The Part Where We Stroll Into the New Year

The way I see it, the last few minutes of New Year’s Eve is like two ends of a bridge that are about to join together. In one side is the young, naïve, sprightly guy ready to run into the unknown future - while the other side is the dishevelled, unshaved, lethargic guy who walked as though the world weighted upon him. When the bridge connects, they’d shake hands, bid each other farewell and go on with their ways.

This happens every year. The naïve guy would always run ahead, taking the falls and the obstacles whichever they came first. The tired man would walk and sigh and wonder how it was that he never took time to look around. They’d reach the same end of the bridge every year. How they do so is like those time-paradoxical things that are best left unexplained.

There is a lesson here somewhere, but I’m too confused trying to figure out how this continuum thing works.

***

I should probably try writing about things in retrospect, and I think I’ve been trying to do it for every year to no avail. If the New Year’s is like the connecting bridge, then my guys would be sitting around chatting about Marshmallows while playing cards, and when the bridge split again they’d look at each other with shocked expressions. One might even try to jump. He never makes it.

So the year that was is, once again, a blur. Maybe pre-New Year brains are just that mushy. Maybe I’m simply too lazy to try and reminisce a year where things barely happened. Truthfully, nothing happened. I had gone through another year by staring dead into space and drooling. Time simply rolled on, carefully avoiding tipping me over. And when they did, I just drooled into the ground.

There, it was dark and comfortable and I dreamt of Nice Things.

***

Alright, maybe I can try and remember the past year.

(And I’ll be doing so by going through my 2010 blog entries, just to help my mushed up brain).

I remember doing a lot of flying. Much more than one could ever dream of, even if flying weren’t their cup of tea. But I had flown. I had gone to Bali, and Bangkok, and Jakarta, and a few times to Singapore. And then, of course, there was Japan. I have a lot to love about my job, and the constant flying was one of them.

I remember my great grandma’ passing. I remember the funeral, and my last look upon her face. I remember not crying. I still hadn’t.

I remember the day it dawned upon me that I had been in my job for a full year. It was an exciting thought, and there was this pathetic bloom of pride. Somehow, I hadn’t managed to get myself fired. Somehow, that meant a lot to me.

I remember little of everything else. There was a farewell I couldn’t make, a promise I couldn’t keep. Watching as the world played out like a theatre. It’s a story about me, but I’m just the audience. And I had fallen asleep on the fast-forward button.

The lights are on now, and the people are moving about discarding popcorn boxes.

***

There is something that I don’t need to try and remember, however. That’s because it’s happening right now.

And it’s a dream. There’s no other way to put it. I’ve tried pinching myself a few hundred times, and at one point put my foot out on a passing trolley at the supermarket, but I’m still here. Still in this dream. This surreality. This believing that it’s all real, however unreal. This wonderful feeling.

This feeling in the stars, in the clouds. There is no air, but only Life that you breathe.

And I’m still here, in spite of everything. I’m Still Here.

And I like it here.

A lot.

***

Resolutions? Just one.

The good thing about this resolution is that, if I kept at it, and I will, it opens up to a hundred more resolutions to fulfil. So I’ve got my sleeves rolled, and knuckles cracked. I’ve even put on my running shoes.

It starts next year.

***

Here’s the bit where I wish everyone a Happy New Year.

And I wish that you find Happiness. That’s just about it. Happiness, I figure, is direly underrated. You don’t pay the bills with Happiness, but Happiness pays you Love, and Laughter, and Joy, and that thing that keeps the road ahead lit even when it’s dark.

It would really then be a Happy New Year, right? Right?

Right? Guys? Guys??

First, a picture that I may use for bragging rights:

But it doesn’t belong to me, not alone at least. It belongs mostly to the greatest writing partner that I could wish for, and she gave me the plots and the words and that mental image in the form of an army of zombies waving banners that say “Just a little more!” and “Stay Lurching!” and “Brainz Up Ahead!”. She and the Zomb-army carried us past the finish line, and all I did was make sure I hit the nightly word count by continuously typing Ape, Ape, Ape, Ape, Ape (and, for the rest of the night, Bananas x 1000).

Suddenly, it was back to those nights where the parchment would open and I’d fall into it, and the words would just come (Apes and Bananas). And I’d be somewhere else, and nothing else would’ve mattered. Not even the coffee-requesting parent. Not even the mosquitoes. Not even sleep, at least until it got overly demanding. Only that this time, there was someone else with me, and she pitched while I batted.

Suddenly I was plotting, padding, making characters speak in my head, tying up loose ends and throwing things randomly on the wall with the hope that it sticks. And then, in the end, making sure that I’d come home and write it.

50,000 words weren’t even enough. But here’s the second promise; finishing the novel. Complete with the edits, changes, omissions, ironing, waxing, wrestling-with-the-characters-ing, and footnotes.

The road is long, and I’m having a great time walking down it.

So here I raise, this imaginary glass of sparkling champagne, to my writing partner, her Zomb-army, and the words.

Time to fire the Large Plotron Collider!

****

Right, there was also that bit where I went to Japan for a few days, and it’s my third self-promise to blog about it (with pictures. From a perfectly fine camera duly wasted upon me). But at least until I finish the coverage on it.

There is, of course, self-promise One and Two. There’s also a Four, but knowing myself, self-promises tend to vaporise. So maybe three for now. I’ll work in the extras later.

And yes, this bit of the post is to remind me to do it. Do ignore, and go let that spider chase your mouse pointer.

Oíche Mhaith

Carni

Right now, there’s an inflatable castle in my head, and I’m in it and bouncing off the halls and turrets. This, I figure, was placed there by the alcohol. It was only half a pint, drunk with friends and laughter, but to my credit it’s already double the amount I would’ve dared to drink. So yeah; I’m still an alcohol wuss, and right now I’m bouncy.

(At any rate, a bouncing castle wouldn’t bode well with that NaNoWriMo novel we’re trying to finish, but I wanted to write something. At least until the bouncy castle deflates).

November was the craziest month.

There was the fact that I tried, and had to, close the magazine a week early. And there was NaNoWriMo. And the Japan trip came along and threw everything into disorder. I’ve technically worked for three weeks without a single day off, if you count Japan being work, which it is in parts.

But I've enjoyed NaNoWriMo. Japan was an eye opener, and the job was the same adrenaline rush that only midnights and deadlines could give. So it was all crazy, but crazy good. Crazy tiring.

November was like a carnival. It had lights, and noises, and music. It had rides that thrilled; roller-coaster carts and Ferris wheels and haunted houses, and it had shows and acts that told of secrets and shadows and the darkest pits of desire. And like all carnivals, you know the dark, seedy going-ons it has in its corners, and yet you’re attracted to the lights, thrilled by the thrills, enticed by the secrets in the tents...

You get swept into the ride, and you’ll hate it, but pervasively, unabashedly, finding every moment enjoyable.

All I found myself doing was falling. Into the spinning lights. While they played and danced and made me hate and like.

Right now I’m walking out of the carnival, cotton candy in one hand, beer bottle in the other. And there’s a ravine ahead.

And I know I’m just gonna fall.

I'm in the airport now, and the Internet access here is patchy at best, so I'm just gonna run this quick:

1) I'll be flying off to Japan in 2 hours time

2) I have butterflies the size of Mothra

3) I'm having food coma

4) This will be the furthest I've ever been from home

It's still like walking into a dream. The type that makes you climb stairs in a desert, leaving you parched and dying. But surreal all the same.

Which me luck against Godzilla.

So, one part of me is saying; “Why the fuck aren’t you asleep?”, while another part is saying that “If you’re not fucking sleeping, why aren’t you clocking word count for NaNoWriMo?”. But I had tried; I sat staring at the previous words I’ve written and waited for more words to come ... and nothing came. But the words, oddly enough, came for this, so I figured that skipping one night would do me some favours. In one shoddy way, I am writing still. And it keeps a stagnant blog slightly less decadent. So shut it, Conscience B.

