It didn’t take him long to evaluate the situation; he was shackled to the wall, naked, the dankness of the place pressing upon him like cold iron of a knife, and in front of him stood two men, both identical in being thin and tall and in suits. He needn‘t any explanation to know that he was in deep trouble.


“Awake now, Mr. Dale?” said one of the man, be he couldn’t tell who; both faces were masked by shadows. “It’s time to start on our little practice.”


“Wha-” was all he could manage, and it was the last he would ever remember saying. The last he would remember hearing was the one of the tall man saying, “My partner Mr. Duwall, will be tending to you. I would say that his methods are quite… multifarious. Enjoy.”


The last he remembered seeing was the tray of instruments deliberated dropped in front of him, where it clattered with a crash he couldn’t hear.



What he remembered, though, was the pain.


Like fire.

****

multifarious \muhl-tuh-FAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:


Having great diversity or variety; of various kinds; diversified.



(How to have fun learning new words)

Let’s see… it’s quite about 11.58 p.m., on the 27th of December 2007 (Happy Birthday, bro!), and just about the right time to ponder about relatively important questions.


Questions, such as How to Kill the Rancor, or If the Persiflage Banter of Mrs. Copperton Caused the Death of her Husband, What Would that Form of Homicide be?


I’ll be frank; I don’t know how to kill the Rancor. I tried every weapon in the book, even dual-handed Lightsabers, but he still pounces and devour me whole (of course, there’s no need to kill the Rancor; you just need to steer the prisoners away from it…). The other question is for you to ponder about.


I was in the car afternoon yesterday when I phone call came asking if I am Mr Tan and if I’m the one who will be doing my Industrial Training at Global Infonet, and after my prompted answer it went on to ask if I can attend to the firm a few days earlier to help out with a few stuff, and that it would be a big help, and that since I’ve asked if I can visit the firm earlier already I might as well get to work. No?


Well I said no, because I have work with my father and my uncle (white lies, people, canvas white, pearly white, candle white), not that I’m obliged to go and help anyway when my semester break is already so short. What I got instead was a product write-up, apparently for some evaluation of sorts, which I submitted this afternoon with the nagging feeling that it will be slotted to some poor website’s advertising over some Laptop Insurance policy.


For the next 3 months, I’ll be doing my internship at Global Infonet (after being tossed around from The Star to Bernama and finally to this, most likely do to chagrin-able performances at the exams), where I’ll be working from 9-to-6 daily doing heaven knows what, and I’ll be paid RM300 for my troubles. It doesn’t sound like Journalism to me, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers, only amicable leeches, and the best consolation is knowing that I will not be sent to a HoMag.


I was looking forward to Industrial Training, but now that I know that I won’t likely be doing some actual journalism, I think I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been somehow tricked into some sort of minimal-wage labour when I first signed the form pertaining to where I might want to intern at. It’s a ploy, by poorly paid university lecturers sending less fortunate students to unwanted firms and earning some hefty side money from it. How the heck can they afford a BMW?


Ahhhh, give me back my youth!

******

Hmm my youth is well here, albeit a very wasted youth.


Here’s a little recommendation; if you’re a Simpsons fan and particularly enjoy their musical escapades, try getting your hands on one of their albums.


But if you didn’t know that they actually released albums compiling their original soundtrack, no worries, because you’ll be hard pressed to find them here. I saw the one and only copy of The Simpsons: Testify!, at The Gardens on Monday.


I managed to mooch it off somewhere, but now I’m looking for their older album, particularly the ones with the songs The Spring in Springfield and See My Vest (this one the spoof of Be My Guest from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast).


And now, as I finish this and prepare for sleep, the lyrics to Jellyfish


Jellyfish, along you came,
And right away I’m stung
Sweet words I longed to whisper,
But you paralysed my tongue…

Uninspired Days


Goes by with something like this;


1) Wake up
2) Brush teeth
3) Greets puppy and greets puppy’s mess
4) Breakfast and a show
5) Chores
6) A choice of three; Movie, Ps2, Laptop for the rest of the day.
7) Chores
8) Dinner
9) Stare blankly at a blank page
10) Give up
11) Sleep.



Altogether rather peaceful days if not entirely unproductive, which much proves to myself on what I am and the sort of life I’m living.




But there isn’t really much else to deviate to; I mean, I can’t finance myself to go out frequently, I don’t have good books to spend my idling to and I certainly fail at writing when I’m much more inspired to stop thinking at times where I’m not required to think. I’m. Too. Lazy. Yeah, that much sums it up.




The break in monotony is a movie yesterday, which was I Am Legend, which was watched together with Pauline and my cousin Ivan (who having no time and no company to watch this movie with, ended up spending a lesser work day with us) at Mid Valley. There was the Christmas Eve throng and much mindless wondering (on my part, at least), but it was an enjoyable day and I didn’t even see the arcades.




I Am Legend is a good movie, but when I thought about it on the way home I realised that it was somewhat lacking. What it has is; good, chair-gripping action, a good performance by Will Smith, a very despairing sense of loneliness and a rare glimpse at human nature in times of hopeless aloneness. What it doesn’t have is; more chair-gripping action, a better ending and a sleuth of untapped potential I feel the premise has. But it is a good movie, definitely one of the better ones this year, and definitely worth the money.




And today I found time to watch 1408, last year’s adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name, which I read barely days ago on Everything’s Eventual (which I’m weeks overdue at the university library).




It’s about horror writer Mike Enslin’s stay at a room with an in-room death history of 52, some of them from (gruesome) suicide, most of them from unreported natural deaths, and definitely due to some anomaly in the room. Well, a Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Olin couldn’t do anything to deter our determined writer from staying at the room, and eventually our writer faces the worst sort of room service you’d never tip for.




Critics gave it rather favourable reviews. I found it disappointing because I thought the short story was much more horrifying. My brother said it scared him shitless and there really is a very good sequence in the hotel’s ventilation system in which our writer crawled in to escape from the room. It has its emotional moments, bizarre moments and also its stupid moments. It’s nice, I guess, but like I said; the short story scared me somewhat, the movie didn’t do anything else except made me jump during the ventilation scene.




Next horror movie romp; 28 Weeks Later. Which didn’t quite work on the DVD player but maybe will work on the laptop.




*************




Merry Christmas!

(A dire anomaly has caused the picture to shrink! Zoom with CTRL and + to read, if u actually want to.)

Sem Break!


Well, yeah.


I was up yesterday morning with a taste of liberty in my mouth (the tang you get from sleeping with your mouth agape for 12 hours) and a sensation of zenith spirits, which made me do certain things I would never do in half of my lifetime. Like telling myself, Yeah, I’ll clean up the room today.


And then I ate breakfast and sat around the living room, pillowed by the whim of warmly curry noodles freshly devoured, and as much as it counts to me, this is what homeliness is all about. Normally I would do as much as I could to laze the day away, but the spirit was there, and I announced to my parents that I will be cleaning up my room and they looked at me as if I told them I was having a homosexual relationship.


So I cleaned the room and did a pretty good job of it, and now it looked neater and nicer to navigate through and I won’t probably lose my pen whenever I put it down and find it half a year later under some strewn paper.


Speaking of lost pens, I found 5 I thought I misplaced in college and three of them still works (the other two, under the clogging ability of dust, failed to perform like any pen would). I also found my copy of Tales of Unease by Sir A. Conan Doyle; a collection of short stories I bought for cheap but left forgotten among my stack of notes (collected for 2 years consecutively). Other findings include a bunch of old exercise books, one of them with my old primary school comic drawings, which was so horribly bad I smiled like a moron looking at his old porno collection.


And speaking of porno collections… *ahem*, I found my Y Tu Mama Tambien VCD tucked among some old books. It’s not porn per se. It’s Alfonso Cuaron’s highly praised movie I happen to purchase from a VCD peddler who filed it under soft-core porn. I bought it for one buck and forgot to watch it. Now I wonder if it works.


* * * *


Grindhouse is best defined as two A-class movie slapped with B-grade title because they wanted to make two B-grade titles that rock. And they rock. It can’t be any more blatantly put unless I use the words kick-ass, super!, walao-weh and holy motherf***


But here’s the thing; very rarely you see movie directors making movies for fun. Grindhouse struck me as that. Somewhat Tarantino and Rodriguez got bored and they came up with this fresh idea from something that was already stale 20 years ago. They came up with two movies that is completely over the top the way b-grade movies are and they made it hella fun.


