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).