My Mind Now In Paris

On the streets, as I would imagine it. I would be walking, and getting lost while trying to take everything in. Paris would sing to me, all sounds and whispers - and as Paris would be at her soul, it would be Jazz.

Yeah, that would be nice.

But I couldn’t be there. Not without many, many years of working. And saving. Not without a little foresight and a goal. I suppose Paris now would have to be the postcards, and the pictures, and the movies. It could be a dream, too. Maybe.

That could be just that, though; woolgathering on a rainy Saturday, while Paris sings to me in a different way, through the headphones, and composed by Michael Giacchino.

I can't blame myself. After all, all hearts, in all manner of love, find their way to Paris.

My Heart, though, is really Somewhere Else.

A Little Caffeinated, and Waiting.

It was supposedly something to kill my Friday, stated as such with the disclaimer that it would, as certain as the sender may think of it, murder my Friday in all literal sense. The sender also told me that it was a Wall of Text. At 77 pages, it could be.

But a guy like me, who does little reading, or perhaps just much less than he should, can tell you that this particular Wall of Text is very climbable. And once I had set my rappels right and made sure I had that courage to do the Wall the justice it deserves, I began reading.

That was 77 pages ago (ok, I cheated; I didn’t go through the Works Cited section, because I wanted to get to the ending and referential formats confuse me still). And I have not done it justice, because my horrendously low sense of academics meant I have difficulty in understanding parts of it (of which is entirely my fault) and that I have no capability of producing any form of coherent and intelligent comment to this work. In fact, my simple brain can only say this, in the way that I have always said it, to the sender and to everyone that would care to listen:

She is Amazing.

It normally only takes a sight, and a little Get-to-knowing her to come to this conclusion. But reading this, the apparent became certainty.

I am Amazed.

She would call me biased. She would rap my head if she could, and then tell me that it was much less to do with her than it has to do with fortune or luck or guidance. But I would’ve rapped her head back, and told her that it takes someone Amazing to turn that fortune and luck and guidance into this amazing piece of study.

“So what?” she might say, and I imagine that a soft frown would decorate her face, and she might divert her eyes to think or to muse. “Other passionate people, with hard work, could’ve done it.”

But other passionate people might not have the Love you have for your work.

If her work was indeed a Wall of Text, in the figurative sense, then it would’ve been a crafted wall. It has its patterns, surely; all Wall of Texts do. But it also has a Life. There are not many walls in the world, figurative or literal, that has a Life. A wall may only have a Life if it’s given one. Usually, it’s when Love is poured into it, as part of the concrete and the bricks.

I touched the Wall, and it touched back. And when it did, I knew I owe it to myself to finish it. For the first time in a long time, I made coffee and sat down to read. Coffee not because reading it is boring or sleep inducing, but because I wanted to rid of the day’s inkling of tiredness that followed me home from work.

And I read, and made sure I understood as best as I could. I read and found myself learning. Best of all, and this I wasn’t even surprised to discover; I read and I am intrigued.

It was a study. And if I could’ve given her the marks, I would’ve marked it as Perfect.

She would’ve rapped my head again and told me it has flaws. Maybe her lecturer would, too (not the rapping. But I imagine a similar form of pain induction, perhaps in a glare or a Tsk, because I would’ve been a Know-It-All and probably deserved it). But I would point out that it’s perfect because you can feel the Love in every word written.

Love in the subject. Love in the discovery. Love in the learning and the teaching and the devotion to it.

It was, above all, a work of Love. Those are always the best works, and flawed as they may seem to be, they’re Perfect in that sense.

But where’s my constructive argument? Where are my intellectual comments, my justifications and my dissection of the study laid upon an autopsy table section by section so that I may prove to you that it is Perfect? I can’t, because I’m not academic. I can’t because I’m not worthy of it. I can’t because my thought process has already regressed back to its primitive state, and soon I would be back on my hands and knees, trying to figure out the mechanics of peeling bananas.

You have nothing but my words. And I can only tell you that it’s true.

