A lot to do with standing.

(My internet’s been down for the good 5-6 days, and I’m glad that no one really thought me as dead, missing, severely incapacitated or just simply gone macadamia at the local hospital.)

I’m currently at The Book Fair thing, which is held at the PWTC for 10 days starting from the 4th to the 13th of April.


I’m having fun. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more refreshing for, well, the whole entire Industrial Training, and mostly this is because I’m more often than not so immensely busy that I barely have the time eat, and that is a good thing. I’m also learning. Loads. And publisher contacts! Somewhere closer to actually having to build your own contacts and getting the huge know-how.


Every morning now I tend to lecturers that flock in in the throngs (the theory, devised and written with much observation from both I and Asman my book-fair colleague, goes that lecturers and their respective book dealers will only enter our booth in numbers made to clog and confuse, so that we have to rush and be miserable). They will pick their books and place them on the floor, tell me which institution they belong to, writes them in a slip, and then leave me to scan the barcode which will later go into a book listing that they collect sometime later.


Mornings are hell. The pandemonium type, with lots of ducking down and saying Excuse Mes and How May I Help You Sirs and replacing books. After lunch hour things generally die down, but it can get hectic sometimes, with last-minute crowds.


All in all, I’m feeling great, albeit a little tired and sleepy.


My bosses are Melvin and Adrian (they are, to say, bosses for this particular book fair, because I was transferred from my company to a sister company and later to this one, which is a partner-company, and it’s not really confusing if I’d said it right), and they’re Singaporean. Really nice people. Melvin is the son of the company’s owner, apparently, who looks young, eager and experienced for his age. Adrian’s the senior worker who is a nice man, and generally jovial.


No Singaporean stereotyping here; these are good, able people who are good to people.


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


The trouble with ending the day’s work at 7 daily is that I don’t really have the time to go explore the fair, and when I finally do I realised that I regretfully managed to bring insufficient cash to properly fulfil my book-buying needs.


There is this booth at Hall 1, Selvan Holdings, I think, which sells best-sellers novels for a price of RM15 each (old copies or prints, the type people forgot and found as overlooked stocks in dusty boxes). I was there on Day 2 or 3 and thought it was heaven; you get Sheldon and Ludlum and Cussler there, in larger numbers, but what’s best is the few hidden gems that needed some patient scanning. I’ve snagged a Stephen King novel and a Terry Pratchet on sight; I didn’t even bother looking at the title and cover until I paid and left. Now I’m the owner of a 1981 copy of Cujo by Stephen King (with an interesting cover image of a sun with a dog’s face in it, menacing on a blue SUV) and Terry Pratchet’s Thief of Time (a Discworld novel, and my first Terry Pratchet without counting Good Omens, which he wrote with Gaiman).


Next stop: Selvan’s for the few Sheldon novels and whatever gems I overlooked, and also the PayLess Books stall which I heard has a Buy-1-Free-1 offer.


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


Maybe if I went to talk to her, she’d talk back.


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

I predict that my internet will not persistently and relentless continue its normally good and workable service after tonight, due to reasons of self-observation, so I think it’s fair to say that I might just go back into disappearing for a few days without much word or notice.


Not that I’ll be much missed, but I figure a friendly note in regards to my (sudden, if not usual, if you’re usually here) disappearance should justify my reasons to be unavailable and very well work as to not give people impressions that I might’ve cracked and taken the quickest route to see hell.


I should be getting these darned internet fixed, as soon as internship ends and I’m back to idling life at home.


(I’ll also take this opportunity to apologise to a few people whom I’ve forgotten to contact or reply their calls/messages/texts/e-mails, and also to people whom I contact regularly but is unable to do so these days. It’s been really busy and tiring, plus with the internet acting up it’s really frustrating.)


Well, I hope everyone’s okay. If you happen to drop by the book fair, look me and Ji Lin up in Hall 4. We’re under EMO and Alkem.

Cheers, and goodnight all.

Quietness, passé, stagnation and rot.

It can get pretty boring at work.


People see me rotting, I think. The see the stink lines rising and the air waver in acridness. No one took the liberty to roll me over yet, to check if I was dead, or still breathing but close to dead, and then call the cops to bundle me away in black body-bags (they probably need 2).

Nope. I sit at my table and ooze, green slimes and maggots and whatnot.

There are a few good things in the coming weeks that I’m looking forward to. One of them is the 16th of April, which means this damned Industrial Training comes to an end. Another is the decision of sending me to PWTC for the remainder of my days to help out with The Book Fair thing. Finally, days where I spend my time out in an environment both inviting and fresh, and while probably occupied with showing scholarly professors to their rightly books, is still something that beats the office monotony and utter tedium.


At least the Training is going out with a bang. At least I get fresh air.


(I think I complain a lot. I think my fellow course mates undergoing the same Training at different places are having it twice -- if not trice -- harder that what I’m forced to go through, but I think what I really wanted is having it hard.)


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


The evening skies these days all spell an imminence of storm.


The trouble is, said impending storm either never happen or it happens very much later than what you can predict. Come three to four P.M and dark clouds are a- gathering, with winds a-toiling and thunders rumbling and people immediately seeking for shelter or to shelter their stuff, only to find that the rain didn’t come, or came hours later.


Even the weather-reports seemed to shoot off target by miles; yesterday they told me to expect cloud and thunderstorms in the afternoon, but all I see was clouds at first, with the thunderstorms coming 5 hours later, and by then -- as people would put it -- it's already evening.

Because there is nothing better to do: MeMe!

Also because I got tagged by Goblok and Vic, which makes two tags, and some time ago when I was into memes I hear that if you get two, you gotta do two. But of course, those were the olden times, where getting up to 30 tags because you’re popular meant that you have to do it 30 times, provided you’re very much dedicated, so perhaps I shall overlook it.

And now, the meme:


1. When you look into the mirror…

The corridor appears, and the glass shatters and falls and I walk through it in the semi-darkness, taking right at every turn until the ground gives way and I fall and suddenly I’m back in the light, with my hair miraculously gelled.



2. When did you last saw someone picking their nose?

This man was at the LRT, reading a Chinese magazine that seems to be a cross between a gossip mag and a business bulletin, when he suddenly let the magazine down and coughed. After that he got up and left the train. It was last year.

The man beside him picked his nose.


3. What are you doing now?

I’m exploring the finer points of life, and this one involves an invariably and involuntarily reaction towards something that -- on most days -- I deem to be an activity for the days of lesser work and worries, and yet I am at work (which I should be taking seriously, no doubt) and typically wasting my time doing anything but anything work related, and one of them is this.


4. What would be the best birthday present?

To me or to be given to soeone else?

If it’s for me, then it should be on the lines of X360PS3WiiCliverBarkerNeilGaimanLeatherBoundBookMasterPenThreeWishes1)Handsome2)JessicaAlba3)LoadsLoadsLoadsofMoney

If it’s for someone else, a ball pen and a notebook and a witty card to justify its cheapness.


5. Who do you think is hot right this moment?

Marge Simpson


6. Who annoyed you recently?

The gadarnit producers of Avatar: The Last Airbender for not releasing the newest episodes.


7. Where did you meet your loved one? If you have yet to find, where do you plan to meet him/her?

I saw her at the mall, amidst of others so similar to her, that until today I wonder how was it -- as though by some heavenly guidance in all divinity of light -- that I found her. So I took her, got to know her, and shortly she was in my room, spending that night, and the night after, and the night after too, and now we share the same bed and I embrace her to sleep every night.

My darling bolster-pillow...


8. How will you use this meme for the benefit of mankind?

I think I’ve done it already. I’ve managed something that someone might read and possibly wonder why someone had to do something like this; I’ve given that person something to ponder about. Of course, eventually, I will do the inevitable task of Tagging more people into this endeavour, only that I don’t actually have anyone in mind but Ji Lin the Princess Snail, so I shall open this meme for all to do and post whenever and wherever they want.

They can even do it differently, which makes for a good few freshness, and they can do it something like this:




1. When you look into the mirror…







2. When did you last saw someone picking their nose?






3. What are you doing now?

4. What would be the best birthday present?








5. Who do you think is hot right this moment?






6. Who annoyed you recently?





7. Where did you meet your loved one? If you have yet to find, where do you plan to meet him/her?




8. How will you use this meme for the benefit of mankind?

http://freerice.com/




Something like that.


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

Hmm, more to follow, apparently.

A few interesting things to read.