You won’t even care even if they’re utterly gory, campy and downright disgusting sometimes. When you see the girl stick an assault rifle as her peg leg you know this is some serious mindless fun.

Today I found an old friend.

I didn’t, actually. It was the start of the trailer for Edward Burn’s Purple Violets, where the words are printed by typewriter, on Courier.

The trailer then talked about how ‘sometimes you get second chances’ and how you make of it, even if it may suck. A love story about discovering what that was and whether or not it should be rekindled. Or, at least, I think that’s what it’s all about.

(Well, the movie looks good, only that I won’t probably be able to watch it on local screens. And it’s not the type of show I would download, because it was made for the arts and not for profit and the guilt will be evermore eminent.)

It got me thinking though. About two things:

About meeting and old friend, and about second chances.

But it’s not difficult to find the old friend, though there is always the question of time and place and convenience. No, I think the biggest question is about second chances, and what we can make of it.

Unfortunately second chances won’t probably find its way linearly into my hands like moth to purple fluorescent light. I guess it should be grabbed, and then it also depends on the size of your net and the speed of your timing. That is, if second chances do fly by me when I wish for it.

I watched my first Fred Astaire movie today, which coincidentally is also my first Audrey Hepburn movie, and it was a 1957 musical by the name of Funny Face.

They weren’t kidding about ‘dancing like Fred Astaire’, because darn it, Fred Astaire could dance. Like the very essence of music itself. The timing, the self-choreographed freshness and the total life of it; man, poetry in motion. And he could sing. And act. Heck, he could even make like a complete fool of a man and still look cool and perpetually charming.

Audrey Hepburn was cute. Like the schoolgirl Lolita nerd (at least, until she was fashioned into a model by Astaire in the movie). Really darn cute. And really darn talented in acting and dancing.

Man, back then actors are ACTORS. Now, actors just need to look pretty and ride a horse with a dwarf saddled to the back. The eyes of Hollywood these days…

It was an enjoyable movie, only not so funny as it might have suggested. But there was one segment of the movie where Astaire and Hepburn went around Paris doing photo shoots, and the still photos were somewhat excellent.

At the end of the day and through revision, I had the some parts of the lyrics stuck in my head. I think I might just have to go to sleep with it.

Though you're no Mona Lisa

For worlds I'd not replace,

Your sunny, funny face.

Dog Day Afternoon.

I found out that there are two distinctive ways to spend the afternoon before your exams (neither prolific nor conducive); one if them is getting to know your subject notes better and greet it with a genial drawing or two, and the second way is to bask in the window-filtered afternoon sunshine and watching Al Pacino robbing a bank in Dog Day Afternoon, while also taking some pictures of your Rastafarian pup.

(This is the Rastafarian pup at this favourite spot in the house, which has moved from under the coffee table to the rug at the front door, where it is much sunnier and where he wouldn’t wake up and bang his head.)

Of course, you can also mix both methods and have guilt cling to your chest like a cling-happy cat, where it stings and weighs considerably.

I’m glad to inform that study week is over and not so glad to inform that exams start tomorrow, for which I am not (and never) prepared of, and if you ask why I’m still here blogging instead of having a hectic final bout of revision, lets just say that I stand firm in my believe that procrastination will allow me to stand at the end of time a victor and a survivor, for the reward of time is to not spend it even if it flows eternally.

Yes, that is nonsense, so bite me in the hiney and see how it tastes.

Argh, the horror… I’m so bad at studying now I can’t even concentrate for 5 minutes. 5 minutes, and I was doodling on the spare piece of paper, or walking around the house senseless, or plopping down at the laptop to have a go at CS. 10 minutes later I was on the couch watching TV until conscience leant slightly more to the angel’s department and I was back in front of my notes. 5 minutes later the paper was full with anime heads.

Feature Writing tomorrow, and death is at the front gate, with his iPOD on and Amy Tan open at chapter 24, reading by moonlight.

I’ll be needing some luck tomorrow. And ample sleep.

Goodnight people.

(And to all the tormented souls out there under the same torturous contraptions such as I, good luck and if you don’t believe in luck, all the best. Or, if you don’t believe in wishes, then Merry Christmas and a happy Maryln Manson).

Clock; 1.44 a.m.

I can’t sleep.

This is a rare occurrence of insomnia. I used to be prone to it, but for the past few years (perchance due to a dwindling state of mind) I’ve been able to sleep soundly and surely, and I take it as a sign of a good turnaround.

Insomnia (for me, at least) is not where one finds the inability to sleep due to excessive remnants in energy and freshness. Rather, the lethargy and overall yearn to sleep is there, eminent and strong, yet the body fails to rest, and the mind fails to close, and what’s left is to will away the stagnating clinging of troubles or thoughts that refuses you your sleep.

I said troubles or thoughts, but not every occurrence is due to certain problems that plague the mind. Sometimes it’s just the simple act of thinking that keeps me awake, whatever that was in mind. It’s stupid, and obviously something I feel is easily cast away at a whim, but I guess things don’t work well enough for me. So the cogs continue to turn, rambling and loud and screechy, working on thoughts one doesn’t even need to think about.

I’ve had things worse sometimes, like not being able to sleep a wink until forced to give up, and finding myself cooking a very early breakfast and finding things to do to pass the time. Normally time passes very slowly then, and I may even try to sleep, but it wouldn’t come and there wouldn’t be anything to do; no TV for fear of waking the parents. No books to the mind as numb and heavy with exhaustion. No video games, no internet (none back then, except for dial-up, which was too costly for me to afford in order to will away times of less importance) and definitely no one to talk to.

Only silence, darkness, and the lulling calls of sleep; malice and cruel in its alluring tease. But I just couldn’t bloody sleep.

With time to spare and little to do, I did something a kid with consciousness and boredom could conjure; I imagined. I remembered telling myself stories to sleep. Sounds crazy, I guess, but it started when I closed my eyes and make a sentence and see how it goes. Most times, if the story is nice, I repeat on that same scene and feel the ease of mind, the loosening in the rough grip of thoughts. Then it was just pictures, images, moving and coloured or discoloured, and sometimes I fell asleep.

This tactic still works, especially if I’m too miffed up or troubled to go to sleep. Start a sentence and see where it’ll take me. Sometimes the stories I wrote come from there, but it was back then. Today my stories come from the realm of day where the monotony of waiting in places full of life took place, where words float around ready for me to grab. Still, there were always the ones that began in the midst of the night, above a snoring brother, where everything was muffled by the door and the pillow, and where the shadows come to life behind the curtain so long as passing light would give it motion.

With the laptop and the internet now, I wouldn’t have to do much to get me distracted enough to sleep. Now that I write this down I feel at ease, and I’ll probably fall asleep when I retreat to the bed.

I might not be telling me a story tonight… but as far as I know the way things work, I just might. Yeah, I might…

And the Rain! It Falls!

There’s probably everything worse than having a flat tire in the middle of a rain, and those everything else should include some saw-utilising act of Hara-Kiri, or having a giant dildo rammed down your di-


I simply gave up trying to change (the rain trickles down the spine like a cold finger in a failing courting game) and urged the car into a nearby tyre shop. Turns out the tyre has a minute crack and until I’m financially capable of buying a new set (which, to say, won’t happen for the next 16 years), I’m stuck with the spare tyre acting as a permanent.


The rain lasted Thursday morning until evening today, and it was dastardly cold and chilly, and all the while I had Breaking Benjamin’s Rain playing as I sprawled beside my Rastafarian puppy, both of us bored to bitter bits. All the world is waiting for the sun…


I’ve spent the week doing the preposterous; whereas my classmates plough through the entangling fields of destitute in preparations for the exams, I sat down and morphed into a couch tuber and watched a lot of movies. And to make it more of a despicable act, I sat down and made a list of the movies. And now to complete the trilogy of disgracefulness, I sat down and posted it today.


And now, without further ado, the List.


1) Blades of Glory.