In my hard drive now sat a study I made; the only one I’ve ever done. It was, at one point, something like a Wall with promises. On the billboard, it promised a lot. When it came to constructing it, however, I used cheap materials and cut corners and botched it. It’s now not a wall, but a piece of wood. With words on it, and arrows, that point out to people that this is a Wall.

Thankfully, people aren’t fooled. Though they gave me marks for the effort. I guess it was the arrows.

The funny thing is that part of this wood was actually Love. It had nails jutting out of it, but they were the bits I hammered it. It was ugly, but you can touch it, and it’ll touch back. Though it’ll give you tetanus.

One day I might make use of it. Burn it, as firewood, or send it out to sea, as part of a ship. Or maybe hang it up, as a memento, of how to start something with Love and forsaking it for the sake of ease.

Now, though, I leant it against her Wall and stepped back for the bigger picture.

Amazing how one can feel so small, and so wishing to be big at the same time.

The 3^rd

Cold Shower

In the hardest of rainfalls;

It was dark.

It was cold.

It was harsh, and loud, and blinding.

It was, above all, lonely.

It was everything that was ever bad about the hardest of rainfalls, except that I remembered you. And how it is that thunder calms you.

And I felt like I could weather through, somehow. I felt like I could feel your hands in mine.

And I could.

******

Well, that was a crazy week.

It largely had to do with the fact that Chinese New Year couldn’t be happening anytime sooner, and to make sure we get the magazine out in time, magazine-closing happened earlier. Way earlier. And if you ever see me out on the streets, mumbling and glaring and generally being bitter about Chinese New Year – all that red and pomp and those insanely, painfully saccharine songs - you’ll know that this would be one of the reasons.

I don’t think Chinese New Year hate ever hung so low and dark over the office, or at anywhere for that matter, even if nobody said a word or complained. We’d walk and bustled, and the hate would brush our hair and tickle our ear and muddle our minds with thoughts of massacre and suicide with Dettol.

For that week, every evening, it rained. And the rains then were heavy and harsh.

It would’ve been forlorn. Or depressing. Or lonely, because there had been days like these in the previous year, and they had all been lonely days.

But it wasn’t this time. Because of the Words and Songs and Being There.

Because, in one way, there was an Angel. And I was bestowed with the above.

It kept me going, even after I’ve gone through.

And I go a little further still.

The Second

Hello There

There's no story here.

The girl wasn't a lost girl. That man wasn't a man who found her. It wasn't an airport or a terminal or a place where people meet and people separate. It wasn't a place of departures and arrivals. It wasn't a place of Lost and Found. It wasn't a Start of A Special Relationship.

It was a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, and the girl and the man were complete strangers. They shared a look. I took a picture.

And I made up stories with it.

And it was about a lost girl and the man who found her, in a place where everything and everyone goes and leave, and people get lost and found. There would be a Start of A Special Relationship.

And, maybe then, there would be a story.

This is a special kind of night. It’s the way things fell into place, but we’re not talking about contrived coincidence or, as one may put it, fortune or luck or fate. It’s just that, being here, headphones on to Jack Johnson, and waiting for a dream to come; it’s a kind of serene pleasure I’ve probably never had. And it feels great, in a quiet kind of way. Therefore, it’s special, as special goes.

It had rained. Heavily. I drove away from work and into malignant clouds, which proceeded to throw chaos and ensured the roads were jammed. And maybe because of the room’s comfort, made cosy by the aftermath of the weather’s toil, I fell asleep right after dinner. It was wholly unintentional, and I sank into sleep the few minutes I sat on the bed while waiting for the computer to boot. My dreams were bright and unreal and formless.

I woke up with a panic, but it was only 11.30.

Part of me wanted to work, but the most of me knew how pointless that would be. The dregs of sleep cantered and frolicked, and scattered my flock of thoughts.

There’s no way this post would be anywhere meaningful or worth anything, but Rule 1 was to get the words down no matter what. And as Sam Vimes put it; if you give yourself any reason to not do it, sooner or later you won’t.