I shall first, in all of my honour, present to you the link to Elizabeth Bear’s Hugo Nominated story, Tideline, which you can read here: http://www.elizabethbear.com/tideline.html

If you think Mark Twain is a boring writer with limited imagination, you can read Adam's Diary here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ExtrAdam.shtml and Eve's Diary here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/EvesDiar.shtml

Also, because it talked about meat, there is this: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml

This one because it’s so interesting: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TherMan.shtml

And this one for the roll and because I love it: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/MaggMiso.shtml

Lastly, and perhaps not quite a big deal at any rate, I’ve gotten something up in Monochrome Smogs, and it’s a short story commissioned by Ji Lin to abate my boredom at work. Drop by and give a comment.

And that, I swear, is the end of it.

In my dream there, there was a neighbourhood.


It was night and the streetlights were on, orange incandescent and dim. Double storey terraces, flanked by overgrown trees and self-maintained foliage that did more to obscure than beautify, ran along the road and turned itself into a disguised maze.


I didn’t know the place. It was familiar for being real, but it was nonetheless alien and -- under the dreamlike waver of the moon -- completely mystical, somewhat.


I was in the car, and I was nervous in the way one would feel when feeling lost. The radio was turned on but nothing was playing. Somehow the icy air emanating from the conditioner whispered like a sighing breeze, sharp and penetrating, and it was as though it could freeze the dull flickering warmth I think was hope. I was helpless. I remembered being close to fearful.


The turn took me to a house with a raised tent at the front, and from underneath the little light that could escape was almost blinding. There was thumping music; a party, and where the music came also came with bits of cheerful yells and whoops. I stopped and got off, hoping to ask for directions.


A young man appeared out of nowhere, and made towards me.


“Here for the party?” he asked, his accent Scottish. “Got an invitation?”


“No,” I said. “I’m lost, and I was wondering if you can give me some directions.”


He raised an eyebrow, the judgemental way, and somewhat belittling. I could see his tongue darting out to lick his lips. He looked almost unsettling; there was a perturbing energy coming from him.


“It depends on where you want to go,” he said, and now he was looking at me as though he expects me to start giving him something for his trouble. “Can’t give you directions if you don’t tell me where you want to go.”


I realised that I didn’t really know where I was headed. “Just out of here,” I said. “Out of this place. The neighbourhood.”


He smiled, looking cocky. “Drive down the opposite direction and turn left. Keep going until you see this house with a big yellow gate, then turn left. You should see the sign telling you where out is.”


“Thanks,” I said. And then I remembered. “Listen, I appreciate the help, so perhaps maybe I can give you something for your t-”


“Fuck it,” he said, pulling some sort of mock grimace and waving his hands. “All to help a lost friend.”


And then he vanished. The music turned into an unmistakable medley of jazz. The light from the tent turned blue.


I got into the car and drove.


I took the left turn like the man told me to, and drove for several minutes before I came to the house with the big yellow gates. Somehow in the dark the yellow was still prominent; perhaps so thick in colour it managed to glow. I turned left, and found myself facing another tent.


Behind was the sign, but the tent had obscured the large part of it. Like the first tent the music was thumping, vibrating the ground rhythmically, though the light was velvet. Someone was singing inside, the amplified sound muffled and dulled by the thick canvas. I thought I could drive past, but the tent took up the whole of the road.


Someone knocked the side of my window. I looked up and saw a girl with a Mohawk.
“No minors,” she said, the little ringlets of her lips catching some of the velvet light. “Beat it.”
I wound the window down, and said to her, “I’m not going in there. I need to get out, but I can’t get around the tent. Is there another way out of here?”


She was looking aggravated, and I could tell that she was slightly drunk. “Go the opposite direction, past that house with the big stupid gates, then turn left, then left again. There is a road to the right that takes you to the highway. Go straight and you see the sign, but better the highway if you want to make out of here.”


“Thanks,” I said, but before I could roll the window down she stuck her head into the car.


“You’re no minor,” she said, and she sniffed at me as though she could smell my age. “You can join the party.” She threw me a smile that was half flirty and half chilly.


“No thanks. I really should get going.”


“Well,” she said, lifting her head out. “Yours to waste.” She turned her back and walked towards the tent.


I didn’t wait for her to enter the tent. I did a there point turn and went the other direction. Left and left again, and true enough there was a road to the right with a sign saying Highway. I didn’t turn, however. Somehow I thought I should be looking at the sign. It felt to me that there was another way out, or at the very least, I should know what this place was.


The sign was the type you get at the zoo, with small wooden plates pointing which is where.

There were 5 plates in total.


The first plate said Taman Megah, pointing left. The one pointing right said Taman Sentosa and the third one said Library, pointing behind it.


The fourth one was blank, pointing towards the highway. The last plate said Exit, pointing northwest.


I took the road that said exit.


It took me to past a playground with a basketball court, and there was sign that said Exit with an arrow pointing left. I took the road, which led me back to the house with the yellow gates.


I stopped in front of it. The gates were open, and from within the darkness I could see the Exit sign, lighted green.


A chorus. A song. Like a choir, flowing, like it was the wind itself.


I walked in. And then I woke up.

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

Maybe i should've posted it in monochrome smogs, but it was more like talking about a dream to me than actually telling a story. I didn't mean to write it like a story even, but somehow it caught up.

The funny thing with this dream was that I remembered the words exactly; like my dream about the Arch in the Desert, this one was so real i woke up not knowing who i was for a minute.

I'm starting to like what i'm dreaming lately.

August Rush for the Seasons.


I guess everyone has a bad movie they somehow like. And I say bad in the context that the people themselves know how bad the movie was, only that they didn’t care. August Rush was one of those movies. For me, at least.


I like it. Most of all I like the music. And I guess that’s all that matter.


I was heading home on Tuesday and many interesting things happened.


The first one was hearing my name being called loudly and enthusiastically, the sort of name-calling you register to people you haven’t seen in a very long time and would very likely turn your day that day. I started, halfway up the stairs, and found a college classmate who somehow managed to delve herself in the world of sales and marketing. Her Maxis Broadband booth was there at the LRT station for the day.


(Perhaps it’s safe for me to point out that this particular ex-classmate was the same person who pounced on me online trying to sell me an internet package. The world is too small sometimes.)


She was all smiles, but the worst part was the she was all hopeful. No escape, her look says. You’re buying.


Fuck it, I’m not buying shit, I tried to say. But you know you don’t ever say that.


So I listened and nodded and tried to look interested, and in the end I took her number and promised that I’ll tell my uncle at least. She didn’t sound too happy. But hey, that’s sales and marketing for ya.


Then she introduced me to her boss, which is a tall Indian dude that I reckon to Russell Peters gone to London for a few years to get a degree, minus the humour and wit. This dude runs a sales & marketing company training ‘young hopefuls’ in the arts of the trade, and soon I’m there under some well rehearsed recruitment speech.


“I was an engineer once, doing about 3K a year,” he said at one point, and you can tell where he’s going. “Then I went into sales and marketing. And you know the way sales work… you do know, right? And soon I was getting about, say, 6K a month. And then the company tells me, ‘you better get out of here and start one yourself.’”


And then he chuckled. You can smell the condescension and overwhelming pride.


“So, whenever you feel like taking sales and marketing up, give me a ring,” he said, in all the conviction a man who knew that a few years down the road I’d call him or someone like him.


“I’m thinking I’ll more likely go into my interests first, if not something closer,” I said. I had I hate sales and marketing I hate sales and marketing repeated in the mind hoping he will pick it up telepathically.


He cocked an eyebrow. “You can never tell, really.”


At this point Pauline tapped me on the shoulder and whisked me away before I can give a retort of some sort.


After that it was some sort of game Coincidence was playing, maybe for some laughs over popcorn night.


Meeting Pauline is coincidence enough. I was then introduced to Yi Liang (the closest I can spell his name by ear), who strikes me of as a sci-fi fantasy fan so big as to having his own parody songs.


He advised me that the next time I get bothered by people trying to sell me something, I should tell them that my religion is against their products. He also said that if they persisted, I should start chanting.


Charming.


And then I got a call from a familiar number, which my Bluetooth earpiece failed to register its owner’s voice clearly to me. My first thought was that someone from the other company was calling me over the political blog, so I went, “I’m sorry, who’s this?”


And the voice in the other end said, “You really can’t remember my number ah??
*interrobang*”


Then the line went dead. I was like, “Shit.”


Then Amanda showed up.


I was the most sorry that I’ve ever been, but I don’t think people noticed.


Argh.


And then Mekz and Mr. Foo (Kevin?) appeared. I swear it was like a sitcom situation not unlike the moment the lead lands himself in some embarrassing troubles.


