Irony Impaired

Everything that could go wrong personally and professionally, already has. Everyday, just when I think, it's less bad today, let's clean up yesterday's mess, a new mess happens. It's gotten to a point where I'm just wondering what kind of new mess is going to happen tomorrow. Or whether an old kind of mess is going to repeat itself.

Regardless, this morning when I was buying petrol in a petrol station, I felt like I was the moving subject in a painting.

Sun wasn't even up yet. Cold, canned coffee in hand. Gorgeous car gone months unwashed. Fingerprints all over the rims from the constant tyre pressure checks. Equally unkempt, fat, balding owner sipping the cold coffee leaning by the driver's side. Fuel pumping on the opposite side left untended. Window down and driver side door open. Black Sabbath's "Dirty Women" blaring from the radio because only the engine was shut and not the electronics.

That image hit me with a sudden realisation of the fact that I'm completely alone and no one was about to help solve any of these problems. For reasons I can probably never understand, I also realised that my existence never really meant anything to anyone and I didn't feel bad about it at all.

It was just pure content and resignation to the fact that I was alone.

Taking a Break

As the title suggests, I’m in that phase where everything seems to have met at the most complicated network of crossroads I’ve ever experienced. More like a bad traffic jam flowing to and from every direction hitting a dead end at every angle.

This post however, isn’t about me. The only reason why I can laugh at my jobless and penniless state is because of the fact that I see people around me, everyday, who have their lives far worse than mine; especially my poor mother who has to put up with me and two other brothers who are coming of age, still grappling with the inner workings of the world.

These people I speak of, whether they are going through emotional, financial, or physical trauma, they evoke a unique mix of sympathy and sadism from within. I look at their crappy lives and I think, you sad losers who can’t get over your troubles and see logic staring at you in the face (not that I’m any better). I hope your days clear up, paving the way for a brighter, happier future. Maybe it’s just me but I think many of us deep inside sometimes insult yet at the same time, wish the best for these people.

This post is in fact, for some of the people I know. Each with their own sets of problems. That someone I know who’s probably suffering. That someone who was forced into vice due to unfulfilled social and emotional needs. That someone who had to endure a day’s, week’s, month’s, lifetime’s worth of shit and have been strong and held their heads up high to keep going on because there just wasn’t any other choice. Only to find that at any given moment, something as minor as forgetting to turn on the water heater before you take a shower becomes the one thing that ruins one’s whole perception of reality, and reduces one to a sobbing mess. It could even be emotional intensity that once tugged on the proverbial heartstrings and finally, yanking them right off. Turning them into something so disgustingly intangible, no one could understand how the mess came to be. Only you would.

I can’t claim to know your lives because I really don’t. I see or hear about you crying. I’ve seen you scream in self-imposed silence. I sensed your anger when you lash out in a voice that nobody hears. And those of you who just bottle everything in, your smile becomes a permanent scar, bearing testament to the overwhelming pain that’s been slicing through your face. The defence you put up when one asks about your well-being is laughably transparent. I can’t always tell who does what and I’m sometimes glad I don’t. All I’ve had to endure is probably comparatively miniscule and I probably wouldn’t be able to take it if I even had an idea of what you were going through.

So, to the downtrodden and the emotionally crippled, the working professional who is compensated instead of rewarded, the arches and their angels forever lost to each other, the faces I knew so well who now belong in the underworld, those of you who came to me for help, I wish I knew what to say. The ones who never did, I wish for the same so when and if you actually came to me, I’d be of some use. Hopefully, you’d get over it and build a future the way you want it to be.

If I laugh at your problems and joke in the vain attempt to ease your suffering, it is only because your pain has also sliced a bloody smile on me. Do not however for a moment, think that you’ve become a burden. Know that when this happens, you will always be in my thoughts and thus you and I will never be alone. 

Remember College?

Chapter 1: Of Classes and Passes

I sure do remember college. It really was the most memorable period of my life. 3 years of uninhibited debauchery while at the same time, having done more than I’ve ever thought I’d do.

As most people would see it, college really was the time to find oneself. It is within that period of time that the world unfolds in front of you. We begin to discover what drugs are and the actual effect of alcohol although it might appear to be a surprise to some. The word hedonism then really shines through in a manner that could only be understood with experience.

You only had to take a look around. It wouldn’t be long before you notice that for some students, the hair grows long, the ideas get radical, the concept of supply and demand goes out the window, and some of them sink into a spiral of self-destruction. It’s a utopia of sorts. It was completely detached from the real world yet it was bigger than that little slice of home that was the only thing we’ve seen for most of our adolescent period. Some take it to an actual representation of the real world because it always starts off amazing (what with all the newfound freedoms and the new faces and ideals that we discover). This however, would not last long as the side and occasionally negative effects begin to thunder down at us at an alarming pace all at once after a while. It is at this period of time that the men are separated from the boys depending on the way they handle themselves. Some characters begin a downward spiral into oblivion. These are the performers. Some others learn to be just a spectator watching these performers succumb to their primal urges for self-sabotaging. And then the shows over, they go about their daily lives. At this point, even if they indulged, they’d have a limit.