(Or something in that effect. Terry Pratchett is too much of a genius for me to quote, and my flock of thoughts are scattered).

And I shall end this here, as this. Not much of a thing to mark a night I deem special, but I think I knew it in myself that the nights for the past month had been special ones themselves.

Nay. It’s really the days. Or rather, the Time.

Life, right now, is special.

The First of Fifty Two

White Out

It was a street I’ve never been on. Perhaps once upon a time, by chance, I had, but not in recent memory. Yet the unevenness of the pavement felt familiar, and the time I made frozen in a frame reminded me of walks and strides and runs I’ve never made, on a street miles and miles away from home.

One may say that there are two streets that’ll look the same, but truthfully;

Do they end up in the same place?

*****

We’re essentially two crazy people onto something crazy again (but we’re of two different kinds of crazy – Teh Ais Limei's is an Awesome kind, the kind that people cock eyebrows at but will inevitable cheer as she creates the next great masterpiece. Mine is the kind which people run over with cars, calling the asylum at the same time, while the cops participate in sinking slugs into my thigh). And what we’re on is (a) Project 52, where we’ll be posting a new picture per week, for a year, and write a little something about it. Her entry is already up, which you can see here .

It’s crazy because we’re also essentially people with Lives going on. It’s also very much like you do, too, but if you have the time to even be here reading this (quite possibly, however, I’m simply writing this into empty digital space), heading out to take a picture that means something to you and then putting it up could be something nice. And something new, or fresh, or inspiring. And maybe even something magnificent.

So here’s a formal invitation to join us, should you feel like being crazy for a bit in life, and we could all do with some insanity to see life in its full. You might even discover something.

And if you’re saying Yes to this craziness, just tell us who you are and where we can see your pictures. We’re doing this as a commitment towards fun and stories, and there’s definitely much more fun and stories if more of you tag along.

So let us know if you’re in, and we’ll be there, to gawk, talk, drool and worship your picture.

Cheerios!

(You write a little something every day. That is Rule 1. It doesn’t matter if you’re too brain-dead to pen something remotely comprehensible, or if lethargy is eating at your consciousness. You get some words down, even a little bit. Even a single word. And you do your best to make it count.)

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

It started with a man named Odd Gleditsh.

(There’s nothing odd with Odd; it would really mean The Tip of the Blade, and it’s a nice name by Norwegian standards. This little snippet of information is taken from Neil Gaiman’s Odd and the Frost Giants, of which Odd Gleditsh is in no way related to.)

Odd Gleditsh was born into whaling. He whaled. And he whaled well enough to rise several ranks and made himself business supplier to a few whaling fleets. It was impressive, and he became successful enough. It was around 1920.

And somehow, being a man quite unlike most men, he saw something in Paint.

He started selling paint. And when the paint sold well enough, he started making them. He took over a bankrupt factory and resurrected it under the name Jotun Kemiske Fabrik. Odd died in 1990, but Jotun would live on to be one of the world’s most renowned paint manufacturers.

20 years after Odd’s death (in his pictures, he was a happy man. And there was a joy in his smile, which looked like he smiled from the heart, or perhaps from the brimming depths of his bank account), a man named Tan Heng Kai walked into a Jotun shop, opened – like the many thousands of Jotun shops across the world – in a Malaysian town named Kajang. There, he bought a Jotun paint. It was wood paint.

A month later, the tin of paint was opened and placed on top of several pieces of newspaper, and every quick successive moment, a brush would dip into it. And that brush would smear the paint over a wooden fence. Sometimes, if handled clumsily, some of the paint will fall on a hand. That hand would be mine.

And I would wipe it off with thinner, mostly unbothered, and continued with the painting while Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek came out of my mouth in the most terrifyingly tuneless ways.

Somehow, to that man named Odd Gleditsh, who made the company that made the paint that I had applied, with as much care as leisurely painting would give, to a fence that sat on a balcony that perhaps isn’t quite a balcony, I couldn’t decide if should hate him or be thankful for him.