Well, nothing like that really happened, but the feeling was there enough.


Seeing Amanda for the first time in just about half a year now is quite something. For one, she never seem to have changed. She said I’m still same old me either. And we talked a bit on the way back. She sounds alright, and I’m glad for that.


For a moment there it felt like it was back in college (when I was somewhat thinner with less nonsense).


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

I am going into a decline.

We’re probably at the brink of a new era; the type we promised ourselves.

So it was like a fleeting dream, somewhat unbelievable, somewhat astounding, but overall it is like the stuff reality mostly shun but decidedly brings it back so that we know it exists.

I have to admit; I’ve been spending these past weeks feeling that I’ve been deliberately stepping away from the country’s elections. I feel that I have no place in it. I say this because I don’t have a political agenda (or a stance, or even a thought) and because I’m not able to vote, and somewhat that amounts to ignorance. Or avoidance, however you may put it.

I go through it like an unsupportive spectator would a tennis match, ooh and ahh-ing when the shots are thrown forth and backwards and at the end I’ll cheer the winner, only that all the while I didn’t really care less whatever the game’s all about. State Championship or Nationwide League?

I feel bad, but that’s honesty for you. I should probably grow up.

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

The Princess Snail, Katatsumuri O-hime-sama, celebrated her 21st birthday on the 5th of March. Happy Birthday, Ji Lin!

It was a nice party. It started late and I was both hungry and wary that people would decide to throw me into the pool because my birthday was two days prior to hers. There were catering food and some barbeque, but I didn’t manage to stay long enough to get myself more than two sausages and one chicken wing off the stove.

I went around to talk to a few classmates, and found that most of them have a lot of stories to tell. All I could tell them is that I’m bored with work and the most eventful thing was probably the short stint in which I was indirect PR to Victor Gu's political blog(he lost by a huge margin, and I’m not feeling guilty).

Which is true, really, because all I’ve been mostly doing (currently) is type a whole bunch of letters and e-mails and trying to manage a charity blog with limited resources. I get a lot of free times, and these times I devote to watching Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender online. No one even cared; they knew I have nothing to do until the boss gives me. They only give me e-mails they feel too meddlesome to type. I feel almost content.

Give. Me. Work.

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

I’ve spotted myself a few target books.

One of them is The Sandman: Book of Dreams, edited by Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer, which is an anthology of short stories based on Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series.

Tempting, but I’ve not read a single Sandman issue, and I don’t even know what it’s about.

Secondly is Eoin Colfer’s Airman.

The price of the book is steep; bout RM50+, so I might just wait for a cheaper version or ignore it completely until the next Artemis Fowl book comes out, which is August this year under the title Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox.

Thirdly, the Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix, which comes in a 3-book set for about 70 bucks the last I checked (bout 20 bucks cheaper compared to buying the books separately). I’ve been meaning to get my hands on it, but the 3-book set seems to disappear whenever I go to the bookstore with money in hand.

And lastly, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, which is RM600 and I might just dream about it when I sleep.

Lately, I find myself in a story deprived state.

I’m re-reading the Artemis Fowl series on the train (because it’s such an easy read, best when you’re exhausted and wouldn’t want to get dully lost between the deep convulsive lines of most works), and sometimes I pick up my anthology of H.P Lovecraftand try to read a story or two. I’m turning into quite a fan. Now I’m even visiting sites such as lolthulhu.com

Nothing better than getting a pic that reads:

(Pic from lolthulhu.com)

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."

21

Suddenly it’s not such a big deal anymore. Suddenly the world passed on like it always did, and while I kept reminding myself that being 21 is the big 2 1, it never did settle, like a promise that wouldn’t hold. Suddenly it was, “So what?”. Repeat that a couple of hundred times.

But I made resolutions, nonetheless. I did feel whole new. I did feel like I’ve stepped onto a threshold of the new and strange, which can either be wonderful or calamitous, but not that I’m anywhere worried or wary. Just walk. And it starts out as a nice kind of walk.

3rd of March will be ending soon, and if I said I’ve made the best out of it, I lied. Somehow it always felt like there’s more. I’ve done my extent, however, and I’m tired. It has been a nice celebration.

I was on my way to a celebratory dinner on Saturday when it occurred to me that I haven’t, just quite haven’t, made a speech. Or plan one, perhaps, the way my brother did (and delivered, to a group of people who roared and responded). Somehow it felt that a speech had to come, had to be made, but in the end there wasn’t a speech, and there wasn’t one concocted.

I simply figured, that if I had to say something, it’d be; “I’m 21, two for many seconds, one for newer firsts.”

(After that, the statement hit me in all of its idiocy and I decidedly drowned it off with hot tea.)

The dinner was great. I didn’t have pictures, but I wished I did. There was a video though, which I shot over whenever I was free. There was a nine course dinner and some karaoke, and the brother sang Click 5’s Happy Birthday and got booed off by dad. Charming.

It was quaintly dealt with without any embarrassment or overly prolonged limelight (which I shunned, preferring the darkness, which soothes the skin). I did sing, however, and twice Elton John’s Your Song thanks to a very insistent mother. Nutmeg. But it’s the kind of karaoke you’re meant to sing badly in, because people simply didn’t care. There’s too much happiness going on about to worry about poorly enunciated lyrics and off-pitchings.

The next day, however, was superb.

There was a luncheon with the Kelv-ster, Pauline (Goblok) and Vic at Mid Valley Chilli’s. There was bottomless taco(?) chips served with salsa sauce, bottomless kegs of drinks and very, very large dishes that required every ounce of determination and stomach place to completely consume. Add that with a lot of laughter and stories, including a variation of Sweeney Todd (what if he was a janitor?), and you get the type of lunch you’ll never quite forget, not only because it was downright funny all the while, not only because the darned Kelv-ster went to order a birthday brownie sneakily (but got exposed, because the waitress didn’t know better but to be discreet), but because you’ll remember that you tried to laugh with a very, very full stomach.

It’s like every celebration with friends. It never goes away.

For presents, I got a box of chocolates from cousin Jasmine, while lil Billy gave me the regular photo frame (to which a picture similar to my profile pic would go into). Pauline, Kelv and Vic, though, got me The Simpsons Masterpiece Gallery: A Big Book of Posters, and the latter two also gave me a T-Shirt wishing me perpetual infusion with the Force.

The Force is with me. All your donuts are belong to us.

The shirt is based on the Lego Star Wars double-suicide incident. I jumped off-cliff and Pauline followed. And it was the funniest thing in gaming history.

The poster book is excellent, but the best is the movie poster parodies.

The Planet of the Apus; now available in VHS, DVD, and Store Security Camera Tape

I have the poster book up on the tallest row in the bookshelf, propped at where I could see it whenever I walked into room.

*********

And that was it.

I figured I’d end it doing some writing, and here it is. Somehow in the course of three days, I’ve done just about everything that made life more worthwhile than going through it without the minute details and intricacies which matters the best, and also most importantly.

And I guess I’ll end it like I always did, and it always been a Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday, Pauline =P.

Goodnight world.

In the trench and down the gutter.

Yeah, that’s probably where I’m heading, because I’m pooped and is under so many forms of lethargy (you have dog-tired, and omg-I’m fucked, and also damn, I’m dead?) that I’m feeling intricately like a plastic bag with no things in it.

I would sit here and wonder - hmm, ponder, - about the decidedly profound cruelty one boss could exact on his handful of interns, but I think I’m beyond that in the sense that everything is probably said and done and that interns are invariably, also inevitably, meant to be pushed around like they’re rock bottom in the hierarchy chart.

(Hey hey, we are rock bottom; even the janitor gets paid more.)

So I would go the simple way of saying, “Fuck you, work, and everything about it,” and they say simple sentences tell enough.

5 CM/S

I just had an ex-classmate from college who IM-ed me out of the blue (shark-like even, like I’m a lonely raft in the middle of the South China Seas), then pitching me an online wireless package that will allow me to go online anywhere, possibly even at my local mamak, and it will only cost me RM138 monthly and with no phone-lines to be hassled with. I said I’m sorry, of course, because I have no need for it, and she went offline quicker than a rabbit down its hole, and I don’t know whether to make for an irony of her connection or the fact that it could’ve been just an attempt to sell me an internet package.

Either way, at least I knew that she’s alive, and I wish her good luck in her work.
Many things happened last week, but it didn’t mean that I have more at work to worry. Handing two grants may be hard work, but afterwards there was barely anything to do, apart for being a dispensable office-chore boy, and I was bored all over. And at the end of the week things got busy again; the bosses gave me work over the weekend, which is now somewhat complete, albeit in an unsatisfactory manner.

