thisguy

my folks are out of town for a month and my sister's got herself officially hitched. so i've been living alone for the past couple of weeks with only joel for company.

tonight after many kind invitations from my godmother, i had dinner in the house i spent a chunk of my childhood in. tasting familiar home-cooking, using familiar cutlery and basking in a vibe that brought me way back in time to simpler days. i really should spend more time there.

after dinner i kind of hung out with my god-brothers (technically my god-cousins) who are about my age when i used to practically live in my godmother's house.

time seems to sometimes stand still in places familiar, yet somehow, decay has a way of setting into the most static of circumstances.

tonight i was Pip at 23, standing in Miss Havisham's house, remembering days past in a place that still looks and feels the same after all this while, even though the events that have passed through it have changed everything.

jian came over today to imbibe, harrass joel and naturally we ended up jamming. it was good to have things fall into harmony. music makes sense when all else fails. when i told him that these days i feel as if music just doesn't do it for me, i don't think i earnestly meant it.

it's been awhile since i last felt anything at all.

aside from mild disappointment in a number of instances, the only other emotion i've had lately is quiet pride for work done well and recognised.

"it's been so long since i've been running by myself"

---

my shopping list seems to be spilling over... by the end of this weekend i aim to acquire :

• a new belt
  
• dinner/evening shirts
  
• new soles for my shoes
  
• or new shoes
  
• a dark plain-ish tie
  
• swimming bermudas
  
• casual bermudas (i'm not sure if i'm getting this right...)
  
• good bargain books from the atria warehouse sale - i think i overspent here, considering that i haven't even touched the books i bought in karachi, but i'm consoling myself with the fact that they were just too cheap to resist and i'll be giving two of them away as christmas gifts!
  
• a christmas tree - as per family tradition, first year's bonus goes to buying the family a christmas tree. am a little disappointed with the ones i've seen so far, though...
  

i hate shopping for clothes... it's so hard to find stuff i like that fits and doesn't blow my stressed out year-end-christmas-wedding-season budget.

on top of my shopping i also need to bring joel to the groomers', fix a burnt ceiling fan (don't ask), clear/dry/iron my weekly laundry load and squeeze in time to get some weekend work done. tell me again why weekends are *special*?

---

media wishlist :

music : 9 crimes - damien rice
movies : borat - cultural learnings of america for make benefit of glorious nation of kazakhstan

break-ups, relationship mess and weddings somehow found their way into thisguy's packed weekend. having spent too much time dwelling on the sordid, surreal and sweet, in almost equal measures, i don't feel too inclined to write much more on these topics.

instead, i'll celebrate the shallower side of my weekend - spent ticking things off my shopping list.

am also bracing myself for a full on week at work, a company annual dinner to survive and a mad dash to clean up the mess i've made in the house before my parents get back in from the states. i miss my smaller accomodations - where vacuuming and mopping used to be a 30-50 minute affair. instead now i've got a living room, three toilets, 2 bedrooms and a staircase to take care of. it doesn't help when your housemate is a slobbering, fur-dropping, adolescent kid who only wants to run around and play.

culprit!

(written offline sometime between lunch hour and back-to-work-time)

there's nothing like being left on your own in a fishtank to finally free your thoughts. by fishtank, i mean that i'm in a glass room in a client's building, where i'm supposed to scrutinise (through various reports and stacks of documents) the inadequacies of a reputable organisation.

but in a room like this, i can't help but feel that i am being observed as well... not that there is any mistrust, but i suppose people are curious as to why i'm here.

it's been close to a year that i've been living my life as a corporate professional. winging it most of the time with snatches of freshly gleamed information and about as much confidence as a RM50 tie and GBP35,000 education can give, i've been brainstorming with senior professionals, telling organisations how to operate and perform better, growing a freshly acquired caffeine adiction and contributing as part of a machinery of checks and balances within the financial services system.

how've i been doing? apparently i've met expectations and exceeded some too. some work that my team and i recently put together was recently appraised by a partner in a middle eastern practice who mentioned that no one in the whole of the gulf could come up with more impressive material. i took this as a fairly good compliment, the track record of middle eastern consultants not-withstanding.

and so it is, that my efforts in juggling various side projects, social life and family commitments, not to mention waking up every morning to face rush hour traffic is well worth it. i really am in a good mood most mornings as i catch snippets of the morning radio show and marvel at the buildings that adorn the city i work in.

year one down, now what's next?

parental units are back and joel's been evicted. he's had a rough week and a very bad grooming session. it's been a hectic hectic week for me too with crashing deadlines, especially after i found out i'll be :

away the whole of this week on training in some high up place.

so yea. my life is on hold for a week while the "administrator" upgrades my "software". will resume human mode on friday.

meanwhile - if anyone can tell me where i can get a fibre optic lit christmas tree for under RM200, and a suitably expensive but value-for-money wedding gift for two, please leave a note. thanks.

as usual, i'm really looking forward to the end of the year. not because it's been particularly bad or anything, but - you know - just to get it over with. next year's itinerary is one to look forward to and i'll tell you why maybe later - like - next year.

work is frantic at the moment so excuse me if reports of my demise spread - as the saying goes - they've been wildly exaggerated.

i'm cool with the doubling up and crazy workload and deadlines though. why?

coz i'll be taking my first unadulterated week off (this year) during the christmas week!

whereupon - hopefully - i'll be :-

• updating/refurbishing this blog
• finally getting my travelogues done - (got renewed motivation from nyx's hanoi travelogs)
• clear up my hard drives
• take a quick roadtrip alone somewhere remote and not too faraway in malaysia
• throw a post-christmas party
• redefine my goals in life
• spend some time with my dad
• finish watching four seasons of the west wing
• paint seremban a little redder than it is right now
• determine how to link the items 5, 7, 9 and 10 together

quite a long list of KPIs attached to geekery, wholesome activities, soul-searching and random stuff - all needing to be addressed before year end.

as with many of this year's events, i never got around to writing about it here, but a couple of weeks ago i went for my first company annual dinner.

if you want to know how it went, read justin's account of his one here.

mine was at the same hotel, just different company, probably different food, a week or so earlier, different people but similar (if not more) rowdy behavior from my department. also - we pretended we were auditors too.

