It started with a morning call.

But it didn’t happen while I was asleep, which would’ve been the type of situation where one wakes up, bleary and still occupied with the tangling tendrils of pre-wake drowsiness, to answer the phone in a voice that cracked and sounded 30 years older, wondering who it is and whether a beating is impending (and then the good/bad news will come and one would sit up to make sense of all the tumultuous info).


No, this time I was wide awake and was actually discussing with my brother the fundaments and delicacy of the Wing Chun art of Self-Defence (an interesting, rather applicable bit of Chinese Kung-fu, and yes I discuss something like that with my bro. Frequently) when Pauline called and told me that the results for the Industrial Training thing was out.


(She got an A, by the way, which is very good, and particularly more due to the worry she exhumes over. Some moments later, though, she buzzed me online and we both discovered she had contracted some Spyware and suddenly she was back in the pits with the snakes and the closing-in walls, and just now she had just told me her brother saved the computer. Wow, I wonder how many times you can fall in the pits and get back up all in one day.)


So I went online and did whatever a self-respecting student of the University would do in the light of discovering his/her internship results by getting all tensed up and mildly aggravated, and you gotta have to feel that way if you’ve just spent the good of three months getting up in the morning and doing something both unrelated to your studies and personal gain only see that, in the end, everything fucked up.


The webpage displayed an A for me. Holy fuckshit.


You can say that a whole lot of load on the shoulders took flight to the sky in a flurry of feathers and white.


But I guess I’m lucky. Lucky that my work evaluation came high, thanks to the ‘small-company’ status it holds; as Ji Lin might’ve put it very well, they probably need interns badly and would give a good evaluation so long you do fine as a good worker. I was an OK worker. I did my job and tried my best. It was a fish-out-of-water situation but I guess I managed to scrape through. Got rewarded with something good, yet then again, too good; somehow, there is the injustice that would be hard to swallow, especially when knowing that a whole of other slaving students out there who probably didn’t get what they deserved.


I think I just lost my right to complain, that I didn’t get what I wanted, that I didn’t get what I actually need to learn in order to know what journalism has in store for me.


It was back to the old question again, the one I asked myself throughout the months of January to April; was I unlucky, or lucky?


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

There were many things that happened this week.


There was the first class of the new semester, and boy was it boring.


There were the other classes as well, some good, some abysmal in the sense that I’m starting to have premonitions as to how I’m going to spend my time in these classes and not contract ennui.


There was the Safety Campaign, which might’ve been disastrous but -- thank goodness -- was rather OK considering the utter impossibility of it.


There was the grandee who walked, talked and balked and didn’t know how far he was threading into the lake in the utter darkness.


There was the moment which I would dub in my life story as The Moment I Received Pan-Mee (Noodles) Enlightenment; courtesy of Bryan (and indirectly, Pauline). Restaurant Kin Kin’s original spicy Pan-Mee is -- oh bloody hell -- like the beacon of power and excellence that shone and drowned all other Pan-Mee in blight; so good and utterly unique it is, other Pan-Mee (be it good, bad or passable) shall fall into the rims of the sideline as merely indifferent.


There was the new camera my father bought, recklessly impulsive he is when it comes to buying unnecessary things.


And there was, last but not least, rain the evenings. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you see the faint outline of a rainbow barely visible under the scanty, post-shower drizzle.

The ants on my table doesn’t know the dangers of marauding into my table-top waste basket; an expedition into perilous grounds, most probably suggested by a delusional worker that believed of the world of discarded candy wrappers found under and between crumpled paper of flustered miswritten words.


Ah, the foolish band. Only a single line, not accompanied by the occasional diligent soldiers that would’ve been something more impressive a sight perhaps. Up they march into the unknown, with the scant promise of sweet, sweet food for their brethren, disregarding danger, waving away the rationale of safety in larger numbers, or safety away from the sitting giant, now watching them with some sort of fascination stemmed from ennui, itself rooted in oh-holy-macaroni the marvels and wonders of a university-night, and heavens help me that it’s only the first week of the semester…


Down comes the wet cloth, like a yellow and coffee-stained tsunami. Micro-fibre qualities of the cloth ensures their entrapment, and subsequent slow suffocation, should they remain in it for long. Into the sink they go, water carrying them down the pipes and into the sewers and into the dark dank world of eternally pungent water.


The giant laughs maniacally and shuffles back to this room.


********


Oh holy macaroni. I’m bored.

My first robbery. And afterwards, the biggest burger I ever had.


I don’t know why, but as far as sketches go, I often get the person who is subject to some form beating. When I was in secondary school, Form 5 to be exact, I had to act alongside a pal for our English oral speaking exams and I was the overzealous boy whose girlfriend got nicked by his best friend; overzealous boy tries to hit the best friend and gets slugged in the face. Yee-haa.


During college, back in TARC, there was another English speaking test and this time I was a middle-aged man in his mid-life crisis with a debt and a failing family, who got a good pounding by a bespectacled loan-shark (“You can’t hit me!… Wait, technically you can, you’re a loan shark. But argh!”). It didn’t help to know that I was acting in front of a group of girls I barely knew, and that the first presentation I had involved me being hurt in a fictitious manner.


