no longer spent as much as he did and he went out to find a job. Amanda too had to find one.

Fortunately for Terence, he was smart and he went to a good university so finding a job wasn't too much of a problem for him. Amanda too had graduated with a degree but working wasn't really quite her thing, she found herself in a bit of a fix.

Just two years later, Terence caught Amanda cheating on him with an older man. He was dumbfounded and depressed.

What the hell was going on that this woman he had a baby boy with had to be cheating on him with an older man.

Some say... it was because of the financial security that wealthier older man had... some say... love is blind.

They eventually filed for divorce. Terence kept the only child they had and Amanda went on to marry the older man to live the life of a socialite.

The story of Terence and Amanda got me thinking about one thing... about the ups and downs of life.

It is inevitable that in anyone's life, especially where business is involved, there will be ups, there will be downs. Richard Branson's successful Virgin Atlantic airlines had almost failed once but today stands tall with a fleet of aircraft and a brand name to die for.

Closer to home, I have met many rich businessmen with wealth in the millions. Many of which have told me how they had succeeded, then failed... then picked themselves up to succeed again.

People will always have their ups and downs (and don't get me wrong.. ups and downs need not be measured simply with dollar signs).

I feel that right now I may perhaps on a small scale be experiencing my 'UP' or at least on the way "UP". One day... I may very well face my down. Things can and will go wrong.

Hence, the girl I will eventually end up with need not be really pretty.

She need not be cute. She need not be hot. She need not be sexy.

The one thing she needs to be though is strong and committed.

Strong enough to give me her strength when I am down... and committed enough to sit with me through the storm.

Meeting the Malaysian Dreamgirls at Their Home

Ok guess who I was with this afternoon.

The guys at Malaysian Dreamgirl were nice enough to invite me, Sam, Pinkpau and Shaolintiger to the top secret villa that housed all the Malaysian Dreamgirls.

I was surprised to see how nice the place was

It had a swimming pool, a big kitchen and a great living room wtih big sofas.We started off sitting together in the Living Room talking to the remaining Malaysian Dreamgirls, asking them how they were, if they were having fun and most importantly we asked them about the conflicts they've been having with one another.
The answer was... yes they were all having fun.. and no they don't fight anymore, they're now one big happy family.

This of course we found out to be untrue later on when we actually got the chance to speak to the girls one by one but I'll go into the cold wars later on.

The first thing I saw when I entered the villa was a wall full of this.

There were drawings that all the girls had drawn apparently of themselves.

They were all UGLY pictures. I mean who the hell draws like that?

I came to a quick conclusion there that Pretty Girls are terrible at art.

When we were all gathered in the living room I shamelessly asked the girls about the art again which was then when I found out why their drawings were so horrible.

They apparently had an 'exercise' where each of them had to close their eyes and draw a face on a piece of paper.

But it's not that easy.
You're not allowed to just draw a face with your eyes closed but you're supposed to do it in the order that someone tells you to do it. For example, someone might say, draw the nose first.. then the neck.. then the ears... and you end up having ears where the lips should be and lips where the eyes should be.

They later got Shaolintiger to try it out.
Then Pinkpau.

Then me in which they used a piece of paper to block my view to make sure I didn't cheat.
And Sam.I'm not gonna show you the result we had because mine was especially embarrassing.

After two hours of playing games and chatting as a group, we decided it was time to talk to the girls one by one.This is when it starts to get a little complicated because we're constantly hearing different sides of the stories from different people and sometimes we find it hard to connect the dots.

So all I'm gonna do is share with you guys what the girls told us. What I'm NOT gonna do and what I think we all shouldn't do is to judge any of the girls ok?

They're all actually really nice in person.

The first one I wanted to talk to was Cindy, so Shaolintiger, Sam and I walked outside with Cindy to talk in private.

The reason why I picked Cindy is simple.Many people who watch the show are now under the impression that Cindy is very much a bitch but I also understood that sometimes in reality TV Shows, a show might tend to skew a person's character towards his/her bad side and not reveal much of the good side.

In short, I wanted to find out if Cindy really really was a bitch like many people online now think she was.

I asked her about a few issues and she brought up how there were two main factions that were fighting in the house.

We had Nadia, Fiqa and Hanis on one side... and Valerie, Jean, Adeline and Cindy on the other.

To my understanding, Alison, Jay, Ringo and Eyna have always been neutral and never picked a side.

The sides were mainly decided based on who shared rooms with each other. What apparently happened was that there was a time where Valerie was upset with Nadia borrowing her jeans and she was talking to Cindy about it.Cindy reacted by saying something along the lines of
"Ah forget about her lah.. no use wan."

and it so happens that the walls between the two rooms were quite thin so someone on Nadia's side overheard.