(Another reason for not being asleep is that, right now, my hair is still wet, and I have mud on my face. It’s most likely mud mixed with random herbs that is packed and marketed as a Neem Face Pack, which was shoved into my hands by the people who bought it, telling me that it’ll do me good and make me a better looking man if I kept at it – and I’m just thinking that hey, if it’s free, and if it ensures that I won’t have to consider plastic surgery over the next few years, why not? So here I am, in the middle of the night, typing on a blog entry I shouldn’t be making with mud smeared on my face, making me feel increasingly metrosexual. That would be the mud bit.)

But nights like this are worth being up, just for a little while. And I have jazz and numbers by Ol’ Blue Eyes right here, and he’s doing a great job telling how life should be.

And maybe it’s the jazz, and the night feeling so placid and empty, that I feel like I could do with a shot of Bourbon. The kind you take over at the bar, with the bartender named Joe, while the jukebox plays something like what Ol’ Blue Eyes would sing, about making one for the road. And I could say, I could tell you a lot, but it’s not... in a gentleman’s code. And then drink. And then say, “Hit me with another one, Joe. For old times’ sake.”

But reality is a sour bitch. I don’t drink, and I don’t know what Bourbon is. The nearest bar is in town and it’ll be playing seedy KTV music. And I might feel like I could do with a drink, but the drink would probably do as much as a favour to me as playing a round on an arcade machine. A quick, forgetful thrill. And I’d personally choose the latter.

There’s probably some coherence, or maybe some sense, in what I’ve just written. And damn if I’m gonna bother checking for one or giving it something.

You can shut up now, Conscience B. And A.

(But Joe, maybe... you know: Make it just one more, for my baby. And one more for the road).

Room With No Walls

There was this old forgotten story, which sort of went like:

There was a boy who lived in a room with no walls, built on top of a pillar that rose above a sea of clouds. In the morning, the boy will tend to his garden crop. In the afternoon he would rappel down the side of his pillar, where he was building stairs that spiral down into the clouds. He was doing so because, one night, he saw a pulse of light from beneath the clouds. No ship had been able to sail below the clouds and return, but the boy was compelled in his certainty that the stairs will take him down. And he built and built, and...

And the rest never happened, because I’ve never written past that.

The story is still lodged somewhere at the back of my head, and maybe one day I’ll finish it. Knowing me, however, that day might never come. But it’s there, and sometimes it tells itself to me as I sleep. I just need to tell myself to write it.

Anyway, my room now has no wall.

If I am to sleep in it, people passing every morning will me my leg stuck at an odd angle and my pillow soaked in drool. I’d also be covered in dust and debris, which – aside from being a tad uncomfortable as a state to live in – is also very unhealthy. I’ve now relocated to the brother’s room, and every night is a revisited battle; I’ve spent a better part of my life sleeping with him that it’s back to the old nightly endeavour of fending off his blanket-stealing attempts, and his dangerous swinging legs.

I’m glad October went past. The days where he sat on the chair, the weather had been chaotic. And people went ballistic and started having events every damn day, which was hectic to attend. And somewhere I managed to demolish an old cabinet by trying to use it as a height boost, hurting my hand in the process. And yesterday I did every single Don’ts in a guide to break a fight between two dogs, and got my hand bitten for my troubles (nothing antiseptics couldn’t help, though). And I owe DiGi a lot of cash I didn’t spend. And I’m at the eve of NaNoWriMo with no plot, no story, no characters, no nothing...

(But I’m cheating this year. Sort of. There’s nothing on the FAQ that said I can’t collaborate with someone and actually just write the half of it...)

(I think I’ll burn in NaNoWriMo hell).

The bright side of things, however, is that it’s November, and when she takes the chair I normally get a very good 30 days. She has been kind to me.

50 more minutes now, and October will leave.

It’ll be time to write.

A more rational me would’ve gone to sleep, but this other part wanted to relish in past photographs, so I sit here uploading old photos into Flickr, and taking time to go through products of a more enthusiastic period of youth.

(This reinvigoration of an interest is stemmed by the Bra-man, who already has a Flickr account of his own, accessed here, which is in turn sparked off by his acquisition of a DLSR. Resurrecting my Flickr page is both in his request and my interest to pick up a DSLR myself. I’ve also starting to feel rather competitive. Not that I’m ever in the league, but I can’t help it.)

Anyway, my Flickr page is here, and if it stays active I’ll probably pin it to the link bar for good.

I like photography. I don’t love it. I used to, but time has a good way to dash enthusiasm and confidence into shards, and whatever’s left is only enough to keep me snapping during vacations or memorable trips. Otherwise, I barely utilise the compact cameras. They’re here, in the drawer. I haven’t turned them on for a long time.

I don’t take good pictures, but there’s a sense of achievement in trying to get one. For me the fun is in the process, and the photograph is the trophy. It didn’t have to look nice, but a nice trophy is fantastic anyways, and it keeps me going for that. Going through these old pictures, I realised that I miss it a lot.

This Nikon D3100 I’m getting, might just put me back in the love. As for now, I’m having a crush all over again.

I must confess; I like photography.

I really do.

I figured I was smart. I figured; there’s no better way to force yourself into writing unless it’s a life threatening situation. So here I am, strapped to a chair, which is being slowly lowered into a pool of genetically mutated Piranhasharks and will keep doing so unless I continuously type down something. It sucks that I sort of have writers’ block, so I’m pretty close to the waters now, and there’s this itch on my toe that I have just have to get and oh god it waters just touched my ankles I have to type gotta keep typing one word two word three word four word oh crap oh crap oh crap oh

Oh, now I have some leeway. Right. I just need to type myself to safety. Just keep typing, typing…

*****

So, I had this week staked out. I studied the calendar, I noted down the important stuff and I had myself a schedule, complete with red-marker circlets. Then I cracked my fingers and got on with it. By Tuesday I’ve forgotten my days and I thought I was in the year 1901.

In my defence, I kept my end of the bargain until everything simply collapsed into craziness. When that happens, the best one could do is simply fall along and hope that there’s coffee at the end of it. So don’t blame me for thinking time went back to 1901 and I stood watching Annie Taylor going down the Niagara Falls in a barrel and freaking survived.

Anyway, I wonder why every person out there thinks October is a good time to have media events. By the damn throngs of it.

Things happened, one after another. And I couldn’t remember most of it already, or rather I’m too lazy to. One had me going on a flying fox, though. It was real. It was a long day.

And it’s not dying down. The storm’s still going on. We’re barely through.

Though, now I’ve got a poncho and an umbrella. And yellow boots.

Interesting what a barber can say to you and leave you troubled for the day. But you’re only troubled by it because it’s true, and that you’re already troubled by it anyway, only that it takes someone to word it out, even unintentionally, for it to latch on and spread out like blight. At the end of the day, it’s a disease.

A mental structure is like a bricolage, built with salvaged scraps and scattered bits of separate thoughts, and it unless these thoughts are of strong material, it doesn’t take much for it to crumble. A breeze, a prod can bring it down. Sometimes, the words of a barber.

The rest is kind of what you do with it. Face the truth, and walk away with a briefcase and ready to make a move, or pick up the pieces and start rebuilding the next whimsical structure?

But you know, the road ahead is tough. Sometimes it’s easier to rebuild, and stay holed again.

Oddly empty highways, lighted amber and dark, can be a joy to drive through. Windows down, head abuzz with 10 sips of wine, Yoko Kanno’s Space Lion playing on the radio makes it melancholic, and it was like I was driving towards someplace unreachable. In some ways, it was like dreaming. The kind of dreams that were wishful, unattainable things.

And the magic ended at the toll, when barred gates and money put a stop to dreaming. I paid, drove by, and it was just that; a drive home.

The radio played That’s Life, and Frank Sinatra sung me to the next traffic light.

****

It might be too early to count these eggs, but it seems like I’ll be going to Japan next month.

For work, of course. But the free time in between meant that I’ll be making the most out of Tokyo, to appease this semi-otaku tendencies.