Yeah, it took me awhile to finally sit and watch this. A lot of people said it was hilarious. I found it funny. My other 17 skitzo personalities think it’s utter nonsense. And they know I agree to a certain degree.


2) Knocked Up.


Well, there was half a year where I skipped on the info and tagged this movie along the lines of Date Movie and Epic Movie (I.e; movies to avoid watching because it burns a couple of brain cells). Then I sat and watched with bro and think that it is awesome. No, really. Then I logged onto the net and saw the A- overall ratings at Yahoo!. I think it deserves it. You won’t find anything fresher this year around, and it’s probably the only movie that can make the scenario of having sex with a pregnant woman downright hilarious.


3) Tekkon Kinkreet

Which is an Anime, which I was introduced to while going through the trailers of my Paprika DVD. I don’t quite know what to make of it; the animation and art is superb, but the plot is like a strewn mess that makes sense but leaves the feeling of discomfort, like being in an untidy room.


4) Disturbia.

Ah, now this is a nice movie. Thrillers just need to be simple while hitting the right notes in making things intense and scary. They don’t even bother with a twist to the killer’s identity; rather, they make him stand there so you get creeped out, and it makes sending in an Asian dude into his garage so much more scarier.


5) Evan Almighty.

Uhhh… I thought it’s alright, only as stale as movies like this can come.


6) The Kingdom.

I’m surprised this movie made the Malaysian screens; I dunno if they cut the scene where the suicide bomber prays to God before bombing himself and taking a couple of people along with him to meet his 72 virgins. It’s gritty, it’s somewhat exaggerated if you think of it (it’s like how easy action heroes in action movies get around with things) and it’s good.


7) Balls of Fury.

A comedy! With tiny balls! Oh shit my brain hurts...


8) Fido.

Hmm. Imagine instead of having WW2, dust from outer space settled on earth and raised the dead into zombies, thus beginning the Zombie Wars. And then, with the very intelligent scientists discovering that when you shoot a zombie in the head and you kill them, the war is won by humans. Every city and town is then walled behind thick fences. But what do you do when your grandpa dies and becomes a zombie (due to residue of the settled dust)? Why, with the smartness of the scientists, you give him a collar which subdues his need to feed and voila; workers and labours that u don’t have to pay or feed.

Then it’s the story of a boy who found a friend in his zombie and names him Fido. And it’s like those movies about boys and their pets, only this one is the story of a boy and his zombie, which ate his neighbour, in a world so crazy that crazy is normal (what, zombies doing your trash and garden. Kids taught to headshot and people getting eaten while everyone else acts as though normality is this). You don’t come along a premise like this in a long, long time. While it’s not a great movie per se, it’s something worth watching.


9) The Golden Compass.

Never has a movie made me angry. Never. This one did. ‘Nuff said.


10) The many other movies I watched on HBO and Star Movies which I’ve completely forgotten, apart from the one about Steve Martin and John Candy trying to get home for Christmas, where they have to take trains and cars and planes.


Well, The Golden Compass doesn’t suck. It just made a fan of the book pissed. Producers of LoTR my arse. If they can’t end the movie right, even if it doesn’t quite end, at least do what the book says. It ended good, at least.

***********
I seem to have forgotten what books I lent to whom; I went through my cabinet wondering where Stardust is only to remember that I lent it to a friend, and it took me a trip to the kitchen to remember that it was Pei Ling. Then I forgot that my copy of the Golden Compass is still with Pauline and I started to call a cousin, only to remember just in time. Now I don’t quite remember what I lent my cousin. Or was it games, not books?


Argh.

Today is a Testing Day.

I know it for a fact that it is. I even predicted in before I went to bed, and for the past week I’ve seen it looming in the distant future like a pothole I’m bound to step in and sprain my ankle. I’ve had it like the presentiment of inevitable things that are to come, and ones that ravage the peace and bliss of days.

Oh, how badly ravaged it is, and like bloodied soldier I kneel in a puddle of blood, crying, bidding the return of my virgin Sunday. (but it is tainted now and even Clorox won’t save it, so much for the miracles of soap).

But away with the histrionics; today is indeed a testing day. Dad is hell bent on mounting the newly bought prayers altar, which meant that there are holes to drill, screws to screw and many a mental strain as the profound immensity of my father’s Austinian means of oppression (and slavery) bear upon me like trepanning.

I will get screwed (as in scold), bolted (as in hit) and drilled (as in furiously demanded to repeat a course of work). It is the complete package should you wish to subscribe to Living with the Tans, the new and life-changing experience for your loss to miss!

So, then and there, it happened, and I got along with it. After all, it is a religious thing, and something I ought to get into without much qualms.

I’m not quite a religious person, though. I only go as far as praying, wearing amulets my dad insists I do and believing and respecting in the existence of a more higher form of life. In fact, I have this constant believe that all gods in every religion exists and are probably interacting among one another in more than mutual ways, up in the clouds. Like, for instance, a weekly bridge-and-poker night at Nirvana or a day off basking at the banks of Styx. I don’t mean to disrespect, but there’s this vision of Kuan Yin, Amaterasu, Mother Mary and Hera sitting down over Go Fish and comparing sons that I can’t really shake off.

(“I wouldn’t want to call Heracles my son,” said Hera. “But he did bring me back this ring from his business in Athens. Such a sweet young man, even if he’s not mine per se. I just wish Zeus would’ve kept it in his pants even if the titans were at it.”
“MY son led all humankind to eternal paradise,” said Mary, and all the girls nodded in approval.)

I take religion in a more lighthearted manner; I believe that if I do something I get something, and it is due to my own actions. I don’t believe in getting something by wishing and perpetually wishing that it will be given because I wish with devotion. I see death as something natural, and while I’m still scared shitless about it, I’ll eventually die and what happens after we leave it for then to see. Rather, I find it more important to keep a part of myself in this world, mostly in writing, so as to stay a memory on earth.

Funny enough, someone once told me that this believe in the cycle of life and the immortalisation of memories on earth is Taoism, and insisted that I believe in the bridge to God, and said it in the way like I’m certainly going to hell. No offence. I remember feeling insulted, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Well, if you think of it, the way that most of us act according to each own beliefs, in every way we’re going to hell in one religion but going to heaven in another. Imagine a man dying and instead of seeing the shiny gates of heaven as he expects to, he sees the boatman at the river of darkness, who says, “You’re not buried with coins on your eyes. You stay here and rot.”

Imagine the distraught. But of course, I have this feeling that every belief sort of keep a track on their believers, and when they die they get assigned to them own means of spending the afterlife. Sort of like subscribing to insurance or a retirement plan from different companies.

Ah, time I head to bed now. But before I go let it be known that I mean no ill will towards other religions in writing this. I know we’re all chill people, but you won’t know if I suddenly find this in a newspaper somewhere and soon an entire nation wishes my death at the stake.

My dad will disown me and probably burn me at the stake himself, and well, spare it from me will ya?

Bee Story

So, so, I was there right, at the back of my house, helping dad weed out the creepies that tangled in the fence when this HUUUUGE-Douche of a bee just flew in and smack me right on the forehead. WHAP! I thought I was hit by a prune there, or a rotten mango or something, and I was like, blurred and confused like a guy who discovered he had mammary glands, and then dad turned around and looked at me all weirded out and said;

“What happened? Got high on weed?”

And I said, “No, this HUUUGE-Douche of a bee just hit me in the forehead.”

And he said, “Don’t let me catch you with weed or I’ll have your head.”

And I said, “No sir, I don’t smoke weed but lalang doesn’t count as that sort of weed now, right? Cos I’m weeding and stuff.”

And he said, “……..” and went back to hacking at the bougainvilleas while I stood there to figure things out and to think and to wonder if that bee hit me on purpose due to some personal vendetta or something, cos I hate bees and I‘m scared of bees and if I see bees I kill them.

After awhile dad asked me to climb down between the storehouse and the fence to hack at the bougainvillea when the bee appeared again. So I was like, “this place ain’t big enough for the both of us.” Which is true, see, because it was like, barely 3 feet wide in that place, and I ‘m already almost as wide.