For those of us who become spectators, we begin to understand the difference between rich people, and the less financially able. We start to understand that there is a responsibility to all this hedonism and its ideals. It was not so much a responsibility to the world. Just a responsibility to oneself. Bit by bit, we begin to see the world for what it actually is. It’s all in good fun to go a bar/pub/college – read on, it will soon make no difference to you – in your pyjamas and drink lots of alcohol while doing lots of stupid things. But take it from me, it wouldn’t be nice waking up the next morning in a pile of your own puke knowing it’s a blessing because it could’ve killed you while you were choking on it the night before.

My sympathetic friends, upon finding out the next day about my ordeal, told me to wait till I was famous before I go down the way Bon Scott did.

On a more personal, more academic note, it’s an open secret that some people expected me to contribute to the rising number of fail-and-repeat students or those who just disappeared without a trace. But against all odds, I had actually made it out – albeit with some luck – alive and kicking without looking like too much of a fool. On the way however, there were quite a few close shaves (one of which was mentioned above). Looking back, I can’t think of many things I would’ve done differently. Except those things I’ve done that made life difficult for the people around me.

It seemed perfect. The way nothing was actually in the way of you doing anything. This does not just apply to me, but to everyone as well. A person only really discovers him or herself when they’ve hit rock bottom. Something I learnt the way everyone does at some points in their lives. It was when I caught my girlfriend with another guy that I got outraged. See what I mean by freedom? It was the first time I felt real jealousy. The freedom a woman gets and the power she wields over a guy when he’s drunk with self-indulgence and the pretences of affection. I finally understood how Cleopatra – from the era of probably unshaved armpits – managed to bring down the Roman empire.

It was an ugly scene. I remember it as a short period of time before I began drowning my sorrows with Thursday night booze cruises. But according to my housemate, it was a really long time. Regardless, the healing process took forever. But I eventually recovered. Was fun.

Seemed more like a wake-up call. From the way I experienced it at least. I’d have realised that throughout the whole semester, I had only attended one session of my “Digital Imaging” class. But thanks to my lecturer, I passed the unit.

I mention this because the reason my lecturer passed me was very unusual. It wasn’t because the lecturer loved my work or that I was particularly nice to him or anything. In fact, the only time my friends and I went to his class was when we were drunk off our face on a Friday morning and I decided to draw something very inappropriate with Photoshop or something and was caught in the act. The friend I came with was so drunk he couldn’t tell the difference between red and yellow. Upon being told to colour the flowers in a preset picture yellow, he coloured them all in red. Two hours of fervent colouring because he didn’t know there was a “fill” tool. All that effort for nothing. Now I cannot remember what kind of flowers they were but they looked very inappropriate. So it was because of the fact that I knew this lecturer from a long time ago through one of my underlings back in secondary school. The few insignificant people I didn’t treat badly in school turned out to be my saviour in college. Because you see, the lecturer was my underling’s godfather. He was ostracised in school and I was his unlikely confidant and friend. For which, mister lecturer was very grateful and passed me. I gladly accepted the pass mark because I hated the subject and there was nothing in my profession that required me to deal with anything remotely similar to what he was teaching.

Call that nepotism or whatever it’s called. I call it karma. Sample dialogue:

Raj: “Of course you feel terrible, you’ve completely screwed up your karma dude.”

Sheldon: “You don’t really believe in that superstition, do you???”

Raj: “It’s not superstition, it’s practically......Newtonian. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Leonard pretends to be a friend and acts like a two-faced bitch. Therefore, he is reborn as a banana slug. It’s actually a very elegant system. You know...... what goes around comes around.”

                                                                                     -The Big Bang Theory-

Don’t you think that’s a point well-made?

That was not the first time I passed a class with a fluke. I had a lecturer whom I hated in my music theory module. He was a chinese guy who thinks he’s a modern day luminary. His exploits in Berkeley are usually at the forefront of his conversations with other people, always conveniently leaving out the fact that he was only there for a week because he only visited the university.