(And, if my itinerary is to be believed, I get a chance to visit the Ghibli Museum. That’s one tick on my Bucket List).

It’s gonna be expensive, even if food and accommodation will be taken care of. So starting today, I’ll be tying up my stomach and only drink milk for 6 weeks.

*********

This very possible trip to Japan also meant that it’s time I get my DSLR. I’m pretty much set to purchase the Nikon D3100, but I still can’t decide if I want to pay it through instalments or save up more for a smoother transaction. But a new camera and Japan’s sights would be awesometastic.

I think I’ll leave these thoughts in the air as I retreat to bed.

Lucifugous

"Come back later?"

I like staying in the dark these days. The shadows are cool and comforting, and the darkness can blanket the mind with blissful ignorance, which is always welcoming.

You still need the sun, though. Warmth, light and Vitamin D is needed to keep going. And it’s always better to travel in light; you don’t have to worry about stumbling into potholes and chasms.

These days, I travel under the stars, convincing myself that moonlight would suffice. So far, I had walked into poles and construction digs, and maybe a monsoon drain or two. Once, I stepped into a minefield and sparked off a chain reaction that lit up in spectacular fountains of dirt and limbs.

You’d think that I’d learnt soon enough.

But I’m just stubborn that way.

*******

Three weeks can give a lot of things that just happened to be ponderous subjects, and by ponderous it meant I get less sleep as they mull and debated and insulted each other’s mothers in my head. Most of them are the important things, and they’re there because they just happened. Some of them are those things you just had to stupidly think about, even if they had nothing to do with you at all. It’s like volunteering for more work and without pay. It kinda makes you a sucker.

(I mean, I think it does. Doesn’t it?)

But well, like someone said to me once; “It’s better to think than not to.”

No, no, that doesn’t make sense. But I’m not in the mood to make it otherwise.

Anyway, three weeks of lesser sleep and brain atrophy has contributed to writing skills that has marvellously regressed. And in a job that prints ‘Writer’ on my name card, that’s not good. Not good at all.

Let’s… let’s start working out.

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

I used to do this, a long time ago, as a means to etch words into my abysmal vocabulary. It doesn’t work, mostly because my goldfish memory couldn’t ensure that it’s stays etched; it fades out in three days at most, but it does work itself as some sort of writing exercise.

It goes like this; you take a word, which in my case is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day, and you write something about it. Today’s word was Lucifugous, but since I've already used that as an irrelevant title, let’s use another day’s.

That’ll be Nympholepsy. Which means:

1.

A frenzy of emotion, as for something unattainable.

2.

An ecstasy supposed by the ancients to be inspired by nymphs.

Which also means: a tumultuous mass of feelings caused by very attractive women. So yeah; think Epilepsy, but the psychological type, and caused by hot chicks. And yes; it’s a pandemic.

The next step is to simply write something with the word in it. Like:

The roasted ribs gleamed at him, dripping oil catching the light, steam wafting gently and coiling into imageries of taste, rising up into some kind of mounting nympholepsy. His mind snapped, and the glass panel did little to hold him back. The ribs were already between his teeth, and he gnashed and tasted… plastic? No. No. No no no no...

Yeah… well, I guess I needed more workouts.

Let’s see if I can keep this up tomorrow.

Being cold and miserable just doesn’t cut it anymore. Where’s the despair? Where’s the sense of hopelessness that you wish the rain can fill? Where’s the infallible grief and growing anger and prolonged destitution? Or that emptiness that pierce into the skin, filling the bones, replacing the soul? Snap out of it, mister. You’re just caught in the rain. You haven’t seen the end of the world.

That would’ve been a sight.

*****

This morning it rained. Heavily. Normally I would roll over and sleep, tortilla-wrapping myself with the blanket and dreaming of Scarlett Johansen lettuce dressings. But today, by virtue of the dad being away from home, morning chores were doubly mine.

It rained like the heavens upended the northern Atlantic ocean, so that it was heavy, unending and piercingly cold. Just enough to plant the seed of misery.

I went to work so late I probably shouldn’t have gone to work at all. But there was urgent work to be done.

And the rain came and go in drizzles. Dreary clouds just stapled itself to the sky, unmoving and stubborn.

Office Internet killed itself. I had to sit through an hour of troubleshooting before the people at TM unwillingly filed a report, promised a technician and cut my call.

My work crawled at snail’s pace, then morphed and shaped itself into coiling streaks of colours, and danced away to the Limbo.

I had my forehead on the table. I spotted a coin on the floor. Left it there.

The carpet turned to mush and I sank like an anvil in quicksand. Everything was grey.

A man wearing a sombrero hat over his diving suit floated my way. “You too?” he said. “Lots of people here today. Must’ve been the weather.” He paddled away, trailing bubbles that stayed in place.

I decided that it was probably best if I headed for home.

It still managed to rain. It’s raining now, in lapses. All the better.

Because I can now tortilla-wrap myself, and maybe dream of Milla Jovovich lettuce dressings.

Sweet dreams.

Sitting On A Rock, watching a lonesome dark cloud roll across the horizon, and catching a little wind with a Snickers Mini in hand. If there’s such a thing as a Random-Stroke-of-Zen Moment, that would’ve been it.

As always, the rock and the wind would give birth to a lot of ideas. Paper planes and kites. Paragliding. Or bagfuls of dandelions, opened to the breeze. That would’ve been sight.

How long was it since I hiked up Broga Hill?

A couple of things have changed. For one, the oil palm plantation below now has an enclosure, and there are people there charging climbers two ringgit to park their cars . An opportunistic vendor now parks his coconut stall at the foot of the hill, enticing weary climbers with thoughts of ice cold coconut drinks (in truth, almost lukewarm). Some authoritative figure of some sort enacted a few signboards along the way, and - wherever needed - aiding ropes were now available to speed up the ascent.

Other than that, and the fact that it’s now a tourist attraction, and the overlong cattails, everything’s still the same.

Stamina now shot to dust, but I still made it up at least. And I headed for the rock without a thought, ready to push off anyone with the gall to sit on it.

(Which begs the question; Can one buy a rock? If one would invest an insignificantly significant amount of money, can a gigantic piece of rock be bought and fitted around with electric barb wires and a moat filled with piranhas just so only one may sit on it?)

In place of dandelions, I shot a stalk of Lalang into the air, the way that the father thought me. The stalk danced momentarily in the wind, deciding whether or not to follow the flight and, knowing the scientific hopelessness of it, simply danced to the ground.

I felt like it reflected a bit of something, but it’s a fogged mirror, which I drew a face on and forgot.

A conversation. And then, as it happened, a reminiscence. Of old coke vending machines, and some talk over flowers. And days of sharing headphones. Train rides pondering the questions. Planning and watching everything fall.

One cold night, shivering for no reason, and about to do something really stupid.

I used to think that the past should serve as a means to walk forwards. These days it felt like it was tethering me back. I’m grounded at the balls of my feet, and the roots are only growing daily. Can’t lift my feet. Not going anywhere.

It was a long time ago. I keep feeling like it happened yesterday. But it wasn’t a case of not letting go. I’ve unclenched my fingers and watched it fall, but it’s that mess in the hall I’m too lazy to sweep.

I’m not making sense. But it’s midnight, and I can afford that type of leeway.

Bright Lights and Hospitals

It started sort of like déjà vu. Then it went down a different road, one that led to a roller coaster ride that can only careen into unforeseen tragedy. At any rate, I spent that morning staring up a lot. Between wincing, groaning and swearing off all sorts of vices just to make the pain go, I stared up. And up that morning consisted of ceilings, a glimpse of the dawning sky, and lights.

Really bright lights. That burn an afterimage of gargantuan French Fries into the retina.

The mental projection of that Eskimo wearing Oakley goggles and standing on a patch of ice resurfaced. Soft snow floated down, but I knew I couldn’t taste them. The Eskimo naturally said; “Fucked up again, huh? You never really did learn.”

“Good job reminding me.”