Still, the weekend had been a peaceful one. Saturday had been largely occupied with chores, but chores that I found a reason to be enjoyable with, especially when the day was windy and the garden strangely inviting; scattered bougainvillea petals all over, tumbling around by the breeze, and it was painting-like. I would’ve wished the press release would’ve sounded nicer after that, but in the end it was forced and stale.

(It also sucks to imagine that if the press release DO actually get out and be distributed and that a fellow journalist course mate do happen upon it, they would look at it and wonder who is the darned bloke that wrote this, and somewhere in my office I would sneeze.)

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

It took me some time, but I finally found it.

The anime is Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru , meaning 5 Centimetres per Second, which is (as indicated in the movie) the speed of which a sakura petal falls.

It is directed by Makoto Shinkai, who I find is a very delightful movie-maker, who likes to repeat his storytelling mannerism and themes, but one who makes it work every time (3 times so far).

It is love story. A very simple one, told with wonderful pictures and words, and it’s not Romeo or Titanic or Fuishi Yugi. It’s simply about life and how easily things can drift away. Like sakura petals. Unpredictable and helpless, bore by the winds and weather.

Here's the movie's theme song, accompanied by scenes from the movie.

I don’t ask ‘what if’, or ‘what else’, but I guess there were train rides I should’ve run away from.

“Seven Apples on a Witch’s Tree…”

It has been like a damned jackfruit under my mattress for the past month, but now the grant application is done and submitted never to be heard off again, not at least until the pivotal call comes saying that it’s a sorry to inform you sir but it’s been rejected, or perhaps you could come and do a presentation, in front of a panel of judges, all whom have seen thousands of similar shirt-tucking idiots presenting mediocre ideas in all the same manner, and please wear a polka-dot bowtie because it would make a huge difference.

This week I’ve seen the completion of two grants, twice my puke swirling down the basin (hello McNuggets), and a wall graffiti somewhere in Petaling Street saying “Rape the wall, not the kids” (beside it is a very nice drawing of a toddler holding what I believe to be a spray-paint can).

I’m also addicted to a song, which is this one here;

(Yay, first vid on this blog)

The title is Ringo Hiyori ~ The Wolf-Whistling Song, by Rocky Chack (which, I think, is a Japanese snack food).

It’s the ending song to the anime adaptation of Spice and Wolf; a personal favourite now, mainly due to this song.

If you couldn’t catch it due to the horrible diction, here’re the lyrics to it;

Seven apples on a witch’s tree,
Seven seeds to plant inside of me (o.O)
In springtime I grew a magic song
Then skipping along, I sang the song to everyone

I look up the world through apple eyes
I cut myself a slice of sunshine pie
I dance with the peanut-butterflies
Till time went and told me to say hello while waving goodbye,

A thousand sugar stars
I put them in a jar
Oh and whistle ‘round the world
Oh and whistle round the world
I’m a little wolf inside a girl, you say
Off I go from June to May
Oh, whistle ‘round the world

(There’s also a full version, if you’re interested, and it’s here)

I’ve been looping it at work until everyone started raising an eyebrow at me, and by then Katatsumuri Ojousama (previously Mademoiselle Escargot, in truth Ji Lin) was already cringing every time it starts. I’ve even sang a variation featuring her, and soon she was performing trepanning whenever I started to sing.

*********

There was a card, I think.

Somewhere in the basket among the dust-collecting CD covers, and the wires, and of course, the dust.

It didn’t belong to me. My brother thinks it belonged to him, but he said ‘belonged’ in the way he made sure that it was a past-tense, and that now it belonged to someone else but is with us, forgotten and perhaps given away, but not the ownership at heart.

Just the card, the words and the picture hearts, red and wide and full.

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

I remembered going into the 2nd year of my diploma course and hating valentines day.

I knew why I hated it; I hated it because I was lonely, bitter and missing someone. I think everyone who was alone, at some points at least, found reason to hate valentines day, and mostly because it’s like it was smack right in your face and you can’t turn away from it.

And then there were those times where a simple Happy Valentine’s greeting came and replied with a “I don’t do valentines. Not yet anyhow” with all the bitterness of mothball flavoured chocolates. It’s the sort of hate from emptiness, in a place where everyone is full and whole.

At some time people grow out of it (or, by fate, found someone to complete them); callowness die when we grow, and even if the that sort of silent mockery that permeates the air still remain, the condemning whisper whispered by oneself, I think we all end up understanding that staying soaked in bitterness feeling bitter is all and twice the torment.

I think we know when to take the lollipop when someone offers it.

And after all, it all never started.

It’s post Chinese New Year holidays and quite frankly I never expected to get an extension, but if you’re feeling woozy in the head with whatever’s left from yesterday’s lunch still stuck in your throat, you’d call in sick and decidedly choose to stay home, and that’s what I did.



It’s probably late for me to say this but Happy Chinese New Year, and may the year of the rat usher in a whole batch of fortune in the form of chewed up leather couches and missing Camembert de Normandies.


I feel like I was trying to avoid blogging for a bit; somehow being unable to post up the pictures of the wedding seems like a huge damper in continuity (that is, if continuity matters here), but then again perhaps I was just being lazy, not to mention uninspired, and what with the many sudden change of plans (thanks to a very generous mother, who in being so genial was being very ungenerous to me) I was more or less set to not to have time for myself.


Funny that I have to be sick to finally sit down and write, but I guess it is circumstances like this that return you to normalcy, or perhaps, set you back on something you’ve long stopped doing.
So it was CNY all over again, and all over again it was a sleuth of visiting and being visited and comparing the yearly changes that either embarrasses or enlightens or sometimes churn out the best in oneself, and in the end it was the same thing except that this time around my 6th aunt (whose wedding I had just attended) is now finally among those who will be handing out red packets instead of receiving them.


Four days of it feels pretty short, but in a way I’m glad it’s over; CNY was never my thing, in the way Scrooge will say humbug in Christmas.


(Well I don’t hate it. I’m just too lazy for it. I’d rather all of my holidays spent in undisturbed rest in my room, with a good book and good music and maybe some lemonade.)

***********

I was at work yesterday. It was boring.


Why?


There was really nothing to do. And when there finally were something, I was too sick and tired to do anything.


The bossman can be a funny person when arranging meetings; he arranged one with me but didn’t make one with bossman bro and at the end of the day there was no meeting and nothing to follow up, except for some old work, which significance escapes me.


I remembered wallowing in boredom, playing Yahoo! Pool and iSketch until the stupidity of it all kicked in, and what’s left to do is to annoy Ji Lin and feel sick.


It feels like being a failure of an intern, but when there’s nothing to do, there’s really nothing to do…

I’m ain’t dead.


Not yet, at least, and the Digital Death Clock said I still have another 10 years provided I didn’t overstuff myself with peanuts (which will set it back to 5 years) nor make myself too useful around the house (stress from work will set it back to 3 years).


I came back from a wedding, two wedding dinners (one for each part of the world, which is Segamat and Kajang) and some fine merrymaking, all which I would like to blog about but couldn’t until I get the pictures from my aunt, because she made me impromptu photographer and I didn’t manage to use my own cam.


Either way, the wedding was great, the dinners grand and it’s one more wedding I’ve seen and gone through, and perhaps proud to say, be a part in.


Between all the wedding rush, there was work and also there was a story I’m working on, which is now completely halted by just about everything, and I’m well determined to finish it.
I would’ve also liked to blog about the 2007 Doraemon movie, or Sweeney Todd, or Juno, or even Cobra vs. Python (in which I watched and cringed and laughed at), but as of now, I’m sleepy and there’re plentiful chores tomorrow.


But before I end this post, I would like to note:


1) Thanks to Sean for telling what Snakeoils and Wolftickets mean, and now one of the songs actually makes sense. Thanks!


2) Thanks to Pauline for rubbing in my face on the fact that she caught Sweeney Todd on the BIG SCREEN with pals Kelv and Vic while I was stuck in office moving mouldy boxes, but if there’s any compensation is that I could tell her that I’ve watched Sweeney Todd too, perhaps in a smaller screen, but at least I can watch it again and again and again and again and it also costs 8 bucks and it’s crispy clear =P.


All that is said and done, there’s only left the act of sleep, so bonne nuit all, and sweet dreams.

Of Snakeoils and Wolftickets

It’s a tiresome week.