But even so – and I realised this after I shut the tin of paint and replaced it back into the storeroom –, and if Odd had continued whaling and never sold paint, my dad would’ve still gotten something from Nippon. That, then, would’ve been another story.

And I'm not even sure why this is here.

***

I confess:

I had meant to continue writing the novel I had put off for a month. Only that I had really missed out the bit in the Rulebook of Writing (if there ever is one, and not written by someone) that one should, perhaps, really really refrain from putting off a novel for too long. That’s because one would simply forget the plot.

So I was really reading back what I (and my amazing partner) had written, and then erasing one small bit where I had written blindly into, and now I’m trying to plot something that wouldn’t come.

I’m a failure.

The good thing is that I have my drive to work tomorrow to plot, if I’m not too busy having my mind really in the clouds and deep into dreams of skies and stars.

So right now, I’m merely writing for the sake of writing something.

***

I am also waiting.

And I might not have to wait much longer anymore. In 10 minutes time, I’ll be delving into a kind of drug that isn’t administered through needles or by sucking powder or by inhaling smoke. All it takes are words, a voice and a face.

It’s a potent drug. And I am addicted.

Severely, addicted.

And it puts me higher than this.

Much, much higher

I bought the ticket, sat in the cinema, and was immediately surrounded by couples.

It didn’t occur to me that I could’ve gotten the corner seats, or somewhere front enough to put off other people, but my movie-going sensibilities were healthy and less bothered by the concept of being in the cinema alone, so it made me choose the seat smack in the middle.

I was the lone guy, still in work attire, hands crossed and waiting to watch an animated feature, a ‘Bah, Lovebugs’ already at the tip of my tongue and ready to jump off.

Everyone was couples there, except for that one guy behind me. He was the lamp post. And he was talking very little as to not appear so.

But I wasn’t quite alone, not really. I was watching it with someone in mind.

And I placed that thought on the spare seat beside me, and fed it popcorns.

***

Entangled

That's one hairy girl, Flynn Rider. You don't mess with them.

(Here’s a disclaimer, which I’ll put in very large letters, so that people don’t come and throw scissors at me later:

SPOILERS HERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

And it’s for the movie Tangled, titled Rapunzel in Asia, because Disney Asia either 1) Felt that Asians would not be familiar enough with the Grimm fairy tale or 2) They lack the marketing skills of Disney America, otherwise Lords Disney, or 3) They know Tangled is really a marketing sort of title, but kept Rapunzel anyway because they’re Disney and people will still pay them money for everything. Westerners. What idiots.)

I guess, in most ways, that me considering Tangled as the best animated feature of 2010 is perhaps utter bollocks. But it is the year’s best, to this writer’s honest opinion. Yeap. You’re probably staring at me now, mouth agape. The scissors in your hand is very throwable, and you’ve practised before, especially on unfortunate cockroaches. You know I’m really just being daft. 2010 was, after all, the year of How To Train Your Dragon, and Despicable Me, and Toy Story 3 (“Especially Toy Story 3,” you said, twirling the scissors. It catches the light and gleams). What Disney concoction, no matter how nice or cool, could ever trump this?

Well, it’s because (and in this writer’s honest opinion): It’s Friggin’ Disney. Wow, good throw. Got my ear there. Very clean.

But well, this Disney we’re talking about here isn’t the Disney that closed down their traditional animated studios and made Chicken Little. This is the Disney that has that spark for characters, storytelling, wonderful visuals and the good old Believing In Themselves. Like The Princess and the Frog, Tangled is very much a traditional Disney movie. Disney of Walt’s time. Disney of the Animation Renaissance, which they had started. Disney who knew what they were doing. Disney with that childlike wonder in their hearts, and the adult-like dedication to bring them out as imaginatively as possible.

Oh, missed me there. But it’s Okay; I dodged. Just wanted you to know that. Don’t feel so bad about yourself.