Wednesday I was a robber who tried to rob Li Mei (carrying a bag owned by Carmen, which I just got to know better and is a jolly girl) and got arm-locked in the process. Oh, and I got thrown on the ground! In front of a good 100 freshmen, who did some whoops when I was down and groaning. It was a promotional teaser to introduce the upcoming UTAR Safety Campaign, and we did it with a bang by bursting into the auditorium shouting and tugging at the poor bag until Li Mei Jujutsu-ed me and I got thrown. Apparently it worked, and while the initial plan was to have an unexpected drive-by snatch thievery (with me as the snatcher, but the idea got scrapped by the supervisor), I guess we managed to make a good enough impression.


Afterwards we were down at the Pavilion for lunch, and the Kelv-ster suggested the Carl’s Jr. restaurant. The burgers there are the sort that mutated from ideas written on pieces of paper, mixed in a biscuit can and prominently picked by the Creative Executive, who would proceed to place three ideas to a single burger and pitched to the director. You get all sorts of combinations; bacons and beef and mushroom and pickles and whatnot, and they all turn up in abominations held together by sesame seed buns. Wow, talk about the towering monster of doom.


They don’t look as ugly as I may make it sound; to the regular burger-lover, they’re possibly Van Gogh sandwiched in the classy strokes of Da Vinci. And they taste like Shakespeare exploded into lyrical splendours accompanied by Mozart and London Symphony. They taste good. They’re dead big, though, but shared with a friend it’s just about right (even halved, I reckon they’re the size of the average McD’s). Combo the burger with chilli-cheese fries and bottomless drinks, and you get something quite worthwhile once in sometime. I’d remind you to reserve more stomach space, though.


I managed to skip dinner that night. It was a huge, life-changing decision. My parents looked at me as though I just came out of the closet.


***********

Today (Saturday of the 24th of May 2008, 2 days after Indiana Jones went on his latest adventure after 20 years), Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day is Ruminate.

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 24, 2008

ruminate \ROO-muh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To chew the cud; to chew again what has been slightly chewed and swallowed."Cattle free to ruminate." --Wordsworth.
2. To think again and again; to muse; to meditate; to ponder; to reflect.
3. To chew over again.
4. To meditate or ponder over; to muse on.

You can use it this way;

The pot-bellied fathers of the participating children, in complete sync and understanding of each other’s paternal plights, pulled out their pipes and congregated at the corner to ruminate over the joys and ramifications of fatherhood.


And it seems to happen this way, really. I noticed that a group of fathers found themselves at the corner of the MPSJ this morning, their cigarettes out and carefully shielded away from any passing teachers, talking in a mixture of weariness and excitement about their kindergarten children. It’s Sports Day for the Kinderland children, held at the Subang Jaya Sports Complex, and I was there to help out the aunt and uncle.

I was listening for a bit (in a dire means to escape the repeating children songs booming out of the PA system, smack beside of where I sat), and I wondered if this is what fathers do, during parties or dinners or a random ball in some hotel somewhere for the wealthy celebrator. Do they really whip out some smoking device, gathered in a corner and discussed how Michael couldn’t seem to eat his broccoli, or that Lisa needed more discipline than what the experts suggested, or that the wife is suggesting another kid and that little Jason’s kindergarten fees are already sky-rocketing?

And I was there, half-listening and half tying my shoelaces (a little guilty perhaps, to be eavesdropping out of sheer boredom), and I guessed that maybe fatherhood sort of deserves something akin to the Gentlemen’s Club; but instead of talking the latest shipping companies, you talk about your kids.

I don’t really known why I thought like that and why I had decided to actually write about it (as I would put it; I couldn’t help but ruminate on it). Maybe I had wanted to write about how the fathers actually looked when they talked about their children, or that way that they could somehow agree with each other more than any other conversational topic.

Then I remembered that it’s Father’s Day soon.

Maybe dads deserve their own Clubs.

Bathing Rabbits.

Quite honestly a no-go sort of thing, but my father wagered his socks that the sun was warm enough to dry the rabbits before they catch the hypothermia train, so we had them quickly soaked and soaped and un-soaped and then chucked into the garden, where they camped wet and flustered, and made disgruntled attempts to shake the water off their paws.


(Note that bathing your rabbits is inadvisable. Unless dried very, very efficiently, your rabbit is more likely to stay at one corner of its cage for a few minutes, and then keel over into a salutation to the sun. By this time, grab a plastic bag.)


Now the rabbits smelled like anti-flea cat shampoo, and I know they’re not quite happy with it, proven by the couple of times I see Ms. Grey trying to rub it off onto the grass. Beats smelling like overused gloves, missy.