I didn’t have a day off; I worked on Thaipusam, and the best thing is that I went there in work clothes at the usual time only to find out that work starts at 10, where non-formal clothes are allowed and it’s actually a half-day. So I was at work dressed like Napoleon Dynamite at prom dance, sitting with people in jeans and t-shirts and Hawaiian shorts, working hard on a day I shouldn’t be working, and then working past what we constitute as a half-day.


That morning Pei Ling dropped me the news that Heath Ledger is dead, and I remembered being stunned on the way to McDonalds for lunch, repeating the news to anyone who asked and realising that I was talking like I was shell-shocked and traumatised (I wasn’t; I was just very surprised, but I think I looked completely despaired).


I just wished the church in Australia will bury him; I heard from someone he was refused burial there because he acted in Brokeback and it was a “blatant promotion of gays and the rights of homosexuality”. He’s not gay. Give him a break, and let him rest in peace…


Leeching off the free internet at work (until recently, when it refused a connection to my laptop as though in determined retaliation), I found a very neat song titled “Mad World”, sung by Gary Jules doing a cover for Tears for Fears (an 80’s band). If you’ve heard of it, you’ve probably heard it over Donny Darko or in the first Gears of War teaser. It’s a sad song, about the world and how normality is madness mostly, only that we don’t see it that way, but I don’t do it justice so listen to it if you can.


Downloading Gary Jules meant that I would subsequently get his entire album, which I did, and it was a pleasant collection of gentle songs titled under the album name of Trading Snakeoils for Wolftickets.


I don’t know what it meant, but I like how it sounds. And mostly the songs sound great too.


*******


I’ll be heading down to Segamat for my aunt’s wedding tomorrow and will be back on the 28th. Maybe I’ll blog about it, with pictures and videos and stuff.

Dinners,

Which now happens with me feeling so utterly exhausted that they seemed to have turned into a state of otherworldly affairs; I’ve been dining with aliens and dragons and King Tutankhamen himself (who, after a couple of mouthfuls of coke, told me he wished that everybody should stop making a fuss about his cursed tomb, which wasn’t cursed in the first place, only booby-trapped and clogged with unwashed sewage), and that wasn’t even the weirdest sensation; there was one dinner which I remembered ordering a plate of tom-yam chicken rice only to get a plate of rice with chicken and no tom yam but some really bad tasting sauce like Bolognese only burnt and too salty.

But the sad reality is that I’ve been dining pretty much alone most of the nights, which can be somewhat dull, and it came to a point where I quoted this to a girl at work; “Like the song, ‘I don’t like to sleep alone’, I don’t like to eat alone. Let’s go for lunch.”


She didn’t know the song and thought I meant that we should sleep together as much as eat together, which would’ve gotten me a sexual harassment suit, only that she must’ve thought I was making a very bad hit-on and decided to brush it off as a cold joke. Thankfully and sadly.


But there are some nights in which I didn’t eat alone; one dinner I managed to give the work an early slip and found myself at grandma’s eating a heavenly dinner with the parents. Heavenly, which is just about what orgasm could get you, on the right circumstances, and having eaten nothing but MSG coated meals over the past months, home cooked food probably beat whatever it is a bed and a lady would get me.


And then there was the dinner with friends; Pauline, Vic and Kelv-ster, at Nando’s Mid Valley, where the food came fast and the company great fun, and there was a lot of catching up done. And it was like the reunion of the nonsensical study-group. A very noisy, very funny one.


Friday, I was at grandma’s again, and what was supposedly a short trip to take a trough home ended with me washing down a miserable dinner with a supper of Lap Chap Choy, which meant A Mess of Vegetables; one of grandma’s specialty.


Work is all same-same. I didn’t even feel like I was doing any work at all; just type, call, type, call, talk with Ji Lin (which I will now refer to as Mademoiselle Escargot) and go to the rare meeting, in which I try to take in anything, fail, and end up nodding like a very attentive fool.


The garden is now done; the cement is on, the roof thingy up, and whatever modifications and placements my dad wanted was pretty much taken care of. There’re only grass to mow and aquariums to clean, to which tomorrow will be occupied with.


The Rastafarian pup is now placed outside, in which he now experienced his first feeling of neglect, the bitter cold of a thundering rain and the lack of company. Now he looks at me with all the sadness any puppy-dog eyes would generate, but dad never considered having a dog in the house, and he now has a very big kennel with a makeshift bed to sleep on.


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

Stand at the edge, and know that you’re alone.

I read that somewhere, forgot about it, remembered it but not who wrote it; anyone know?

Work is Monochrome







There is no wait.





No knowing where it falls






No room for patience.





No end.

***********

I was bored at work.

Flash makes a very good substitute for paint.

I think there is a large percentage of people in the world who proclaim (with much integrity) that Life’s a Real Practical Joker; the way it leads you down to somewhere only to constantly steer you towards the marshlands, or pot-hole pedestrian, or sometimes the guillotine museum while at essence you’re pretty much going to end up in the same place as everyone. Why make it so taxing?


Then there’s another percentage of people who says that Life’s Full of Raillery and it’s pretty much all harmless stuff unless you think it is otherwise. Mind over matter is the key, and to quote the common term that they roll around with their tongues in cheerful-spouting sweetness; When life’s getting you down, just smile, smile, and you’re not in frown.


Then there’s the other percentage who says everyone is a hypocrite, even themselves, and they live a life in abject hate of everything.


I, for one, don’t know which percentage do I belong in. I would like to say I’m in the Life’s Raillery bandwagon, but sometimes I feel that choosing that makes me one of the Everybody’s a Hypocrite club. Either way, does it really matter? I think life’s pretty much where everyone lives and dies and try not to suffer so much in the process. And making sure they have offspring. And that’s why most people think gays aren’t really ‘living’, but that’s their problem to ponder, and to peace with them.

It’s an Oh Noes! Week. You can imagine me going Oh Noes! so many times now I’ve close to turning into Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and I thank that to the fact that I’m now probably going to be twice busier with triple the things to worry about.


It feels like exploitation. It feels like the cultural creations of the world is in conspiracy against me. It’s filial piety and workmanship abuse. It’s the obdurate over the friable, where I’m the cookie and someone’s very determinedly threatening to crumble me unless I do what they want. I’m the lesser individual here, and there’s nothing I could do without suffering the consequences, and while I don’t believe that there is ever too high a price to pay, there is a price so high it will make you penniless and in eternal torment under some sort of relentless loan system.


There’s nothing else to do but to play along, and at most, make the best out of it, I guess. Yup, I’m in the Life’s Raillery bandwagon, with a cartful of hippies, singing Raindrops keep falling on my Head.


My back hurts. I think I overworked it. Either that or I’ve been bending down wrongly while doing the garden reconstruction. We’re having one part of the garden cemented and dad saw to himself to use whatever we have to relocate to turn another, more desolate, part of the garden into an oasis. I’m already so wasted over Industrial Training and now my weekends are a part-time construction worker. I’ve done my fair share of hoeing, brick transferring and soil disposing. I want my rest back. Give me my rest.


And my job seems to have taken a turn towards the troublesome; now Ji Lin and I have to work on a bunch of nonsense that’ll take the whole 3 months and I’ll have to go around researching and doing meetings and stuff. To cap it off I’m (supposedly) group leader, which sucks, and I’m already at riff with the fact that I feel like I’ve been misplaced for this internship crap. Oh noes…


The only good thing this week was Kelv-ster dropping by on his off day for lunch, and while it was short it was good to catch up on stuff. Everyone seems to be doing fine working at the papers. Makes me wonder and wish.


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


I’m sorry if the post didn’t make any sense. The sleep gnomes have raided my brain terminals and are now launching a full-scale assault of the left cerebral bunker. Which means it’s only moments before I dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
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Running the cogs.

Maybe it’s only me but I find it exceptionately easy to fall into routine. It’s only day 6 at work and I’m already going on it like I’ve done it for the past 2 years (excluding the hard and new parts, like going on a meeting with a very lethargic looking person from the insurance brokers or calling a designer who sounded like I’m willing him to commit suicide).

It doesn’t mean I’m doing a good job, though. It also didn’t mean that I enjoy routine and monotony. I don’t. I like things fresh and constantly new, yet it is undeniable that we live on routine and that routine does, at most, bring comfort and peace and consistency.

Work day will begin by waking, packing, taking the 7.30/7.45 train to KL Sentral, grabbing the Klang train at 8.15/8.30, breakfast, work, lunch, work and then the train home, which I use to catch up on my anime on the phone. Then dinner, then chill, then sleep until the next day and rinse and repeat.