Since then there was a bit of tension between the two groups but Cindy's group had began to shrink.

First Jean left, then Valerie leaving her with just Adeline.Doing Housework

I then asked Cindy if what some of the other girls said about her was true... that she never did any housework and that she would never help to cook or wash up. All she did was eat.

She said the only reason why she never helped to cook was because Nadia's group was always in the kitchen already doing most of the cooking and it was rather awkward for her and Adeline to join in to cook when they were experiencing this sort of cold war.

She however reiterated that if anything... Adeline and her would always help to wash up. Nadia's group will cook... Adeline's will wash up.The Jeans Incident

As an extension to the incident with Valerie's Jeans, Cindy then went on to tell me about how Valerie had lent some money to Nadia for her to buy Brand's Essence of Chicken or something when they were out and Nadia hadn't returned the money to her.

To Nadia's defence, when Shaolintiger and I asked her about it she said that she had returned the money to Valerie and that she never knew that Valerie was feeling so upset about her using Valerie's jeans.

When she found out, she washed it and returned it to her on the spot.The Tomatoes Incident

Each of the Malaysian Dreamgirls had the chance to buy some of their own food with their own money. The unwritten rule in the house was that they would each put all their food that was just meant for themselves in the fridge but tied up in a plastic bag.

Nadia bought herself some tomatoes with her own money, enough to last her a while. One day she woke up to find some of her tomatoes missing and she found out that Cindy had taken some.
She was furious but according to Cindy she didn't know about the unwritten rule and Nadia went ahead to curse some foul words at her. Cindy said that she eventually apologized to Nadia and offered to pay for the tomatoes but Nadia told her to get lost.

When we talked to Nadia about it, she told us that it was hard to make that mistake with that 'unwritten rule'. Just to double check when we talked to Ringo later on, I asked her about the rule and she said she knew about it so I'm not sure what went wrong there.One thing that Nadia was quick to admit though was that she was rather harsh to Cindy but only because she was very very angry. She doesn't exactly have all the money in the world to spend and she was trying hard to save for certain things so when she found out that someone had taken her food, she lost it.

I don't know about everyone else but I can totally understand that. Very often when I'm filled with anger myself... I say things I don't usually say just to make sure I hurt someone. I think it's very big of Nadia to see where she went wrong and admit it even to us. You're great Nadia.

Here are a few things I've learned since visiting the girls at MDG today.

1) Everybody loves Jay

Everyone who lives in the villa loves Jay and I can certainly see why. She cooks, takes care of everyone and is very very politically correct. You'll never be able to get Jay to say anything bad about any of the girls.A lot of people say that Jay looks like a "Tranny" but after meeting her in real life I just have to say that the photos don't do justice. She looks really good in real life... and DEFINITELY like a woman... NOT a tranny.

2) Adeline's English

When you talk to her in person, Adeline's english is not as bad as many people think it is by watching her on the show.

3) Cindy isn't a bitch in real life

I really don't think Cindy is as bitchy in person as she is portrayed as in the show. Sure I know, I've only met her for a few hours but in those few hours, she was nice.

4) I wish I had come early enough to see Alison and Valerie before they went

Fortunately I had a chance to meet Alison for a short while during the audition but I never got to meet Valerie who looks like so much fun on screen. Take care Valerie, I wish you could've stayed longer but it was nice when you were around.

5) Ringo is keeping well.

You have no idea what Ringo does just to try to keep in touch with her readers.Basically each day each of the girls have 7 minutes each to spend on the phone or online.

Ringo will go around trading time slots with the other girls and save up for 3 days so that on the 3rd day she can go online for 21 minutes... just to blog. Her birthday is coming up this Wednesday as well.

Happy Birthday Ringo.

And Lastly...

6) It's Not Easy Being On Reality-TV

If you ask me, being on reality-TV is like being a blogger and revealing who you are. Whatever you do can and chances are will be scrutinized by people out there.

You will have your supporters but you will also have your detractors. Any mistakes you make will be magnified and any attempts you make the fix those mistakes can be easily hampered.
For that I take my hat off to ALL the girls at Malaysian Dreamgirls, even those who got eliminated earlier on. I'm sure it's not easy being on Reality-TV, but all of you are doing something few Malaysians get to have a piece of action of... and you're all doing a great job.

I'm gonna end with this last picture of Eyna, Ringo and Sam.

Sam is a huge fan of MDG.

If you guys want to catch MDG, check it out here.

