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).