I’ve been getting along the days feeling like I’m part Gene Kelly under the rain and part Forrest Gump on a road trip, in the sense that I’m feeling cheerful over things I don’t really know or don’t really understand or just cheerful anyway because it’s the way to be. Not in the manner like I’m having a spring in my step or seeing fraying bougainvilleas as majestic roses; but I’m walking with the sun behind a gentle cloud and humming to whatever song that’s stuck in the head.

I take it as a way to cope with the strain, but well, if it is, then I’m coping pretty well.
I realised today that I didn’t like my job. I don’t hate it, but it’s just this; it’s not something I’ve signed up and bargained for. It’s something I would’ve done in a desperate state of unemployment, but at the whole - especially when reading up or listening on fellow course mates’ exciting and unpredictable ventures - I feel like I’ve registered for the Dead Poets Society and instead got the Campus’ Program for the Future Janitor.

To think that I spent months wondering how it would be to cope with journalism, when now I’m doing anything but journalism. And where I’m sitting now, things are starting to get stale and uninspiring if not for the rather positive outlook I seem to have on it (learn what’s shoved to you, because in the real world where dog eat dogs and corporate leaders are masked alien tyrants, whatever you can get, keep it).

And so I did.

A few people asked why I didn’t apply for a change when I discovered I won’t be doing journalism, the big punch-line is that; I didn’t know I won’t be doing journalism until the end of the exams and I’m starting to get calls from the office. And it’s not like I can completely help it. Ms Sharon said I’ll be going to an ‘online publication company’ (to which I immediately deduced is a HoMag, due to the secrecy of it). Ms Sharon also said ‘online magazine’, I believe, and even at the amended list of where we’ll be sent to, mine was marked ‘online JR co’.

Gee whiz, I sure was expecting some sort of obscure online magazine where the people will work in leather-tight pants and worshipping Hardo-Gay. At least that’s a journalism co, even if it will hurt my heterosexual believes and standpoint. What I got is an IT company that has, at this moment, nothing to do with whatever online publication aside from the fact that it publishes websites. Does that count?

No, I don’t enjoy typing letters. I don’t like calling designers to goddamn send the brochure drafts. I don’t like the sound of grant proposals and hamper fax advertisements and I sure dislike making minutes of meetings. The only thing I enjoy is the little bit of advertising copywriting I‘m tasked to do, but at the end of the day, I wonder why I’m there doing the things I’m not supposed to.

I don’t hate it. I’m learning from it. But damn, I want to write about something that has happened and then let others read it, because even if it’s the most basic, stoic and downright boring piece of writing, it’s still a story.

I want to write stories.

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

Apparently, the kitten I let in from the gutter seem to be treating the place as some sort of hide-out. Or at least, that’s what its mother would prefer to think, and now when I go behind I hear mewing and if I pop the gutter-hole open, a kitten head appears and would seem to want to come inside and tear at the curtains.

Dad’s idea is to flush it away with boiling water.

My idea is to leave the gutter hole open and when the kitten’s in it’ll meet the Rastafarian pup and maybe they can be friends.

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

How does this sound for the opening text to a website Client Support page?

“In giving life, God gave the means to live.”

If you see it online somewhere, you’ll know that it was written by a guy half-awake and wallowing in the last bit of his daily-depleting sanity, and know to feel some sort of pity, perhaps, or even feel happy for him, because it’s sadly the only thing creative that he felt he had done over the past week.

And it just got better.


I’m surviving, I think. It’s the sort of week you get that resembles the first days on a deserted island where you don’t have your own calendar and didn’t know that coconuts are strong laxatives. And you get your rain and shine which you try to keep away with whatever strands of palm leaves you can get and you surely don’t know how to make a fire. Yet.


But as surviving goes you adept and surely, just surely, at one point I would know that if you rub a stick over a handful of dry leaves you might just get your fire.


Let’s see; first week of the year, first three days on the job (industrial training) and a weekend with no parents plus construction work (cement pavement) happening at the garden. Lots to talk about, innit? Well I’ll start by pulling a leaf out of my fellow blogging friends, notably The One on a Retarded Journey (Cartoon Chronicals) and the Twisted Trainsistor, and go along depicting the brief details of my past week by categories of events/incidents/accidents/


To which, to start with:

Industrial Training

I have to admit; I woke up on Wednesday morning, took the train, took the LRT and took the bus to the office telling myself that I’ll be at a somewhat small office doing anything but journalism and having things easy in a way but disappointing in another. And I was right, somehow, because the office is somewhat small, and I’ve been doing anything but journalism, but what I didn’t count on was that being one who (currently) has to market himself based solely on his (deplorable) skills to write, I wouldn’t be able to have it easy.


In fact, I have it easy in the certain things that I do, like, what? Typing letters and a daily update? Cake. Not cake when having to do a lot of it.


And somehow Ji Lin and I are put into a few major projects, where there’s considerably more work to do compared to the other fellow interns (from PD block), and it just keeps piling up somehow, and now it feels like there’s too much for me to keep track.


Still, it’s an interesting first 3 days. Friendly senior colleagues, and free wireless to secretly DL songs when no one’s looking. My boss, Joe (which I will now refer to as the Bossman) is a nice person, which I would likened to a soft-speaking, more polite and ambitious Joey Tribbiani (in looks), the sort of people with high hopes and a set way to get things done. But he works us off like we’re slaves (technically, on an RM300 allowance, we ARE slaves). Nice dude, but evil. Sigh


There’s Kiwi, my supervisor (I like to think, though more or less Ji Lin and I are under both Kiwi and Joe), which is… how do I put her? Cute and playful and funny but gets the work done like she’s the roman empress. Not tyrannical, not harsh or brutal, but she gets it done with finesse.


Over the three days I’ve been doing copywriting, letters, webpage texts, minutes of meetings, R & D and a whole lot of typing. There’s a lot to tell, but I’m too lazy at the moment, and also because there’s;


Car Problems:


Tyres busting.

Battery weakling. Two days stranded when I arrived back to town to find my car wouldn’t start so I have to call an exasperated dad.

Side-mirror-a-falling. Someone must’ve clipped it. Drove two nights without a side mirror and it is annoying.

Parked Cars a-scraping. Was giving way to an oncoming car and SCREACHEeee

Shitty guys repairing. Two hours at the repair shop waiting for people to come and fix my car and being treated like I was sitting there making trouble. Way to go.

Five golden rings…


Parents. Not. Home:


No. One. Feeding. Dog. Come. Home. Mess. Shit. People. Cement. Garden. Help. Move. Stuff. Tired. Bye. Rest. Day. Ps2. Controllers. Broke. Damn. Nothing. Else. Dead. Bored. Work. Tomorrow. Rush. Home. Feed. Pets. Sigh.

Grant Proposal.

Something that I have to read over on the weekend but I haven’t, because vista won’t open it properly and it’s all jumbled up. Nuts.



Add all of that to a lot of rain and a couple of bad luck, like going to work on your first day with Milo stains on your shirt, and getting major train delays while feeling tired out because the bossman kept us up late at work.


Ah, but I hate to sound like I’m whining; it’s been an interesting week; I’m tired but I’m feeling lively, and sometimes I can’t help but feel useful. Not bad.


To round this post, a kitten crawled up the drain today and got stuck at the gutter (or, rather, the drain where the water from my washing machine goes), and throughout the morning I heard mewing like it was coming from the walls but didn’t pay too much attention; you get cats at the back-alley behind the house too often to care.


Then it rained and I was cleaning up the trash behind when it mewed again, so cousin Ivan and I opened the gutter hole and the kitten was there, wet but strangely calm. It crawled out of the hole and I wrapped him up in an old shirt. After the rain I was thinking of asking some neighbours if they wanted a kitten, but when I got to the back-alley the mother was there peeking into the gutter, so I placed the kitten near where the gutter was and the mother came back soon after to pick it up.


I haven’t heard any mewing since, so I guess it’s good.

It’s that time of year again.

Day 1. The Big Second. The Pivotal Start to a Brand New Beginning.


Which meant that what’s gone is gone and that I should probably start putting up my New Year’s resolutions, only to forget about it come the start of February. But what’s there to put up anyhow? Same old, same old, I’d say. Be a Person should head my list, the way it led the others into a wild plunge towards the army of Unbecoming. Year after year.