We don’t get a lot of sun these days, and the crappy thing is; we don’t get a lot of rain either. The weather is caught in this sort of uncertain limbo, or probably playing the game of running towards the waves and then leaping backwards when the waves lurch forward; the skies will amass an interesting ensemble of dark clouds (with the orchestral accompaniment of Thunder and Lightning), prompting the neighbours to rush out to their clothes, and then reverting back into a dull canvas of gloomy emptiness. The nights turn the house into baking oven and the mornings lack the sense of hovering chill; all you get is dry whiffs of wind and that’s it.


Isn’t it springtime somewhere?

Le festin est sur mon chemin




Les rêves des amoureux sont comm’(e) le bon vin
Ils donn(ent) de la joie ou bien du chagrin
Affaibli par la faim je suis malheureux
Volant en chemin tout ce que je peux
Car rien n’est gratuit dans la vie

L’espoir est un plat bien trop vite consommé
A sauter les repas je suis habitué
Un voleur solitaire est triste à nourrir
A un jeu si amer je n’peux réussir
Car rien n’est gratuit dans…

La vie… Jamais on ne me dira
Que la course aux étoiles; ça n’est pas pour moi
Laissez moi vous émerveiller et prendre mon en vol
Nous allons en fin nous régaler

La fêt(e) va enfin commencer
Sortez les bouteilles; finis les ennuis
Je dresse la table, de ma nouvell(e) vie
Je suis heureux à l’idée de ce nouveau destin
Une vie à me cacher et puis libre enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin

Une vie à me cacher et puis libre enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin

(English Translation)

Dreams are to lovers as wine is to friends
Carried through lifetimes, (and) spilled now and then
I am driven by hunger, so saddened to be
Thieving in darkness; I know you’re not pleased
But nothing worth eating is free

My hope is a banquet impatiently downed
Impossibly full, now I’ll probably drown
Many thieves’ lives are lonely with one mouth to feed
If giving means taking, I’ll never succeed
For nothing worth stealing is…

Free at last; won’t be undersold
Surviving isn’t living; won’t eat what I’m told
Let me free, I’ll astonish you; I’m planning to fly
I won’t let this party just pass me by

The banquet is now underway, so…
Bring out the bottles; a new tale has spun
In clearing this table, my new life’s begun
I am nervous, excited; (oh) just read the marquee!
A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting for me

A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting for me


(Thanks to the kind people of stlyrics.com for the lyrics and the delightful translation).

French is rather hard to sing; I thought I’d give it a try but pronouncing malheureux damned near sprained my tongue, so I gave up and wondered if there ever was a chance for me to say Je T’aime to someone, I would simply just mispronounce it into Jet Amy.


French; ze language of love. Paris, ze grande ville of amour. 5 years ago I was one of the three people, namely my mother and father and I, who wondered aloud as to why my brother scoured the bottom of his piggy-bank to purchase an English-French-English dictionary (pocket sized, by Oxford). This was shortly after he bought an English-Japanese-English dictionary, and we thought he was on the verge of becoming a prodigious 17 year-old who will inevitably master command of 7 languages and will be one of those people who can rescue distressed Spanish ladies asking for directions in Kuala Lumpur*.

(*It remains without doubt as one of the coolest things one person can possibly do. Being able to do so will increase your cool level notches higher. This, somehow, does not seem to work with Hakka and Sing-lish. No offence. It’s personal observation and analysis).


Till now, the reason for the French dictionary now sitting on the top of my writing table (mostly seen wedged between the Japanese dictionary and the Federal Constitution when my mother saw fit to tidy it, collecting dust lightly along the top and proudly giving people the assumption that I could speak some French, which I really don’t) still eludes us, and my brother would simply claim “I don't really know” whenever I asked.


I concluded that my brother had, among the many individuals out there immersed by the way Gomez Addams would go nuts when Morticia used French (“Ah cherie! You spoke French!”) and knowing that girls sorta reacts the same way on a vice versa scenario, thought he would benefit from the additional few vocabulary in French.


Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but the dictionary now stands gloomy and very much unused, aside from the occasions in which I saw need to know how something sounded in French (now Babelfish took over, but I still flip the book sometimes).


But French; the language and all of its articulated properties; why is it so captivating, so alluring and enticing, to be deemed as ze language of love? Is it the way it is pronounced? Does saying voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir sound more appealing than saying “You, me, bed, tonight”? Or is it the enigma of it; the mystery both heightened by its often difficult-to-fathom pronunciation and the opposites lesser knowledge upon the language (“Vous gros et paresseux re comme un porc” said Andy under the perfect cerulean skies, and Lisa sighed and said, “yes, I do.”)? Or is it stereotyping to a profoundly huge level, that French, regardless of anything, IS the language of love, brought as the gospel truth by movies and stories?


Alas, I do not know. Perhaps I with some sort of miraculous brilliance I would have studied upon it. But I would tell you that French is, undoubtedly, beautiful, but it is the sort of beauty that lies in every language spoken in the pleasure of passion and purpose. Latin, Italian, Japanese, even Hakka, all have this quality that transcends the need to understand the meaning. Think of it as orchestral music, and the melodious harmony it sprung, like rivers of abstract stories and emotions, when played right and passionately, and you don’t even need to know what makes that sound like clams dropped on one another.