He lit his cigar. “Well, it’s not entirely your fault. You’ll find out. But lets start with exercising in the mornings now, can’t we?”

“Set my alarm then.”

He blew out the smoke, jabbed the cigar at me and walked away.

The doctor looked like he had been watching too many soap operas. He listened to symptoms like cherishing Bach, and talked methodically.

“Could be a stone in the urinary tract,” he said, nodding as though concurring with himself. “Anyway, we’ll find out after the test.” He left, him and his Einstein moustache. I twiddled my thumbs under the covers, wondering where the pain went without any medication administrated.

They then carted me off for a CAT scan, but not before parking me by a random wall. They said there was a line going for the scans. I sure didn’t see any, but maybe they meant the procedural type. So I twiddled my thumbs some more, and nodded at the parents if they looked this way. I’ve already ruined their weekend morning, so reassurance was the next best thing to do.

At the wall was a painting framed by plastic made to look as expensive, engraved wood. I couldn’t tell what it was about - it was one of those abstract pictures, but considering the hospital setting I’d say it must’ve been medical related. It had coagulated colours and crude boils. I was putting my money on the titles like Jimmy’s Acne, or The Cancer Dirge.

The CAT scan was horrifying. Every hum of machinery meant a few hundred bucks gone. I was also getting radiation into the body. They probably mutated something.

They then wheeled me into a room, and told me that the CAT Scan didn’t do the trick well enough, and they had to ultrasound me. I already had a few pregnancy jokes made up but the doctor looked like he needed coffee and candy, so I kept my tongue.

Ultrasound gel feels cold. It dawned that I had a really large gut. Like, huge.

The nurses (attendants?) started talking over me as they wheeled me out of the room. “Could use with some automatic doors,” Dude said. “High-end stuff.” “Yeah, yeah, the expensive ones,” said Dudette. “Like in America.” “Shut up, Shut up,” I said, but only in my head.

The bright lights ran along with the ceiling, burning lines and lines of large French Fries.

The last doctor I had to see looked excitable, and he took time to explain where the problem was with a helpful but distracting graph. He then signed the medication and asked me to come see him in a week’s time. The sound of the door closing also sounding like the cash register going Ka-Ching.

And it did. But at least I get to pay back.

And with that, Saturday afternoon started.

******

That happened last month. I wanted to write about it but I got distracted by having to review StarCraft 2.

It wasn’t serious, but before I was driven to the hospital it felt like it was. If having to wake up to puke water all over the toilet, followed by numbing pain to the gut and creeping tendrils of unconsciousness didn’t do enough to scare me into a hospital trip, I don’t know what else would.

I think it’s time I really wake up for a morning jog. The dogs could do with the exercise too.

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

Like that painful morning, the month came and gone. I practically walked out of the hospital and into closing week (there was about seven other days in between, but that flew by too). And because I was so distracted by so many things, I handed up work much slower than usual. Time to buck up this month.

I’ve also been playing a lot of StarCraft II. I’m no good in it; RTSes are never in my gaming forte, but it was undoubtedly a lot of fun, even when losing. Ok, maybe losing every Custom Game match wasn’t so fun, but it kept me playing still.

Right then. Wish me luck.

At this time (night)

My thoughts are where (the clouds)

I could see (and imagine listening)

(To) (You)

“And you expect a good answer out of a bad question?”

I do, actually. Bad questions, after all, are meant for good answers.

Though sometimes it wouldn’t work and both parties have to stare at their feet and shuffle shiftily. Then they’d have to wait for someone to clear their throats and say “move along,” to break the awkwardness.

As expected, I made a fool of myself. The people at Blizzard called too early, before I was mentally prepared to ask questions and before I could figure out how to record the conversation. I ended typing furiously as I asked, and there’re lapses in silence where I tried to juggle between interpreting an answer and trying to word the next question.

It was short; only 15 minutes. They were nice people, and Brian Kindregan (lead writer for StarCraft II) is both great to speak to and very helpful.

I found it most interesting that he worked on the Iron Giant. Gamers out there should know that he also wrote for Jade Empire and Mass Effect 2.

Writing for video games now seem very fascinating. And very much underappreciated.

***

Love is like a feast. Take enough of it, and you’re full, warm and contented. Take too much, you puke. Take too little, you hunger. Take nothing, and all you can do is watch and scent, and imagine the taste.

“When we woke and forgot the dream, it was probably meant to be forgotten.”

A tall clock tower, taller than the clouds. As tall as the obsidian pillars that rose around it.

A flying fish, in fact a flying machine shaped like a fish. A dandelion aircraft; the sort that rely on the kindness of winds and the unthinking, unpredictable hand of fate and fortune to carry it around. In it, two children lost in the erratic nature of a white canvas and the whimsicality of a pen, pondering the reality of dreams and likening it to the clouds that roll along them.

“That they are of shape, but indiscernible. Like you had the idea of what it is, what it’s trying to say, but it’s a hopeless grasp.”

“That it is what you make of it. It is what your imagination can create. The clues are there. Just think, and guess.”

The winds will take them under the clouds, where it is twilight that slowly become darkness as they descend. From the darkness rose mechanical hands that grasp a globe of Earth - millions of millions of them. Each Earth with green grass and growing trees, and rocks that flowers grow on.

They will land on one, and watch as the winds carry their craft into the plunging darkness below. They lay on the grass, side by side, and watched as the clouds gather and slowly sink towards them.

And then, the sound of thunder.

*****

In the morning, I’ll be having a phone interview with the lead writer of StarCraft II. I’m naturally but irrationally nervous.

I have a thing about asking questions. Mostly because I have nothing to ask, most of the time. Mostly because I tend to answer these questions myself. They will never be true, but it’s a force of habit that prevails the way id works over the psyche.

(The honest-to-goodness reason, however, is simply because I lack the mental capacity to think up of questions to ask in any given situation.)

This is why journalism is an art in which I’m dead in, but I’m trying to work around the kinks. I can probably start by asking more questions. The problem is knowing what sort of question to ask, and what sort of question to not. And because I know myself so well, I’ll probably be doing a lot of the latter.

Tomorrow I shall make a fool of myself.

*********

On the subject of dreams:

Inception is an awesome movie. It’s not the greatest movie this year, but Nolan certainly worked his magic. Or rather, he must’ve just simply cracked his head open with a nutcracker and the resulting image is the movie.

I won’t call it groundbreaking in idea, but I’ll call it groundbreaking in execution. And everyone loves an ambiguous ending. The type that puts the whole entire movie out of logical perspective.

And the theories start rolling. Interpretations of symbology and visual metaphors start pouring in. College Humour predictably does a parody video. People started telling each other how intellectually suited they are to watch the movie, and shot down everyone who found the hype overblown by saying that they are intellectually unsuited. All is well. The world is alive and thinking.

Hollywood needs movies like this. Not that they don’t, and not that they should churn out more; if Inception was a testament in anything, it’s that it was simply the smartest movie to come out since shows like Primer, Momento and Perfect Blue flew under everyone’s radar. People found the braininess compelling. Too much brain and people started complaining how one copies the other.

Every movie henceforth that requires you to think as it progresses (or literally gives you a mindfuck) will be claimed as an Inception rip-off.

I can’t predict trends so well, but I’d like to see if I’ll be right.

Now, to find my copy of Paprika.

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

I’ll have to look for Zimmer’s eargasmical composition for Inception, but right now I get my eargasm from Tchaikovsky.

It took me long enough, but hey; it’s not everyday you found out that your aunt has a 10-disc collection of classical music from the likes of Vivaldi, Bach and Strauss Jr.

Capriccio Italien Op. 45.

Du du duuu duuu

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

Speaking of Capriccio Italien, in a way inspired by the Carnivale in Rome, I found someone who named himself Carnival.

As in Carnival *Chinese surname*. It’s true. And he’s a balding middle-aged man who told me how I should frame my event photo op. He caught me staring at his name tag, mouth agape, and told me that yes, his camera is not too shabby.