good tactic - when you're drunk and inappropriate behavior is imminent, never give out your real name or place of work. if only i practised this more often...

so it's been 2 years since we were sitting on that fence in westminster watching london revel.

and it's been a year since we were gathered at bahir's place in the city watching the valley revel.

tonight will be relatively quiet, and i've decided that i am ok with that. sobriety should be embraced gracefully every now and then.

if you haven't already noticed, i've not been "in the zone" as far as writing is concerned. but i'm determined to put out a decent post before the evening is over.

without further ado, i'll let the sentimentality take over -

thisyear found thisguy;

• participating in the production of one of Malaysia's most exciting new local films
  
• getting lowballed by some bastards in the industry (and some outside the industry)
  
• gaining weight in penang
  
• setting up house for the kitten in seremban
  
• riding camels in karachi
  
• scoping thai chicks in bangkok
  
• tomb raiding, playing erhu and guzzling amok and angkor beer in siem reap
  
• hitting on hooter girls and sipping s'pore slings with an englishman in singapore
  
• singing queen anthems with the mafia and guzzling speedy's wild boar curry with jon in cherating
  
• chilling, brokebacking and getting super wasted in pangkor
  
• drinking beer topless with the five families and upgrading my software with colleagues in genting
  
• scaring suburban passers by at oktoberfest with the lousiest indian drinkers this side of the city
  
• migrating this blog then losing half a year's worth of journal entries
  
• catching up with old friends and struggling to re-establish ties (didnt do so well in this department)
  
• buying a new christmas tree for my family (it's a symbolic thing)

i don't think i've worked harder ever in my life before, yet i seem to have squeezed in a crazy amount of play too. to top that all, i got my best ever new year's present - my first promotion! (no raise yet though)

if you've stopped by to read this, drop a note and i hope you've had a good year and an even better one to come.

if you've had a shit year, go visit this site, and thank god for not having it as bad as saddam.

am due back at work in 7 hours.

:(

had a smashing 12-day break, infused with alcohol, emo-ness, tim-sum, food, computer games and good conversation.

even cleared up my room a little. but didn't read as much as i'd like to. i think i read more pages of the books i've acquired recently in the bookstores i bought them in. didn't wash my car. i did squeeze in a trip to the gym and church though.

i swear i had more pensive thoughts to write down here tonight. but i'll let a post i wrote 2 years ago speak instead.

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the tragic truth behind new years day

...is the fact that, despite the numbers on the chart changing, everything ever really stays the same. no fresh starts for anyone. unless you've earned it, or deserved it by some divine blessing, you're pretty much stuck where you are.

new year's eve was more or less a repeat of last year's swim in a sea of people. except this year, the ocean of revellers seemed a whole lot bigger and i was pretty pooped out after the cooking session earlier that evening.

perched on a flimsy "balcony" in the middle of westminster, with two very drunk, rambling girls, ck, hy and her boy, we sat and watched the firework smoke clear. no new year's kiss, no poignant revelations, nothing much to show for all the bright lights and thunderclap explosions.

i had been planning to start a complete makeover of this site or maybe rearranging the furniture in my room. but i couldn't think of a good enough reason to go through the whole painstaking process. somehow, maybe superficial changes might mask the fact that nothing's really new afterall, but the changes i really need right now, involve a whole lot more effort and fate than a countdown and fireworks.

in any case, here's a toast to 2004. like a kiss with a hot chick with bad breath, i'm grateful for what i got, but it was unpleasant to say the least and i'm f*cking glad to get it over with.

-020105-

"It is impossible to step into the same river twice. No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
- Heraclitus

it's funny how i read that line while sitting on a makeshift swing, a log tied to a tree, swaying over the sands of a beach in pangkor island over the weekend. it was from a milan kundera book i happened to bring along in an attempt to figure out a few things and eventually finish reading what i started almost a year ago.

we found our way on the island after a bout of spelunking, multiple breakfasts consisting of toast, half boiled eggs, begedel, milo and ming court (behind excelsior hotel - so i remember) dimsum. it was a trip to bid rohan farewell and come to terms with another piece of youth lost to the real world (if there really is no such thing, how come we can't seem to ever lose sight of it?).

through the drunken events, go-karting and flippant conversations that ensued, i couldn't entirely get over the sense of melancholy at the back of my head. perhaps that would be why after 8 cans of beers and a very successful round of bluff, nightmares still plagued my sleep.

i've been to the island many times since childhood, to fish, heal wounds with family, welcome new family members, contemplate regrets with friends, flirt with girlguides and now, to say goodbye.

i can only wonder what the next trip there will be for?

i've yet to get my head around the past couple of weeks - its flurry, darkness and haste - but somehow this blog must move on.

while i sort out my stories and pictures, lemme plug the perfect pre-chinese-new-year reading:-

nyx's series of posts on liondance trivia -read them and astound your drunk friends and bickering relatives with newly reaped knowledge on the subject.

really enjoyed her posts since i've been fascinated by lion dances since i was a kid. my godparents even bought me my own mini-lion dance kit. wonder where it is...

sitting on a gaudy red couch in a serviced apartment somewhere in the middle east - just lost a long journal entry post to the depths of cyberspace.

my meat shwarma dinner just got delivered.

was planning on writing a travelogue-esque post but i've been writing so much about the country i'm in, i'm a little sick tired of it - i'd rather write bout anything else.

while checking out this girl's blog - recommended by nyx - i came across the term "elevator speech" - trust the MBA wielding community to come up with a phrase for everything yuppies do.

i'm pretty bad at it - those minute long conversations with clients who pay you to spend time with them or colleagues whom you get paid to spend time with. yet given the profession i'm in, it's something i have to learn to pull off better. still, it's like pillow talking with one night stands - not really my thing.

anyway, more randomness some other time. i'm hungry.

excuse the bad pun above. :p

multiple projects, deadlines and client management - that part you dont really want to know about. so i'll get right into the other stuff.

fell ill on my third day in the desert also my braincells have been used up to remember the (arabic and non-arabic) names of 20 or so managerial personnel within 3 days so excuse me if the chronology of these events is off kilter. its a little hard to arrange the flood of thoughts and moments that've been passing through thisguy'slife the past week, so i'm just going to record them in a random list.