Alright, Tangled isn’t without its flaws. It didn’t start off too well, and I can’t exactly tell you why. But once the plot got along, taking these established characters into the wilderness and giving them alcohol, it became a life of its own. I got lost in it. I stopped feeling like I was watching a movie. I was caring about the characters, I was laughing and I was sad, and it didn’t matter if I had actually seen most of everything coming – I was already so deeply lost in it that it surprised me anyway. It only took the reality of the End Credits to being me back, and also only because cinema cleaners here have no respect for End Credit watchers.

It was like watching Disney in their prime again, getting swept along in that carpet ride, getting to know Hakuna Matata, wanting to be Out There or Part of Your World, and knowing that Love conquers all.

Sure, I may be wrong. I may be biased, and there’s perhaps one or two of you out there who know that I am. But if you’re ever a Disney fan, you do yourself a favour to watch Tangled, before it faded into the unattainable (until the DVD release). Because, well, It’s Friggin’ Disney.

Hoho, close one there, that one clipped my heel that Ah Ok, there goes the eye, you got the eye, haha, and yeap; oomph; the pancreas. Always the pancreas…

***

That was the technical reason, the movie critic in me. Here is the real reason, and also where the SPOILERS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD disclaimer come to play.

Our heroes were on a boat, and they said something. Something I had been waiting for them to say. And after that, the lanterns came.

And the Song came. They sang about meeting their dreams, or chasing after pointless ones. They sang about seeing each other. They sang about having new dreams. And we know, then, as the lanterns descent and lit the water and their eyes; that they dream of each other.

It took a Song, and the mass of floating lanterns, so beautiful and close and real, to make me know that I’m really dreaming, too. And I have a new dream.

You’re my new dream.

The Dreams Forgotten Today

This is one of those ruminative posts that are best left unread, but here's a ruminative picture anyway

Evening today, I took the DSLR up to the roof. It was up there with me, of course, for taking pictures, but what I had really wanted to do was to spend a few moments not thinking.

But nothing can outrun thought; that was the bit of wisdom you pick from Norse mythology, and I was soon standing by the fence to stare blankly into the sunset. The camera went to auto-sleep.

You don’t outrun Thought. You sit down and face it. It’s best to even serve crackers and tea.

There is a girl, and she is now across the ocean, pursuing a dream. For the months she was there, I had always considered her as amazing and courageous. And there really is no one I knew who is as brave as her, and in a time where most people dream only to fantasise, she dreamt to fulfil it.

Today she gave me her portfolio website. It was for an article she wrote on Twilight, and it was to follow up on our conversation on it.

I read the article. And then I read all of her articles. And then I turned off the computer and took the camera up to the roof, hoping not to think.

Why? Because I was suddenly struck with something. It was a curious feeling; parts of it were fear, mingled with memories and a cold stab of realisation. Inevitably in life, you get epiphanies. But epiphanies aren’t all warm, bursting realisations of feelings and the sudden will to decide – they are, in parts, the plunge into cold arctic waters, where the pain stabs you like needles, stopping your heart, freezing your mind.

A plunge into reality.

Have you ever dreamt?

You have to. Nobody can live a life without dreaming of something. The difference is whether the dream is realised or otherwise. Dreams become reality too. And dreams are hard to achieve.

I dreamt a lot, but I dreamt to fantasise. That is the fact.

When I was in middle school I dreamt to the point where dreams didn’t matter, because that was it; dreams that you make to smile to, to escape the conundrums of life as it rolls onwards into greyer and greyer territories. I had never given thought on dreams. It was a life where I was ready to live on without knowing where to go. I never studied. I never found a passion. I played and lazed and day-dreamt, sure that in spite of everything, there’s always a part of the world that I can find a place to stand in. And that was all I needed. Just a place to stand. I didn’t need to move.

I didn’t know what to do. Or rather, I never wanted to do anything.

Writing was a curious thing then. I loved writing. It helped with the fact that I day-dreamt and these dreams were mostly worlds as large as imagination could make. In my memory, I had never chosen a single exam essay that would need me to write a factual piece. It was always the stories.

One day a teacher said to me; “You write well.”

It was the greatest day of my teenage life.

“Have you ever considered a writing career?”