And the bee, the bloody bee, he garn-it cheated and flew right at me so I swatted at it and the knife caught the fence which rung like a bell. DUUUUUUNNGGGG! Like them Notre Dame ones, only not so nice, and much more like a gong propped wrongly. I missed the bee and it hit me smack at the forehead again and I shouted, and with the ringing fence and the screaming my dad thought I fell and got impaled at the sharp parts and he came shouting, “What happened? What happened?”, so I told him the same HUUUUGE-Douche bee came again and smack me at the forehead and I swatted at it but missed and hit the fence.

So my dad, he looks at me all weirded out again and said, “You know what happens to boys who lies?”

And I said (what he told me long long ago), “they get their tongues cut off by the King of Hell who fries it and dips it in wasabi and feeds it back to them.”

And he said, “You know what happens to a 20-year old boy like you who lies?”

And I said, “I dunno sir, you never told me.”

And he said, “they see me in hell.”

And I was like, scared senseless, cos my dad, he worst than any king or duke or uncle of hell.

So I got back to hack at the bougainvilleas and it took me a few hours and then it was night-time, and that’s when the trees come to life so I hurried off in case the bougainvilleas thought of revenge. I showered and I changed and while I was buttoning my shirt I see the bee again, and he was all perched up on my laptop looking as smug as Jerry Seinfeld.

I said, “Go away, bee, I don’t wanna hurt you and if you’d wish to hurt me you’ve done that this evening so it’s even so beat it!”

But the bee, it buzzed and whirred like a my cellphone on vibration and it dashed right at me again, only this time I was ready and I smack it with my pillow. It didn’t kill the bee (it takes more than pillow to kill this bee, and I start to think that he was the devil or maybe his uncle which is the King of Hell), but it damaged it wings and it fell to the floor buzzing in its GEZZZZZZZZZZ way.

And then I thought, this bunghole bee caused me loads of trouble this evening, and it seized me like the Dark side, you know, the anger and hate and suffocation or whatnot and I grabbed the chair and I smashed it down at the bee and it got squished.

Dad, he heard the commotion and thought maybe I had an epilepsy or something, and he burst in shouting, “What happened?” and I told him that the bee came back and I beat it with my pillow but it won’t die so I used the chair on the bee and now it’s squished.

Well, if you guessed that it weirded dad out again, you are right, and dad, he looked at me like I’m some sort of crazy-ass idiot from Whose Line?, and he said to me;

“Were you watching porn?”

And I said, “No I ain’t dad, I don’t have porn in the laptop and the internet’s not on.”

And he said, “Good, cos if I catch you with porn I’m getting you a vasectomy.”

And I was like, “WHaaaa???” cos I wanna have kids and I sure don’t wanna have my privates stuffed with cotton (which is what bro said vasectomy is).

And dad nodded, and said that I should fix the chair, and he walked out.

That was the end of the worst time of the worst day I ever had.

*************

I was clearing off the old study table this afternoon when I found my old tuition file. In it was a half-written story a friend of mine back then asked me to write. It was a story about a guy who had trouble with bee while helping his dad do the garden. He wanted it to be completely nonsensical. I sort of took it as a writing challenge back then (I remembered boasting I can write a story out of anything). I didn’t finish it back then, partly because I didn’t know what to write about, and it was forgotten the next week I went to class.

This evening dad hauled me out of the room to help him clear off the weeds and the wild plants that managed to tangle with the bougainvilleas and the fence over the years, and halfway through it a bee flew straight at me and it sort of shocked me up a little (I’m not good with bees). My dad looked at me with this combination of curiosity and sternness, and the basis of the story grew then.

I tried to make it as idiotic as I possibly can (which isn’t, really, because nonsensicality has no borders), and I post it up here beyond any rational thought and concern of my personal image, as a commemoration to that friend.

So here’s to you, Ling, wherever you are, and I hope that poem I gave you to court that girl in class is not lost (it was pretty darn good, really).

And even toads will cross my path.

This evening alone I’ve had heavy rain, a flash flood of sorts and dinner at KFC, which is preferably left to your discretion, dear reader, lest you find particular pleasure in getting me grounded for spending unnecessarily.


I arrived home at nine to a puppy that eagerly awaited my return so that he could pounce on my feet, to nibble and to bite and to slobber over, and it is high time I remind myself that in the future, my Rastafarian dog will eventually fall into a huge build-up of libido, and it’s best that I start training him to leave my legs alone.


I sat down at my laptop and I found these words written on a document I almost deleted;


When we talk about the world, what do we really talk about?


It took me awhile to remember what I wrote it for, so I looked up at some old hand-written essays and found a forgotten beginning to a short story. I typed it down on the laptop and remembered that I did it before, once upon a time, and ran a search. Voila, the document was there, strangely at the tucked at the corner of my documents folder in the way I wouldn’t notice. Now I read what I wrote and I forgot how to actually end it.


But have we really ever talked about the World?


Afraid not. And I think he deserves some sort of respect and commemoration.


* * * * *


It hadn’t really stopped raining, but it had dwindled into a drizzle nonetheless, and it was safe enough for me to make for the LRT station without being completely drenched. In a night where it is dark and shunned by the grace of moonlight and lampposts, a drizzle somewhat doesn’t seem to exist, not in sight, not even in touch, because as the wind took over it was a completely deluge of chill and dampness.


But not every part of the street is deprived of light, and eventually there was a streetlight bright enough for me to make out most of the way, and it was then when the toad hopped out of the shadows and through the gap between my feet, either completely unawares or completely unafraid, which is not quite the way toads are supposed to behave.


And I was there bemused and perplexed somewhat, wondering there if there is a superstition that states that if a toad hops between your feet, you might get something out of it. And if there IS something like this, then I got myself a story, only that I wished I got some money instead. Aren’t toads supposed to be lucky?

Pointlessness is all about making things without having to.

It was bleary, I was groggy and both of them combined to be some sort of hangover that seem to occur the mornings after Monday, so it was quite a heavy awakening, and it took me some self-assurance (and nagging) to get me up and brush my teeth.


It sort of drizzled in the morning, and the skies today has a sort of cataclysmic imminence spelled all over it. It was the sort of weather the TV newscaster would say, “Ladies and gentlemen… I think we’re about to get motherf***ed”. Therefore it was cold and bleak, and so much to start the day.


But there isn’t much to talk about today. Dad was on the train and LRT with me; his car was in the workshop for the umpteen time this few months, and as per usual occasions in which we both found ourselves in a train wedged between people, we were more or less quiet.


I am always under the impression that my dad would look completely put of place in public transportation; there is always the image of a grizzly bear cantering in a shopping mall unawares of the screams and shouts. And there he was, sitting in the middle seat of three, arms folded with his sunglasses on so that I wouldn’t know if he had his eyes closed or he was scowling at the destitute impression of the commuting world. Just like a grizzly bear, only that people are used to it, just as much as they’re used to the elephant seal standing at the sliding doors, the ostrich reading Amy Tan and the iguana leisurely propping himself at the glass divider looking like a jade mannequin.


Somewhere near my stop he drew 10 bucks from his wallet and ordered that I take the cab to class, his reason that it was raining and that I’m a profound git for thinking of walking to class. So I did like a good boy and grabbed a cab with a driver that seems to detest the world in the way it was chock full of distrust and trickery. His motto (which I have gotten to know in the short minutes of sitting beside him) was ‘screw thinking big because you’re going to fail’ and ‘becoming a boss? You’ll lose it all!’ (he said in Cantonese and made it rhyme, so my translations won’t do justice).


Before dropping me off he commented that journalism would probably render me perpetually poor and miserable. I told him that it’s all about fighting to the top, and success is how you make for it, and he laughed in a content sort of way, said “good for you”, and stopped at where I pointed. He happily bid me farewell, “may we meet again if fate has it,” and I bade him good luck and good day.


One of the rare, good taxi rides you get.


And then it was boredom in class, and once more I drew and slept and listened to things not related to my studies. For tutorials Mr. Money let us out an hour earlier, so I made home in the damp afternoon, bought me a packet of rice and spent my lunch fending Marley off my feet (Marley is the surprise from the previous post. He is feisty, he is always hungry and he pounces at my feet. Other than that, he’s cute the way puppies are).