woke up one morning after a flu induced deep sleep to find the windows blurred by the after effects of a sandstorm. it's funny and interesting how this is a land where the terrain can shift itself around, washing away blood, ideologies and time. yet some of the tallest, most remarkable structures are now being built - to permanently stand and mark out the shifting sands.

despite being one of the more stubborn amongst my peers in terms being drawn to malaysian life and wanting to live there long term, earlier this year i started toying with the idea of migrating someplace else. over homecooked dinners at two malaysian households displaced to the desert recently, i got a first hand look at what migrant life is like again. the free-er lifestyle and better money offset by displacement and subtle isolation - stuff to keep thinking about for now.

we got stuck in the soukhs yesterday. the narrow street stalls that were closing shop got us lost in the belly of the city. stumbling to find our way back to the main streets we walked through alleys where black shiite flags were hung high, pictures of holymen and possibly freedom fighters adorned some of the archways. basically pretty unerving stuff, even though both of us were born in predominantly moslem countries.

we found our way out safely, although paranoia kicked in at one point i thought we'd next be seen on a breaking news channel.

still, this is a country where

- my apartment cable network has more phone-sex channels than actual programming.
- where there actually is a church right beside a mosque
- you can get a couple of pints of guiness on tap in british styled bars
- you get calls at night in your room phone asking if you "want lady"

yet a few blocks down, away from the luxury cars and migrant workers, there're entire neighbourhoods that look like downtown basra.

despite me counting the days till i get home again, i'm quite fascinated with this city.

anyone who's ever seen a blue october video will understand when i say - grown up straight men with eyeliner shouldn't be allowed to appear on tv.

so perhaps its a new phase of emo-disease i have. first i confessed to having a weakness for my chemical romance, now its blue october. wtf. it's those damn violins/mandolins in that Into the Ocean song. (since when do songs get their own wikipedia entries?)

---

my colleague's flown off, leaving me all alone in this nice apartment in the middle of the city, in the middle of the desert. i've got stacks of dvds and downloads to get me through the weekends so this is going to be the best solitary confinement i'll ever have. the kitchen and fridge is stocked - pasta, instant noodles, precious pork sausages and even stuff like onions, garlic and sauces - all ready for my cooking whims.

tomorrow i aim to venture into the desert to see a tree that's somehow survived in the middle of the desert dunes. i hope my trusty toyota saloon car doesnt get stuck. in any case, if you don't see this blog updated soon, please do send a search party and look out for a lost chinese boy clutching onto his mp3 player and water bottle.

this business trip away, although putting my social life in paralysis, has given some good time to catch up on some reading, side projects (check out thecicak's new look!) and chatting with friends from different time-zones. i've also finally gotten around to downloading some new music. a little late, but i'm really getting into muse's new album - too bad i missed out on their kl gig. oh - speaking of gigs - shakira's performing in the region. bless those hips - they really don't lie.

slow day at work which kind of picked up towards the end - doing a job where your productivity and value add relies on the cooperation, coordination and camaderie of other people is really challenging, but when things work, its also extremely cool - gratifying even.

had the urge to sit in a cinema since i've been sulking because i'm missing out on the release of 300, in pursuit of happyness and mukshin back in kl. so right after work i delayed dinner even though i was hungry and checked out the local cinemas here. a ticket costs RM25, crazy right? i'll have to wait 2 weeks for 300 to open here, but apocalypto was showing, so i caught that instead. pretty well crafted movie, but didnt really see the point of it all, perhaps because i was expecting more of an epic storyline.

---

i think one of the main reasons why i like travelling and displacing myself so much is so that i can find my centre again. (random aside : did you know "centre of gravity" is a now buzzword in the management consulting lexicon?) i've been doing quite a bit of thinking - about my life thus far, choices ahead, parents and loved ones. it's quite nice how this quiet space away from home has opened up pockets of time for me to spend entirely on myself yet i still find myself thinking of all the other people i could be spending time with.

---

so i made my trip out into the desert, took a detour to the south tip of the country where a mega development project is underway - to build luxury property on reclaimed land in the shape of a cluster of islands in the sea. nothing much was built yet, so the nicest thing there was just a model of what the project would look like.

made my way back up and on a whim, i went out to touch the Persian Gulf. the seaside here stretches on for miles and shallow water seems to go on for a few hundred meters. didnt get to see any fishermen tho.

when i finally got to the place i was looking for - the tree of life, it was almost perfect for picture taking. i was disappointed that there aren't any sand dunes around in the desert here. but the tree itself is picturesque, set on a little hill amidst an otherwise barren landscape, its leaves were tiny and some of its branches scooped down into the sand then back up again, like bamboo shoots.

after seeing it for myself, i think i understand why this tree has become a tourist attraction. its beauty lies not in its symmetry or shape or colour, but there's a sense of strength you get from it. no wonder people say it has the qualities of eternal life. it gets beaten by wind and sand and sun on a daily basis, but for 400 years, somehow it has survived and found sustainence for itself to remain on that hill.

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i was just having some random thoughts while eating my dinner alone at the food court. over the past couple of years, i've surprised myself at how much i've been able to take on - how i've managed to get past the crises within and around me. i don't think i could have done it quite as well if not for my roots, sustainence and faith. if you're reading this and you're going through your own crisis, i hope you too find your ground and hold on till its over.