(I would like to state here my believe that the most beautiful way a language could’ve been spoken, in the fashion of utter passion and desire, is the flustered ramblings of an Italian lady discovering the activities her husband did sub rosa.)


* * * * * * *


I think I’ll have to apologise for this, even if you won’t likely have read it. I think I can safely say that I am bored out of my skins.


It’s pretty annoying when in a situation where one is torn between writing for the class blog, as promised to a fellow classmate to which he replied with a Thanks, and feeling like ditching everything to play Chrono Cross. I’m not obliged to write apart from being obliged to write as some sort of practise, this being a responsibility to myself for aspiring to be a writer while not being a good one. But I would try to write and end up something nonsensical, or fiction at the closest best. Fiction which I would not think suitable to post in a class blog once deemed political blog but really a journalistic blog.


And currently the only things journalistic to me are reviews and some feature on some stupid something which significance to the world is close to zero. I feel my abilities being limited here (It’s like Spider-man in space, and webbing is useless there, man.).


Well, nothing worth eating is free.

I’m back now.

And I see no cow-related calamities, nor do I chance upon a random, unidentified body upon my doorstep, which would’ve been the doing of Mr. Moo (at any rate, even if I do find one, I wouldn’t be likely putting it up here, would I?). As far as I know no downright peculiar television broadcast went on the air, though I do know that there was a 45 minute long tech error on Astro Wah Lai Toi (which caused an outbreak unlike which I’ve seen; millions of house-cooped up housewives terrorising their family members because Dicey Business was replaced by a blue screen announcing the technical error, and I tell you, it was pandemonium).

Well, everything’s fine, and my previous post can very well be just forgotten and wiped clean like the Slate in Slater. What do you say?

Betong turned out to be an interesting trip, and possibly the quietest, most placid vacation there ever was. Where was the urgency of rushing through ever landmark before the days are up, or the worry and brain-cringing hours planning the impossible trip to eat every damn thing in town? Nope. Betong only had 3 famous landmark to visit, and food is everywhere within walking distance and we actually wanted as much time in the hotel as possible.

I didn’t really expect it, but it was a relaxation sort of trip. Wow.

I think I'll post the pics and vids up here, instead of letting it rot in my drives.

Well.

Betong, in a nutshell, is a town in the Yala Province of Thailand, smack south and just off our Perak border with the Land of Rice and Smiles. 5 hours drive from Kajang, and just 5 minutes from the Pengkalan Hulu border control booth (308m above sea level). It’s a small town, just as quaint as you might have imagined, with a few notable landmarks and the bustling air that calls Tourist Business. According to Marimari.com, the name is derived from the Malay word for Bamboo (isn’t it Buluh?). The town holds a population of about 48K people, with the majority Buddhists and Muslims.

Possibly because it’s just beyond the borders of Malaysia, pretty much everyone there can converse in Chinese (your standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkein and Hakka). Here’s how the town sort of looks like:

We checked in the hotel shortly before lunch, and then set off for our first meal. Beef noodles and chicken rice (if you’re not familiar with Thai chicken rice, know that the chicken there are lean and stripped of fats). And then on with some shopping. Stuff there are pretty cheap.

Soon after I found the out-of-place clock tower, rightly in the middle of town (a landmark, apparently).

Looks beautiful in the night, too.

Nearby, you find the biggest mail-box in the world. No kidding; the largest one according to Marimari.com

Giant red dildo, with yours truly beside it as comparison.

I thought it was big enough (you don’t have that much mail, do you?), and was busy wondering why it was even built in the first place when I saw this;

Holy Excrement of Heavens; this is f***ing huge!

(yours truly as comparison, now a mere speck).

This box is built in a new community centre sort of building, not yet open to the public. I guess they didn’t want someone else to take the Largest Mail-box trophy anytime soon.

This here is the where my dad calls as the Bob-Marley shop, for its huge collection of reggae stuff. They have flip knives and fedoras, dildo-shaped lighter and a large number of katanas.

Metal-cast BB guns; like the damn real things, man. Straight banned in Malaysia.

Oh, and this is where the Rastafarian Pup came from.

It may not look it, but it's a pet house

Well, after the wandering around and eating, we head back to the hotel for a nap… supposedly, until my dad decided the day is too long to waste and took me and the brother for some Thai massage.

I can describe it simply as F**K-SHIT Motherfuking HURTS.

It hurt. Like mad. And somehow my dad can fall asleep in the process. You’re basically naked on top, wearing these pants that don’t hold and will keep falling down. They lead you to this room, turn down the lighting, and let you listen to some soothing music (I recognised them as simple, orchestral pieces from famous songs, notably Killing me Softly, Raindrops keep fallin on my Head and Song Sung Blue). Then they press whatever pressure points they’re taught to press, and at first it was pretty alright, until suddenly oh damn-shit they’re NOT doing that and you wanted to scream, you really wanted to, but you got your pride to care for, and then they started twisting the limbs in odd directions to stretch and to crick and oh god no, no, DAMN SHIT IT HURTS!