Well, it’s the New Year anyhow. It’s 2008, and it’s just about as big as any passing and coming of years, and I should make the most of it. Even if I’ve somehow caught the cough and a rather exasperating runny nose (the type where you don’t quite have boogers but actual water dripping down like failed waterworks), not to mention having the worst night of yester year. And Industrial Training starts tomorrow. Ah, the well and proper start to a brand new year.


It’s the New Year and I should probably put up a review of 2007, which I would do now.


There wasn’t much about the past year; I didn’t remember much of it anyhow, and the first half went like every semester of college, with much assignments and the fair few emotional problems, most of them typically pathetic now that I think of it.


But at May it was finito; college ends and Uni starts, and I said goodbye to many I’ve now lost contact with, though not quite lost as in completely forsaken; only the window of communication and talk shrunk to just as much as a 20 cents stamp. But that’s the way that I know it; wherever there’s change there’s loss, but there’s always gain, and there’s always those maintained even if it trickled away.


And then I transferred from a prim and proper institution into a factory site they call a university, but it’s all fine. Good teachers, great friends and a sleuth of some very interesting characters, like they’re smack out of bizarre-town.


I’ve learned new pointers in writing, and I think I actually improved in my drawing: not that it’ll help in anything. My old laptop died and I got a new one, and the old laptop got revived and is now dad’s. My steadfast Mp3 player got lost and I bought a new one, which is pretty much the same only with more memory space (and a speaker at the back). I got my first article published in the paper, and while it’s nothing worth commemorating or be proud about, I guess it’s a good start.


And the death of Max. And the arrival of Marley the Rastafarian Pup.


The best part of 2007? I don’t seem to have any. I think, on the whole, as every year had been; it was a good year, and I’m glad that I’m at the life I’m in.


2008. It started with a cough, a sneeze, and couple of hours turning in bed in a futile attempt to sleep. And while it’s shitty, from the popping sounds of fireworks and the passing cheers of people in their celebrations, I guess sometimes we can’t help but smile at the coming of things.


Happy New Year.

It didn’t take him long to evaluate the situation; he was shackled to the wall, naked, the dankness of the place pressing upon him like cold iron of a knife, and in front of him stood two men, both identical in being thin and tall and in suits. He needn‘t any explanation to know that he was in deep trouble.


“Awake now, Mr. Dale?” said one of the man, be he couldn’t tell who; both faces were masked by shadows. “It’s time to start on our little practice.”


“Wha-” was all he could manage, and it was the last he would ever remember saying. The last he would remember hearing was the one of the tall man saying, “My partner Mr. Duwall, will be tending to you. I would say that his methods are quite… multifarious. Enjoy.”


The last he remembered seeing was the tray of instruments deliberated dropped in front of him, where it clattered with a crash he couldn’t hear.



What he remembered, though, was the pain.


Like fire.

****

multifarious \muhl-tuh-FAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:


Having great diversity or variety; of various kinds; diversified.



(How to have fun learning new words)

Let’s see… it’s quite about 11.58 p.m., on the 27th of December 2007 (Happy Birthday, bro!), and just about the right time to ponder about relatively important questions.


Questions, such as How to Kill the Rancor, or If the Persiflage Banter of Mrs. Copperton Caused the Death of her Husband, What Would that Form of Homicide be?


I’ll be frank; I don’t know how to kill the Rancor. I tried every weapon in the book, even dual-handed Lightsabers, but he still pounces and devour me whole (of course, there’s no need to kill the Rancor; you just need to steer the prisoners away from it…). The other question is for you to ponder about.


I was in the car afternoon yesterday when I phone call came asking if I am Mr Tan and if I’m the one who will be doing my Industrial Training at Global Infonet, and after my prompted answer it went on to ask if I can attend to the firm a few days earlier to help out with a few stuff, and that it would be a big help, and that since I’ve asked if I can visit the firm earlier already I might as well get to work. No?


Well I said no, because I have work with my father and my uncle (white lies, people, canvas white, pearly white, candle white), not that I’m obliged to go and help anyway when my semester break is already so short. What I got instead was a product write-up, apparently for some evaluation of sorts, which I submitted this afternoon with the nagging feeling that it will be slotted to some poor website’s advertising over some Laptop Insurance policy.


For the next 3 months, I’ll be doing my internship at Global Infonet (after being tossed around from The Star to Bernama and finally to this, most likely do to chagrin-able performances at the exams), where I’ll be working from 9-to-6 daily doing heaven knows what, and I’ll be paid RM300 for my troubles. It doesn’t sound like Journalism to me, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers, only amicable leeches, and the best consolation is knowing that I will not be sent to a HoMag.


I was looking forward to Industrial Training, but now that I know that I won’t likely be doing some actual journalism, I think I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been somehow tricked into some sort of minimal-wage labour when I first signed the form pertaining to where I might want to intern at. It’s a ploy, by poorly paid university lecturers sending less fortunate students to unwanted firms and earning some hefty side money from it. How the heck can they afford a BMW?


Ahhhh, give me back my youth!

******

Hmm my youth is well here, albeit a very wasted youth.


Here’s a little recommendation; if you’re a Simpsons fan and particularly enjoy their musical escapades, try getting your hands on one of their albums.


But if you didn’t know that they actually released albums compiling their original soundtrack, no worries, because you’ll be hard pressed to find them here. I saw the one and only copy of The Simpsons: Testify!, at The Gardens on Monday.


I managed to mooch it off somewhere, but now I’m looking for their older album, particularly the ones with the songs The Spring in Springfield and See My Vest (this one the spoof of Be My Guest from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast).


And now, as I finish this and prepare for sleep, the lyrics to Jellyfish


Jellyfish, along you came,
And right away I’m stung
Sweet words I longed to whisper,
But you paralysed my tongue…

Uninspired Days


Goes by with something like this;


1) Wake up
2) Brush teeth
3) Greets puppy and greets puppy’s mess
4) Breakfast and a show
5) Chores
6) A choice of three; Movie, Ps2, Laptop for the rest of the day.
7) Chores
8) Dinner
9) Stare blankly at a blank page
10) Give up
11) Sleep.



Altogether rather peaceful days if not entirely unproductive, which much proves to myself on what I am and the sort of life I’m living.




But there isn’t really much else to deviate to; I mean, I can’t finance myself to go out frequently, I don’t have good books to spend my idling to and I certainly fail at writing when I’m much more inspired to stop thinking at times where I’m not required to think. I’m. Too. Lazy. Yeah, that much sums it up.




The break in monotony is a movie yesterday, which was I Am Legend, which was watched together with Pauline and my cousin Ivan (who having no time and no company to watch this movie with, ended up spending a lesser work day with us) at Mid Valley. There was the Christmas Eve throng and much mindless wondering (on my part, at least), but it was an enjoyable day and I didn’t even see the arcades.




I Am Legend is a good movie, but when I thought about it on the way home I realised that it was somewhat lacking. What it has is; good, chair-gripping action, a good performance by Will Smith, a very despairing sense of loneliness and a rare glimpse at human nature in times of hopeless aloneness. What it doesn’t have is; more chair-gripping action, a better ending and a sleuth of untapped potential I feel the premise has. But it is a good movie, definitely one of the better ones this year, and definitely worth the money.




And today I found time to watch 1408, last year’s adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name, which I read barely days ago on Everything’s Eventual (which I’m weeks overdue at the university library).




It’s about horror writer Mike Enslin’s stay at a room with an in-room death history of 52, some of them from (gruesome) suicide, most of them from unreported natural deaths, and definitely due to some anomaly in the room. Well, a Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Olin couldn’t do anything to deter our determined writer from staying at the room, and eventually our writer faces the worst sort of room service you’d never tip for.




Critics gave it rather favourable reviews. I found it disappointing because I thought the short story was much more horrifying. My brother said it scared him shitless and there really is a very good sequence in the hotel’s ventilation system in which our writer crawled in to escape from the room. It has its emotional moments, bizarre moments and also its stupid moments. It’s nice, I guess, but like I said; the short story scared me somewhat, the movie didn’t do anything else except made me jump during the ventilation scene.




Next horror movie romp; 28 Weeks Later. Which didn’t quite work on the DVD player but maybe will work on the laptop.




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




Merry Christmas!

(A dire anomaly has caused the picture to shrink! Zoom with CTRL and + to read, if u actually want to.)

Sem Break!


Well, yeah.


I was up yesterday morning with a taste of liberty in my mouth (the tang you get from sleeping with your mouth agape for 12 hours) and a sensation of zenith spirits, which made me do certain things I would never do in half of my lifetime. Like telling myself, Yeah, I’ll clean up the room today.


