Rebel Rebel

Hello again

2011-12-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

Hello tiny room in my grandparent's room where I spent half of my teenage days feeling sorry for myself and acne. Still with the colorful Scandinavian designed 80s duna cover, still on a 2 stack super single mattress where my great grandmother passed. Still with the world map sealed into the single drawer desk with the giant pink USSR still very much intact.

It's been a while.

In 1997 in the dim light of a CTR screen and to the constant 'uh oh's' of ICQ popups where the first boy-girl relationships were established. I'd sit here and sample my Grandad's liquor cabinet, playing Quake drunk while listening to Disco 2000 wondering what it'd be like 20 years from now.

Before Thom was about to marry Sally, before my grandma's cancer, before comics or playstation, or art, or advertising, or PLC girls, or anything. There was just this me in this room and a whole lof of hope and anger.

I put on Tripple J and then pull out a block of Super Sculpey.

At 3 pm I'm running through the sunny back streets of Camberwell, and as the warm scents of pine and eucalyptus grace my nose I feel the familiar hay fever sensations return.

By 4 I'm standing standing in my favorite part of the bathroom - infront of the frosted mirror and using my figer to make a picture around my face.

At 6, I sink into the lazy boy I used to have speed-reclining competitions with Wongo in.

The evenings slip away. But by 11 I'm back here in my bunk of a bed, sipping down stolen liquor from a honey jar, dreaming about where I'll be 5 years from now. It's almost as mysterious as when I was 14. and if I squint and squeeze my eyes together tight enough, I can just about see myself back as a tiny little zero, back to a tightened knot of hope and fury and kind confusion.

It feels warm and dreamy and for the first time in a long time, I sleep a deep sound sleep.

Reservations

2011-11-22T08:56:00.000-08:00

When people stop to ask me why I look so tired, I generally respond saying "September and October were pretty long months". Trying to recount why feels a little like trying to recount the events leading up to a hang over. I'm sure they were good, fun even, but I feel horrible.

It began in the most unlikely of places, a club night I hadn't planned on attending where I'd meet a girl I'd spend most of those next months with, she was pretty and reserved and had a strange spontaneity to her that reminded me of a Travis song. There was always a familiar smell I really liked about her that I couldn't place while we were dating, but deduced weeks later was the smell of hair spray.

The next week was a blur of trying to finish up a piece for an art show and building up my guts to ask her out, 5am mornings and 3am nights were pretty regular as I worked myself into a trance of baking sculpey, and hours on youtube learning to carve miniatures. I'd go to Vietnam that weekend with my sister on what I describe as a 'business networking convention'. It was a strange weekend and we mainly partied with the other young folks and then tried to amble along slightly hung over through the day's jam packed programs.

I'd take comfort in texting sweet nothings and making very elaborate notes in a molskine diary that was given to me for Christmas, somehow it made the days pass with a little more purpose.

The week after was beautiful and I ate lots of rich foods as my new companion was a foodie, I fell asleep during many shows as she was also insomniac, and I started also started reading again because she was also an avid reader of fiction written from the point of view of children which was something that I never realized I was also a fan of.

Work was great, we'd cracked a way to do halloween for one of my key ad accounts and it was a lot of hard work trying to stitch it all up before Bhutan but it all got done and before I knew it I was with my mum, on a trip to a place I had no concept of. Dawns came early and the days whizzed by and for the first time in my life I truly enjoyed hiking and being a son.

There were 3 days between Bhutan and Bangkok, during which I convinced the her to come with me to a television commercial we were shooting there. What would have been a caper turns into a long drawn out ordeal, and instead of heading out to the promise of a wrap party, we're standing in the dusty midst of a set being demolished around us while supervising a water splash product sequence at 3am.

Bangkok is fun though - a little surreal with a slight tinge of pre-apocalyptic fear, but I'm starting to really get her sense of humor and odd fascinations.