The rest of the day was just as unremarkable… I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Perhaps it is a subliminal means of escaping my impending start of my final assignment. Procrastinate!


Yeah… well, time I try to start. Good night people.


Music: The Firebird Suite - Igor Stravinsky


Classical at its utmost best.

It seems like I’ve been through emptiness. Idleness, perhaps, but that’s subjective to what I do, not quite what I feel, no? Though, considering that I haven’t been updating for a whole entire week of free nights, I guess Idleness is the sum of it.

Being brain dead is one thing. Being brain empty; now, that’s a different picture to paint.

Now, I sit here wishing that the next words will come but it wouldn’t. It’s not quite like forgetting or being drained out. It’s like I’m constipated to the point even coconuts won’t save my sorry posterior. Aggrieving.

At any rate, I agree that writing a ‘use it or lose it’ sort of thing; I remember going a month without writing and coming out more blank pages than I ever had. It’s better to write even you have to force yourself to it. Eventually the words will come, hopefully, but if we don’t start baiting ourselves I think we might not be drawn into it when a long time have passed.

I sometimes bait myself by starting a sort of noir movie monologue. It can start with something like; Whiskey. The sort of cheap man’s morphine to the wounds the sights and sounds sometimes cut. Knives in the smog; thorns in the smoke and under the lights.

(Granted, it’s cheesy crap, but it gets me started.)

It’s been a peaceful week.

I say it with the conviction of a man who know how crappy it was the past weeks can sometimes get and now found himself in something so relatively placid it was almost saintly.

A serene, quiet sort of saintly. Like having a cabin in an island somewhere and playing solitaire at the porch with the winds and sea waves to lull the madness of the world.

Watched Beowulf on Monday with Pauline, Uncle Sean and Mekz, which was a crazy crowd. Psycho crazy, I mean. subtle and subliminal. Scary =P

And Beowulf turned out to be an enjoyable watch, regardless of what a lot of people said. Gaiman and the band of writers did a job of making a simple story into something more complex, which worked in some ways, though the one thing that nagged at me was; if they had just let it be and make the story just as it is (kill all the monsters, no sudden drop in pacing and lapse of time), maybe more people would’ve liked it.

But I stand by my verdict of it being an achievement in movie making. Now, if the God of War movie could be made like this…


So, if you have two parents who left on a very rare vacation for two nights, what would you do?

I made a list I what I would’ve done had I been more of a person than a slob eating idiot;

1) Call for a party. With lots of Nachos
2) Call for a LAN party. Or gaming party. With lots of Nachos.
3) Call for a movie marathon. 10 movies at least. With lots of Nachos and Gatorade.
4) Order a very own Hawaiian Delight, cheese crusted.
5) Watch things I don’t normally watch at the LCD TV.
6) Game for 14 hours straight, breaking my previous record of 12.

None of these happened, mostly because the two nights my parents spend canoodling (I think) at some communist settlement I came home at 9 p.m. bent and tired and having to take care of the plethora of chores since my bro wouldn’t be home until 11 and he doesn’t do nuts.

So what could’ve been the time that would never come for (probably) the rest of all eternity came and I wasted it on chores and a crazy dog who bites slippers but don’t gnaw them and hides them in places you may think quite impossible at first.

Yeah… now that I think of it, I should’ve ordered my very own Hawaiian Delight.

Well, the parents are back now and they brought home a surprise.

My brother opened the car door and muttered “Oh my God.”
I looked and said “Oh Shit.”

And we looked at each other an understanding that weighed like atlas’s baggage on our shoulders.

The surprise now sleeps in the kitchen, and he bites. Other than that he sleeps.

Like a puppy.

Nutmeg.

The day I vomited blood and died.

Yes.

I am dead.

The doctors diagnosed it as a severe case of organ constriction; parts from the thorax regions -- particularly the thoracic diaphragm -- and the larger sections of the gut, have what they called in the small layman talk over the coffee machine, been “twisted like your old mama’s spaghetti”.

It is one of the 56 results of chronic assignmenttia, and as they told my parents, something that has been happening since 1986.

“Stomachs now can’t take this sort of things,” they said, and my father listened (my mom didn’t understand a thing). “Bloody educational system.”

But it wasn’t as painful as it sounded. A small consolation I would’ve told my parents; perhaps tomorrow, and it’s that I didn’t die an excruciating death.

It was quick.

I was eating dinner with the family when my mother asked if my gums were bleeding, because there was blood trickling down unto my chin. I wiped it off laughingly, bemused, wondering…

And then the whole table was covered in blood. The food, the faces, the cutleries.

It was like a garden sprinkler set to work at 3 a.m. in the morning where the water pressure is exceptionately good.

And then… well, and then I was dead.

But it didn’t just happen. Nothing did. In every effect there is a cause that run as deep as knowledge would allow, and probably deeper into time, or perhaps there never was any depth. Just an infinite chasm. A chain, without an end and without a start.

But as far as I know, the part involving me started on Wednesday.

It had also started with procrastination.

It had led to a frantic, almost impossible rush to finish three deadlines. All of them on Friday.

There was also a matter of presentations.

And now, it has ended with death. Assignmenttia is caused by an immense pile-up of pressure, tension and bowel inconsistencies, which was in turn caused by a huge sum of busyness.

I had slept for only 7 hours in 42.

I had to finish my feature after my moral presentation, in the class and half an hour before submission. I hadn’t even printed it out.

It so crazy it was laughable. And laughed at it I did.

Laughed about it over dinner.

And then I dropped dead. Literally. “He who laughs last laughs best.” Whatever.

There wasn’t a white light or a sudden lapse in reality in which I find myself consulting a man in a business suit giving me tourism packages and destinations (“The river Styx or the Downtown purgatory? Either way we have good boatmen services, and a complimentary breakfast if you check in before 12.”). There wasn’t even Death per se. I was just there looking down and saying Shit. Then I called my insurance policy.

Now the black candles are in place, and it’s been 2 nights now. We’ve got the ingredients ready (Master Chef thinks Asian brews are exotic but highly unorthodox, and orthodox means the job is always right if not correct, hence the delay in preparations), the Scroll is read and my policy had paid the agreed bribe to Mr Horse Face (Guard Master of the Gates).

What I do is wait.

Tomorrow I should be revived. I should be in the right way, which the policy guarantees.

My parents might be shocked but heck, if I’m home they ought to forgive and forget.

Now I will go to sleep.

Dismiss this as fiction if you may, but that’s what most people say about insurance policies. “Bunch of cons,” they say.

You won’t know when you’re dead.

Saturdays will now henceforth be known as Suffer-day (or, if you would like a catchier call, Suffering Saturday). For the reason I give two words and possibly more, only that both will speak enough as much as an entire concerto chorus would sing it in tenor, and they’re Dad and Fishes.


Nuff said.


To quote my brother; slavery is not abolished in Malaysia. Not yet. Not this small part of the land where there’s the case of having too many hell-forsaken pets that need the constant tending of reluctant carers. Democracy and freedom is lost in the insensible mess of cleaning crap out of fish tanks and literally feeding yourselves to mosquitoes.


And it’s November, where it rains more, which means more mosquitoes, which means I will fear the garden as much as I would fear a pack of vampires vying for some rather fat-clogged blood veins.


November also means NaNoWriMo.


NaNoWriMo means National Novel Writing Month.


National Novel Writing Month means I will get fired up and attempt 1500 words a day in typing.


1500 words in typing a day means I will fail in 10-15 days if I actually tried.

10-15 days means I’ve pretty much convinced myself that I’ve done something but in fact done nothing.


Done nothing means nothing was done.


Which means I did nothing.


Which means I didn’t do much writing.


And I cheated.



Sorta.







By continuing my old manuscript.


Which is not going the way I wanted to go, but I kepy going anyhow because it’s the only thing I can do and starting over is impossible at day 10.


Someone I know named Kelvin (a certain KelvinW, not the KelvinG) told me he managed 23000 words at day 8. That means around 3000 words a day.


Holy f&^%


I’ve done 100 words today, which means my count officially passed the 5000 word line (by little), but there’s no feel to it if you’re not quite enthusiastic over a draft that didn’t go the way you wanted it to now.