Now on this next bit, I can’t explain without telling you about the way I look at chinese musicians. Not the race, but the people who dabble in the genre of chinese music. To the many chinese musicians I know who might stumble upon this entry, please let me clarify that I personally do not mean to provoke or insult your choice of music in any shape or form. I am a person who hardly listens to chinese music but from the few that I have heard, I really cannot make sense of. I speak various dialects of chinese fluently and I can tell for one, that chinese singing is not logically possible. The chinese language, regardless of dialects are confined to four tones in regards to the key one speaks the language in. One thinks that this is just diction. But it truly isn’t. To speak chinese, one really does sing. Even though most English words have two or more meanings, each word could be spoken in any note in the chromatic scale and its meaning or reference would still be clear due to the context of the sentence it is presented in. If a word is spoken in an unusual tone or note, it would only represent distinctive accents, or diction. However, when a chinese word is spoken in the wrong tone in correspondence to the key of the speaker, it’s meaning could change completely. I have many people argue with me about this. However, the fact remains that every English speaker – no matter how lousy – would be able to understand an English song if they could catch the words and understand it. This is not true for chinese speakers. I have spoken Cantonese all my life. It could even be considered my mother tongue since my mom speaks it. Yet I still can’t understand most of the Cantonese songs that I listen to no matter how much attention I pay to it. Same goes to Mandarin which I speak fluently. Chinese music is really the domain of those who speak it as a first language and as such, many people I know who actually understand most of this music, usually don’t speak fantastic English.

This coupled with the ill-defined genres in the Chinese music world. Every chinese pop musician I’ve known fancies themselves as innovators of a genre and claim to be playing something they’re not. I know for a fact because I study the damn thing. Many of these musicians think they’re prodigious talents capable of a jazz odyssey without ever knowing what it actually means as long as they’ve completed grade 8 or 9 musical education. You only have to listen to one artist from Hong Kong to know that everyone of them compose in standard pop formats. Yet there are various TV shows and interviews about them talking about how talented they are, it just makes me sick. Their idea of mixing showmanship with music just ends up looking like a two-bit cover band entertaining you at a hotel lounge (usually consists of one guy playing all the music on a MIDI controller and 2-3 girls prancing around with hardly any clothes and usually can’t sing properly).

This is why I personally classify chinese music as a single genre. The only distinctive genre in chinese music are their opera singers or virtuosos of their traditional instruments with their signature style. Something still prevalent (albeit getting increasingly rare) in English music. It really is unlike the heard-one-heard-it-all world of chinese pop music. That being said, a good number of them are incredibly talented composers who seem to transcend genres. Sadly, these aren’t the ones who appear on TV.

Back to the story. This lecturer of mine comes from that group of idiots I was talking about. During class, one of my classmates once asked him how many instruments he played. He said he played 6. I can’t remember what the 6 were. But I remember piano and guitar being among the instruments he played. Then he hesitated for a while and changed the number to 7. Because apparently his voice is also an instrument. I make it 8 considering the way he plays himself as an instrument.

Overcompensation. The worst kind of pensation. Typical of musicians like this.

His answer was met with the biggest number of simultaneous sighs and facepalms I’ve ever heard and seen in my life. To his credit, he was a good piano player. I’ve heard him play the guitar. Now, I don’t consider myself a good guitar player. But during the many times he played it in front of us, it sounded like I was playing it left-handed. Not sure about the other instruments he claims to play though.

Either way, it was a combination of his bragging-as-lecturing method, the fact that it was incredibly boring that sort of got us frustrated with him in the first place. That incident was just the final straw for most of us.

Which leads me to the crescendo of the story. Being a good college student, I had left all my final assignments to the very last minute. It was the final week and all my assignments were due then. It’s not that I was almost done with them. It was more of a case of “I haven’t even started with them”.

As I recall, it was a Monday night. It had just dawned on me that no work was done. During the class earlier in the day, all lecturers were hustling us with submission dates and extensions. I decided to throw away all pretences and worked as furiously as I was panicking. The first assignment I thought I’d tackle was a report. Can’t remember what it was for. Point is, immediately after dinner, I buried my head in work. Halfway through my report, I had a phone call from my friend. Who was in deeper shit than I was as he was clueless about the assignments. So he asked for my help.

Being a good friend, I had asked him to come over. I had also said he owed me alcohol for my help. This was a stroke of genius or complete stupidity depending on the way you look at it. I maintain it is genius. He agreed. After that phone call, I continued with my work. Believe it or not, within a few hours, I had completed my report. Save for proof reading which, as a gud kolej student, I never doing.

Now you must be wondering, where was my friend? Was he already there already? The answer is no. Think of it, if they were there, do you think I’d have finished my report? The answer is again, a resounding, no. So thankfully, being Malaysians, 10 at night meant 1 in the morning. I was able to finish my report and start on the next assignment that was due for submission after the report.

Around 1 in the morning, there was a knock on my door and a phone on my call from this friend, telling me he was here, at my door. I went ahead to let him in. To my surprise, he had come with an entourage. It consisted mainly of two other ‘good college students’ from my class who also had no idea on how to go about the assignments and a few miscellaneous characters whom I probably will never meet again. Come to think of it, some of them might be dead by now considering the way they abused substances. Speaking of substances, there was a second surprise. A pleasant one. Turns out he was late because he went to Subang from Cyberjaya to get two bottles of vodka. Quite how a return trip to Subang takes 3 hours is quite beyond me. Also I was thinking more along the lines of whiskey. But I figured, beggars can’t be choosers.

