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).