---

on a totally unrelated note - who the heck is mika? they've been playing this grace kelly song on radio here and its stuck on my playlist now.

rot that is.

i feel like my body, my mind - is rotting from the inside - such is the malaise of the three day weekend here in the desert.

after a brief sojurn back home, i found myself back on a plane once more for another month. stocked up on dvds, (babel, the queen, pan's labyrinth and syriana) which I'm determined to not watch all at once.

rediscovered the simple pleasures of cooking, cleaning and ironing. but after a trip to the gym and the pool, i'm forced to realise how i've been rotting my body away the past couple of months. i'd like to say this is going to motivate me to undertake further trips to the gym, but the reality of it is - i hate solo physical activities.

then we come to the mind rot - i've just joined facebook - social networking's most highly evolved perpetrator. i've also built myself my own google homepage - i highly recommend you get yourself one too - it soothes control-freak tendencies and is the niftiest thing since email.

anyway, food is on the way to my doorstep. gotta put some clothes on. wtf.

a hearty arab-styled delivery dinner and french hip-hop finds its way onto my tv screen. black men, rapping in street french makes for some really surreal viewing. but like they say - even cursing in french feels like wiping your arse with satin.

the idea of having this blog was to record as many moments as possible (with the proviso of it not having an impact on my career, reputation etc.) but i feel that i've been leaving too many moments out. i'm losing my ability to link things together. that's what happens, i guess, when your life gets too random - occuring in different time zones, with different groups of people/social settings. if i attempt to recall and talk about things in sequence, in a manner that makes sense, it all becomes too verbose.

i suppose the only way i can record -

• the delay/cancelation of my flight home which left me close to shouting at airport counter people (despite one of them being one of the cutest asian girls i've seen in a while)

• being put on business class by accident - the champagne, conversation with business class passengers (there's a reason why they're a class above the rest of humanity) and service

• the four really special days back home

• the blurry, dreary flight back to the desert

• the many many excellent episodes of west wing (stellar screenplay writing!) i've been absorbing

• the nights out with fellow countrymen out here in the desert

is to just bullet point it, in the manner above. hopefully each bullet point will suffice to trigger more vivid memories as they occured. i wonder if i'll grow old and end up bedridden for the last few years of my life, clutching printouts of these journal entries wishing i took the time to write more...

hmm.

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aside : how come the sight of scarlett johansson kissing bill murray is 100 times sexier more acceptable than her kissing justin timberlake?

in less than 72 hours i should be back home again.

2 months fly by, but instead of feeling comforted, i'm quite scared at the speed time can fly. opportunities missed, moments that never materialised and presence that was never quite tangible enough - slip away like that.

there's not alot to do here in the desert, but i've tried to be as productive as possible, learning new things from people i'd never have crossed paths with if it wasn't for this overseas posting. i'm nearly through the entire series of West Wing - picked up new words, ideas and lessons - who'd have thought you could take home this much from a tv series?

i didn't really go out as much as i thought i would. didn't manage to get that unique taste of local life here. so i don't think i've experienced anything more than the average expat, disappointing.

in any case, i'm set to spend another two months here. will try to squeeze in more travelling and perhaps play host to visitors (if things work out).

---

touch down thursday, back to work friday and off on a much needed break from saturday till monday - woohoo! then after that i anticipate a swamp of work and wedding co-planning. don't know when i'll have the capacity to update again and post some of the photos i took last weekend by the beach. just for fun (and self indulgence) i'll put up the most poseur looking one i have first.

it was windy!

i'm bushed.

it's been several days now surviving on too little sleep and too much activity, scrambling around, dodging cars and city jams and tricky clients and sister's wedding plans and friends and pressing commitments colliding together. to top it off, my ration of coffee, water, proper food and internet has also been intermittent.

today was the clincher though. multiple trips in and out of the city, illegal u-turns and a colleague's punctured tyre really took its toll. god bless 15 minute power naps tho. then at 12.45am, i find out my car's been leaking brake fluid, and there's a rat of some sort living in my airconditioner (in the house, not the car).

yet, while all this is going on, at the back of my head, behind the thousand other things jostling for my attention, there is a worry and dread that overshadows all the other shit that's around now. it feels as if i'm holding my breath underwater, for how long, i don't know...

random asides :-

• i am so shite at finding my way around the city
  
• spending money is hard, especially when time and ability to obtain more money is finite
  
• watching videos of hot chicks projected on a 5x5 foot surface in your bedroom is f*cking awesome
  
• wedding singers/bands are f*cking weird people
  
• how is it that hare krishnas maintain their vegan diet and alcohol abstinence and still manage to seem so happy??

another long day tomorrow. at least i've got dinner and drinks on the company's expense to look forward to.

everytime i'm having a tedious day in the office, or when i'm bored in the middle of a pointless meeting, i find myself teleporting back to better days and better times.

10am, suburban housing area in klang valley, boy scouts' oddjob week : we used to go round the neighbourhoods near our school to do oddjobs for folks on weekends to raise funds for the troop. washing cars, teaching tuition, bathing dogs and cleaning out aquariums for signatures and token amounts of money. the mornings used to last so long, somehow. we'd be sweaty but enthusiastic, and try to avoid doing too much hardlabour. we'd try to pick the houses that had nice cars and possibly a cute teenage girl or two. it taught us a lot about humility and teamwork but was really hard work - i don't know why, but given the choice, i'd gladly do it again.

3pm on a cloudy afternoon in the shade by the poolside. this was during this chinese new year - i had music streaming from my earphones and a good book about strategy on my lap. kid cousins running around and some bikini clad chicks adding to the scenic splendour of the infinity pool. the perfect state of idle.

there's a pool in a newly built condo right outside my project room window at my client's office. tempting me like a motherfucker every afternoon after lunch when i'm sat down working on a dry assessment report.

sigh. at least i've got my earphones on and this music to take me halfway there.

---

i've written before about how my outlook on life is influenced by dicken's great expectations. it was one of the first classics i read as a boy. i've just had a quick lunch with an ex-mentor of mine. one of my first bosses, whom i trusted and confided in when i needed some strong advice. he had a hand in helping me get my present job. yet, over our quick catch-up session, i'm not sure if my sentimentality and dicken-esque naivette is a huge liability to myself. let's just say, the lunch was free, but came with all the requisite "hidden charges" attached with the proverbial free lunch.

also, i find the characters i come across, are as unpredictable as those in the book. people i find myself instinctively distrusting, have surprised me with their honest insight and truths. and people i always thought i could trust, have let me down with their strategic indifference and apathy at different points of time.

it's funny how i've gone through life quite confused most of the time.

---
covent garden - for whenever i want to revisit

bristol '03

i've just spent over 3 hours watching entourage episodes. wasting time is easy.

would've gone on all night, but hairy's ariving on a plane tomorrow at 7am.

here's part of what i wrote earlier - never got around to finishing it.