Just so you know.

Of All Things Boring and Uneventful

If there’s such a thing as a two-week blogging/Facebook sabbatical, I just took it. Mostly because I knew I would’ve been too busy to afford distractions (but such idiocy! I should’ve known that there are at least 999,999,998 other types of distractions out there, in the Internet or otherwise), but also because I needed to sort things out. The kind of sorting not unlike egg shells in scrambled eggs; in this case, my brain are the shells and the eggs are the convoluted mess of everything else.

It’s about setting things aside so I won’t end up eating myself. That would’ve been problematic.

Now it’s simply back to that self-promise of writing something every day; big or small or pointless or nonsensical. And also how I long I could stick to it before another 2-week sabbatical.

I might’ve been abusing that word.

I would’ve liked to say that I have something to great to report, but things were as uneventful as life’s monotony would allow, though we did get to go on a yacht for an event. It was a nice yacht, but it was too hot to stay on deck and it wasn’t technically on sail. The Port Klang waters could barely hold a breeze and there weren’t any pirates. But I doubt any pirates would have interest in a yacht with a huge OKI sail hung limp on the mast (they probably wouldn’t want to offend the Japanese. I mean, where would they get Sushi?).

Oh, and there was a Bloggers and Social Media Conference. It would’ve been more interesting if they hadn’t made it feel like it was made for people wanting to make money with blogs and social media, though in the few instances where they didn’t, the talks were highly interesting. And our 4th Prime Minister was there. He didn’t spare much mercy making jabs at everything. Mostly it was political. But I was very distracted whenever he said the word Nasty. He used it a lot.

It was 2 days worth of conferencing, stuck in a chair with no desk (the media section, in all its exclusiveness, were not given a table), trying hard to stay awake at every business-oriented talk (and Kenny Sia’s juvenile presentation), and drawing shamelessly on the 2008 notebook calendar. I looked like a kid stuck in a boring classroom.

I probably was.

****

Give a listen to this;

If it’s somehow stuck in your head, or if you actually replayed the song just to keep listening over and over again, then I can decide that I haven't gone completely bonkers.

Oh no no, I’ve not be completely bonkers, like, ever. Just partially insane. Two different things altogether.

(On the other hand, Spectacular Spider-Man has to be the best animated Spider-Man since the '94 series. I might not have watched or read a lot of Spidey, but this series is made of win).

"Part 1 - 1.5: An apocalyptic log, and a really tough soliloquy"

(This is kind of nice; I have the urge to blog at 1.17 in the morning, and on my MSN conversation is a girl I’ve never met in real life, and we just told each other to go to sleep without actually committing to the act. This is also bad; because I’m not working on what I should be).

A few years ago, I thought I could write anything. Present day doesn’t seem to present this sort of naive confidence, though sometimes I could really do with that excess of unrelenting assurance. In fact, right now really calls for it.

These days, it’s hard to fall through the hole in the parchment.

Long-distance driving turned out to be not as daunting as I thought, but it did present its own set of tiredness.

I’m not entirely used to great-grandma’s passing; my first thought when I arrived in Penang was to pay her a visit. And then the slight revelation hit. It felt like a new pothole that on the road, that’s easy to forget and driven into.

Got on the ferry, the first time in years. The sea still smelt the same, and I’m glad that you can still spot the odd jellyfish or two. What’s different is the ferry’s divider. It was shorter.

(The girl has relented and gone to bed. My media player is playing a Cantonese song I didn’t remember having).

(I suppose I should head to bed now).

Hey, I did something I used to do. Write about nothing.

Maybe tomorrow I could feel like I could write anything again. Maybe it’ll help me get my work done.

Maybe tomorrow.

(I should probably stop with this habit of only updating before a trip to someplace. I’ll be doing the chauffeur thing tomorrow and driving two of the most important women in my life - my mom and my grandma - down to Penang, to follow-up on some procedural things related to great-grandma’s funeral).

“Prologue, or those days I spend more time daydreaming dangerously”

It was that sort of crazy stretch in a month where everything seemingly led to one another, like the Bold and the Beautiful, and you kind of just sat through it until one day it announces that this is the finale, and you watch it and finish it and get on with your lives (or, somehow, start with CSI: Miami). Of course, by now, your muscles have already atrophied, along with any semblance of a brain.

(Apologies for any soap opera campers out there, but there’s no other way to describe unending lethargy).

And that was sort of how it felt when having to come back from Jakarta straight into closing week, which ended three days back, and things have not entirely slowed down for some recuperation.

(And then, of course, there’s tomorrow and the drive to Penang).

It’ll be an early sleep tonight, so I figure that I’ll keep this one short.

Besides, my atrophied brain needs time to warm itself up.

****

Jakarta was interesting.

Not the place though. But I wasn’t brought to Jakarta Central, or at least that’s how I remembered the local overclocker told me; they held it at East Jakarta, which had Jakarta’s biggest IT mall and the second worst traffic that side of the world.

A fact about Indonesian traffic; the rules don’t apply. The go as far as to avoid cars going the wrong way, but traffic lights and double lines and no-entries only appear as a warning sticker that said ‘Pretty Please’. In Indonesian traffic, might is right.

But you also have to have some puzzle-solving skills as an Indonesian driver. For instance, when you have a good ten or so automobiles converging in the middle of the T-junction (of course, the traffic light was only there as a light source), it takes considerable brain power to untangle each beeping and horning car so that they are free to drive off to their respective junction, while the another batch forms the next puzzle.

Another fact; the pedestrians are all traffic authorities. So don’t be surprised when the elderly lady selling steamed corn at the road side suddenly puts on a scary face and started ushering cars to the right junction.

Needless to say, it was a perpetual state of pandemonium.

Indonesian IT malls are fascinating. Though, only fascinating as much as I could explore, which encompassed eight stores of the mall’s centre court, and three from the first floor when I dashed up to take pictures.

At the centre of the mall was the Overclocking Championship. I’ll write about some other time. For now, let’s just say that it was Not What I Thought It’d Be.

After the championship, the organisers shipped us to an island (Ayer Island, with the eponymous Ayer Island Beach Resort) to let us have fun. They put us in a paintball competition (I got shot in the face, and might’ve shot a few people on the thigh, but it was hard to tell), and those teamwork games that were stupid to do but fun to play.

Then they lodged us on a chalet built on top of the water. If you wake to pee in the morning, you can hear the waves hitting the board under your feet. And the waves get scarily high when the weather picked up; I was on the chalet veranda thinking I could write under the stars and above the waves when sea water started hitting my face. The waves were incredibly high then, and they squirmed and coiled and crashed in the dark.

There were a lot of stars, as island skies do. But from my chalet the trees blocked a lot of the sky.

I shared my chalet room with a Vietnamese man who couldn’t get my name right, and instead resorted to smiling and nodding at me whenever he needed my attention. He was an amazing sleeper; he slept the minute we entered the chalet (sand still sticking on his legs and all) and he slept with the lights on and the world cup showing on the incredibly blur TV, all the way past breakfast (he skipped it).

The organiser shipped us back when they got our flight schedules sorted out, and I found myself on a bus back to the airport.

Another Indonesian road fact here; you can bribe, or in a better sense, tip the pedestrian road authorities with cash for them to stop traffic for you so that the large bus can make an impossible U-Turn.

I flew home with the Malaysian Overclocker, and one of the Malaysian sales rep. It was all good fun.

The rest, they say, were the dreams you can’t remember when you sleep after a long weekend.

*****

Closing was, well, closing week. Thankfully, I chose not to pick up any game reviews, because I couldn’t remember having to have so much to write.

Saturday gave me a few hours off so that I could go attend Li Mei’s farewell lunch. I gave her a Magic 8 Ball. Because, well, we needed magic sometimes to make decisions.

I’m also owing her something else, which is now at the stage which requires me to daydream dangerously. Like when driving home in the heavy rain. Thankfully, Malaysian traffic is nowhere near Indonesia‘s. Constant vigilance is required but not compulsory.