(and they press, sometimes, a little too close to the crotch area to be comfortable).

Well, at the end of it, I was glad it was over. And you might be either like my bro, who swore it off forever and ever and ever, or you could be like me who somehow felt really, really good after it.

It’s fun. But freaking hurts. Sometimes things go two and two.

Then back to the hotel. Then rest. Then dinner (BBQ seafood and authentic tom yam), then sleep.

The next day was properly planned out. First we go eat, and then we go to the hot springs before the weather got too hot to enjoy it.

The place had been built nicely; there’s the main part where the spring is, which they flowed the water into a separate pool to cool it down (too crazy hot on the spring itself). They had some dragon thingies to decorate the place too.

And here’s the centre of the spring, where you can pop eggs in and get them boiled in 7 minutes. Everything there smelled like eggs. It’s something to do with sulphur.

After soaking in for a few minutes, we left the springs and headed for the Piyamit Tunnels, but not before stopping to take a look at these pagodas, built as a resting spot for tourists. They have the statues of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals built in front of them.

There’s the view of the valley the pagodas overlook; beautiful (but ruined by my shots).

And then, to the Piyamit Tunnels!

On the top should be the village the commies built after surviving the bombings. The place is surrounded by properly cared foliage and marble statues. There’s a nice Kuan Yin statue near the entrance.

The plate says for itself.

We’re charged a small entrance fee, and off we hiked to the tunnels. It’s a little way uphill in the jungle. Here’s the hike up. You’ll forgive my family banter and my less than orthodox narration.

And soon enough we’re at the tunnels. There was an uncle who gave a brief explanation of the tunnels, which is the same story they gave at the entrance. I decided that the tunnel is too dark to be photographed in, so I took a video. Once again, forgive my crappy narration and the odd family moments.

The millipede is HUGE.

After the tunnels, we’re whisked into a small museum exhibiting the stuff and events concerning said tunnel. Photography is strictly prohibited inside, but there's virtually nothing inside downright interesting. Educational, yes.

And then, that was it. The end. We’ve went through all the landmarks and it wasn’t even noon yet of Day 2.

We went back to eat, then to rest up in the hotel until dinner, and we camped in the hotel until daybreak (everyone was strangely tired, after the hiking and shopping).

And come 10 a.m. the next day, we were already heading home.

I’ll be going away for a bit.

To Santa Monica, to St. Andrews, Sans Francisco and Honolulu.
For the little sun that goes unseen
Right where the beauties’ been
For the sight of sound, the sound of sin


All rolled up into a humble place called Betong. The one is Southern Thailand, by the way, and has nothing to do with the Pahang place of the same (or possibly just similar) name.
Just for a short trip, with the family (the parents and the bro, and oh, wouldn’t it be smashing…), and Betong’s not short on the sights as well as the fun, apparently. I’ll post about it after I get back on Saturday night.


(I’m pretty sure I’ll be back. I doubt this is a trip to sell able bodies in Thailand as a means to support my family’s clandestine activities -- which mean that I will never possibly know of it, and seeing my bulk would make for a very good sub rosa trade to cannibals of the Wakka Wakka Islands.)


I’m optimistic.


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


There was once this girl, who found herself in mud.


She realised, soon enough, that mud is a terrible place to be in; it stank, for one, and it is gruellingly sickening to sit knee-high in muck, with the cold pressing onto her, constricting. It was humiliating, it was lonely, and it was painful, at times, when she wondered how it was like before the mud and the muck, when it was green grasses and meadows and the promise of eternal spring. The oaths, given beneath the moonlight, swore under the presence of the stars and the nightly wind.


The worst of all was the feeling of sinking in. Of falling deeper into the ever convulsing mud.
There were hands that came, to pull her out. Ropes and sticks and four-wheel drive wenches at points, which she would grab on, hoping that they would pull her away from the mud, and farther away from the meadows before, into someplace new and fresh; a village, perhaps, where she might start anew, with a flower shop at the beside the clinic, exhibiting fresh flowers daily on porcelain china propped at the front of the shop, under a homely sign promising the freshest and loveliest. And people will stop by buying flowers, praising them as they go, or simply just to bid good morning as they passed. A new start to a new, unknown, but certainly better life.


She would hope and wish, and she would let go and fall back into the mud, because she still wishes for the meadows before it, and in the mud by the roadside was where she could see it best.


And she wallowed. She cried. She sank deeper, lamenting, hoping and not knowing whether she would wait or take what that is given; wait, for the hand to take her back to the meadows, or take the hands that offered to help her to the village.


At one point she was too deep, and she was scared. But she wanted the meadow more than the village.


She wallowed. And I think she is still there, sitting in the mud, crying when the cold and the stagnation and the stench closed her lungs and squeezed her throat, or when the night proved too reminiscent an experience, with the stars and the moon, retelling her the stories about the great green meadow, the promises and oath, so that she remembered and wept. I think she still takes a hand sometimes, letting herself being hauled closer to her feet, closer to dry ground, telling her that the village welcomes her, if she would just come. And she would let go and fall, too afraid to lose sight of the meadow.