I get back just in time for halloween, it's a manic saturday night and I'm ferrying 6 interns around in my car at we attempt to drop off candy and scare everybody in singapore. It's late by the time I'm reunited with her, and she's dressed in a giant plume of color. She says people mistake her costume for a feather duster, or a carwash spindle. She's actually a colorful witch, I laugh and call her carwash, before I head back home and drop her off.

October ends following Monday when she comes round unexpectedly. I'd been caught by surprise and still have my PS3 bluetooth ear piece in when she comes in. I tell the my friends playing Battlefield 3 to give me a moment as I receive her and open a small note she's got for me.

The fatigue I'd held off for two months falls upon me. And for a while, I'm spasming involuntary. And then I can't bring myself to wake up or get out of bed. And then it's like September and October never happened, and there's laundry to be done, gym class and sculpey to be baked and another campaign to stitch up intime for another holiday.

But there's also a book on my bedside table, the curious incident of the dog in the night time. It's a murder mystery about a dog written from the point of view of a slightly autistic kid.
I'm really enjoying it so far.

I also get this feeling that these two months will be how I look back on 2011.

Mr. Brightside

2011-06-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Once more I ran into the rain, this time with a waterproof arm band to keep a different iPhone dry.

It beats the plastic bag I'd brought along with me to run last time and I sorely needed the music to go on.

How far will Richard Hawley carry me today?

Damn far I decided - so now I'm doing the rather inconsiderate sprinting-through-puddles, splashing the slow moving lunch time pedestrians with each splish and splosh. fuckem' I decide because tonight the streets are ours.

I couldn't have been sprinting too fast though, because I feel a series of blunt jabs in the shoulder, and turning around I watch almost in slow motion a very tall and white haired middle aged caucasian man is chasing after me and prodding me with his umbrella.

I'm struck with fear as it crosses my mind that he must take revenge pretty seriously to hunt me down in the pouring rain.

But instead he slumps over huffing and puffing with a relieved smile, extending his arm to pass me the key's I'd dropped in my haste.

"I think you dropped these".

"Uh, thanks" I blurt out, hesitating to retract my bad thoughts.

Hey, Thanks.

Journey to the happiest place on earth

2011-06-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

It comes in flushes.

Like on Wednesday when I'm drenched. sweat is dribbling off my brow and dropping into my a disappearing greenlantern subway meal. It's not going so well.

This is a saying that's become more and more frequent in my life

It's not going so well, but it's going alright, and it's Okay.

It's just slightly less than what I'd hoped for and it's not great, but it's all rolling along.

Its eating me.

A few weeks ago, I was in the gym and when Marvin, one of the regular gym guys came up to me, and asked if I was on a mission. It kind of took me by surprise, but then I realized he'd meant seeing me in there everyday for the last 2 weeks. Did I have a goal? some kind of target maybe?

The truth was no, not really. I just wanted to feel something other than insecurity. So there I was in the gym for the 5th time this week struggling to do my 6th chin up, then swinging by subway to dribble sweat into a meal I'd picked out to feel the least guilty about.

It's a vast ocean.

I've amassed a stack of Greenlantern subway meal luckydraw coupons which come free with my Subway meal each day. one of them could turn out to be a trip to the New York comic convention. But I just keep them tucked in my wallet and can't be bothered registering them on facebook. A trip to the comic con would be nice though. Something to look forward to. something in the distance that I can't make out yet but is good. So I hold on to the coupons. They remind me of an unforeseeable, but yet untapped future hopelessly close, but statistically, quite far away.

I'm sure it all has something to do with a failed relationship, a time ago.

And for a long time now, I've been gluing together a makeshift life raft made from gym membersips, subway coupons, rent bills, scamps, receipts for gadgets, a ticket to Bhutan and the random 'productivity' app from the apple store. All in an effort to try and cross this ocean before it washes over me. It's cost me, money, time, friends, and emotions too much damn emotion.

So here I am about to push it out, frantically worrying if it will float.

If it will sail, if it will be great

And if it doesn't - if I can still swim like I used to.