---

i've got 30 days.

30 days to use productively in my solitary state. well not so solitary, since hairy will be coming over to spend the long weekend here.

what can you do in 30 days in the desert? hermit life can be cool. honest. extract yourself from comfort zones, let your thoughts grow louder and the confines of your head and imagination start to stretch beyond what you normally experience.

i have two goals for this month. we'll see how much progress i make towards them.

-

the past 30 days was used up really well. my family and i threw a wedding for my sister. it went better than what we expected and is probably the biggest, most crazy thing we've done as a family. also managed to wake up for two doggie day outs on two sunday mornings. will post photos and such soon.

---

found this anecdote on the net today -

A guy was seated next to a 10-year-old girl on an airplane. Being bored, he turned to the girl and said, "Let's talk. I''ve heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

The girl, who was reading a book, closed it slowly and said to the guy, "What would you like to talk about?"

Oh, I don't know," said the guy. "How about nuclear power?"

"OK," she said. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow and a deer all eat the same stuff... grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?"

The guy thought about it and said, "Hmmm, I have no idea."

To which the girl replied, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don''t know sh*t?"

hairy's crashed out after bouts of mojitos and weird trader vic's concoctions. me? i'm just soaking in the moment. we stumbled out from the bar to the beach - where the city skyline was etched out like a neon painting fixed firmly to the desert sand - whilst stars from a million lightyears away glimmered like chinese whispers in the night sky. beautiful.

it's been an awesome week.

leaving was hard, but hairy's trip here has been a lot of fun and made the whole occasion memorable. if he hadn't flown in from london, i'd prolly have spent this week holed up in my apartment focusing on the genius of ari gold and johnny drama.

friends. company. soulmates. all the money in the world and there's nothing that can replicate the feeling of sheer comfort that goes along with friendship.

hairy, you've had a bit too much rum to drink, but when you sober up and read this - i hope you know i fucking appreciate this.

ps - you drink like a girl! :P

do you ever catch yourself in moments of pensiveness - struggling to recall days passed?

i've been keeping online journals for a little over 5 years now. its getting harder to put entries together nowadays. to indulge in the utter vanity and self-indulgence of putting up fragments of my life here. sometimes i feel that i keep writing because i'm afraid that when i stop, the remembering or the need to remember will stop too.

today marks an immensely important occasion in my life. i've just been told - i might be an uncle real soon...

hope to see you soon little little one.

sure i can do a pretty good feasibility analysis for whether or not copper companies should invest in new technology, or whether or not islamic banks should invest in regional busineses or whether or not local tech companies should divest parts of their business, but i'm actually really shite at decisions in terms of my own personal finances.

how do you choose between these?

do you go for the things you NEED, or the ones that you WANT or the ones that'll only happen once in a lifetime?

will it be a...


canon g7



black 80gb ipod



weekend trip to cairo, egpyt



car

or
a return trip to the states in january '08 to meet someone really really special?

"in the confusion and the aftermath you are my signal fire

no, i won't wait forever..."

it's already been a long week. and tonight after failed attempts at reviving my braindead state, i looked out the car window at a beautiful crescent moon and a bright bright shining star nestled beside it. the only two clear lights in the sky tonight. aligned perfectly together - what blasphemy microsoft pantbrush can be - when compared with the real deal i saw tonight.

only god knows this degree of beautiful.

i've picked up this weird habit problem recently. it would be fine if i just mentally undress hot chicks like other normal guys, but, i've found that since maybe a year or so ago, sometimes when i spot a hot chick, -ok this is gonna sound weird- i find myself picturing her old.

i don't know why - i do NOT dig old women ok. on the contrary, it usually turns me off if it's too easy to picture how a hot chick looks when she ages.

anyway, hopefully this goes away - or is it just a sign that i am aging as well?

there is one girl who i find pretty difficult to imagine growing old - and yet - that's exactly what she's doing ...

been listening to a rather certain type of music lately. if you've heard them you prolly know how i've been feeling the past couple of nights. nothing dramatic. just accumulated slices of doubt, pensiveness and melancholy - just because.

augustana - boston
the perishers - pills
rogue wave - eyes
explosions - your hand in mine (goodbye)
deathcab - sound of settling
johnette napolitano - scientist
teresa teng - the moon...

maybe i just feel like a broody teenager again.

i haven't been tagged in a while - so before i start writing bad poetry, here's a meme.

4 Jobs I’ve had in my life
one : consultant camel jokey (paid well)
two : research assistant in a management school (paid really well)
three : cinema grunt (paid shite)
four : air asia call centre voice (paid commission)

4 movies I can watch over and over again
one : S'kali
two : transformers : the movie
three : before sunrise
four : the matrix and animatrix (first one - with the hot animated chick)
(there're prolly a whole lot more movies i could (and have) watch(ed) over and over again - star wars, sepet, crouching tiger, in the mood for love, ninja the wonder boy, batman begins, etc.)

4 Places I’ve been on Vacation
one : venice (the best)
two : rome
three : paris
four : cambodia (the best company)

4 Of my Favorite Dishes
one : steamed white pomfret
two : lasagna
three : ramli burgers (is it a dish? this really shows my culinary sophistication innit)
four : anything with onions/mayonaise/cheese/runny eggs
you really can't ask a malaysian to pick ONLY four dishes as favourites

4 Places I would like to Visit
one : london (with my godfather - if he were still alive)
two : egypt
three : new zealand middle earth
four : borobodur

4 Most overused Words
one : me!
two : discount?
three : f*ck/c*nt/ti*u/b*tch/p*ssy!
four : busy...

4 TV Shows I like to Watch
one : Grub Smith's travel shows / Borat's cultural learnings
two : Entourage / Friday Night Lights / The West Wing
three : theSimpsons / South Park
four : BBC World News / The Daily Show

4 Bloggers I am Tagging
one : huiyi
two : jujette
three : jonvantango
four : lyn

everybody look what's going down...