Now the recurring question that rhymes and echoes itself around whatever place I am like a persistent and reminding ghost is; “who am I bloody kidding?”


Myself, of course, and I think I’m still falling for it.

It has been a while. Perhaps that’s the truth of it. Perhaps that’s the justification, as far as reasons can be excuses. The longer it seems that I choose not to write, the further my need for it deserts me. Like watching a hat snatched by the wind, and not giving chase.


And there is so many to type. There is even more to write, and to tell, and to put into words and in limn, but I would think… yes, I would think that I shall write this first.


Two weeks, I counted. More or less. I haven’t written anything here for two weeks. There has been many to tell, but being so long already, being almost part of a more distant, easily forsaken memory, perhaps there isn’t much about them to talk about anymore.


There was my brother’s convocation, held at a beach with long waves and gloomy skies. The whole family was there and it was something that I took a lot of pictures of. There had been lonely walks on the beach and interesting people to tell, but it is almost forgotten now, at least to this moment.


There was a normal week, which ended with a trip to the arcades and a lot of money spent on coins. But that, too, is almost forgotten.


There was dad leaving to Laos for work. Bro and I were there to fetch him to his plane.


And there was, of course, the death of my dog, Max. I have not forgotten that. I don’t believe I ever will.


He died on Monday evening at the car porch. The vet didn’t know why he was sick and what sickness he caught. I was with him in the waiting. It was somewhat peaceful.


A week later, now, people asked and I would tell them that he was old. Max was, at least, on his tenth or eleventh year, and in the course of the week I have convinced myself that there was nothing more that I could’ve done. And there wasn’t.


A few days before he was merely having diarrhoea and a mild lack of appetite. Later on he refused to eat and we took him to the vet who gave him jabs and pills to take home and instructions to force feed him with canned food. So I spent the weekend and Monday taking care of him, feeding him with syringes. In the process I got under the weather; had fever and a badly swollen throat.


On Monday I actually thought he was better, because he had been wandering around the garden after long intervals. I continued to feed and gave him his pills. In the afternoon the fever got the better of me, so I swallowed some panadol and slept for a bit. When I woke it was beginning to rain, so I got out to move Max into someplace warmer. I found him lying in the garden. He didn’t want to move.


I urged him back to the porch, and it was the last walk he ever made. I dried him with a towel and draped it around him like a blanket, and after awhile he slumped down and I thought I should feed him a bit. He wouldn’t swallow. He wouldn’t drink. And that was when I thought, in the way you always seem to know, somehow, the way some things are and it is the undeniable and inevitable truth, that this was it, and he was going to die.


So I made him as comfortable as I could do with towels and old cloths. And I waited.
I talked to him. I told him he was a good boy, and that he really was one. After a long while I simply stopped talking, and I stroked his head and waited, watching him breathing, breathing, and I waited. We waited.


Sometime later some of the neighbour’s relatives dropped by and chattered away, uncaring and ignorant and noisy. I remembered wishing that they would go. They did, after sometime, and it was rather quiet after. Only the drizzle sound over the dad’s fountains and the occasional passing car. And soon there was only breathing, breathing, and there was wait.


I don’t remember a long time passing. It was cold and it was real, and it was the way anticipation seem to haunt your every second, letting me wonder if any breath would’ve been the last, or I would just look down and see that the chest have stopped heaving, and that he was gone without my noticing. Soon I could tell that he could no longer see, and that was when his body succumbed to numerous spasms. Violent shudders and jerks that seemed painful, but he made no sound of pain.


Just then, just happening like it would have, like I would’ve known and expected, his body curved into a gentle, graceful arc, and what left his mouth was a soft and final howl, and he relaxed and was gone.


I couldn’t describe how very much real it was at that time. It wasn’t like a dream, it wasn’t like a blurred residue of forgotten and forsaken memories. There wasn’t a single drop of question, of wondering, of telling myself that I couldn’t believe it, and that Max was dead. Really dead. It didn’t happen. It was the quick realisation and ultimatum, the drop of reality and truth.


I couldn’t describe how cold I seemed to have acted. How cold I was, to move his body away from the porch, to try and arrange the legs so it won’t stuck at weird angles. How cold I was, to soap the porch and scrub with a brush to remove the blood and dirt. How cold I was, to cover the body with a towel, to call my mother and brother and father without a tear or, so I seemed and felt, without a tinge of sadness.


So cold I was, and now that I think of it, I wonder where my heart went.


Daily I walked passed the empty kennel, and days before I used to look at it longer and sometimes sigh. Now the sighs grew less and I spent more time smiling at my other dog, Lanna, who seemed to me is completely ignorant of the whereabouts of her companion, and I believe that that’s the best for her.


That week I had a terrible throat infection, and it gave me fever that often left me freezing one moment, and the other baking as though stuck in an oven, so I took the week off classes and was stricken to the couch for most days.


I’m glad to say that I’m back in classes, albeit very much behind of work. Work which I have to quickly tend to…


A bad week? Quite, really, but it is all, perhaps, just as we often do, just say. Just words and agreements. But maybe if it had - if it was - better, maybe if things were different, like, say, dad was around in his own reliable way, then perhaps maybe things would’ve been different. I didn’t ask myself that, not until now, and now that it is asked and left unanswered, perhaps it’s not something that I will ever ask again.


Because we were never meant to ask it. We’re only meant to move on, to another week.

Able was I ere I saw Elba.


Dictionary.com, which has been faithfully sending me new vocabulary daily (my Word of the Day subscription, which comes together with complete definitions, pronunciation method and excellent examples), mailed me the word Palindrome the other day, and Napoleon’s Lament (the title sentence) was one of the examples.


I’ve forgotten what palindrome meant, so the word stuck deep enough for me to remember it, but what amazes me is how palindromes are conceived.


Surely, we can only boil enough possibilities to render it a coincidence, but it seems to me that palindromes at large is created, perhaps not so coincidentally, as we may (sometimes) see. Still, I guess it takes quite an effort to come up with a something like Napoleon’s lament that meant the same thing either way and actually mean something at all.


Or, it does take quite a mind. But *shrug*, this is not a thing to ponder immensely, does it?


Well, semester break is coming to an end. I can announce with all pride and glory that I’ve not managed anything worthy of an achievement throughout my 3 weeks of freedom from forced education (I said forced even though I choose to go through it, because I still have to go through it). Well, there’s of course the picture-taking job for Pauline last week, which I shall not deem as an achievement until I see the photos published or commented in any way (bad or likewise).

And working for Uncle Fook, not counting the other 2 jobs I have to decline hesitantly due to other responsibilities, and I’m still not paid… so it ain’t something to talk about, right?


Right, sem break is now at an end… resolutions are up and sticky-noted all over the desk, and it’s down to self-perseverance that I’ll see through every one of them.


Mhmm.


Self-perseverance.


Right…


So, here’s a picture for you to look at; something I took on Melawati Hill and what I hoped as a fairytale shot… only to ruin it.


And here’s an anime you should check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genshiken


And here’s the Word of the Day:


agglomeration \uh-glom-uh-RAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act or process of collecting in a mass; a heaping together.2. A jumbled cluster or mass of usually varied elements.

Midnight.







8 minutes past.

Ben Folds playing through the speaker.

Sleepy.

Bored.

Melancholic.

Lonely.

And Wishing..

I have…

Half-life 2 on the Laptop.













Midnight.

Sucks.

Sometimes.

I was having a funny dream when the lights came on in all of its blinding fury, followed by dad’s quick and ultimate words of “Wake up; time to get to work.”

Work?

And then I heard something about parangs and rakes and getting rid of the leaves once and for all, and I knew that there was something about Cutting the Mango Tree.

Perhaps cutting is the wrong word to use. Trimming would sound better, only in an ‘understatement’ manner; so elevate it as you can imagine, and you’ll probably get a picture like this:

The 10 year Glory, reduced to a bald humiliation (it happens to us sometimes)

No before-and-after picture though; I saw little need to photograph the mango tree on regular times. Now the sun and wind reaches our door unhindered, and I swear my handphone signal notched up a bar. But most importantly; no more leaves to rake. Yep. I don’t have to literally feed the mosquitoes while having to pile the fallen leaves to be discarded; I feed them while feeding the rabbits and bird and dogs (one option down).