First order of business on my front at least, was to open the vodka. For them, it was to consume it with me because they were just watching me fondle the bottle. Now, they were supposed to be there to get my help for their assignments. What actually followed was me burying my head in work whilst entertaining them every once in a while when I took a break while they were just goofing off smoking cigarettes and telling “mat moto” jokes. Needless to say, I was in my room with the door open whilst they were in the hall.

Two bottles of vodka came and go just like that. I was already quite drunk. However, because I was so preoccupied with work and I was drinking slowly, inebriation was an inadvertently nurtured pleasure rather than a blow to the gut. Still, I had lost considerable control over my motor skills and had a few difficult moments standing up. Whilst I had completed the quota of work for the day, I decided to join them. This was at 4 in the morning. The others were already plotting to go to the music theory finals exam at 9 in the morning without sleeping. Of course, since being young meant I was being held together and kept going by witchcraft, I seconded the plan without fear of fatigue.

After one of my friends puked off the balcony, we toasted to that idea. Before long, we were out of alcohol. I suggested we get some more. So off we went. With every variation of non-sobriety represented by everyone of us, drove off in the early hours of the morning to Subang Jaya’s KK Mart to get more alcohol. Thankfully, we left and returned safely with another two bottles of vodka from the shop. Things weren’t so safe when we got home though. We opened the first bottle and within a few hours, finished it among 3 of us with the other 3 succumbing to wastedness and had fallen asleep. I too was sufficiently drunk but ironically, due to the witchcraft, not sleepy at all. I decided that we should get prepared for class at around 7 so that we would have no chance of being late. This was also to prevent any of us from falling asleep and missing the exam.

I began clearing up the hall. By accident, I dropped the empty bottle of vodka on the floor. It shattered and I laughed. I put on a pair of slippers and cleaned up the broken glass of course. However, my housemate would find a piece of broken glass later in the day or a few days later. Thankfully, that was the only one that I missed. I think.

So we got prepared. Went to school. Now there was one more bottle of vodka left. Unbeknownst to anyone, I had brought along the second bottle of vodka in my bag. It wasn’t difficult to get vodka to school since security quite literally only meant a 500 ringgit deposit and security guards who open the wrong gates for you to enter or exit the building because they’re not used to the traffic flow in this country.

So I also bought a large bottle of sprite as mixer and the games began. We were outside the class and I surprised everyone with the bottle I had and the mixer. My class of about 20 easy-going people came out. There was no shot glass or even a glass for the matter. The drinks were mixed in our mouths. A swig of vodka followed by a swig of sprite. The bottles were finished in no time. Needless to say, we were drunk in no time.

We sat at our places in class and as usual, before an exam, lots of discussions would be going on. For those who drank which was most of the class, we were shouting and singing. It was to be a written test. Mister lecturer came in with the question papers and we were prepared to start. Only we couldn’t stop singing. There wasn’t really a reason for our singing other than the fact that we really wanted to annoy mister lecturer. We sang the jingle to the BOH tea advertisement that was also the subject of our assignment due later that week. All the poor mister lecturer could do was to tell us to keep quiet. He resorted to shouting and we began singing it for the second time.

At this point, the most amazing thing happened. We had a very outspoken, so-called rapper from Africa who claims to be from the UK in our class. We thought he was going to miss the exam like he misses most classes. However, it turns out he was dealing with something far bigger than what we all expected it had something to do with this particular mister lecturer. He whom I talk about, let’s call him “Awabodo” since that was his favourite phrase, stormed in the class. We all fell silent. He then exclaimed to the mister lecturer:

“IF I FAIL THIS CLASS AND MY FUTURE IS JEOPARDISED, IT’D ALL BE YOUR FAULT MISTER LECTURER. IT WAS BECAUSE OF YOU THAT I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO ATTEND ANY OF MY CLASSES!!!”

Or something to that effect. To which the lecturer responded:

“Come on, let’s talk outside. Don’t disturb the rest of them doing their exam.”

Or something to that effect......

None of us had studied for this exam. Well, most of us at least. So this was like a sign from the divine to copy. We decided that it should be an open book exam, and copied each other’s answers through “discussions”. All this while they were solving their problems outside. Needless to say, all of us finished our exam in record time AT THE SAME TIME.

After he was done with his discussion, Awabodo left and mister lecturer came back into the class. He knew we had cheated but we also sensed that he was too fucked to be bothered. In fact, something even more extraordinary was to happen. He said that considering some of you have not been able to come to class for the lectures, I’m going to hint the answers to some of the questions for you guys. And he pretty much went on to tell us the answers to the whole paper save for the essay question. Of which there was only one.

I know it sounds a bit out-worldly, but you and I know that no one can make stuff like this up.