Truth be told, I hadn’t. It wasn’t until then that I had even dared to imagine that somehow, I could write into my adult life, and maybe even earn a living out of it.

But I was young, and naïve, and ignorant, and I had only dreamt to fantasise, so I said “No.”

“Have you ever considered Journalism?”

Journalism, then, was a new world in itself. I do not fancy myself as a good reader, and somehow it never occurred to me that journalists write. It was always as though they had simply walked out to get a story, walked back in, and read into the microphone. That would become the day’s headlines.

“You could try for it,” said the teacher.

And then, I felt, I really could.

That day onwards, I had a Dream. If stories were the only thing that I could make, and then, somehow, tell it out, with words or voices, then I would become a storyteller. It was a Dreamlike prospect. A modern day storyteller, a man with a book in one hand, a pencil in the other, and he would write stories that would stay and entertain and inspire. And Journalism, whatever it was, would be a way to start going.

When my father gave me the Talk, I told him I wanted to pursue Journalism. It was a joke to him. Here was a guy who had never read the newspaper, never seen the news, never written anything more than fiction and nonsense and he had the audacity to suggest a future in Journalism. But I was young and naïve and ignorant, and I had a dream to fulfil, so I insisted.

To my surprise, he allowed me so. In the coming months, he found the quickest way for me to do it, and with my mother in tow, we had a course to head towards. All I needed was 5 credits for my SPM. And that was all I took.

Before I applied for good, my father threw a newspaper page into my lap. It was an application form for The Star’s BRATs program. It was a program to encourage young and aspiring journalists, and that was what I was. That week, I sat up in the nights to fill it.

There was that bit that required me to write about myself, and why I would want to join. It was a difficult bit, because I could easily make something up for it, and knowing that I really couldn’t. It had to be true. And I still didn’t know why I wanted to do journalism, except that it would allow me to write.

It took many nights, but at the last night before I had to submit, I took the pen and wrote;

I want to be a journalist because I like telling stories. I want to be a storyteller, and what better stories can there be told but real ones?

(It was longer then, and much more glorified, but I’d be hard pressed to remember what I actually wrote).

I didn’t know if it was true then, what I wrote. But of all the things I would make up, that one would sound the truest. I put the form into an envelope and mailed it. A few weeks later, the acceptance letter came, and I found myself flying alone to Kelantan for the program.

For the days there, in the program, what I had written slowly became truer and truer.

I found that there were stories everywhere if you knew where to look. Sometimes it takes a single question. Sometimes it takes a sight. Sometimes, they’re the stories you tell just by the thought of it. They were both true stories, and made up stories. And I realised that I like it. I could do this. I could be a journalist, and write about true stories. And I would write them not as news, but as tales, as Stories, and people would read them and feel something.

I came back, and enrolled into TARC and straight into my Diploma in Journalism. For those two years, what I had written on the form stayed at the back of my head. I may not have been a good student, but I made sure I got through. And then I progressed to my Degree, which took me to UTAR.

Two years later, and those words faded. Those dreams, they became the ones I made to fantasise. They were bygone, and stupid. I wouldn’t say reality put me in check. It was more like complacency. And the slow realisation that I wasn’t cut out for Journalism.

The reason was simple, and it was because I am lazy. The other reasons were that I lacked every pretty much every skill you would need to be a journalist. I have the curiosity of a pebble. I cannot, for the life of me, ask questions, or make new ones as I go. I am bad with people, and till today the thought of meeting people terrifies me. What I had was just the passable skill to write, maybe articulate well enough to work slightly above average. That was all. I had the pen, but nothing else.

Soon, I was simply floating along. I did just enough to graduate. I held a degree for a job I can’t do.

And somehow, I found a job, and in Journalism. Today, I write for a living. When people asked, I would still tell them my passion is to write.

Only to write. I had forgotten what it was to be a storyteller.

This girl, now across the ocean, possibly asleep, and ready to wake up soon to face her challenges and fulfil her dream, has done more to me than just enlighten me on the subject of a contemporary hit of a vampire novel. What she had done is the equivalent of pushing me off the Titanic and letting me hit the icy waters, before pulling me out with a grappling hook.