It came at the price of sore limbs and fatigue, on my part at least. Of course, my family didn’t have to walk around a hill for a good part of 3 hours, then hitch off to PJ and back to Kajang on a very crowded train.

Melawati Hill is a beautiful place. Apparently some developers are thinking of clearing it for construction, and if the Save Melawati Hill T-Shirts that I saw every now and then (mostly on Pauline) didn’t quite say how important it is for construction to be stopped, the serenity and beauty of it sang a song of pleading; gee, it’s not right to build on lands like this (listen to me; the place I sleep now used to be acres of lush green forest). Secondly, though, building anything there is suicide. It’s a hillside. It’s a hill. Landslides and mudslides and catastrophe, people!

You don't get something like this is Kajang

(I live on a hill, too. A highland. Damn, I’m a hypocrite).

But it isn’t quite the hills and placidity that entirely won me; it was the winds and the freshness of things. Think fresh mornings where roaring engines drown under calls of cicadas and wispy mists; think waking up to sunlight peeking out of the hills and growth; think walking up the hill and watching rays piercing through the canopy painting fairytale beauty on reality.

No wonder rich buggers go there and retire.

I want to wake up to this daily... now i wake up to a bald mango tree

Some of the plants there... this one reminded me of Junji Ito's stuff.

It’s a lost cause, I heard, but at least there’s a cause. I guess there are things worth protecting, even if you’re probably never going to win it.

Here’s a good luck, and someone pass me a T-Shirt, perhaps?

(P.S: This are only the few pics i have on my Nikon. Pauline, will send you the others once i work out the drivers for the Canon 350D)

I simply stopped wondering.

Sometimes if it takes stopping to forget, and to relocate the mess you’ve got in your head, then I daresay we ought to learn to stop once in a while. Perpetually going on will get you somewhere; but you’ll arrive tired and beat and frustrated.

Stop, if it allows you to rest, if it allows you to take a breather and pant and bend over your knees with a chest-clearing sigh. Then stand up and take in some fresh air. Then get along on your way.

****

If I can tell myself that I did a good job in progressing things (things, as in fundamental necessity of living and a prosperous future) over the holidays, I wouldn’t actually be lying; I’ll just be a hypocritical nutmeg. But it’s the holidays, which meant days for me to frolic and prance in uncaring relaxation, only that if I tell it to someone older they’d give me a worthy scorn and let me get on with it, with a scorn to plague my memories.

But hey, I worked, sorta; and I wrote about it in a long and ultimately meaningless post. At least somehow I bagged a 50 bucks in the wallet, even if it’s not in the bag yet. And there’s the matter of the R.AGE article, which Pei Ling confirmed was published, and it’s an extra 160 bucks(?) in the bag as well. Not quite here yet, but yeah, I’m waiting.

Thanks to Pauline for the R.AGE op. And for the Melawati Hill pic taking trip today, which was -- literally -- an excellent breath of fresh air over a stagnant, recycled sem break.

Ah, here’s a fine introduction from Pauline this afternoon, when we were waiting for Brian (Bryan?) to fetch us to lunch.

http://www.boltcity.com/copper/

Cheers.

Part-time jobs and weddings (a title that meant little over this post)

I would’ve very much be familiar with moments where my aunt would make a call on a gentle weekday evening, announcing – in her often-than-not tired tone – that there is a part-time job opportunity for me in the weekend helping out my uncle (her husband) in his excess amount of shooting assignments; and when such moments came in a sudden (but not entirely unpredictable) manner, I would go through with a very regular answer;

“I’ll have to make sure my dad hasn’t a thing for me to do in the weekends.”

I carry truth in saying that in 4 out of 10 weekends, my dad would have something specific for me to do. Another 5 would be things that come on the spur of the day, at the breakfast table, over a nice bowl of curry noodles and roasted pork. 1 rare weekend is all I have to peacefully indulge myself in the busy and (at best) uninterrupted art of lazing.

But this was a rare weekend; there wasn’t a thing for me to mow, or cut, or to take to a particular shop somewhere with grease and black smudge. And I said “yes” to my aunt, who sounded lazily delighted, and I have myself something to do in the weekend that overpays (mostly) and, at the very least, guarantee that the rancid monotone of the holidays is broken and carpeted by fresh scent of pine.

And up at 6.30 in the morning I did, yesterday, a Saturday per se, and donned a polo T with denim trousers (the standard clothing for a professional event cameraman, and the only choice for his assistant) with much aplomb over Hey There Delilah.

It was the first wedding video I’m assisting my uncle with, and I don’t mean the wedding dinners I’ve mostly helped out to shoot; this was an actual Chinese wedding ceremony where the groom has to go over to his bride’s house with his gang of loyal friends and brace through a series of barriers (upheld and fortified strongly by enthusiastic friends of the bride, armed to the brim with unmatched meanness).

Think of the barriers as tests for the groom in his quest to fetch his bride; he’ll be asked to pay the guards, recite the Matrimonial Terms of Agreement, consume some nasty food (wasabi filled baguettes) and sing as loudly as he can, so that the neighbours could hear, his bride’s favourite song. After that they groom gets the bride back to his house, where they did prayers, and serve tea to the elders, and a merry luncheon would follow.

I’ve been through this sort of ceremonies. Once. In fact, this very uncle’s, whose equipment I have to watch over and batteries I have to recharge, so I know enough to anticipated the flow of events. But oh, weddings are such jovial places to stand, even if you’re sweating profusely and trying to keep your arm straight while holding the light that illuminate all and save the video from turning into a complete shadowy flop, and there’s something about smiling over the happiness of others and wondering when you’ll be there, as the couples were, nervous and excited and cheerful.

The groom was a fat man with an equally fat appetite for joy, but the oddity of him is the out-of-place patch of greying hair at left temple, which was either purported or something that happened over nights of insufficient sleep, and it must’ve been considered as something cool or something superstitiously amazing; because something like that looked pretty ridiculous at most. His bride was almost his size and almost his height, and almost someone a shallow man would cock his eyebrows in a very condescending “oh”, but that day she was the most beautiful woman in the world, with the most beautiful smile, as most brides do on their wedding day.

I tell you this with every conviction and truth; weddings (or Chinese weddings, to be more specific) are sweaty affairs. Whether or not the perspiration is warm or cold is left to be considered, or guessed, by onlooking people, but what I’ve come to know is that the bride and groom would be bathed in sweat when the prayers and tea-serving are over. This particular wedding was because of a badly placed altar which sat under the fan, and for fear the candles would extinguish, the fan was left still and silent, and the audience and couple were baked in the crowded hall in a stuffy afternoon.

Despite the sweat, the wedding was excellent, and the teas were drunk and gifts given and the lunch was merry with laughter and friendly jeers. The next night the bride and groom would be toasted to and praised with roars and liquor, over tables of cold hotel food. Someone would say, “May the bride and groom be showered in fortune and wealth, and blessed with good children and grandchildren,” and everyone would drink to the married couple, and if things ought to be left at endings we considered best, then I say this is where we should ever think about the married couple again.

There was another shooting after the wedding, but perhaps I will tell of it another day. That is, if I ever tell of the many things I wish to tell of the month of September and the whole lot of it, and by golly, my brother is home and is kicking me away from his computer.

Goodnight people.

September, and a whole lot of it

saw mostly gloomy mornings presided over by sweltering afternoon that bow down when the evenings come with rain and cold, and it’s every bit the September I think I know, only more morose if I might add, and that’s the general picture

It’s nearing the end of it now, and – pardon the cheesiness – I’m going to have a lot to reflect back this particular month.

So, in most gloomy mornings I wake and worry about the Exams, and to the usual norm, worrying did little to make me neither revise intently nor stifle the roaring pits of procrastination. (nothing may stifle it… think of it as a volcano that would survive the Indian Ocean poured into it, but would, quite possibly, give off a few blows and die out eventually).

So, in some of the gloomy mornings I’d thought I can prevail over everything by attending a study group, which I would say helped me considerably. Yes. Results showed that I actually learnt something out of the study group this time, and admittedly it did little for the actual exams, but on the whole; my insults list doubled and there’s a whole lot of manic laughing. By golly, you know what those can do for your exams.