A long time ago I saw this girl, and I asked if she would like to go to the village, but her voice told me that I understood too little to empathise, and that the mud wasn’t such a bad place to be, so long the meadow remained a canvas close enough to feel and smell.


And I told her; wouldn’t it sound ridiculous, when I told you, that something living -- even an animal, to say the least -- would know when to get away when being trapped too long in a state of torment?


Isn’t it basic instinct?


And she said I wouldn’t understand. I’ve never seen the meadow.


And I thought; yes, perhaps, until I’ve seen the meadow, and know what’s it like to make an oath and found it shattered one day, to find myself in the mud, I would see to myself if the mud is worth staying in for the meadow. And then, perhaps, if I may know enough to stand up and walk away, I might just return here and tell you about it.


I might just ask if you would need help to get up.


And I walked away.


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


In my absence from the net for these 3 days, do take notice on a few things;


1) If a new post were to appear here during this period, and contains something about World Domination and the Salvation of Cow-kind, please know that it is written and published by an enigmatic figure known as The Cow. I don’t know this person or thing, but I know who to blame when something unwanted is posted here during these 3 days.


2) If my MSN goes online and starts spreading messages about World Domination and the Salvation of Cow-kind; What and How to Act According to the Decree of Cow-hood, please know that I have nothing to do with it and they’re probably a spam virus thing, which I will deal with when I get back.


3) If you receive a phone call by a person claiming to be me, and promptly invites you to the Meeting of Bovine Minds, DO NOT AGREE OR ACTUALLY -- IN A CASE OF UTTER AMAZINGNESS -- ATTEND THE THING. If you do, you will be trapped in a cellar for a week and then used as an experiment to better understand the human anatomy. Trust me, I know. I may not be subject to it, but I KNOW.


4) If you dropped by my house and is invited in by a butler, who is very big and fat and walks oddly, as though not used to moving on two legs, and has a coat of white with black spots (patches), who speaks in a Swiss accent and has a tendency to go Moo sometimes, who identifies himself as Mr. Moo, DO NOT ENTER THE HOUSE. Just leave and call me when I get back. I don’t have a butler.


5) There might just be a chance that national TV (like RTM1 and RTM2, TV3 perhaps, but definitely not on Astro) will broadcast a special announcement saying that the world is considerably f***ed up and that humankind is to go bye bye, for the Time of the Cows have Arrived, do not take it seriously and just go to sleep. But if somehow, and just damn somehow, you wake up and see the streets overrun with Cows and Buffaloes and maybe even Goats stamping on people and gutting everyone with a special Gutting gun, please run. As far as you can. I will deal with it when I get back. Don’t call the military or the police or the U.N. Just run.


Well, that’s that about it. Take care ya’ll


Goodnight people!

Heroics.



Score from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (the one everyone skimped on, even with Brad Pitt leading the vocal frontline, causing the Hollywood directors to yell, as though the day of reckoning is upon us all; “Traditional animation is doomed, I tell ya! Doomed!”)

*Composed by Harry Gregson-Williams*

I should be asleep, really. But I’m not going to. Instead, I’ll floor this post with movie scores, just because I feel like it.



The theme to Back to the Future, composed by Alan Silvestri.



The Godfather Theme, by Nino Rota.



John William’s Battle of Heroes.

And while we’re on Star Wars;



The real battle was fought with sticks with Shrimp/Peanuts tied to the end of it, by the way.


Goodnight, people.

Redundancy.

Put a door at someplace that don’t need one.

Can’t think of a place? Perhaps you can take heed and straddle off with these few examples first:


Put a door on your roof.

Put a door on the Karak Highway.

Put a door that opens to a door that opens to an elevator with only one floor button (13) and when you press it the cable snaps and A Whole New World plays on the speakers.

Put a door in the Hulk’s room.

Put a door in a monorail train with the ‘W.C’ label, that opens to nothing.

I think you pretty much get the general idea.

Good ideas, non? Imagine the utter confusion it would cause. An old hobo walks out to the middle of the Karak Highway, and opens the door into a oncoming 16-wheeler (not that we have many of them there). He sees blinding light, and that’s all he will remember.

The point to all this? I’m afraid it’s merely to place my opinion (or rant, if you may) in regards of my dad who, somehow, in spite of all possible explanations except for pure having-nothing-to-do, saw fit to install a door smack between the garden and the new, expanded porch.

Before you start getting impressions of a 7-foot mahogany double-door with brass handles, let me first inform you that it is merely one of them bar-counter doors that opens and flaps back with ease (my father refers to them as ‘cowboy doors’; the ones that open into western saloons and clatter back into place after someone walks through it, which I think is for the ease of the excessively drunk). It is now installed on one of the metal bars that hold the canopy and flaps out into the garden.

Sounds sensible, yes, if we have a wall that specifically would spell “Door here, please”, or even a proper picket fence. What we have is flowers and pots and plastic flower-bed Just Stick it on the Ground and It’ll Look Like you’ve Built It mini fences.

That said, the door now stands so out of place I wouldn’t be more surprised with one on the Karak Way.