And then I ate breakfast and sat around the living room, pillowed by the whim of warmly curry noodles freshly devoured, and as much as it counts to me, this is what homeliness is all about. Normally I would do as much as I could to laze the day away, but the spirit was there, and I announced to my parents that I will be cleaning up my room and they looked at me as if I told them I was having a homosexual relationship.


So I cleaned the room and did a pretty good job of it, and now it looked neater and nicer to navigate through and I won’t probably lose my pen whenever I put it down and find it half a year later under some strewn paper.


Speaking of lost pens, I found 5 I thought I misplaced in college and three of them still works (the other two, under the clogging ability of dust, failed to perform like any pen would). I also found my copy of Tales of Unease by Sir A. Conan Doyle; a collection of short stories I bought for cheap but left forgotten among my stack of notes (collected for 2 years consecutively). Other findings include a bunch of old exercise books, one of them with my old primary school comic drawings, which was so horribly bad I smiled like a moron looking at his old porno collection.


And speaking of porno collections… *ahem*, I found my Y Tu Mama Tambien VCD tucked among some old books. It’s not porn per se. It’s Alfonso Cuaron’s highly praised movie I happen to purchase from a VCD peddler who filed it under soft-core porn. I bought it for one buck and forgot to watch it. Now I wonder if it works.


* * * *


Grindhouse is best defined as two A-class movie slapped with B-grade title because they wanted to make two B-grade titles that rock. And they rock. It can’t be any more blatantly put unless I use the words kick-ass, super!, walao-weh and holy motherf***


But here’s the thing; very rarely you see movie directors making movies for fun. Grindhouse struck me as that. Somewhat Tarantino and Rodriguez got bored and they came up with this fresh idea from something that was already stale 20 years ago. They came up with two movies that is completely over the top the way b-grade movies are and they made it hella fun.


You won’t even care even if they’re utterly gory, campy and downright disgusting sometimes. When you see the girl stick an assault rifle as her peg leg you know this is some serious mindless fun.

Today I found an old friend.

I didn’t, actually. It was the start of the trailer for Edward Burn’s Purple Violets, where the words are printed by typewriter, on Courier.

The trailer then talked about how ‘sometimes you get second chances’ and how you make of it, even if it may suck. A love story about discovering what that was and whether or not it should be rekindled. Or, at least, I think that’s what it’s all about.

(Well, the movie looks good, only that I won’t probably be able to watch it on local screens. And it’s not the type of show I would download, because it was made for the arts and not for profit and the guilt will be evermore eminent.)

It got me thinking though. About two things:

About meeting and old friend, and about second chances.

But it’s not difficult to find the old friend, though there is always the question of time and place and convenience. No, I think the biggest question is about second chances, and what we can make of it.

Unfortunately second chances won’t probably find its way linearly into my hands like moth to purple fluorescent light. I guess it should be grabbed, and then it also depends on the size of your net and the speed of your timing. That is, if second chances do fly by me when I wish for it.

I watched my first Fred Astaire movie today, which coincidentally is also my first Audrey Hepburn movie, and it was a 1957 musical by the name of Funny Face.

They weren’t kidding about ‘dancing like Fred Astaire’, because darn it, Fred Astaire could dance. Like the very essence of music itself. The timing, the self-choreographed freshness and the total life of it; man, poetry in motion. And he could sing. And act. Heck, he could even make like a complete fool of a man and still look cool and perpetually charming.

Audrey Hepburn was cute. Like the schoolgirl Lolita nerd (at least, until she was fashioned into a model by Astaire in the movie). Really darn cute. And really darn talented in acting and dancing.

Man, back then actors are ACTORS. Now, actors just need to look pretty and ride a horse with a dwarf saddled to the back. The eyes of Hollywood these days…

It was an enjoyable movie, only not so funny as it might have suggested. But there was one segment of the movie where Astaire and Hepburn went around Paris doing photo shoots, and the still photos were somewhat excellent.

At the end of the day and through revision, I had the some parts of the lyrics stuck in my head. I think I might just have to go to sleep with it.

Though you're no Mona Lisa

For worlds I'd not replace,

Your sunny, funny face.

Dog Day Afternoon.

I found out that there are two distinctive ways to spend the afternoon before your exams (neither prolific nor conducive); one if them is getting to know your subject notes better and greet it with a genial drawing or two, and the second way is to bask in the window-filtered afternoon sunshine and watching Al Pacino robbing a bank in Dog Day Afternoon, while also taking some pictures of your Rastafarian pup.

(This is the Rastafarian pup at this favourite spot in the house, which has moved from under the coffee table to the rug at the front door, where it is much sunnier and where he wouldn’t wake up and bang his head.)

Of course, you can also mix both methods and have guilt cling to your chest like a cling-happy cat, where it stings and weighs considerably.

I’m glad to inform that study week is over and not so glad to inform that exams start tomorrow, for which I am not (and never) prepared of, and if you ask why I’m still here blogging instead of having a hectic final bout of revision, lets just say that I stand firm in my believe that procrastination will allow me to stand at the end of time a victor and a survivor, for the reward of time is to not spend it even if it flows eternally.

Yes, that is nonsense, so bite me in the hiney and see how it tastes.

Argh, the horror… I’m so bad at studying now I can’t even concentrate for 5 minutes. 5 minutes, and I was doodling on the spare piece of paper, or walking around the house senseless, or plopping down at the laptop to have a go at CS. 10 minutes later I was on the couch watching TV until conscience leant slightly more to the angel’s department and I was back in front of my notes. 5 minutes later the paper was full with anime heads.

Feature Writing tomorrow, and death is at the front gate, with his iPOD on and Amy Tan open at chapter 24, reading by moonlight.

I’ll be needing some luck tomorrow. And ample sleep.

Goodnight people.

(And to all the tormented souls out there under the same torturous contraptions such as I, good luck and if you don’t believe in luck, all the best. Or, if you don’t believe in wishes, then Merry Christmas and a happy Maryln Manson).

Clock; 1.44 a.m.

I can’t sleep.

This is a rare occurrence of insomnia. I used to be prone to it, but for the past few years (perchance due to a dwindling state of mind) I’ve been able to sleep soundly and surely, and I take it as a sign of a good turnaround.

Insomnia (for me, at least) is not where one finds the inability to sleep due to excessive remnants in energy and freshness. Rather, the lethargy and overall yearn to sleep is there, eminent and strong, yet the body fails to rest, and the mind fails to close, and what’s left is to will away the stagnating clinging of troubles or thoughts that refuses you your sleep.

I said troubles or thoughts, but not every occurrence is due to certain problems that plague the mind. Sometimes it’s just the simple act of thinking that keeps me awake, whatever that was in mind. It’s stupid, and obviously something I feel is easily cast away at a whim, but I guess things don’t work well enough for me. So the cogs continue to turn, rambling and loud and screechy, working on thoughts one doesn’t even need to think about.

I’ve had things worse sometimes, like not being able to sleep a wink until forced to give up, and finding myself cooking a very early breakfast and finding things to do to pass the time. Normally time passes very slowly then, and I may even try to sleep, but it wouldn’t come and there wouldn’t be anything to do; no TV for fear of waking the parents. No books to the mind as numb and heavy with exhaustion. No video games, no internet (none back then, except for dial-up, which was too costly for me to afford in order to will away times of less importance) and definitely no one to talk to.

Only silence, darkness, and the lulling calls of sleep; malice and cruel in its alluring tease. But I just couldn’t bloody sleep.

With time to spare and little to do, I did something a kid with consciousness and boredom could conjure; I imagined. I remembered telling myself stories to sleep. Sounds crazy, I guess, but it started when I closed my eyes and make a sentence and see how it goes. Most times, if the story is nice, I repeat on that same scene and feel the ease of mind, the loosening in the rough grip of thoughts. Then it was just pictures, images, moving and coloured or discoloured, and sometimes I fell asleep.

This tactic still works, especially if I’m too miffed up or troubled to go to sleep. Start a sentence and see where it’ll take me. Sometimes the stories I wrote come from there, but it was back then. Today my stories come from the realm of day where the monotony of waiting in places full of life took place, where words float around ready for me to grab. Still, there were always the ones that began in the midst of the night, above a snoring brother, where everything was muffled by the door and the pillow, and where the shadows come to life behind the curtain so long as passing light would give it motion.

With the laptop and the internet now, I wouldn’t have to do much to get me distracted enough to sleep. Now that I write this down I feel at ease, and I’ll probably fall asleep when I retreat to the bed.

I might not be telling me a story tonight… but as far as I know the way things work, I just might. Yeah, I might…