I expect to be in Part 1 when I get back from Penang. Hopefully.

Right then. Goodnight folks.

A quick one before I head to bed;

Tomorrow I’ll be flying to Jakarta for the regional finals of the Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship 2010.

The first time I heard about it, it sounded like something a bunch of scientists with lab coats and clipboards would do in a room full of motherboards, but after checking out the reports of previous championship finals on the net, I’m now rather excited.

I guess, in a way, it’s sorta like building the faster race car, or creating that battle robot to put in an arena and watch as they duke it out for the prize. In a geeky way, it looks incredibly fun.

I’m not sure I’ll be getting Internet there, but I hope there is. There’s also a day where Gigabyte will take us out on a post-championship Ayer Island chill-out, where the GOOC handbook states that we shall ‘Enjoy the sun and beach on a private island’. Whatever that is, I highly doubt they have Internet.

But yeah, so I’ll be pretty much missing for the better part of the weekend. Drop a message when the Third Reich of the Goats decided to invade in their milk bottle spacecrafts.

Goodnight people

It might be a case of ADD, or perhaps I simply left any form of Concentration a couple of years back, tangled somewhere with that last bit of rationality and functional brain cells.

At any rate, I think it’s highly problematic. Not being able to concentrate on one single thing for a period of over two minutes is worrisome. To phrase it into analogical effect, it’s the difference of an orderly line compared to a chaotic mess of anarchic commuters to a public transportation service. That’s bad. And it causes delays.

Maybe it can be cured medicinally. Maybe there’s a sort of pill that can let me concentrate for an hour and tap on the full potential of every single second of it, letting me reap the benefits of the time-space continuum and the very fabric of dimensions.

Something that can let me read up on computer overclocking without having to jump off and visit TVTropes every two minutes. Where the heck are our alchemists?

As per my usual conformity to the fine art of procrastination, I now find myself revising about overclocking a fair too late for comfort. In the days of college it’ll mean that I have to pull out an all-nighter. For now, I decided that I could get the final stretch of cramming done masterfully within the confines of tomorrow. That’ll probably mean at midnight.

Or during the flight to Jakarta.

Or the night at the hotel itself.

Shoot.

That’s it; by tomorrow evening, I’ll technically become the most knowledgeable person at the office when it comes to overclocking. It’s not arrogance talking. It’s what I have to become, or I’ll find myself in the bug pits of Skull Island.

Okay. To bed, so that I can wake in time for the event tomorrow.

Watching A City Fall Asleep

It works as long as you can keep awake, by which point, if you kept at it for an hour or so, you’d be wondering why you were doing it in the first place.

(And proceeded to either the TV, bed, or another hour on the Internet).

It’s a little like abstract art; that subtlety in pointlessness that only has a point if you make it to be. It’s actually quite beautiful.

(And, undoubtedly, very pointless, especially after that first hour).

I got to do that thanks to the great folks at Nokia, who made sure that I’m on the 9th floor at the very least, which has a generous view of the (Singaporean) Fountain of Wealth and the streets that encircled it. They also made sure that I’m well fed, well entertained and well exhausted, with an Amazing Race type game to keep us occupied for the evening. It was fun, and tiring, but mostly fun.

Back home now, and doing my bit to fulfil that self promise, though frankly not to the extent of what I would’ve liked.

But I’m dreadfully tired.

And I’m just short of falling asleep writing (typing) this. Maybe a little more tomorrow.

And then, of course, there’s another promise I have to fulfil. I shall get to that. Tomorrow.

Goodnight folks.

Hiatus

Unh. I guess I’m having it bad.

Perhaps I should make it imperative that I actually try and write something daily. Doesn’t matter anything. A hundred words, two hundred words. Just to make sure I don’t fall into the same slump, where it’s mucky and deep, but not uncomfortable.

This is that moment where I ask someone to give me one tight, piercing slap (preferably strong enough to send me to the heavens) so that I fall asleep and go back to the clouds.

Too long in the mud makes my socks soggy.

*****

So we came back from the funeral (weeks ago, go figure), which went well. I tried my best and read the prayers - a difficult task, considering that there’re parts where you would have to do it like you’re singing, and parts which read so fast that it’s also probably impossible to do with English. They last as long as two to three hours, and we did it for two nights.

Then we followed the hearse to the crematorium, and paid our last respects, and washed our hands and face with a bowl of chrysanthemum-soaked water, and left the place wearing red (tradition, apparently, for funerals for people aged a hundred and over).

Uncle Fook shot a video of it, which he put up. I still haven’t watched it. Mainly because I know I won’t take it so well.

(and if you’re actually curious, interested or just plain bored, you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggzk-bgZ-gE)

The rest, as they say, is that drive home where life goes back to normal.

*******

Tomorrow will be another flight to Singapore. Two days after coming back, they’re sending me to Jakarta, where I’ll be reporting a motherboard overclocking championship. I’m surprised that such a thing actually existed.

But I’m looking forward to it more than most. Surprisingly, it’s not about Jakarta, but the actual championship.

I wonder how it’ll be like. I wonder if commentators would be present, and if they’d go; “The GD7 looking great today; he’s all in to gun for that top spot, after that overheating fall-out last year. And he’s revving it up and ho, look at him go!”

Naturally, it means that I’ll be doing a fair bit of reading about overclocking. I could hear the brain cells groaning.

To bed now, else I’ll oversleep for breakfast tomorrow.

Good night, peops.

When I thought about - and I do, in sporadic periods, throughout the day - it felt like I was merely giving excuses to myself. Like in the way people try to justify a lie by simply weighing out between the bad or the better points, and sticking to what that make them feel good, regardless. When I thought like that, and when I thought about thinking that way, I felt like I’ve probably lost a heart somewhere.

Sunday morning I woke up to pass my mom a phone call. Shortly afterwards she told me my great grandmother passed away.

The first thing that came to my mind was; this is probably the right time to cry.

But I didn’t.

I left my mom to dress and lay down on the couch. When she came out of the room I went to put my arm around her shoulder, listened to her talk and weep, not really talking back. Because I think we both know what we were going to say, and what we both really thought, so I didn‘t say a word.

Whatever I did then felt fake. Like an obligatory action. It felt like I just did it because it was right.

I felt like I was indifferent. I didn’t know if it was age, or because I knew personally that this day would come. When I was younger, when those ramifications in the night led me to question the questionings of death, I would think of my great grandmother and, reminded of her age, of her growing fragility, I would quietly weep in my dreams. Maybe I’ve wept so much in the solitude of nights and nightmares that I couldn’t weep today.

I loved my great grandmother. I might not have been closest to her, and she to I, but I loved her nonetheless.

Later I fetched the mother out for breakfast with the grandmother, to talk about the news and the immediate plans. On the way back we talked about it, and said the things we meant to say. My mother then mentioned about ‘Hei Chung’, which sounded different from what we normally call the funeral procession.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“It’s a celebratory procession. Where it’s considered a happy thing for one to live more than a hundred years old and passed. It’s a happy thing.”

I knew then, as I’ve always knew it, somehow, that it is true. My great grandmother was a hundred and four years old. She was witness to the coming of the millennium, and lived into its first decade. She has children that gave birth to children that gave birth to children; generations of a family that has gone to have their own. And I certainly hoped that she had lived a wonderful life, and seen all there is in the world that she needed to see.

Whether or not it’s a good life is not for me to say. But I hope for it. Living for 100 years, one is bound to have at least seen one part of a good life, no?

And I hoped, but in my heart, I already knew. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t cry.

********

I always felt that, as a writer, as a means of a parting gift there should always be a written eulogy. And I’m set to write it, only that it dawned to me eventually that I knew very little about my great grandmother.

All this time, I figure that all I knew about her is that she was old, that she was Teo Chew, thatshe was kind and caring, and that she had the greatest memory. Other than that, I knew nothing.