I looked at it this afternoon and realised that it’s not really a sore to the eye; it’s just out of place. Not door-on-the-roof out of place, which is downright bizarre. Just… weird. Needless. Yes, that seems to sum it out right.

I believed my father thought it as a means to successfully keep the dogs away from the garden or vice versa, but the dogs have worked it out now and the father is… well, just passive about it.
I just think that it’s uselessly there, like a door to a door to an elevator express to death. Just give me a hole with no “Beware! Hole ahead” sign, and I will gladly (accidentally) fall into it.

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

I’m bored.

(This is holiday boredom, by the way, and not to be associated with other forms of boredom that are inexplicably and inevitably existent in everything else).

Somehow this shouldn’t be, because I have the stack of books I got from the Book Fair Thing that still sits on my table, staring at me glumly and catching dust quick. I haven’t gotten to the rest of them because Danse Macabre proved to be a long read, and somehow I don’t want to start on something else until I’ve finished it.

I also have Chrono Cross on the laptop (EPSXE emulated, with the complete two-disc ISOs), which I know I can get lost into for hours on end. And Tekken 5 is fun fun fun.

Across the Universe is still in the laptop, which I haven’t gotten to watch while at work, and now still haven’t gotten to watch yet. There’s that huge pile of DVDs in the living room cabinet and I might just actually watch the entire Heroes season 1 on DVD.

So why am I bored? What unexplained, incomprehensible, illogical force is holding me into this stagnating and dourly unmoving limbo?

Great skies above! Give me an answer!

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m innately one who seeks the boredom, because being stoned by inactivity is in itself a form of unrequited pleasure, refined, possibly, by dancing away from the other temptations that bid themselves as ‘cures’ for it. That’s right, like a strip tease or a carrot dangling on a pole; pleasures heightened by refraining from it, kept at a distance not too far to whiff but not too near to taste.
Or maybe I’m just being stupid.

The Day Something Bad I Ate Turned into A Swirling World of Crazy that Almost Led to a Puke-Fest.

That was Tuesday, and the food in question was Maggi Mini in a cup. After regurgitating it into the toilet sink, the world was spinning as though I just got out of a carousel after three hours, and it even spun while I closed my eyes. Somehow I managed to tell the people I was chatting with online that I needed to go, and fell asleep until 7.

And then the mother came and woke me up, insisted that I ate plain porridge for dinner (with canned Fried Mackerel and Black beans, so I didn’t protest) and then go rest up. I was pretty alright after that; everything was still tilting from time to time, and when I walked I was pretty sure I was swaggering (“Yarr… is it the boat, or the rum?”). I felt like puking sometimes, but heck; puking takes the worst out of me, so I held it back by eating mango (it helps, really, especially if it's sour).

Somehow I managed to type down a huge remainder of my final report, the ones I left out of procrastination and a stalemate battle between Do or Do the Tekken. The next morning I rushed out the parts that I left purportedly, edited it quickly, printed it out with the appendix and then flew down to PJ to hand it up. All done without breaks; I was still pretty proud of myself, until it happened to me that I could’ve avoided this and gotten it done last Friday.

Well, done is done, and now the swirling has ended and I’ve safely discarded the other packets of the Maggi Mini. I’m free and nothing else should be bothering me unless I saw myself to be bothered.

In all the mess, I even forgot to wish Vic Happy Birthday on Tuesday. Happy Birthday!

(You’ll forgive a friend who had a final report to rush and a massive headache to boot due to some instant noodles, thus forgetting to wish you, would you, Vic? Non? Please?)

(Please?)

(Please? =P)

(Thanks for this pic by the way =P)

Ah, as they say, freedom is felt by the sense of weightlessness on your shoulder, as though the strains of gravity and the worldly power of depression is vanquished by the heavenly wings that spout from your back, bearing you into (temporary) bliss. And somewhere in the clouds, the air with fill your lungs with sweet, Soda Pop tangs and momentarily the angel harp will play in serenading harmony. Oh, Bohemia!

Yeah, well, freedom is dependant, obviously, on the state of what you have just escaped. For me, and for this moment, it just meant that I have more time for myself. And time is all that I need.
I think I’ve had the holidays planned out well enough; I have days for complete leisure, days to take care of some unfinished business and days reserved for freelancing gigs and unplanned family thingies. Ah, there’re a few days, perhaps, for some planned family thingies, which should involve going for a short vacation, and heaven knows we all need that to clear our systems.

Something brighter looms ahead, and being just the good shipmate on board, I steer right towards it.

Water in the watering can; “I’ve made life easier for you…”

My dad can be both ironic and unknowingly hypocritical.


He made me break my back Thursday morning until afternoon, helping him with the plethora of chores that involves the massive pile of animals he had decided, many years ago, to share residence in our humble abode as means of promoting responsibility and a sensation of Zen. It pretty much made my life crappy and burdened with irrelevant workload and worries.


The Rastafarian Pup bathed, the aquariums washed and the turtles fed later, I moved to refilling the rabbit’s water-bottles. Unknowing to me, he had actually placed a watering can full with water near the cage, for me to fill the bottles with.


