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).