I just found out her name yesterday. It was Lee Hou. It was a pleasant name; in a way, it sounded like “You’re Fine.” Or “Everything’s Good.” Lee Hou. “You’re Fine.”

My earliest memory of my great grandmother were those days where I could find her in my grandmother’s house. Back then I was in primary school, and both the parents would be at work by the time school finishes. For that period, instead of taking the bus home I took a smaller bus to my grandmother’s house, where there’d be warm food to eat and aunts to terrorize. For one time, I can’t remember how long, my great grandmother moved in to live with my grandmother.

Back then great-grandma (or Ah Pak, as we call her) could still walk; she had a cane where the top handle was the painted head of an eagle, with an eye that stared out with determined ferocity. I used to think it was the eagle that helped her to walk, like she was resting her hand on a flapping eagle that took her to wherever she needed to go, its wings like a personification of a strong spirit.

If you’d had talked to her, my great-grandma, when she was in her room in Penang where we’d go visit her, she would tell you the way I used to act whenever I arrived from the school bus at my grandmother’s house. And she would do so with exact detail; something which I’ve never ceased to be amazed of. She would tell you how I liked to lie down on the floor and pedal myself about (like mopping the floor with my back, she’d say), or how I used to spend a long time during baths to play with water. Or how once she asked me something and, not knowing a single word of her dialect, I thought she called me stupid. And it wasn’t till years later when they told me she actually meant something else.

What I remember most fondly were the afternoons that we spent together. I would watch, for the thousandth time, those Disney cartoons that were kept in my grandmother’s house, and my great-grandma would exclaim, sometimes excitedly, during the climaxes, though I never knew what or how to tell her. Sometimes we’d play cards, and it was always either Blackjack or The Fishing Game, which were the only two I remember she could play.

She would move back to Penang eventually, and I’d still come home to my grandmother’s for the rest of the year until we had a maid. After that, the only time I got to see my great-grandma was in every trip down Penang with my family. It was something we did without fail. And every time she would recognise who I am, and recited the days in my grandmother’s house.

The last time I held her hand and kissed her cheek and said goodbye was December last year. That felt like a long time ago. And today, it felt like I couldn’t have ever done it enough. But that’s the way death would make you feel.

My family and relatives would tell me that my great grandmother was a strong woman, a kind woman, a caring and kindred soul. I would remember her as the one person that could always make me feel soothed, somehow, whenever I see her. Even when she was so old that she couldn’t walk, and that her hands could always seem so frail, so brittle, I would somehow feel fine. Like the eagle of the walking stick, holding her hand made me feel like I’d get somewhere. And I’d be fine.

That was her name, after all. You’re Fine.

Everything is Good.

*******

On Sunday morning, the clouds hung low and dark and heavy, and I thought that it was prophetic in the way we always make the weather to be. But in the afternoon the clouds lifted and vanished, and the sun turned the tarmac impossible to walk upon, especially on worn orange slippers, and there was this quietness in the town and in the neighbourhood that felt like how Sunday himself would spend the day.

And I went out to get the house telephone fixed, along with a haircut at a barber who was suddenly extremely meticulous . The brother cooked Pasta ala Carbonara for a friend, and I got to eat some (it tasted like Carbonara, only that it dried up a little too quickly to enjoy). I squeezed some Final Fantasy in between chores. And I did something that involved gloves and a drainage pipe, which I would hope to forget soon enough.

Come dinner, and a trip to the Pasar Malam for it, it felt completely like any given Sunday.

In some ways I thought I could hate myself for it, but I didn’t. There was one thing that we all understood that day.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading down for the funeral. We’ll get to see her for the last time, and walk with the last with her. Life, after that, goes on.

And it keeps going.

There’s a spider in this blog. If you left your mouse pointer over at the white area, he’ll approach it to investigate.

Unfortunately, I can’t feed him. But the koi and turtles from the same site could be.

I’m not particularly too awake to properly blog, but if I don’t do this tonight I doubt I ever would for the rest of the month. In one way, I guess I’m forcing this bit of writing. But if I don’t get the fire stoked, in ways or the other, the furnace is just going to put itself out.

A full month is an incredibly long time to not update. I had thought the week after Singapore would give me a night or two, but things picked up faster than I expected, and when the dust from closing week finally settled, I caught the brother’s fever and that lasted a week. A fitful of coughing later and it is already May, towards the mid of it. It’s like the time-monks simply forgot to redirect time to that particular, um, time.

(Dear lords; one month and I can’t make any sense. At all).

Anyway, a few things to note here, if it matters in any way:

The Beautiful Blogger Award stint managed to invigorate The Intricate Swirls of Miss Vic. Well, I figure it’s closer to a three pulls with the defibrillator; the rest is all surgeons and natural recovery. At any rate, swing by to throw in your support!

And once you’ve done with that, Teh Ais Limei wrote this fantastic piece about Amir Muhammad’s book on Yasmin Ahmad. Probably pretty late to feature here, but if it’s one way to get the word out, I suppose it isn’t so late. Check the comments too!

And The Twistedtrainsistor just plugged in the third part of Marjorie's Margarine in her blog (took her long enough). Don’t worry, she has kindly left part 1 and 2 linked up. Swing by for (immensely) rare fiction from her.

Aaaand that’s about it. Nothing this sleep sodden mind could remember or perpend any more.

Maybe I’ll fare better tomorrow.

The Price of Bacon

There was this air of foreboding when the plane touched down yesterday. If I would illustrate it, it felt like sailing towards dark, damning clouds that roll out from the distance, with the darkness and cold that was quick to envelope, extracting a quick and desolate “Oh Crap”.

(It later turned out to be indigestion, most likely caused by the large amount of bacon I ingested at the hotel breakfast spread. Rolling clouds of discomfort indeed.)

No bit of foreboding got me to this, however; shortly after settling down to unpacking the bag, the dad told me that the car repair bills - as car repair bills tend to be - might have just escalated beyond budget and expectation. I felt like my soul got ripped off, and it’s now still tangled to the ceiling fan, and I’m not yet in the mood to retrieve it.

I’ll leave it there till Monday.

Tomorrow’s Singapore trip turned out to be very real, and very confirmed. So I’ll be boarding a flight at 2p.m tomorrow to fly down south, to get to tour a recycling plant of all things. It still sounds incredibly exciting in my head.

I’m struck with the sudden revelation that if tomorrow’s itinerary ended up being inexistent, meaning that I can actually craft up my own, I won’t be able to figure out what to actually do.

The scenario is suddenly terrifying. I arrive at a (partially) foreign land with a little money and given time to my expense. Deciding to stay in my room for the remainder of 10 hours seem like a self-suicide condemnation. Wandering out aimlessly will get me nowhere or, very possibly, lost. And things happen to people who get lost in a foreign lands. Helicopters and mooks with paper bags get involved. Sometimes the government.

A possible alternative is to now browse through the Internet for touristy things to do. Otherwise, I can go with the spirit of adventure and stay in my room for the remainder of 10 hours, exploring the vastness of Singaporean TV.

Time in my hands always go to waste.

But I can be hopeful; maybe there is an itinerary after all, and they’ll tell us tomorrow that we’ll have to be whisked around like lambs in a shopping mall where they’ll tell us not to look if a meat shop comes to view. It’s a comforting thought.

I suppose it’s for tomorrow to decide.

*****

How to Train Your Dragon is just about the best Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda. Considering the rate of movies they release yearly (two or three this year; it’s almost a monopoly) and their bar of standards, this is actually a fantastic accomplishment.

I’d say Dreamworks is starting to grow mature. They might’ve been already if I hadn’t found the trailers to Shrek 4Ever After and Megamind (released a little too close to Despicable Me, don’t you think?).

At any rate, great year for animation. On foresight, at least. But I dare it to best last year’s offerings.

But before the year gets populated by all manner of other animated features, go and catch How to Train Your Dragon. In 3D if you must. Take your kids if you have em; little kids, big kids, old kids. They’ll all have a good time. It’s just that good.

And, if you’re the type to check out movie soundtracks, John Powell’s composition for the movie is a refreshing mix of action, adventure and Celtic.