PS: There was a camera crew filming us the whole time we were there. I hope we don't end up in one of the episodes. I'm terrible in front of the camera. I can't act to save my life.

A Short Conversation with Sam

This is a short conversation Sam and I had this morning.

Me: So what you think of last night at Zouk? The girls hot ar?

Sam: Yah... one of them the boobs really damn big. Put mine to shame. Make me look small.

Me: Yeah I know... damn small.

Sam: OI!!! WHY YOU SAY ME SMALL!!! I DOWAN FREN YOU DI!!!

Me: What what??? I'm just agreeing with you!

I will never understand women.

When you don't agree with them you kena whack, when you agree with them you also kena whack.

Buying Rubber

I was at Watsons the other day at 1-Utama when I saw something that brought back old memories.

While walking around looking for eye-drops, I passed the aisle that sold condoms. Just as I passed I noticed a young couple, looks like they were barely 18 standing facing the stacks of condom boxes, just looking.

I looked in their eyes and I could tell they were having a rather awkward moment there. It was pretty clear that they wanted to buy condoms for their sexy time but were too shy to.

I considered buying it for them for a moment, I mean I'm a realist so I know that they're gonna do it anyway so why not help them do it the safe way.

The 2005 Durex Global Sex Survey says that most people have their first sex in Malaysia somewhere around the age of 19... they looked close enough to 19.But then again I thought.... bahh let them suffer like I did once before.

Heck I remember my first time trying to buy a condom. I was young (I'm not gonna say how young).

My girlfriend at the time said that it was the MAN'S JOB TO BUY THE RUBBER and that IF YOU'RE TOO CHICKEN TO BUY THE RUBBER YOU SHOULDN'T BE SHAGGING ME.

So fine... she challenged by ego and I decided to walk into a 7-11 to buy it.

This was in Penang.

I walked into the 7-11 in Pulau Tikus (which kinda looks something like this but bigger)


and looked for the condoms only to find it near the cashier. Then I slowly took a look at the cashier, because heyy... that's the one person you're gonna have to look in the face when you buy the condom.

I was expecting to see a nice dude at the cashier that might understand my plight, but instead I saw a nice conservative looking lady, probably in her 50s wearing a Tudung.

I thought to myself
"Oh GREAAAT!!!"

But I wasn't going to go leave without rubber. I decided that much.

So I stalled a little bit.

I walked around the aisle and pretended to pick up a few things. I grabbed a Pepsi and a Mars Bar, then walked over to the cashier.

I placed the Pepsi and Mars on the counter and the cashier took my stuff to scan.
While she was doing it, I suddenly went
"Oh.."

as if it was a "by-the-way" thing and took a condom from the side of the counter and placed it with my Pepsi.

The cashier glared at me and said
"YOU MAHU BELI INI (pointing at the Pepsi and Mars), ATAU INI (pointing at the condoms)?!?!"

My face turned red as a tomato.Actually redder than a tomato. Somehow my reflex was to say "Ini sudah boleh", taking the Mars and Pepsi alone and pushing the condom aside.

I paid for the Mars and Pepsi and ran the hell out of that 7-11 store never to go back again for the next few years.

I was so embarrassed. I didn't get laid that night either.

But like all other things practice makes perfect. These days I'm not afraid to buy condoms anymore. In fact, just like when I buy anything else that doesn't expire so quick, I buy them in bulk.

So I walk into KLCC's Guardian, grab like 5 boxes of Condoms at a time and stand at the long queue at the cashiers.

When the person behind me looks at what I'm holding I proudly hold it up, smile at the person and say
"Yeah I know I'm really lucky".

I've done that a few times but I've never ever once actually got a response. Normally the person just shyly looks away.

So to the couple at 1-Utama that day... sorry lah.... but it gets easier ok?

And remember.. always always practice safe sexy time.

This is a community service message by Boss Stewie haha.

Guilty As Charged

Yes... I'm guilty as charged.

I haven't updated my blog for a while now.

Sorry been really really busy these few days with work.

Just to give you an idea of how busy I am, it's the end of the month and this month alone Nuffnang is sending out something like RM80,000 in cheques to many many bloggers so you can imagine all the checking and double-checking and verifying that I have to do before I approve all these cheques.

Will blog tonight or tomorrow.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman's Wrath

Sunday morning when I woke up I got a text from my friend Duncan who was organizing the Animation Comic Game Convention (ACGC) that was taking place at Berjaya Times Square.

He asked me to drop by if I'm free so I asked Sam if she was keen to go and she said okay.

I got there around twelve-ish and it was great.
There were all these computers around for the people there to try out some of the online games around today and even a Call of Duty 4 competition.