• najib's been named in the altantuya trial

• hamas matyrs "mickey mouse"

• glasgow airport is attacked

• two carbombs found in london

all this while brown's administration is barely a few days old, princess diana's memorial, gay pride and wimbledon going on - and it's also a few days before the anniversary of the 070705 bombings.

it's a mad world.

i've given up figuring things out. instead, for the most selfish of reasons, i hope these events don't escalate - and cause delays to my flights back this thursday...

---
my journal entry on during the bombings two years ago :

it's 11.12 am, thursday morning 7 July. explosions in central london reported on the news everywhere, around 10am. Sky news being the first with updates.

affected places so far are Russell Square (Tavistock square!) where a bus was blown up.

many more (as yet, no confirmation whether related or not) explosions heard in the underground tube network. the underground is now closed while rescuers salvage for survivors.

general confusion, but no panic. cabinet ministers have issued statement but do not report fatalities yet. eye witness reports say many bloody and injured. nothing conclusive about fatalities.

info above was obtained from television news reports. i wandered outside of houghton street and walked to a shop with televisions on the display windows. many people were crowded around it, trying to sift for information.

everything is well organised, police and medical services already working like clockwork. sirens all around and choppers in the sky.

stay tuned for more updates.

not going to make inferences, but today IS the G8 summit.

nothing further to add, so far me and my sister are ok and have texted my parents. mobile lines are now shut.

wow. has it really been 2 weeks since i've been back to homesoil?
it's flown by yet recalling the span of it is quite a challenge - i seem to have squeezed alot into it.

first off - and most recently - the paranoia.

my house was burgled on thursday night while i was out on the usual tomfoolery with colleagues in our usual drinking hole. possibly (but not quite) the worst experience of the year. they took quite a bit. my mom's 30 year old engagement ring, my shisha pipe, my 4 day old canon g7 (refer to the picture, a few posts back) and cash as well as my dad's digital and video camera. a whole load of other stuff too - some of which didn't make sense at all - why take a 3-pin adapter?? no one was hurt though and i'm thankful for that - but i keep dreading that they'll come back- for my guitars or any of the other shit my family's worked hard to earn just so they can steal in the most cowardly of manners.

since then, we've been quite traumatised. i've been particularly paranoid. but with good reason - about 30 mins ago (2.30am) a neighbour rang and told us that the water pipe in our garden had burst - we checked and someone had left it switched on at full blast.

my mom didn't water the plants today, no one - no one in my house touched it.

o_o

i've got a 1.5 meter steel rod next to my bed now. if any of those mother f*ckers want a piece of it, they're welcome to it.

---

too pissed off and tired of my own paranoia to write about the phuket trip, drunken misadventures and how sweet it is to be back home.

some other time then.

i slowed down to avoid running over a boy who was crossing the road near my old highschool. he dashed across the street and turned to look at me midway - we looked each other in the eye and i realised he look somewhat like me ten years ago - prolly crossing that same road - reckless as ever.

i read a list someone wrote online about the things he would tell himself 10 years ago in a letter. if i could sum my letter up in one word it would be ... slowdown...

i am a crunching rock song, driving deep and drenched in D chords.

i am pensive to the point of perverse pessimism.

i am frivolous to fancy and fleeting flirtation.

i am laid out flat on a moving round surface, apparently, i am spinning.

2000 plus years of enlightenment and we've made a science and art out of smoothing things over.

in the world of economics, there're interest rates, exchange rates policies, stock market regulations and credit ratings to manipulate, and voila - another depression averted.

in the world of socio-politics, there're government propaganda, anti-demonstration laws, the universities and colleges acts, mass media censorship and gag-orders to manipulate, and voila - another tiananmen square averted.

while peace and tranquility is well and good, is it really healthy to partake in this much manipulation? how much longer can we pass bad credit around and silence dissent on the ground - before the tipping point is reached - and all hell breaks loose?

you can only smoothen something out if you see the whole picture. otherwise, you're just shifting shit around. sooner or later, a big wave of crap is going to come our way and let's hope short-sighted manipulators are the first to feel the brunt of it.

"...flowers gaze at you, they're not the only ones - who cry when they see you"
- boston

i can't quite put my thoughts tonight in words coz they keep taking on the shapes of mellow songs. instead -

I need
a hundred cigarettes,
a drink of cold water from somewhere new,
to find out what makes her laugh.

I need something to push against

that will push back just hard enough

to keep me up...

while others have been emo-ing around me, left, right and center, i myself am constipated, but not at all empty. i can't separate my thoughts from each other. observations, disappointments, frivolity, analysis, debate, concerns, guilt and emotional support all deserve a mention.

i was going to put up pictures to compensate for the lack of words, but decided that my verbosity needs some salvation.

pictures another day. instead, today - i offer my prayers :

god, give me the strength i need to be of use to my loved ones, to keep my promises to myself and to others and to walk the path you've put me on.

thank you for all your blessings - the sights i've seen, the lessons i've learnt, the love i have in my life and the friends i've made. thank you for filling my days and life with this richness. thank you for your mercies and your forgiveness over our trespasses.

god, watch over the people in my heart, protect them from evil, give them faith, hope and let them know you are with us. god guide me too as i find my way closer to you.

amen

kaiyea (10.9.05), kong kong (17.9.05), little girl (19.9.07), my thoughts, heart and prayers are with you as well.

perhaps it's a sign of confusion with my life, and how hard it's becoming to focus on specific things nowadays, but my dreams have been really weird lately, and the deja-vu moments too...

as if life wasn't unpredictable enough, i've got to watch out for what happens when i sleep too?

