Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

The Heart Cannot Be Mapped

Despite swearing up and down that taking a break meant mooching around the house watching DVD’s, I decided to go on a roadtrip over the weekend, while I was back from China on a short sabbatical. Firing up my good old Firefox, I booked a hotel room in the Emperor hotel in Malacca through Wotif.com.

Arriving at the Emperor hotel was a scene out of a science fiction movie. Half the hotel was shut down, and I’m talking about half, cut in the middle like a cake. One half was functional while the other half was a mess. It’s like the hotel had a stroke that resulted in half its body being paralyzed.

The room was something out of the 1970s. Odd brown colour palettes and a huge bathroom that was totally covered in white mosaic, which kind made it look like an iPod. I had booked the largest room they had, which was a mistake because nobody had lived in it for awhile and I imagined the room had the aroma of a dead body from days gone by.

On the way back home, I decided not to drive by the North-South highway, and took the old roads home instead. With a Garmin GPS carefully tracking my every turn, I had no fear of getting lost. I drove for about 1 hour and soon I arrived in the little town of Muar.

Rewind back to the early 90s when Cowboy Caleb was still a teenager and avid fan of the Roman Catholic Church. In those days, I was the president of the Catholic youth group in my church. And we had a few church camps in Muar. So I had wonderful memories of this sleepy town.

Unfortunately, the GPS cannot be hooked up to my heart or memory, so I got hopelessly lost anyway in Muar looking for St Andrew’s church. After about 2 hours of endless deadends, I gave up and speed off home at 170kmph.

It can be said that I burned a weekend doing nothing but being on the road. However, I think this process of retracing my steps and driving around aimlessly has been very relaxing.

With Bloggers For Friends, Who Needs Enemies?

This really happened:

Cowboy: What’s the plan later?

Jaywalk: I come pick you up. By the way my left eye out of focus.

Cowboy: WTF?! Have you googled this condition?

Jaywalk: Last night, my eye felt itchy so I rubbed it pretty hard. And then I woke up this morning with the left eye out of focus.

Cowboy: You need to see a doctor

Jaywalk: Maybe I’m going blind. I’ve been masturbating too much or something.

*** pregnant pause ***

Cowboy: I’m blogging this

On a serious note: I am going to nag him to go see a doctor ASAP.

First Day of Work, Your Doing It Wrong

I hired a new girl. The fact that she posed like a model for her resume photo should have triggered alarm bells. But we were desperate for a new person so I really had no choice.

So she showed up for work today. Then she calls her team leader, who then comes running to me.

“The new girl says the work environment here is bad. She doesn’t like the hostel too”

“And then?”

“She says she wants a raise if we expect her to stay”

I fired her. This must be some kind of record.

This Cannot Be Explained (3)

Racist Spanish Olympic Team Advertisement

Spain’s Olympic basketball teams have risked upsetting their Chinese hosts by posing for a pre-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures. The advert for a courier company, which is an official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball Federation, occupied a full page in the sports daily Marca, the country’s best-selling newspaper.

link