It hurts

"I'm eighty kid. If I die now, it doesn't really matter at all. I was laughing when I made it pass seventy but here? Here it's just the wait. Four out of my seven closest friends are already dead. The last one who lived just around my house and used to hang out with me just passed away, I still remember calling his son about it like it was yesterday. Nowadays I just think whether I lived a good life. And I believe, the answer is yes, and I'm ready for death.
"So in this long life, what was your happiest moment?"
"Finding out that the girl I loved, loved me too."

~Faces of KL

All this pain. All this anguish. All the why's and what's and how's that are appearing with MH 17 being shot down over Ukraine. Will this be this century's Franz Ferdinand? Will it? Or will we retract once again into mumblings of sanctions and toothless bites as economies struggle with maintaining their current form.

What is justice? What is justice? Is justice an eye for an eye or the willingness to allow things to go unpunished and to believe in a higher being. I used to think religion exists because humans needed hope on this earth. Now I'm beginning to believe that we need to believe in a higher order because nothing justifies anything that I am seeing with my own eyes now. What happened to doing good and good will come to you? What did those families on that plane do which justifies anything that happens to them?

As I lit my joss stick at the alter of my daily ritual, all the logical side of me could think is, what's the point? Why this anguish? Why hate someone just because they believe that they will die differently from you? I don't understand and I never will. All the theologists in the world can spend their reams of paper explaining the reasoning behind why humans believe in this higher order but logic tells me over and over again that it makes no sense. We fight and fight and fight and argue but when we are dead, we're really dead. Gone. Nada.

I looked at the list of dates denoting the years and months of rituals and absurdly enough, I hope nothing on this Earth gets replicated wherever I'm going next. Please, when I'm up there with my heavenly juice overlooking paradise the last thing I want to worry about are dates and rituals. Nope.  No calender for me please.

Those people lying in the fields or in the trains being guarded by scary scarred men? They are the lucky ones. They are the ones that have escaped this mortal realm, bless their souls.

Death. Death has hovered around me and with me for the past year and I don't particularly want it around any more.

And this fear. This fear that something bad is always lurking around the corner. That roofs are easy to break into. That kidnappings will happen. That car crash. That slip. That illness.

Nothing in life is preventable, and the older I get, the more I realise how we can never escape the footsteps which have tread before us.

Thank the stars? Thank whoever your God is? For really, apocalypse has never felt more real than now.

And we learn, over and over again that we never learn from our past. We are our best killers, our own population control. This brought the war directly to our doorstep, and it will not and cannot be ignored or forgotten as petty squabblings take over the front pages of the local papers again. No. The repercussions of this are beyond us and spiral into abyss that remains unforeseen for now. But echoes of an impending tsunami. Just brace ourselves, hold tight to our loved ones...and pray.

Of stepping outside Boxes

How many times do we really take a step back to see where life is now and where we want to go? Fortune favours the bold, if you don't know where you want to end up, any road will take you there, be free, chase your dreams!

Being spontaneous is a feature that society seems to put on a pedestal, but what about planning? What about goals? What about hard work? We seem so enchanted by the end story that we often dismiss the things that people have had to do to get there. Do ends really justify the means? I hope so.

3 months wrapping up the tail end of a project that I could call my own. Throwing myself into situations that would have made me seize up and freeze just a short number of years ago. Progress? I think so.

Michigan reunions seem to be in full swing this summer. Nicnocs in Sg with Dian, some ice cream, booze and boy gossip. Lulu in KL at an Entrepreneurship Forum, very yummy vegetarian food all around and Football mornings.

What next? Yes, what next indeed. Rinjani in less than a month and I cannot be more unprepared than this. Time to visit Uniqlo soon!

Also in the middle of a 2 day detox now, this is where the ends really better justify the means because it also  means I will not chew anything for 2 days straight. 

Stories

A lady stands encircled by the flickering lights of faux candles in a darkened box theatre past midnight. Third in line and following two named and known performers, she waits patiently as her mic stand is being fixed, barefoot, she is elegant, graceful, lithe and pixie looking. Long fingers, long neck. Sharp nose, delicate eyes and a delicate face. She is mesmerizing. A scarf gracefully encircles her black-clad frame much as theatre performers dress, with the goal of not distracting from expressions and voices.

Taking the time given, she raises all 10 fingers of her hand, telling us that we are going to make it rain. Intrigued my first thought is, voodoo? Rain dance? Before embarrassingly, begin to clap. One finger against a palm. Two fingers against a palm. Three and four fingers against a palm. The box theatre echoes to the rhythmically flawed pitter patter of fingers on palm much like the droplets of scattering rain and I begin to be aware and delight in the aural sounds emanating from such a simple exercise. The men are ordered to stomp their right feet and thunder is then produced before the dying droplets echo and we return to silence.

She follows the rain with an interlude of an old tale. That of a sick grandmother, a loaf of bread and a hunters daughter. Ending doesn’t quite follow the tales of yore though, a rather Maleficent twist-Game of Thrones ends up being the conclusion of this prelude before she launches into the final tale of the night. No reading from the sheets of paper or ipad for this one, no, everything in her mind. Hands fluttering to convey the sense of a Moghul’s palace bedecked for a wedding ceremony, hands slitting a throat and hands riding a horse. Hands graceful as a traditional Indian dancers, voice as elegant and expressions as beautiful.