It is this girl that, at the age of 18, had written for a newspaper, and what she had written were fantastic pieces. She has written them for five years, before flying off for her dreams. She has been writing the things I had wanted to write, but had never done so.

What have I done over the past 5 years? I had dreamt, and I let it fade. I studied for passion first, which slowly became a duty, and later just an obligation. And now, I write for a technology magazine, which is absolutely the best magazine one would ever hope to be hired into, but what had I truly written? The months were just me regurgitating tech facts and press releases. Try as I might to breathe life over my stagnating writing, and all I could manage were pathetic opening lines that just as easily would divulge back into boring, uninspired writing. I have not been asking questions at events, and while I justify it with the fact that there was really never any need to, the truth is that I never had a question. And every day I live with the fact that sooner or later people would find out that I’m barely anywhere knowledgeable in the tech and IT industry. I have only been getting by with sheer luck and the patience of others.

Where am I now?

What the fuck have I been doing?

And I’m here, really, to know that I’ve just been back to dreams that fantasise.

I have nothing to fulfil anymore.

You do not outrun Thought. You sit down and confront it. At best, you talk to it. It’ll talk back.

So here I am, confronting it, and talking to it for the first time in my life.

And here is me telling myself that I have a dream to fulfil.

I don’t know if it’ll work, or if I’ll just as easily regressed back to complacency, ready to accept life as the spot in which I can only stand in. I have no faith in myself. But these days – these past 14 days, where I am really living a dream that is wonderful, surreal, fantastic, and something that I couldn’t dare believe in, maybe it’s time that I start believing in myself to pull it through.

I think, for once, and truthfully, I want to dream to fulfil.

Somewhere at the back of my head is still the image of the storyteller, with his pencil and paper. Somewhere along with it is the other image of the guy who believed that he can, somehow, tell true stories.

I think it’s time I go and say hi to them again.

Day the First

("Product Placement.")

(And yes, it has nothing to do with the following post)

That night, when the year’s bridge met each other and my past and future self shook hands and went their own ways, I was on the roof of the house.

(You may be wondering why or how I got up there, and it certainly had nothing to do with an ability to leap tall bounds, or to teleport, or even anything involving a rickety ladder. It does, however, involve a lopsided spiral staircase and my father’s fantastic sense to design the top of our recently renovated house into a flat balcony, if it should be called a balcony.)

I had just gotten a Call, and I had flubbed it. But it had plastered me with this idiotic smile and light-heartedness that it left me dreamlike as I leant on the rooftop fence, the Shandy in my hand barely drunk, while I dreamt into the wind.

The fireworks came. The ones people secretly bought from friends who had friends who are dealers that dealt with dealers of these sorts of fireworks, and they lit lower rung of the skies with unsynchronised brevity. The bangs were thumps, deep and bass-y. I watched them bloomed and died, bloomed and died, bloomed and died…

It was beautiful, in its own unremarkable way.

I imagined a hand in mine, and I held that. And then I wished I was flying in the clouds, crossing oceans, passing mountains and planes and cities.

I finished the Shandy. Then a Text came.

And oh, did I wish.

***

You don’t normally spend your New Year’s Day painting gates, but that was what my parents got up to do, and I got slotted under the morning sun before I knew it, mentally noting that you do not, under any circumstances, wear a black t-shirt if you were painting under Malaysian sun.

Our first meal of the year was at Uncle Tony’s, and it was every of his claypot specialities. The New Year’s part was that we ended up being temporary workers to help clear the tables, them being extremely shorthanded. I had found it to be amusing and strangely fun, overlooking the fact that every other customer looked like they expected us to clean their tables too. Then they saw us sitting down to eat. Then they started clearing their own tables, as best as they could.

The day rolled into a pleasant afternoon, a pleasant evening, and a pleasant night barbecuing at an uncle’s house. Then I got home to a wonderful night.

And somewhere, in a voice that's very much me on High, said "This has to be the best New Year's Day."

"Ever."