All that did for us was just to check whether or not our answers were correct. Until today, no one really knows for sure why he did that. We speculate that it was probably due to the discussion he had with Awabodo and the fact that he cancelled and held replacement classes at his whim without prior notification to anyone about the timing on many, many occasions. As such, we had unintentionally missed many classes. Joining those dots was the only way we could come up with a logical, plausible explanation for mister lecturer’s weird actions. Though since no concrete explanation has ever been given, no one can be sure.

We then left the exam feeling joyful and drunk. Ready to immediately begin a recording session for another one of my final assignments. But that’s a story for another day. For now, that is the story of how I passed the Music Theory 2 module.  

Some Clichéd Title about a New Beginning

This, as casual as it may seem considering it is after all only a blog/journal post, was commissioned by a dear friend of mine(Whom I suspect would be the only one reading this) who just can't stop quoting lines from the movie "The Four Lions". After a lengthy drafting effort spanning the length of quite a number of days, I decided to bin it and start at the very beginning to a time where my life actually took some shape and began to pan out to become what it is today.  

As I have mentioned in previous posts, for a guy who seems rather impulsive and sometimes just plain reckless, I seem to have my life pretty rigidly planned out. It begins (as with everyone else) with my education from the tender age of 7 all the way up 11 years till we turn 18.

Upon turning 18, whilst we stand at the precipice of manhood (womanhood for the ladies), our lives begin to take on different paths. This is when it becomes clear to some of us who hadn't had much sensible or healthy communication with their parents about what they've had planned in store for us. I was never really the sort of person who liked to think too far ahead because I just can't see the point at most times. As such, my idea of the future when I was 18 was pretty vague. Finish my SPM exams, do some shit, do my higher education, find a job. Simple as that.

Then came the time when we began to understand what it actually meant to decide upon your future. What you wanted to study, what you wanted to do, etc. You think had it all figured out in school and all of a sudden, there are all these options and levels of education and qualification you could choose to do provided that you had some intelligence (I had my fair share). Immediately after school, that period of time while you're waiting for your results and before you enter university, we have what seemed to me at least, to be the last ever proper holiday one would ever get. This is usually when your parents tell you about the education insurance or the money they saved up to send you somewhere to study, it could be the moment that you realise they spent it all on buying a car and you had to go to a government institution, or they just had nothing for you and you're on your own.

It is at this time that Westerners and people of a similar culture send their children off to do various things (could be just one or more and it could involve a paycheque) for about a year to allow them to discover a little bit of how the real world is like. To allow them to find out what they want to do. To let them troubleshoot upon the matters that may have been an issue to them throughout their childhood and for them to reconsider their direction in life. To allow them a chance to re-examine their original career choices (One of the few career choices I selected when I was younger was farmer, construction worker, or fisherman).

Then the time to choose a career path or a study path would eventually come and students go off to pursue these newly-discovered ideals.

I never really had that option. If anything, my parents were really happy of my original choice of being an industrial designer or an engineer since I seem to have a knack for these things considering outstanding showings with the sciency stuff in school (fast forward 6 years till today, the same cannot be said about me as it is no longer the case), and a rather unrestricted approach I've always had for ideas. In fact, the few reasons why my train of thoughts usually end up in a horrific derailment are mostly because I tend to overdo the thinking or they weren't very well thought out to begin with rather than caused by obstacles. My parents, they never really forced me into it though. 

To be fair, I was always given a choice. However, they were always bringing up the subject of designing and engineering as they believe that it was a rather stable career choice that I could excel in.

With the little time I had, I discovered that I liked driving cars and toying with the concepts instead of actually engineering them. After a bit of research, I left my most likely dream of becoming a designer dabbling with automobiles after discovering the incredibly unfulfilling life of design and engineering (at least with the motor industry). It was at this point that I began receiving study offers from a few institutions (some for free) to send me overseas and I was more hardly pressed than anything, to have had to reject them all. Those were not my parent's happiest moments. And my list of missed opportunities was only extending at this point. 

I took it as a blessing. Allowing me to reconsider my goals and re-evaluate the kind of life I wanted to lead. After months of working an unfulfilling part-time job, I only knew that I would never ever find myself in marketing if I could help it. Ever. I don't care if times changed. If times changed then I'd just have to find a way to travel back in time and change the past. 

Now music has been a way of life for me for quite a while. I could actually say that when I first got my Discman (I still use it extensively today), I have been doing pretty much everything I've had with it ever since. Music became a way of life. It became a drug. I started associating different periods of my life with certain songs even if they weren't anything that I liked or genre-suitable. 

After much consideration, I decided that noise was probably what I needed. I hear lots of people describing the growl of the V8 or the scream of a V12 to be like music to their ears. Personally, I never got that. I love the sounds of "V" configuration combustion engines immensely. But only music is music to my ears. I would much rather listen to a hypothetical Led Zeppelin show rather than the hypothetical amazing car that I could hypothetically drive to it. 