I am intrigued and inspired, storytelling has been elevated to a level I have never seen before and reminds me yet again how intertwined the arts are, between visuals, aural, rhythm, imagination. Between stories, dance, music and writing. The arts may often be cast aside in favour of their less imaginative counterparts, the math, the sciences and the facts, but nothing can grab your imagination more than the beauty of a simple rhythm, the swoop of a silk clad, heel shod boleo or the sounds of a voice telling you a beautiful. Story.

Halfway There

2014 half gone, been through a lot for this first half of the year, teaching tango, performing tango, going diving, learning new things on this job, keeping in contact with everyone, signing up for crazy things like G4G4 and Rinjani.

It's been pretty good so far, nothing new to report though besides the fact that I've been considering more and more about what next when it comes to going back to school. 4 years almost.

And as people move in and out of your life you learn to forge friendships ever the more quickly, take people at instant judgement, realise that certain situations will never be the same again but are ok with it. You learn that time takes friendships that lasted for the whole of schooling life and turn you into two strangers who really don't particular care about each other anymore whereas friendships forged in the current and now suddenly become your new clique. You learn to be ok with all this and realise eventually that everyone at the core of it, has to be comfortable alone before they can really connect with someone else.

Such is life.

G4G4 was good and as usual I'm fighting itchy bug bites and blistered feet as CC in the wild only ever does best. Think DOE bloody blisters and Perhentian Bug Bites. 13 km of running and 2 km of kayaking as well as an hour crawling up an 80 degree incline hill. Horribly disgusting but the sense of achievement is so palpable. 4th place of 15 teams overall so was a good run on our part. You can do anything as long as your mind is in it, this is why I do these things really. Much like DOE, or Rinjani coming up next it's about pushing my body to the limit as I sit here in the office in silence among people who pretend we don't see each other, each too engrossed in the supposed importance of their work. Words on a ppt. That's what I get paid for.

Foodie trips

Had a quick getaway this past weekend to Ipoh and Penang with the Ethos bunch before the workload starts for the next 3 months. I foresee no holidays until Rinjani, but at least the dry-spell of no public holidays gets broken next Thursday, woot!

Went to Ipoh, ate brekkie stuff, waited eons for the chicken hor fun at Thean Chun before wondering around the Kong Heng/Plan B around the corner. Left for Penang, stopped by Jalan Penang for Cendol and Assam Laksa, then got into the hotel and promptly ended up by the poolside sipping cocktails. Seafood dinner finally arrived at 9:30pm and was gone in 10 mins flat before we went for a foot massage and realised that some of us are super sensitive to pain.

Woke up at 8 to play tennis with the boys before walloping a huge breakfast and floated dugong like in the pool...sat around for awhile more since checkout got extended to 2pm. Drove into town and past Karpal Singh's house, found Ayer Itam Assam Laksa, Mua Chee and amazing sugarcane juice which I promptly spilled all over myself. Also the cleanest public toilets in Malaysia.

Passed out on the way back to KL, before ending up eating dinner in TTDI-yet again, hungry.

Was a good trip! Off to Sg for more project work in the upcoming weeks, ah the travelling life of a consultant, airports need to be closer to home!!!

Mad Men Finale

I cannot believe it's the start of the final season. But before I start lamenting the end of one of the greatest shows I've watched, there's still a full 7 episodes to predict, dissect and figure out for this year and 7 more for next. Shows and books often show you why it's better to leave things to the imagination rather than being too literal, after all, the moment it lingers for too long then it plunges into being quite a bit boring and more like real life than anything else.

It was painful to watch the opening. Don don don, like Harvey Spector but 40 years previously, confident, mysterious, old school charm and looks-left broken on a lonely apartment balcony on a wintry January night. Eeps, how far you have come.

"Mad men is a show about how we never really get over our own shit, instead, the best any of us can do is learn to accept our shit and work within the boundaries of our own paradigms."~tomandlorenzo

Home

We were running through the questions at Ben's the other day and one of them caused quite a bit of thought and discussion. The question was something like, if given RM 5 million would you leave this country and never come back? After much pondering some of us felt that no amount of money would ever make it worthwhile to leave while others were ok with higher amounts (RM 100 million or billions) as justified by the opportunity cost of leaving - ambitious friends I have-.

The thought struck me as I was whizzing down Singapore in a cab, wondering how just across the border, Sg manages to showcase an impressive masterclass on how to become a developed nation in just 2 generations, yet given that, I would never trade the chaos of Malaysia for anything. Weird as it is, even though our wages are lower, QoL that much more impacted, politics and faith in chaos, Malaysia really has become home. It becomes the imprinted bed with a pile of bolsters, it becomes the familiar worn out t-shirt or pair of jeans that fit you just so. Not flashy, not outstanding, but comfortable.

At the same time a home that has changed, become a little bit more uncomfortable to experience, become a bit more conflicted, become a bit more, real.

Obviously my interaction with this country is done with a barrier of privilege in place, what do I know of suffering or poverty? I do not. But why do we often feel apologetic for this? That someone not the average, makes them automatically disqualified from participating in the rhetoric and discussion surrounding the happenings within a country? That isn't fair either is it?

It's been a few years since I've left AA, and even now as I ponder what next, I've realised that complacency has settled in big time. What next indeed.

Stock check on the first quarter of 2014, travel times, diving galore, breakthrough in Tango, performances, writing articles, new phase of work life. All's good.