---

random thought : what's virtual about virtual friendship and virtual experiences? virtual beers, virtual pokes, conversations in virtual reality - at the end of the day, you decide what you want to attach meaning to. some might say that attaching meaning to virtual things is foolish and borderline sad even, and i think i'm guilty - but surely life's too short to place a limit on the amount of meaningful things you allow into your life?

disco dancing, we're dearly driving disarray
whirling dervish, wont you whirl my world away

i realised today how very lost i am. i have my gravity to keep me down, my spirtuality to keep me calm and my love to keep me warm. but i really don't know where it is i'm going and who it is will take me where i need to be. it's not so much the lack of direction, but the lack of knowing which direction, which instinct, which scent to follow.

i went to bed last night with thoughts of how i'd turn things around, quit my job and start a revolution. woke up at 5am and realised how flimsy the notion was - it wasn't even anything close to a dream.

i think one part of me has let the other part of myself down. i tell myself i'm sorry and i'll need time to figure this out, but time is killing off the dialogue between the two distinct parts of me.

times like these, i'm grateful for what few certainties i have going for me right now... the bits of me that i know i am and i know i want to pursue. perhaps everything else is just a "good-to-have".

a lone guinness does wonders to create clarity in stressed minds.

have been busy up to my eyeballs and literally swimming in work - my cubicle's a mess - i've been having working lunches/dinners and fallen asleep in that little 3x2 space, it's not funny.

lately i've felt as if i've been somewhat stuck in my orbit, and funnily enough, many around me have drifted out of theirs. farewells, break-ups, home-comings, new-births, births-to-come and corporate developments have kind of left me wondering when's my turn to move on.

i'm still learning alot. moving on is not even close to necessary at this point, and i'm pretty certain, i'll stay where i am for at least the near future, but all the more, that makes me restless.

[excerpt from an old blog entry]

i remember being young and having my mom tell me the story about the stone cutter- you know the stonecutter guy who's cutting stones one day and looks up at the scorching hot sun and wishes to God that he could live his life as the sun and then he gets his wish granted- so he becomes the sun until one day the clouds come and block his view and so he wishes that he could be the clouds- and so then he becomes the clouds until the wind comes and blows him away- so he's still not satisfied and wants to be as powerful as the wind and *poof* he becomes the wind and is happy until one day the wind tries to blow down a boulder but the boulder is heavy and does not budge. so the wind wishes he could become a boulder- strong and steady. so he becomes the boulder and then- is proud that he is strong and steady- until this bastard stonecutter comes along and chips the boulder to pieces- and then the boulder wishes he was the...

so you get my drift right ? there's no fast way to tell that story anyway. and yes- mothers are dangerous things-

my mom always pointed out that the stonecutter was foolish in never being satisfied with who he was and instead of concentrating on what he was doing, he kept dreaming and wishing for things he didnt have. but the way i see it- true- the stonecutter was one fickle bitch but at least he got to experience being the sun, the wind and all that. and i guess that would've been fun- more fun than picking at a stone all day long...

i saw my sister's sonogram video online the other day. whilst i'd seen still images of the baby before, watching her on video was entirely different. the odd bobs and bits became limbs and moving organs once animated. watching her stretch, twist, turn and move was so peculiar yet enthralling.

new life in the making.

she had a furious little beating heart. she took trial breaths - eager to breath in open air - she's an impatient, active little girl - i almost felt sorry for the fact that it would be another 5 months before she really gets out into the outside world.

keep moving, keep growing, keep trying little bebe. i'm waiting for you.

so it's been a hectic couple of weeks. i've missed out on telling the stories about the big carpark fight, drunken conversations, car conversations, octoberfest public debauchery and some other stuff my perpetual memory loss state will not allow me to tell.

in between all that i've been working my arse off, weekends, weekday nights, meals in my cubicle and swimming in numbers.

i read somewhere (i think it was a chicken soup book) about how this guy who's a workaholic shares his experiences in dealing with work pressures and family. he wrote about how at the end of each gruelling day in the office, he'd come home and before getting in the door, he'd lean on a particular tree in his garden. this he called his leaning tree. as he leaned on this tree everyday, he'd transfer all his stress, burdens and work matters to the thick bark of the tree and when he was done, then only would he enter his house to face his wife and kids.

i read this a couple of years ago, way before i started work and even then i'd think about how simple yet impossible it would be to have a leaning tree. the cynics amongst you who know me, might call a nice pint of guinness my own personal leaning tree. but truth is, it's not. i'm still looking for it...

Photo : eggcube.com

so i've really been neglecting this. what with facebook, work and that other blog i'm trying to start up - am i spreading myself too thin again?

my life of late has been a giant post-it note - filled with to-do-lists that grow, strike off, then grow somemore. visa application - check (10 years baby!!!), cicak stuff (in retirement) check, christmas shopping - check...

i've still got tickets to book, accomodation to arrange and new responsibilties, side projects, new friends to meet, old friends to catch up with, books to read, pictures to upload and organise, a car to fix... i am a giant post-it note

i'd really rather be an excel spreadsheet - organised, coded, sortable and neat, than a mess of post-its. but that's going to be my new year's resolution - so i'll save it for next week. which reminds me that i really need to add another item on my post-it wall - sometime next week, i have to list out the important moments of 2007 as per usual blogger/thisguy routine.

---

it's funny how, amidst all the things i've done, somehow, the culmination of sorts, has only manifested (officially) a couple of days ago. amidst the drama, the million and one things i could've done better/differently, the life-changing stuff i've walked myself through, i've also managed to get myself a promotion. just in time for year-end, for what it's worth, i've managed to do at least one thing right this year...

while i'd like to end the year on a smug note, there're so many other bigger things going on and a wall full of post-its to manage. for now, i'll abandon my wall, and settle for some time with you to close off the year instead...

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?

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.

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

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?

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?

"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.

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)

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.

took off early from work today for a change, got home and slept from 6.30-9.30pm. i had spent the weekend sick and working, whilst most of last week was spent working and preparing for a colleague's farewell do.

declared a mini holiday and veged out in front of the idiot box til 2am. had dinner at midnight. and here i am. a.w.a.k.e. for a change.

upon coming back from a trip i realise :
it takes 2 weeks to finally clear out pictures from my camera/hard-drives
it takes 2 weeks (sometimes more) for me to unpack a suitcase
it takes 1 day to keep my passport in a secure place (most prized possession)
it takes 1 week to unwrap my newly acquired FHM magazine
it takes 2 weeks to realise someone has stolen my bolster from my bed

i'm enjoying this moment of clarity at 4am, listening to stina nordenstam's little star on repeat. i need a new laptop. i need a haircut soon. i need to get my sleep cycle back in sync with normal human time.

it feels as if i've been living in time warps. time slowing down, then speeding up, then failing to move at all.

i'm in the midst of wrapping up a major project i've been working on sporadically since the beginning of the year. late nights, forgotten weekends and amazing support from some of my favourite colleagues and it'll all be over soon.