However, after much research, I find that there was no music course that would accept me. There just wasn't any space in the world of trained ears, virtuosos and certified musicians for a ham-fisted, completely untrained, former engineering major student with no musical history or inclination whatsoever. 

Some of my colleagues, knowing my deep interest in music, put me on to sound. Having had some experience in the field, they put it to me that I should be playing around with sound designing. After a few weeks of dabbling with it, I had found a way to do what I loved most. The crafting of sounds. This to me was a direct window to music as it essentially involved music and every other kind of media involving sound. It was my first choice and my back up all at the same time. Perfect to my post-adolescent-pre-matured mind. At the tender age of 18, I was given the power to make a 100k ringgit, long term decision and that was the entire process of consideration and thought that went into deciding upon a direction in which to aim my life at. 

In the space of four months, I had made up my mind to study sound, music and its many components. I was to dissect it to its simplest forms and attempt to understand its many singularities and structures before attempting to reassemble it back together as systems that can be understood as a part of its unique, respective systems in an effort to investigate and make sense of every substance (if there was any) that I may consist of.

The news was broken to my parents, who weren't convinced at all about this sudden change of heart. I on the other hand, was adamant, to maintain this newfound, retarded romance. Unwittingly, I had fallen right back into designing and engineering, albeit with a completely different trade. Two months later, after a lengthy argument, I moved out of the domestic, protected bubble that is the family home. Moved into a life of a constant three-way (as with all three-ways, it's always unexpected) between sound, music, and I whilst at the same time, toeing the line between art and design. Between envisioning, and engineering

Kiss My Politically Incorrect Ass

I'm sure everyone's been through this, especially when you're in Malaysia. Where manners is secondary to social hierachy and the simple phrases like "please", "sorry", "thanks", or even the far more commonly used "hello" that we've been taught to constantly use by our parents either go completely unsaid or sometimes, used with utter bitterness. As if the person they are saying it to forced them to.

As a result, we don't really know how to get our points across, we have so many misunderstandings, we have unecessary arguments, and finally, we tend to lose the will to be polite to one another. We begin to believe that things should be done for us and we do not need to show appreciation, as it is the job of the underlings to serve us. We no longer say "please" when we want a favour done for us thinking that you must have done something for the other person in the past and he or she is just returning the deed. In other words, taking people for granted. We don't bother apologising to others we've wronged thinking we've been wronged on countless ocassions we don't get apologies.

Mom and dad taught us these things for a reason. When such social protocol no longer has a place in modern society, the whole social structure breaks down. In the words of Dr. Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory", We descend into anarchy. 

Those words, I'm sure most of you would agree, is beginning to ring true if it hasn't already. For the sake of this blog post, I shall only use one example. Malaysian motorcyclists. That alone is enough to explain my point completely. To begin with, I say Malaysian motorcyclists because I do not actually know how motorcyclists in other countries behave on the road. That said, I haved lived and assimilated into cultures from both developed and developing countries. I can and have seen the huge difference in the way the people behave on the roads. Also, when I say Malaysian motorcyclists, by no means am I referring to every single one of you motorcyclists. I am aware that every individual behaves a little bit differently on the road and some of you are very, very well-behaved. However, I do refer to a good many of you. The ones who can't differentiate between right of way and physics. To whom size equals faster runs through the traffic and the ability to cut into everyone's way with ease. To whom physics does not apply until they get hit.

You see this all over the place. In Malaysia, motorcyclists have no sense of lane-keeping. No sense of direction. A one-way street going south can be used to go northwards by a motorcyclist. Cutting lanes, bullying your way past traffic is a way of life. If you can't bully your way through, blare your horn. Who cares if you're just a little mosquito who does not have the right of way and the highway was made for cars. Bleep away and then stare back at the car that was just minding his own business before you came along to ruin his or her day.

I understand that considering the way car drivers behave on Malaysian roads, we're no angels either. As a result, we cause accidents and the motorcyclists, having much, much less protection than a passenger on a car, is far more prone to accidents and serious injury. I would like to offer all of you motorcyclists a solution. Instead of cutting lanes, riding in the middle of two lanes very quickly in the middle of a jam at night, and shouting at every car that rightfully is allowed to change lanes, why don't you just keep to the left of the highway, or the road where you belong??? Isn't that what they teach you before you get your biking licence??? Wouldn't you be able to avoid a lot more accidents if you keep to the speed limit or match the speed of cars and keep to the left where you're not a nuisance instead of speeding along and cutting people up everytime there's a corner or a slow traffic???

Another one is at a highway where there are designated motorbike lanes on the left. Guarded by safety rails so we people who have more sense and drive cars would have less a chance of hitting you should there be an accident. There shouldn't be complaints about bad motorcycle roads. We who drive cars do not care. It does not concern us. We pay the car road tax because we want to drive on the road for cars. You pay bike road tax, no tolls, you get the bike lane. You shouldn't be playing around on places that were made for the car. I don't care even if you have a really good and powerful bike. If there's a lane for the motorcycle, be a good motorcyclist, stay where you are. If you want to come onto the road, work a little bit harder and maybe then you can afford a car.