I love First Person Shooter games. Heck I was damn bloody good in Half-Life and CS (Especially Half-Life) but I've never before played Call of Duty 4 so I didn't even bother trying to compete.
I'm so left behind in computer games now it's actually shocking. And to think I used to call myself a hardcore gamer. Ish... shame on me.

But hey since I was there I decided to try on some of the games they had there.I tried on this game called.... Ok I can't remember what it's called but it's some MMORPG game from Korea (yeah I know.. I'm not exactly narrowing it down for anyone here).
Anyway..... I figured that since I couldn't really play many of the games there, I would just walk around and check out all the people dressed in Cosplay.

Heck it was pretty fun.

I mean we had people dressed like Hellboy.Girls dressed like some Anime characters that didn't really ring a bell to me.

And even this fella here...

Whom I really don't know who he's supposed to be.

It didn't take long before a girl dressed in a Japanese School Girl uniform came up to me and offered me a balloon.

Now when a hot Japanese School Girl offers you a balloon you take it!!! You JUST TAKE IT!!!

Heck even if she comes and offers you a lump of dog shit you say
"Arigatou gozaimasu!"

I was a little excited though.

I mean heck... the last time I got myself a balloon was when I was a little kid. Ever since then, nobody ever bothered to give me a balloon seeing that I'm all grown up and all so when handed me a balloon.. hey I felt young again!!!

I decided to give my balloon a name at the point in the time.
I called it "Behloon".

Armed with my Behloon I walked shamelessly around the area to check out more of the Cosplay outfits.

They were all pretty cool so I decided to take pictures with a few of them (With Behloon of course).

Since Sam was there with me I would say
"Hey could you please help me take a picture" and go ahead and pose with whoever the Cosplay character was.

Now here's where it started. Before a woman unleashes her wrath on you, she will always give you a few warnings. A few may be less than 3 but definitely at least ONE warning.

The stupid thing with men is that more often than not, we don't notice those warnings until much later on.

The first warning came when I was going looking at the girls around and saying
"Holy shit.. that girl is pretty!!!" and Sam replied with a
"Where got hot... her nose not nice". (She was actually quite pretty but I didn't take a good photo).

Being the man I was, I ignored that warning unintentionally.

Then I went on and saw this girl in a Maid Cosplay kind of outfit.

I got so excited and went up to her and said
"Come come take picture with me and my Behloon".

Sam grunted
"Why like that also you want to take picture with? Please lah!!!".

That was my second warning but I ignored it again.
Finally, I was walking around when I spotted this girl dressed in a pink outfit.

I have no clue what she character she was supposed to be but she looked kinda cute to me!

I wanted to go take a picture with her but so did everyone else and she was so busy taking all those pictures, I didn't get a chance so I tried repeatedly to get a good picture of her.


After this picture I felt that I didn't get a good enough picture of her so I tried again and again.

That was when Sam shouted
"I SWEAR YOU TAKE ANOTHER PICTURE OF HER AND SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU?!?!"

Now that warning was pretty pretty clear even to a dumbass like me.

So I backed off and said
"Okay okay... lets go home".

I grabbed my Behloon and started walking off.

On the way back to the car I was playing around with Behloon, bouncing it off Sam's head and going
"Boing.. boing... boing..." you know just for some childish fun.

Sam looked pissed. She didn't look entertained at all

I mean online when you see her blog you see cute cute pictures of her like that you think she's a little harmless puppy right?

But let me assure you... if you get on her bad side... she will finish you off!

So I decided not to push her limits and I walked ahead of her a little bit with Behloon.

Suddenly I heard a loud BANG which echoed off all the walls in Berjaya Times Square's lobby. Almost at the same time I felt a GUSH of air between my arm and body where I was carrying Behloon like a football.

I turned back to see Behloon on the floor, destroyed.

Sam looked at me and started laughing away
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA YOU SHOULD SEE YOUR FACE RIGHT NOW!!! LIKE A SAD LITTLE BOY WHO JUST LOST HIS BALLOON!!!".

I got angry and I shouted
"WHY YOU BURST MY BEHLOON?"

and she defended herself with lies.

"I didn't burst your Behloon, it just burst itself".

Even that didn't made sense to me... HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? HOW CAN MY BEHLOON BURST ITSELF??!?!She just kept laughing away.

So there you have it everyone.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman's Wrath.

You piss her off, you get on her bad side, and she will hit you where it hurts.

In this case, it was Behloon, the very first balloon I have had in many many years.

As I drove home, the silence in the car was deafening.
We didn't speak to each other.