t h i s g u y ' s p l a c e

every now and then i come across snippets of stories online which i suddenly "connect" to.

i have a weird fascination with the oddities of life and a tendency to romanticise both the ultra mundane and the peculiar.

take this story for instance : Drunken Swede tries to row home from Denmark

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A drunken 78-year-old Swede stole a dinghy after a night out in the Danish town of Helsingor and tried to row back to Sweden, but fell asleep halfway, Danish police said on Monday.

When the man discovered he lacked the necessary funds to pay for the ferry from Helsingor to Helsingborg in Sweden on Saturday, he decided to row the five km (three miles) across the strait of Oresund that separates the two.

He quickly grew tired and, trusting fortune and the currents to see him safely home, took a snooze at the bottom of the boat, where Danish police later found him out at sea, still asleep.

The strait is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Police said the owner of the dinghy had decided not to press charges.

i'm not sure what connected me. the drunken determination this old man had or his subsequent trust in fate that he would be drifted back home even after he grew tired of rowing.

---

i'm back from a pretty eventful trip to macau and hong kong. many firsts, and new experiences as well as the familiar exhaustion that follows days of hitting the road with just a map, water, camera, (no lonely planet!) friends and conversation to get you through the day.

if you couldn't already tell, i'm feeling melancholic too.

disgruntled with this life that seems to throw us all against each other. like random molecules in a random gravitational pull that makes no sense at all. we collide, impact each other's lives, hold on as tight as we can with the few limbs we have and let go of so many others.

if i can't hold on, i want to at least make sure i made an impact big enough to be really felt. in this universe, with it's rules of chemistry, physics, biology, economics and social science, that'll have to do for now. impact.

full.

my life feels full.

sunday morning 7am 8th of june and i'm staring out the fogged-up window of a suite on the 16th floor. the room is thrashed. alcohol and vomit and the sickening hue of cupcake colours meshed with the drab shade of the hotel carpets form a stark picture that kind of ties in with the blur from the night before. my friends, my closest allies and new friends, are scattered around. one in a cupboard. two in a pile. three on the bed. two sitting on the sofa, guilt written on their faces. culprits, cohorts, conspirators, companions and cunts, i love them all.

it's cold but i've just had a warm shower to wash off the buttery scent of icing sugar and the sticky sweet smell left lingering on me by the stripper that i barely remember. (was she shaved? not shaved? how is it that i only remember the most unattractive part of her - her face?)

my body feels clean on the outside, but inside i feel poisoned and my mind's in an alcohol-tainted state of remorse and regret. (as i get older, i find my hangovers get worse. is it because there is more to regret in the painful harsh light of a hungover morning?)

still. my overall state of mind is one of extreme gratitude - just for the fact that i survived the night and got so incredibly wasted in the company of my friends.

back to where i started, i was looking out the fogged up window onto thecity skyline. kl - my other good friend. barely awake, she looked as hungover as the rest of us. it looked like one of those grey mornings where the world might just decide to call it a day and everything might just end abruptly.

and i was ok with it.

25 years and one day old and i think i've gotten the hang of life. i can handle it sober. i can handle it drunk. i can handle it hungover. i can handle it when it's time to pay the bill.

---

yesterday, in the same night, i found myself attending n's wedding and m's 40th birthday. in both cases, i sat in as a quiet observer in the profound moments in the lives of two close/old friends. one on the cusp of her new life as half of a married couple. one partying her socks off to the beat of an approaching mid-life crisis. i remember thinking some rather deep thoughts but for the life of me can't recall it now.

i think it was something about wanting to get drunk on life.

---

i feel full.

these couple of months are going to fly by. macau | hong kong | redang | krabi and perhaps mongolia | dubai in between.

i'm looking forward to it. i like feeling full, secure and satisfied. but travelling will make me hungry again. in a good way. (i hope)

"Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs.
Speak no feeling, no I dont believe you.
You don't care a bit. You don't care a bit."
Hide and Seek, Imogen Heap

I remember hiding as a child, waiting for someone to come find me. The more difficult I made myself to find, the more I wanted to be found. Peeping, out to see if anyone would come, it was always not a big victory to come out of hiding, and realise your playmates just never had a clue how to find you.

i spent most of the waking hours of my weekend painting bright colours onto the walls of a hospital's pediatric emergency ward.

another good weekend spent doing something more fulfilling than writing up strategy reports.

hairy's back in town and tim and nat too. but despite the recent fun antics and drunkard behaviour, i think what i really need is to clean up my life.

we're shifting offices this week. i've to tear down my post-its, organise the facets of my 3-year old consultant brain into little files and cardboard boxes.

it's also spring cleaning and tax time. digging up old receipts and i'm pretty shaken up by my utter lack of financial planning.

so yea, paintjobs, moving, tax and cleaning - i'm sorting out the physical stuff in my life and it's difficult enough - when can i get around to sorting out my thoughts, dreams and emotions?

and when i'm done with all of the above, do i really want to see what my life will finally look like?