As much as you think that maybe it, there is another thing that some (a very small number) of motorcyclists like to do. They tend to believe they can bully their way through the traffic. Sometimes when there's a bottleneck at a junction and the cars are really close together (maybe at a junction), you will find that in the midst of five or so more lanes of tightly-packed cars, there will be a few motorcyclists joining in the action. I wouldn't mind it so much if there were two lanes leading to two other destinations and the motorcyclist had to use the right one. That's completely acceptable. However the ones I'm talking about are the kind who shoves and pushes through traffic giving car drivers another thing to worry about when there are a million angles that he has to look at so to not cause an accident. To make matters worse, a number of them like to bully their way through by blaring their horns when they can't move their bikes. They choose to come onto the road yet they cannot wait for the traffic to clear up a little like everybody else. There are moments when you just cannot give way whether it's to a car or a motorcycle and yet, there's a motorcycle behind you on the left, blaring away. He or she is neither in your lane or the lane on the left. Just blaring away, trying to bully his way through on your left.

Forgive me but all motorcylists seem to tell the whole world to sympathise with them. To understand their predicament. They are physically smaller, and some of them aren't able to afford a car. Well not being able to afford a car is unfortunate if you actually want a car. But if you get a motorcycle, behave yourself. Don't annoy the car drivers. The lanes are designed to fit cars and buses, not bikes. That's why they are 7-8 feet wide. You are allowed on the road but you shall keep to the left so that we won't accidentally hit you. It's for your own good. If you're physically smaller, don't think that it's an advantage and you can cut in front of everyone. In a collision between a car and a motorcycle, you cannot win. At u-turns, if you decide to turn alongside a car, don't cut him up when you straighten up. You skid, you end up under the car. I simply don't know how they cannot understand such simple logic. In Australia, motorcyclists treat cars with respect. In return, they're also treated with respect by car drivers. They too use their inferior size to get past traffic but they do it carefully. They too race between the lights but they don't cut people up on purpose. They too ride very fast on interstate roads and on fast lanes, but they are genuinely good, powerful motorcycles that can match and handle the speed that the cars can. They also understand that they are entirely to blame should there be an accident involving them when they decide not to use the motorcycle lane. As such, they stay there. Unlike Malaysian motorcyclists who constantly blame drivers for being rude or causing accidents.

If you want to be safe, buy a car. If you can't afford it, work harder. If you want a bike, keep to your lane. No one needs a mosquito buzzing around making a nuisance of him or herself on the road. You don't pay the road tax we pay. You don't deserve to use roads that were made for us when there are roads all over the place made for you.

I do not say this because I hate motorcycles. I understand it's appeal and I too have a liking for the whole open-air experience. However, I do not believe it's very safe to travel at speeds deemed dangerous even for a car, on a vehicle that has to be propped up by a stand when it's stationary. A motorcycle is flawed in engineering terms for it's extremely short wheelbase, and it's height which is immense considering it is usually only about 2 feet wide. As a result, it not only cannot stand on it's own, it has a very high centre of gravity.

Cars are a different story. We're much safer in the same environment. It weighs much more of of course. But because we're always more stable at normal speeds, we brake faster, we corner better, we can also drive much faster. As a result, at most times, there's just more fun in a car. Some of us car-drivers will choose to have it on a public road. A motorcycle cutting us up at our territory is not something we welcome. Not even at normal driving conditions. We don't appreciate it from other car-drivers, we certainly don't appreciate it from you two-wheeled houseflies.

So to those motorcyclists who have been brought up and taught how to commandeer a motorcycle by the society that does not understand manners, keep in mind. Your society may have given up on manners and respect, but if you don't start practicing it again, car-drivers might give up on their patience as well. Then society really descends into anarchy. We will be unharmed and you will be left in tears when there are accidents that seem to only involve you people all over the place. When that day comes, if your brain turns into a puddle of red underneath car tyres, just make sure that you don't get your blood anywhere on the car. It's a bit of an inconvenience to us.

My Fuzz Face

It's been exactly a year since I left home and been at Australia. 

For 4-5 months, I never really wanted a fuzz face. 

The next 6 months however, I really wanted a fuzz face and spent time learning about it every single day. Then I had the fuzz face for 10 days. 

Now I don't anymore and I miss it dearly. 

An art form never mastered but constantly coveted by man.

A dream it was and a dream it probably always will be.

Journey Thus Far

Being about 6000km away from home, you begin to realise what it is that you've been taking for granted for years and how much you miss them now. For instance, right now I miss having decent curry.