I didn’t notice, of course, and when he saw me heading (trudging) towards the pipes, he said to me; “There’s water in the watering can. I’ve filled it for you.”


“Oh,” I said, and walked back to the cages.


“I made life easier for you. What do you think I’d do?”


“Ah.”


I was crouching on the ground, refilling the bottles, when it hit me like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I laughed grimly, flushing away the rabbit droppings.


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


A note to all:


If you’ve heard about the infamous Orson Wells War of the Worlds radio broadcast that caused nationwide mayhem because people actually believed martians were invading with heat rays and tripods, it’s now available for you to listen.


Part one of the broadcast is here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4wf5TPVz56A. You can find the remainder of it there as well.


One part of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre (a study of the horror fiction genre by the King of macabre himself) talked about horror on the radio. He harkened back to the time where radio drama was just as staple as Heroes and Desperate Housewives are to us; a fusion of dialogue and narration (by 1950’s radio spokespersons, which can say “Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast to bring you…” in such perfection you wonder what evolutionary pandemic had caused our voices to degrade) that played on our imagination, giving us the canvas to draw on rather than a full picture.


I’ve read that part, which has Arch Oboler and Orson Wells and some interesting measures of horror voices and sound effects can give you, and went to try the vast ocean of Youtube for some samplings. I wasn’t disappointed.


Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds, I’d say, is ingenious. The things they can do before the tube of images and sounds turned into imagination itself.

73 Days Later…

And I was liberated.

But liberation, I believe, depends on how you look at it; three months and a half had been both long and brief, but after the liberation -- the act of walking past the prison gates, towards the waiting car, nary a look backwards -- it is back to the old humdrum monotony of having nothing else to do.

I don’t have to go to work now, I tell myself in the morning (not yet anyway, not until I’ve graduated and got lucky). I have to wake up and do the chores and make sure that the pets don’t die. That, coupled with afternoons with nothing to do but Tekken (fun, but short-lived fun), it’s just like getting out of prison and going back to the drug-infested alleys.

But still, because I don’t have to rot in the office, as opposed to having to rot at home with all of its humble comforts, things are definitely better. *Confetti!*

The internship has ended. I only have a report left to finish, which I haven’t started

(recuperation is a delicate matter), and after that I shouldn’t be pestered by things that I do not deliberately pester myself with.

I looked back, as usually as one might, and I think I remember the past three months half as something of a mixed nuts. I didn’t hate it, but I never liked it. I’m grateful I landed there, perplexed and disorganised, but safe, and yet I’m disgruntled that I was involuntarily kept away from knowing what being unsafe meant. I remembered little, forgotten too much (rotting for a good month or so can do that), and found things to be new and fresh but utterly monochrome and dull.

It’s a like a movie with the good and bad bits blended, turning into a multi-coloured slush of so-so tasting slurpy.

Still, when I left the office Wednesday evening, I don’t find myself looking back. I may be back, though, but that’s for the future to show.

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

Oh baby… baby!

I was having dinner with the mother last Friday, and just as the bill was safely settled my mother’s phone rang.

It was a call from the grandparents, down in Johor for some babysitting. They had called to mom that Aunt Shirley (or Aunt Five) was in the hospital. She went in for a bout of food poisoning, but what the doctored discovered during the check-up was the she was a month pregnant.

We drove to the hospital in relative silence, discussing only a little, and mostly this was because I was pretty much occupied with my thoughts, and I could tell that mom was, too. I was sitting in a mish-mash puddle of anxiety, and -- what I remembered repeating to myself during the journey home -- a sense of childish excitement.

The aunt is fine, now resting at home. Come December or next January, she would be having her baby.

A baby!

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

What I have gotten myself during The Book Fair thing:

And the titles, from bottom to top, are:

Danse Macabre and Cujo by Stephen King (both in their 1993 publication covers by Warner Books, which feature a lot of red and a picture of the King at the spine and the back of the book).

Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I wonder how two horror-filled heads are better than one.

The Naked Face and Morning, Noon & Night by Sidney Sheldon, which is in the same cover collection as my copy of Best Laid Plans.

The Chamber by John Grisham, which looks sparkling brand new, as well as Skipping Christmas, which is hard-cover.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton; I’ve watched both movies and I hear the booka are completely different.

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett, which I’ve read and loved and now turned into a fan.

And finally, Galilee by Clive Barker. This is about the only paperback of his I’ve seen which doesn’t price above 50 bucks (well, I found this in the bargain bin, but I assume that it’s the sort of paperback that you can find for about RM35).

(Propped on top of them is my Alkem Cap, and below is my Capstone Books malleable star).

I’ve also bought two non-fiction books as gifts for my dad, and they are 45 Years Under the ISA by Koh Swe Yong and Merdeka!: British Rule and the Struggle for Independence in Malaya 1945-1957 by Khong Kim Hoong.

All of them tally to RM195; the most I’ve ever spent on books, and the best I’ve ever spent.

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.