(They make you think about web-zipping Spider Whales destroying a city in a single-swing, including scenarios where people get smacked around by a massive pendulum tail, and about Robot Chicken and about blobs and walruses and insults. And you think about that with 15 minutes left in a paper and you have another essay to write and four other more questions to go back to.)

(They make you survive the contaminating air of examinations, with all your sanity intact.)

But sigh; I don’t think I did too well, and the procrastination gets another blame.

I guess, sometimes, it’s all about the madness of things. The blight nature of minds, the dark convulsive inevitability of thought that, like gathering immensity of storm clouds, is ominous and grim. The way we discombobulate, disintegrate and diminish in our own thinking, wallowing in the mess of defecated thought, and tumbling and haplessly scraping at the mud-built walls that crumble under our desperate grasps. We’re all but helpless, but there’s more to helplessness than meets the eye. It is said that in helplessness we are humans, the way to say that we’re mad because we’re people, and a more complex mind with untapped potentiality that is buried by utter idleness is, by far, the undeniable reason why we’re all crazy and demented.

In insanity is where we feel like shit, and when we feel like shit we’re humans. That’s what we’re meant to be; wallowing swine in the mess of our defecated thought.

And all of the above, goes to say, that Exams Week 2 is making me a nuthouse, and since I’m already hands-full trying to ward away squirrels that try to make away my macadamia set, placing an extra pair of problems on my shoulder wouldn’t help.

I wish my dad would understood, at least. I need a break.

(Not that I really need one; I’m still slacking and procrastinating as ever, but it’s the exams and I get to whine and that’s the gospel truth of truths).

I’m typing this in the brother’s room, and it’s been a long time since I actually spent time typing at the table I used to argue with my brother for, under a fan that have kept me cool in the reign of my brother’s tyranny (I exaggerate, but in a sense I’m not quite doing so). It brings back memories. Of 8 months ago. And times before that.

How I don’t miss it (muahahaha).

I’m here because the laptop is in repairs, which rendered me completely entertainment-less, and while I’d admit that it is the best thing to happen during my examinations, it sucks. No freedom of when to surf, what to surf (admittedly there are things I can’t surf here, some due to lack of software) and where to surf (no surfing and gaming on bed… bummer).

The exams end this Friday, with a paper I’m actually clueless about. And I only have a day to prepare. And it has something to do with maths.

Maths.

Shit.

(Ah, for a change, this is a better screen, better keyboard and very much better connection in the manner of ‘slightly’ and ‘possibly-faster-if-you-look-at-it-positively’, and it’s University stuff, so I’m glad and satisfied and dead bored anyhow).

Last week contained:

A downed Internet connection, due to a functioning modem that didn’t work.

Three exam papers that I would, given the ability, break into the school office to alter its results because if I don’t, they go on the net as model answer for the perfect sort of idiocy.

Lots and lots of procrastinating. Jolly.

This week starts with:

An Internet connection, revived from much fire and ashes, in the form of a brand new modem that is marble white and looked like a pita pocket bread with black jam as its fillings.

A mistake, which led me to wake at 6 in the morn, sardined in a delayed train, and humiliating myself, because I thought my exam starts at 9. It starts 2, with me here, wasting time like overflowing buckets of water.

A broken down laptop. I grieve.

Ah, but then again, it’s Exam Week(s), so if bad things come in throngs, it’s because that’s the way the world should be, with the sky up and the earth down, where fire burn and water drown, and where sometimes things ought to go right up the viridian alley where it hurts and stings.

The Callous Comments of the Careless Guy and his Magnificent View of the World

(aka Mars V2, because we pretty much screwed up till we look like it),

Brings you, with his immense and undeniable wisdom;

A word about the World today:

“Cactuses will prick your finger.”

And there you go, folks! Important words, by important voices. Remember it till the day you die.

*******************

Ah, my apologies for the above.

I figure that since I haven’t been posting for some time now, someone somewhere might’ve just figured that I’d gone loony with mascara and wigs and sitting in a sidewalk giving people words of wisdom. So that was to tell them that yes; I was at the Masjid Jamek sidewalk (by the McD’s, you couldn’t have missed me if you were there Monday evening), giving people very, very prominent words about the World (Mars V2, not Earth) for 50 cents a piece. Dressed liked Madam Gypsy-Prophecy-Giver and her many copycats.

Hey, I couldn’t really rely on my parents for tuition fees, right? So bugger off somewhere, if you’re there with your eyebrows raised and tut-tutting, and read between the coughs.

*coughcoughcoughnumbskullcoughcoughcough*

Ahaha… right, I’m officially loony. Where’s my stress-ball?

But what I DID do for some extra cash on the sideline, is writing for The Star RAGE @Campus whatsit. Thanks to Pauline for the opportunity, and my apologies for the last minute and head-tearing submission. I didn’t write well enough, or rather, had some ideas that didn’t seem good enough but passable according to the standards Last-Minute Work. So went ahead with them, and they hadn’t been rejected yet, so I guess it’s ok.

Busy week, but not the busy which involves a lot of work and little sleep. Busy with having fun before stepping into the looming blight of examinations, more like, and the exams couldn’t have come more sooner.

So in the midst of this busy-ness was Rush Hour 3, which – like most sequel sequels out this year – bombed and disappointed and wasted my 8 bucks, and I won’t count the good but unfulfilling lunch that day (13 bucks, and the 10% discount card I had that day only cut away the service charge. Bastards). I watched it with a cousin, and he enjoyed it at least, so it ain’t so bad.

Last Wednesday was Hat Wearing Day, which was a little thing me and some classmates made up just for the heck of it, and I came to class wearing the Russian fur hat (complete with the Star of Moscow) and we took some pictures.

(From the left: Pauline, as a Forest Guerilla, me as Comrade Commissar, Kelv-ster as Terrorist PC80594 according to the tag on his shirt, Joshua as Perajurit Negara *benchwarmer* and Mekz as Peace Girl).

Class that day ended early; so early that we actually found time to go to the cybers, and played a lot of Battlefield 2142, some Jedi Knight 2 and some Quake 3, and had lunch at SS2, and went back to university so that I could do some work. What with a gentle afternoon, with some good companions and an empty classroom… great day.

Thursday was the Motherload, because we had badminton, and badminton here, at UTAR, with these bunch of people, is crazy. Nutmeg, I tell you. People don’t collapse halfway through a game making snow angels on the court and having the rest of us throwing fits of laughter, or throwing tantrums half-naked because of a missed shuttlecock. I had to commit sepukku with my racquet. It was insane.

It was also great fun. Damn it.

**********

It took me a trip to the market to buy my chee cheong fun breakfast and some army transport planes roaring past to make me realise that it was Merdeka, and that Malaysia is 50 years old.

A lot of other things are 50 years old, too. Dad is 50. His temper is 50, and temper doesn’t work like wine; bottling up for 50 years may make it more bitter, but losing it every minute makes it makes it Bordeaux 1957, and it pounds into your head like hell (but yeah, I admit, he’s less inconsiderate these days).

50 years now, independence. And being a journalism student and out of a distinctively more carefree age of secondary school, one starts to wonder about the term of Independence, about the country and about the state of things that we have to choose whether to hail or to condemn. By right I am on the fence. By other rights I have to choose. And what do I choose? Stay on the fence. But I’m not one to discuss such things. It’s not who I am, even if I’m expected to be.

Sometime ago I wrote something like this, in a failed story:

I think most things at the age of 50 would be entitled to such a question; what have we achieved?

And the answer is, well, not something that we can find from asking, nor is it something we seek by doing the naiveté and saying that answer lay in ourselves, that sort of thing. No, the answer is just simply There, if we look at it closer, if we look at what it meant, if we discard away whatever praise or creed or love or hatred and had just looked at it, because the answer is simply what we had done and what that happened afterwards. Our actions, our consequences, and whatever you make of it; your pride or your shame, is what you had chosen, and in the end it doesn’t matter because it had happened and what you felt doesn’t mean others did. What it is, it is there.

And by golly, 50 years now, and surely, we’ve achieved something. Hadn’t we?

(The story failed because I wrote something like that, and I didn’t understand what it meant).