I remembered one night when she wasn't not online on Y!Chat and did not mention having work the night before. The chatroom is private, so everybody knows everybody and we've known each other long enough to trust one another. There wasn't things like Facebook or even Friendster, so in order to know the person more, we did it the old-fashion way, face-to-face meet. So everyone in the chatroom was wondering where she was, and I called her up. She was just about to get ready to get on stage to perform, but she answered the phone anyway. Anyone who knows Diba knows her mischievious side, and what she did soon after was totally out of her own spontaniety. She asked me not to hang up, but she got to go to work, just leave the phone on. Lo and behold, a LIVE performance from her, while she was up on stage, and she left her phone up on a bench close enough to the stage, that I can clearly pick up her lovely voice on the phone. The others in Y!Chat chatroom were still waiting for news on where she is, so what I did was turn on my mic, tell the others that Diba wants to say hi, and had the chat button pressed the entire time she was singing on stage. The entire chatroom erupted in cheers and applause.

I still remember too, the first time we met. We were just spending time chatting on Y!Chat, not a personal chat, just to everyone in the chatroom, and "ikanpausbetina", her Y! handle/callsign, says she wants to meet me. My handle was , and still is, "Scphsega". I thought she was kidding or something, because people still like to maintain their anonymity so that they can continue with their online persona without breaking the "illusion" of who they really are. Some are like that, while others are as real as their online personality. Diba is as real a person as she is in real life, bubbly, fun and spontaneous. I was not expecting this, she drove to my place, called me up and demanding me to come down and see her immediately outside. Shocked because I look up to her as how fans look up to their idols these days, I went down, still in my pyjamas(!), and maintain as gentlemanly as I can as I approached her car. Guess what? Gentleman pigidah! The moment you meet her, she makes you feel so much at ease, that you slip back into those easy-going mentality you have when you were chatting in Y!Chat. And then later, since she just finished work, still hungry, she drove us up to SS14 Ravi for supper, and I totally forgotten that I am still in my pyjamas!

Oh, those were the days. Miss them so much. So many life experiences and stories on Y!Chat you cannot believe! Mothers impersonating their daughters to get guys to chat her up, mysterious guitar-wielding singer belting tunes melting female chatters' hearts, the gatherings, the get-together, the drive-up to the north and south to meet each other,........hell, we even have clubhouses, a physical meeting place so that chatters from out of town can spend the night in KL, without the need to spend so much on accomodations while they are in KL meeting up others. That was how close we are.

Once we had flying over Sanaa airspace, we're cleared to "Al Baha, Bravo Sierra Alpha", when it is cleared should be "Bravo HOTEL Alpha". I replied back in on the radio to reconfirm, and this Arab traffic controller had the audacity to say he is right and why I need to judge his calls. Checking back on "Bravo Sierra Alpha" which is BSA (not BHA, which is the right identifier for Al Baha), BSA takes the route to Basra which is crossing into the no-fly zone of Iraq. The plane would have been torn to pieces by artillery before we even reach the goddamned place! Even after reconfirming on the radio, in public purview by other airlines out there, the air traffic controller still refuse to admit he is wrong, and so goddamned sure of himself that he had cleared us to the right place.

I think I dont have to mention the rudeness and blatant disregard to the law when it comes to the conduct of Arabs in this country alone. Cutting lines at taxi stand, going straight to the counter to buy food when there are others waiting to get theirs, are just examples of their behaviour. What I found out later is that they are used to being treated like that, like kings, in their country and expect to be treated the same here.

Sorry, but my view on Saudi Arabia is that the country is more of a regressive nature than anything resembling a modern country. The whole law structure is so skewed that women has no basic rights there other than being objects of satisfaction and means of working them to the ground. They are a "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" after all, and the term "kingdom" here is really the literal mean. Servants are basically slaves, and those who are on the upper tier, are free to work their way around any semblance of a law they have there, to the way they see fit.