finished work late and couldnt get a suitable dinner buddy so i had a nice dinner date with my mom instead. nasi kandar for me and ice kacang for her. i try to eat with my parents at least twice a week, seeing they're my house mates. but i rarely get to eat with them "alone". tonight was nice. my mom will always stick out like a sore thumb in a mamak. but somehow, tonight with a ridiculously huge bowl of ice kacang she seemed to fit in. more so than her tired haggard looking son, in crumpled cotton workwear.

it's really too late and i'm much too tired to blog. but i'm letting my life fleet past too fast. i remind myself its important to sit still for awhile and capture moments.

i'll be heading off to a beach getaway. it's a company trip but i'm determined to get a suitable amount of "me" time or at least get wasted in the process.

looking forward to it. i'm already planning on my pack list :

• sunglasses
• beer money
• sunblock
• loose shirts to wear unbuttoned
• journal (finally found the perfect one in hongkong)
• iphone+music+headphones (need to bring this back from the dead - it's brickd on me)
• underwater camera (courtesy of pohsi)
• guitar (gotta get a new bag for it)

its only a weekend holiday but god knows i need it.

(dear god, please let us survive the bus rides)

... is over," he realised, floating near the edge of the pool.

beer can, girlfriend, bro-friends nearby, a perfect shade of sunshower, water that felt just the right caress of cool.

rohan's leaving on thurs. the last of the abrahams of summer - off to face london's rat race. it's hard to understand why we didn't do more pool afternoons on the sundays he was here.

redang's come and gone. next week it's mongolia and krabi in rapid succession. (perhaps seoul or beijing in between - depending on layover lengths)

i can't say this summer's been all fun and games. the only off-days i took were for company trips to macau and redang. yet weekend after precious weekend i've managed to interlace a weird successive mix of alternate madness/drunkedness and work.

this weekend, was neither. futsal, swimming, kitten evenings and a really good night last night spent watching John Mayer's "where the light is" concert dvd - can i have more of this please?

for some strange reason, the stereophonic's "dakota" is playing in on one of the websites open in my window tray. the song seems to follow me around. making its presence felt most on the last days of summer...

read on for an entry to the beat of dakota written 4 summers ago...

1pm in my shorts i hit facebook before i brush my teeth mouth dry but water is too far away i'll make it someday what's more important is i compile these moments place them on an online photo/note album like the altar of my own existence before time and corporate jargon swallow them in infinity i'm listening to unfamiliar music in the form of an mgmt cd exchanged to my hands in the smoky strobelit indie night that really seemed like morning 12 hours and 4 chicken wings ago perhaps this is what living really feels like...

financial meltdowns, political maneuverings, a friend said on her facebook status that there's hardly any reason to watch anything other than the news on tv nowadays.

yet, that's all i've been doing during my stay here in mongolia- watching grey's anatomy series - in between battling one of the toughest projects of my short career.

financial meltdowns happen because of festering assets/non-assets. political maneuverings happen because of mismanaged governments. my grey's anatomy marathon happened because my other hard-drive - the one with all the good movies which i've queued on my to-watch list - is not speaking to my laptop. that's the hard-drve with an inconvenient truth, scoop, thank you for smoking, etc.

and i'm stuck with the hard-drive with grey's anatomy. the series can be quite riveting and even enlightening to some extent. but i'm sick of drama.

i need to get back to proper productivity. building real things, real relationships again, instead of being stuck at clients in a mongolian mining town. not everything is about work. i'm not an ambitious surgical intern. i'm actually not interested in watching all the investment banks crumble because of their own greed. i'm not interested in watching power hungry politicians wrestle each other. somehow, none of this is real. yet. this is all that i'm surrounded with right now.

48 hours to go. i just want a hug. a real one.

1.09 am. my iphone is singing to me. random songs on a playlist that's too cluttered to be anything but random.

its the second day of a 5 day holiday. its the second day i've been working past midnight from home.

its getting harder to feel alive nowadays. there's a slight rush i get when i send off a particularly well-put together piece of work. other than that, and some squeezed in moments with loved ones, there's just not enough life in my life.

i dont know why i've been feeling so trapped these days. these are my choices, i'm staying put and waiting on my own accord. so why feel this cornered?

i'm still doing what i love, but things have changed somewhat. a part of me has figured out what's happened and it seems all there is to do is to come to terms with it and adjust until it gets easier.

"all we can do is keep breathing"

breathe. manage my time better. complain less.

easy.

started with waking up on the right side of the bed
getting a nice parking space in the building
a relatively manageable workload that's interesting too
nasi lemak delivered just the way i like it
colleagues in a good mood
spontaneous picnic excursion and car sing-a-longs
kfc & cendol in the park
good meeting to reflect on positive things
relatively early end to the working day
dinner with an old friend
west wing
ben & jerry's ice-cream
joel behaving well for a change

i'm blessed. and certainly grateful for days like these. but it's also times like these when you see things working 100% in your favour, that it becomes glaringly obvious that deep inside, where it counts the most, it's still not enough...

my day off work started at 2pm after i slept at 5am after mad rushing something after procrastinating on it and after a long day of kl city meetings.

woke up hot and bothered and checked my email to see if my boss got the work i sent in at 5am and turns out it wasn't too bad after all (if only i started on it earlier). chores. and hit the highway at 4pm to begin my short sojourn away from my quiet lonely house and the office that's eating up my life.

seremban's a cool place to live. really. 45 minutes away from the city and the food is great, people are nicer (weirder) or maybe it's just the fact that she's here. we had baked crabs that cost too much for 2 people but managed to finish it anyway. wandered around town and back with after buying a frisbee and the biggest indulgence of my weekend so far - a whole can of longans all for myself to eat.

it's only friday night but sunday will come too soon. i think i need a break from work. like a long one. my life feels like work followed by a series of interrupted holidays too far apart from each other. maybe i'm still used to school holidays that lasted for months. i can't imagine how refreshed i'd be if i could take a month off and how productive i'd be when i got back to work after that. sigh.

while we're on that, i'd like to also work from home more...

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i like not sleeping alone.

:)