It shall lull me to bed now.

Oidhche mhath

Lost in Backlog

This is what you get for not updating when the supposed post was fresh in mind. Now I’ve completely forgotten what I had intended to write.

I think it had something to do about the Law of Averages, as read at Mr Jam’s Curious Diary. Or maybe about how the world had decidedly went into a laundry dryer and came out tumbled and tangled, though the comfortable warmth afterwards is something oddly soothing.

Or maybe because there was this one time where I wished the escalators wouldn’t pitch me back onto the floor when it went up to the end, but start eating me from the shoe up while I scream helplessly as blood sprayed around like a broken fire hydrant.

Nope. I can’t remember nuts. I suppose I’ll just keep going with whatever I’ve got.

Wrapped about a week ago, but because the car isn’t back yet, resulting in me mooching off at the mother’s car at any given opportunity, I haven’t had the mood to do anything else but play God of War 3 (which I’ve finished this evening, and came away satisfied but a little sad). Project March is in development hell and the graphics card just died again after three days of use since it came back from the repairs.

Gee, it felt like a whole week of bollocks.

Will most likely be in Singapore this Wednesday, which is something about recycling. It sounds much more exciting in my head.

Right, because I have several stuff backlogged, it’s high time I start clearing them;

*******

There must be some sort of mistake, because this shouldn’t happen to me.

I guess the whole system sort of messed it up, and delivered the wrong award to me, which should rightfully be something like;

There’re other awards, that I’m aware of, but it’s definitely either this or the Award of Blogging Excellence, First-Class Honours in the Conveying of the Amazingly Insightful and Utterly Inspirational Content Through the Medium of Blogging and Pigeon Carriers Sponsored by the Venerable Blogger.com (or ABE: CAIUCTMBPCSVB Award for short).

But the mistake has already been made, so I shall dutifully perform the tasks as stated by the Rule, which are:

1. Thank & link the person that gave you the award.

2. Pass this award onto 15 bloggers you’ve recently discovered and think are fantastic beautiful dastardly

Beautiful and Dastardly too.

3.Contact said Blogs and let them know they’ve won the award (I’m too lazy for this).

4. State 7 things about yourself.

Therefore:

1) Both Teh Ais Limei and the Twistedtrainsistor gave me this award

2) a. The Winners of the Beautiful Blogger award:

- Teh Ais Limei and the Twistedtrainsistor, but since they’ve already won twice, I’ll give them both Incredibly Honorary Mention Which By Default Means They’re Winners and Are Awesome At the Same Time.

- The Intricate Swirls of Ms. Vic, which is in a bit of a slump now; this award will hopefully reinvigorate it.

- Creme Et Noir. Her constant, consistent updates have been inspirational, and her excellent writings just keeps getting better.

- Thissucksmonkeyass (or True Story of What Was). Read and you’ll know (and who says you can’t award a family member?)

- Where Rachel is Idle and Mom is Exasperated, and also where she writes entertaining pieces and show that delightful weirdness which is her beauty.

-Heck, pretty much everything in my link-list.

2) b. The Winners of the Dastardly Blogger Award:

- The Curious Diary of Mr Jam, for the fact that it’s NSFW. Why? Because in the world of office jobs and the 9-to-5s, Mr Jam’s blog (or column, whichever you prefer) is the secret paragon of glimmering hope that keeps this depressingly gray world not so gray. It is the blog that office superiors, those that wield the chain-whip and the Taser of Obedience, can smell in the air as the computer monitor radiates out, which will prompt them to say, “What’s this? What’s this in your monitor? Mr Jam? You DARE VIEW MR JAM IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD REGIONAL MANAGER? TRAITOR! HEATHEN! Guards! Seize this man!”. In the world of office jobs and the 9-to-5s, Mr Jam is like Confucius’ Scriptures in the Qin Dynasty, the Books of Nazi Germany and Fahrenheit 451, the Propaganda of the People or the One Ring of Middle Earth. It is the Hope in Pandora’s Box, sealed in the swirling, convoluted forms of Evil, Fear and Corporate Cruelty. Mr Jam is the Saviour, and he’s getting us killed in the office. We don’t care though, but our magazine articles do.

- Neil Gaiman's Journal, which is home to his Oracular Magic Crystal thing, and also where his genius shine even when not penning the next amazing novel. It’s dastardly because he’s dastardly himself, but in a very good way.

- Boltcity, which belongs to Kazu Kibuishi. Once you get started with his web comic and marvel at his amazing art, you’ll end up hopping into every artist in his link list too. When that happens, your only means of salvation is to hop into TVTropes, but a similar fate awaits you there.

3) I’ll skip this one here.

4) 7 things eh?

- I’m fat.

- I live in Kajang (with my parents)

- I have 5 dogs.

- I live with my brother too. He hurts me.

- I have a brain infected with some sort of fungus, which is now growing and taking on all sorts of mutations, and the doctor says that one day it’ll grow out of my nose and attach itself on my left arm, slowly turning me into a Fishman - the servants of Cthulhu. He has given me pamphlets on the Fishman Help Institutions and Training Centres and has directed me to a few GOO churches (I’m considering St. Lovecraft’s) where I can start getting counselling and prepare myself when I inevitably become a Fishman. After that I move to Innsmouth and into the Fishman hostel and start serving the GOO, which the doctor says isn’t a bad thing, because I should be honoured to be able to serve the GOO, though I still can’t understand why my parents cry whenever they see the green stalk growing out of my nose.

There! I’m done. I’d have an acceptance speech but I can’t think of one. So I’ll just say Thank You, and it’s directed to everyone I’ve mentioned above.

********

Phew. That felt like the storm after laxative. I guess I needed that.

I’ve kinda concluded that life isn’t quite so bad - even if it is, and it happens - if you simply create an Optimistic bin and dump everything inside. Then you get the good, worthwhile parts filtered out. For example; the day I wished the escalators would eat me in a painfully gory manner was the same day I went to work and bustled along happily knowing that what comes after is a great thing (even if I screwed it up. I think).

Not that it really helps in this big, great life that stands at point of the rock, tipping everywhere the wind blows and crashing down when it gets too hard.

Cest la vie.

Bonne Nuit!

Strings from up Above

"Who flies these things?"

Tomorrow is very well the start of Closing Week, so I figure I should update before I’m too paralysed to do it (or start giving the excuse that I’m too paralysed to do it, the same day I slam dunk from the three point line). (I can’t slam dunk from the three point line but I can do it in NBA Street. That counts.)

The car is now at the repair shop, which is going to cost me a good 2 thousand bucks, thanks to the dad, because he figured I couldn’t live with a fraying door panel and some minute windscreen problem, forgetting that I really couldn’t live being 2 thousand bucks in debt.

But well, I’ll take it as redecorating the car. It was going to happen eventually anyway.

(When I’m the King of Sheba, and I have golden maidens to sell for millions).

And I appreciate the dad in finding the people to fix it all the same.

Everything makes my buying the PS3 all the more regretful. I’ve had a (horror!) thought of selling it off while it’s still new, but there’s this part of me who knew I would die of depression if I did it.

No games for next month. Well, maybe FF13.

(Or God of War 3. Each or either.)

****

Not much for me to remind anyone, but Script Frenzy starts in 11 days.

Don’t know what it is? Here: www.scriptfrenzy.org

I know, I know. NaNoWriMo was hard enough. But hey; writing projects never hurt, no?

Speaking of projects, I owe a story to Li Mei. I’ve named it Project March but it doesn’t seem like I’ll be finishing it by March after all.

Here’s to hoping that it’ll get me back to writing, uh, more pointless stuff.

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

“We’re all puppets to Gods. They’re up there with their strings on us, making us move and dance and get tangled up with everything else.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“That they can walk you off a cliff if they want to? Sure thing.”

“Doesn’t this sort of make the fact that you can actually blame something else when bad things happen?”

“…yeah.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

****

Goodnight, people.