The Virgin Suicides

2011-04-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

At 5pm on Tuesday I'm at Pestbusters, finally meeting Peggy who is the singaporean equivalent of Janine from the Ghostbuster movies. She'd insisted I'd come round with the specimens (in spite of me sending pictures) and introduces me to her 'ops guy' Afendi - who would be played by Lawrence Fishburne if there ever were a Pestbusters movie.

Afendi and his colleagues sit around in their overalls put their pencils down and chuckle at the jam jar and it's inhabitants. I can't tell if they're laughing at me or them. Finally he walks over to where I'm seated beneath a giant fiber glass mosquito, and smiles gently.

"So, I'm pretty sure these are dry wood termites" thats not good "quite unlike their cousins the subterranean termite" he points at a giant fibre glass model of a fierce looking white termite mounted above his desk. Ok. "See this door here?" He kicks a heavy wooden door, "subterranean termites could eat through this in ... a week? Maybe days?" mmhmm "These guys?" he shakes my jar and cocks his head to one side "I'd say... 2 years." he hands them back to me in a hey! presto! moment "so don't worry you've got time!" he says returning to a smile.

I'm contemplating burning just my wooden bed and study table. My whole place is made of wood. Fuck.

They'd just appeared one night. I finished work late and returned to find my room crawling with 100s of these long abdomened bugs crawling across the floor of my room. I thought they were ants at first but then they seemed too weak to even pull themselves up the walls. There was no distinct trail but I found a pile of little beige pallets under the study table, so I crammed all the pallets and about 20 of them into a jam jar and hadn't stopped googling or squishing termites.

Afendi's now a little puzzled. He strokes his chin for a significant amount of time before he comes up with a hypothesis:

Female termites leave their nests every season in huge swarms to find mates and become queens, a heavy storm must have blown them into my room. They must have tried their best to get by (the study table), but after several days of not finding any mates, got severely distressed and disorientated, and without the colony to fend and forage for them, they wilted, losing their energy and appetites, and thus not being able to even climb up a wall.

I was skeptical. But when I returned that evening I couldn't find anything resembling a termite. No pallets, no holes, nothing slowly struggling to get up a wall.

Just some wings, a few dried up husks and an acute sense of loneliness.

Now that I'm in your shadow

2011-03-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

At night the mosquito net comes down and tucks into two corners of my bed.

In the morning, the blank white walls are stripped yellow by the slatted sunlight. Several alarm clocks are ringing in the distance as I cradle my head still slightly fragile from the night before.

There was no need for air con, so there's no need to switch it off.

After a coffee I walk down 6 fights of 6 steps and am welcomed by the fumes of old baby smells from the former owners of my car. Unlike other cars I've driven before, it's silent when I press the ignition button, and even though its ready to go it makes no enthusiastic roar or even a purr. Just the sound of fans and lights.

The 3G GPS is slow to register, as I pull off portsdown and towards the streams of cars east boud on the Ayer Rajah express way.

Work is a red and white office, cheerily lit and like the bridge of a starship in a scifi Role playing game (Wingcommander 4/ Masseffect) is bustling with activity not very consequential to the course of my narrative.

In the afternoon, I'm in a studio working on several polystyrene trees. there's a lot of really bad radio, followed by a news broadcast, followed by a lot of googling japan + tsunami.

There are many images, but the one that sticks with me is an imagine of a man who owns a porcelain shop and is picking up the pieces.

We don't discuss it in much depth, it makes for pretty unusual banter for a while before we exhale and get on with it.

Back in the office, I'm going through my birthday email. One's from a Japanese colleague of mine, time stamped only hours before the quake. Thankfully, not currently in Japan. I reply with a thanks/condolences letter. And she remarks about the inappropriateness of the email subject line.

Its only then that I realize my strange birth day-after relationship with this disaster.

I find it hard not to confuse parallels now. Trying not imagine waking up hung over and walking out to find myself standing in the shadow of a tidal wave.

My quiet car, floating in a sea of grey.

Bits and pieces of cake covered novelty gifts.

An inbox full of wall posts and e-cards that wouldn't be accessed for a while.

That surely it was someone else's birthday in Japan on March the 11th.