after sacrificing the past couple of weekends to work, i really made the most of my free weekend last week. attended 2 gigs - one jazz, one folk and took part in a live performance art event. i'm eager to do more now!

i've been wanting to contribute to the local underground scene here. make a departure from my stiff collar corporate existence and plunge into the pseudo pretentious yet unabashedly talented underbelly of this crazy city.

i'm on the lookout for poetry open mics.

and if i do go, i think i'll read one of the following.

feedback?

purification

i strip my own layers off
like sand from the sea
layer upon layer
until all i see is me

like smeared ink on seared flesh,
sliced skin and torn dress,
the purification hurts at first
but quenches the thirst

for that new beginning
that silver lining
at the end of the storm
feels like something reborn

0205

dead molecules

"you're not the only one who can build walls" he said
and so it began- the silence thickening like frost
cold and impenetrable, but never really permanent
ice sometimes looks empty but never really is
it is the molecules of deep water that suddenly refused to move
indifferent and unfeeling, sometimes we just s t o p

0205

3days(let me in)

why won't you let me in
why won't you sing
play a little music and make the lights go dim

steal the show
start a row
when things heat up we'll go with the flow

why don't you fix this chest
take time off, rest
let loose the demons and try our best

to keep this evening
forget the feeling
forget the leaving, forget deceiving

lock the doors
lie on the floor
why don't we stay up the night till four

why won't you let me in
show a little skin
play a little music when the lights go dim

steal the show
you kiss, i'll blow
tell me if i'm going too slow

why won't you let me in why won't you let me in

052005

it's late. it's also the first night in a longgg while that i have all to myself. met up with the mates for pre-shoot buzz and supper. played guitar, had dinner at dinner time.

a conversation in a car about calories' effect on prolonging your life got me thinking.

do we really want to prolong our lives?

i'm fine with death now. maybe coz i don't have kids. i don't see why prolonging life should be a worthwhile cause for me personally.

instead, i'd like to know how i can engineer the perfect death for myself. these days, i fear "how" i die, rather than when i die.

there're plenty of worse case scenarios.

cancer - slow and painful.
STDs - slow, no sex and painful.
stroke - debilitating and slow.
gangrape in a public toilet by the plus highway - painful, malu
car accident - ugly, maybe painful

etc.

i'd like to die of a heart attack, preferably in my sleep or at the tail end of an orgasm. never mind when yet. that i really don't mind leaving up to god. but with the advent of so much research into causes of death, i'd like to know how i can rig it so that i die of a heart attack specifically rather than any of the worst case scenarios above.

should i eat more mayonnaise? clog up my arteries more? smoke?

i need to figure out how to increase the risk of dying of a heart attack, while reducing the risk of dying because of any of the above (cancer, stds, etc.)

i'd pay money for a book that would teach me how to get the death of my choice, rather than teaching me how to prolong my life. But ultimately i never want to be so healthy that it would take me 20 years to die after a paralysing stroke - what's the point in that?

and i've lost myself, found myself and lost yet again,
discovered a city, rediscovered exuberant music,
let go of my friends for awhile to concentrate on family.

i feel like i've been through alot lately, and went through most of it alone - as it should be.

i'm losing my need to share, perhaps because i'm busy compiling the pieces of thought for more analysis before finally deciding what it is there is to say.

i'm working too much, displacing myself too much. it's time to build a better life.

somedays i don't recognise myself anymore.
thing is,
i kinda like that.

been swamped with work. it's that time of the year where we're pitching for jobs and working on jobs at the same time.

somehow managed to squeeze in two important occasions in my life.

1. Becoming an uncle - baby sophia was born 29th January 2008. a little (chinese almanac) piglet - who's so far been a bundle of joy although she had had the fever and caused a quite alot of worry. she's adorable from what little I've seen of her so far and i've been playing a clip of her i took while watching her on david's webcam over and over again.

2. Bungee jumped! - spent the weekend in bali with colleagues and ticked off one of the things i wanted to do before i die. because i was so shit scared the whole time and the experience lasted a little over 5 minutes, i'm gonna try to write it out here to enshrine those couple of seconds i put my life in the hands of god and mr. aj hackett.

Continue reading "free faller" »

the introspection began with the successful idenfication of a cello suite i've been looking for since watching the master and commander years ago. (i know its one of the most common baroque pieces ever, but for some reason i've not been able to find out what it was called)

anyway, so it's a chilled out sunday evening, the afternoon rain's just ended and a short working week's come to a close.

judging by the amount of time i have between now and dinner time, i highly doubt that this will be the post where i list out last year's achievements/moments/shortcomings. but still, i'd like to record this moment.

the end of the first week of a new year. possibilities stretch out. on friday before the champagne, before the karaoke, i received a telephone call which marked a definite first for me. how that happened, i'm not really sure how or who, but i'm well chuffed about it.

tonight after i take my parents for dinner, i have work to complete, an article to prepare and some bills to pay. maybe after that i'll get around to some serious retrospection...

meanwhile, if you're in possession of some good (cello please) classical music or guy movies (al pacino dvds, gangster movies and classic de niro stuff) kindly get in touch with me?