Not long ago however, just a few hours ago in fact, I woke up and the first thing that popped into my head was the way my youngest brother looked when I scolded him after he stole my eraser back when I was in standard 3 or something. I remember feeling so bad at myself because of how sorry he looked and I ended up giving it to him. Then I remembered how I used to scold my second brother for being always being so shy and difficult and completely incapable of taking care of himself back when he was a kid. It got so bad that I went to the point of physical violence. Never anything too bad, but it was pretty demeaning and humiliating to the both of us.

At this point, you can probably tell that I've never been the most well-centred of people. I used to have virtually no patience and was very well-known for having both silent and loud explosions of temper. This was before teen angst kicked in. Many people suffered in my wake. When I think of all the trouble I caused, I did suffer too. 

I look back over the years and see how my brothers have grown up into fine young men. The way they carry themselves. My second brother even has a job now and my youngest brother has found an interest in girls. My dad was a family-man who would come home everyday even during lunch time to be with his family (because we stayed where he worked). I think it was his presence that instilled a sense of responsibility in my brothers. I don't even have too hard a time taking care of them. My brothers hardly get themselves into any trouble. In fact among the three of us, I've caused the most trouble over the years. 

I remember a time when I was taught how to ride a bike by my dad. Then I remember the times when I taught my younger brothers how to ride the bike. Once we all knew how to balance on two wheels, we pretty much ran into everything we could. Clumsiest people on earth. For some reason, we were all rather unathletic without practice. But after years of playing football and running, we actually possessed a certain amount of skill. I used to think people who sucked at sports were just that. They just sucked. Up till now I've still never met anyone who could go from being flat-footed to knowing how to place a football in a certain part of the net from half the field away. That was how my brothers were. After having years of no practice, I've noticed that they are becoming more and more flat-footed again. I never knew this was possible. I always thought a person was one or the other. I did not think there was a possibility of alternation let alone multiple transitions of abilities. 

My brothers now both play guitar. We never really came from a musical family or anything. But all my uncles including my dad, could sing and play guitar. The three of us, play guitar far better than them, but should never be asked to sing. Just recently, we found out we have a huge number of relatives from my father's side who are all musically-raised and come from a musical family. Our assumptions that we were the first to get into the gigging scene was completely wrong. I come from a family of entertainers and advertising people. Considering the way my family members behave, advertising people seem to be like entertainers as well. I love that part of me. I love that part in my brothers. We're always able to strike up a conversation or draw interest. All three of us do it in very different ways. But we have that much in common. Yet, all three of us suffer from a lack of confidence. The entertaining is just a way of hiding it. I have since noticed that it's the same for a lot of my family members. As much as they wouldn't care to admit it. 

My second brother now plays better guitar than I do. I still bust his chops for playing metal. But only for fun. In actual truth, I was so bloody proud of him I could've punched him. This includes my youngest brother as well. Both of whom picked up the guitar after I did. Still juveniles but behave like real men. Taking care of my mother when dad and I are away. I like to think that my mother is in very safe hands because in many ways, they've always been far more family-orientated than I am. My brother has since gotten a driver's licence and crashed a car. Following in my footsteps of pulling a whole lot of shenanigans. In short, getting a bit more independent. My youngest brother will soon be doing the same. The way I listen to them tell me stories nowadays, sometimes you can't believe how much they've grown up. These are the first people whom I've literally watched grow up and grew up with me. 

We used to give each other nicknames (Jaguar and Jagung) and I used to draw them cartoons of superhero's with fruits for heads (Orangeman, Appleman, etc.). The villain was always "The Bee". Don't ask me how that happened. I was a kid. My imaginations were a bit nonsense. It still is. The same goes for my brothers. From those childish jokes to the intelligent, grown-up jokes I sometimes hear from them nowadays, it surprises me to think that just 10 or so years ago, I was still teaching them how to tie their shoelaces. Now, I'm teaching them about college. In fact, they might even know more about it than I do at this point. 

They still close the gates for me every single time I go out. I still remember waving goodbye to them everytime I leave the house with the car. I remember playing childish games even at this age with them. For example seeing who can shout the loudest and most annoyingly in staccato (very hard to explain) in the car when mom's not around. I always take the liberty of sending them to their jamming sessions. Makes me very proud to see them have their own bunch of friends with the same mindset and actually setting out to achieve something or just to have fun. 

Waking up earlier, and remembering how my brother looked so guilty after I scolded him for stealing my eraser when we were so young, made me think of them a whole lot. As you can tell, I've had a lot on my mind these past few days. The way things are now, and the simpler times when the thing we looked forward to most every single day is to go out and ride our bikes and crash into each other. I taught them about grasshoppers and frogs. I've seen them create wonderful things out of nothing. Do things that I'd never have thought or imagined doing in a million years. The childish nonsensical words and whimsical songs we came up to tease each other, still ring rather clearly in my head.

I know it may be a bit redundant to say this now. But I've seen my brothers from the day I put on their diapers wrongly for them, up till today when they're growing into fine young men. Besides being incredibly proud of them, I really do miss my brothers now......