We didn't turn around

2011-01-13T03:16:00.000-08:00

My Grandmother on my Father's side died yesterday afternoon.

And just like a well rehearsed nation wide defense drill, people scrambled like fighter planes, contorting their way out of tight corners and mobilizing before my aunties house where she lay, a little more quietly than she had before. I could hear Chopin's Nocturne in G minor play out.

The next morning Kristin, a colleague of mine told us about her brush with death when her villa in Bali had exploded due to faulty Gas main. I sat transfixed by the proximity of death, as I watched her hands move excitedly mimicking the spray of glass. The story was funny and it was told in a charming manner, but I couldn't hep but think back to the afternoon before.

Before I'd understood why I was holding my grandmother's mouth shut - because riga-mortis would set in soon, and we wouldn't want her jaw to be hanging open when she was put in the casket.

The flesh under her jaw was warm to touch, probably warmed by the heat of my auntie's hand which had been holding the jaw shut before me.

There was a moment I was about to cry.

But I didn't.

I was afraid to ruin the intricate performance.

The awkward but stoic last performance, the grandest final scene.

I held her face tight, as I struggled with my face to contain the tears I'd already started making since I'd flagged that taxi to get there.

HEEERE'S JOHNNY!

2010-08-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

Mixed papers, foamcore and Acryllic.

Done for "R3DRUM" - an art exhibit inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 'THE SHINING'
Organized by Steve Lawler

And... HEEEERE'S KENNY! (my Dad)

Footsol's latest blemish

2010-05-16T09:12:00.001-07:00

The team crest for the Singaportly Pirates, captained by Marc Wei and Cristened by Oliver Eden Green.

We sat down, wrote emails and made birds.

2010-05-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Clay, canvas, paper, feathers, felt & acrylic

Outfits by Lin Ong.

Rain

2010-02-21T08:01:00.001-08:00

The rain made things wet, and the wetness in turn woke up new sensations.

A squishiness in my socks, the spray from a moving bus. It brought about a sense of urgency and reduced us to animals, hunters, a massive flock dispersed and fanning out for shelter and warmth.

We ended up in an art gallery, a new bike shop, a spotlight, a seven eleven. We chained out bikes to a tree when the guard told us we couldn't use the carpark. We skid through a hail of traffic, and finally I did what I never thought I'd ever do, and sat in the driveway scrubbing down my bike with Jiff, grazing my knuckles on the gear box. It didn't matter, I felt alive, furiously scrubbing grease off metal, not being able to distinguish the sweat from the rain. The hot shower that followed was the best shower ever, so was the icy cup of Ribena.

Later that night, we couldn't get into our local club-house restaurant, there was a 10 meter queue of people - presumably this had something to do with the rain as well. so we ended up at trying some new dishes across the road. I had braised duck noodles. We all ate heartily, and didn't think too much about calories or dieting. It was a nice change.

New thing

2010-01-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

Its 2010 and things are different.

We sat down last night to try and plan our trip in May, changing calendars, waiting for websites to load, I walked the block with Doug looking at gyms, and counted the things I ate in a day: Two cups black coffee, three cans of soda water, a chicken sandwich with thin mayo and whole meal bread, 4 jellybeans in red delicious, butter pop corn, tropical bubble gum and cherry flavors, Soy joy bar, and a bowl of noodles.

As far as the 'official records' are concerned, I'm still off cigarettes (10 months and counting) and off beer for at least until I reach a satisfactory weight and can fit into my skinny pants again without fear of overhang.

The things I've set out to do this year are small. One thing in particular, is listen to the news instead of my iPod. This was triggered out of a moment of panic when I realized that I didn't recognize Time magazine's Man of the year 2009 (Ben Bernanke). The other ambition sounds slightly stupid, but it's to participate in more public social networking discourse. I've found myself becoming more and more socially withdrawn, both virtually and in reality. So I'm going to try and attempt to comment on your facebook pictures and read my digests instead of flicking straight to messages and events. I guess that means trying to remember my twitter login.

So this suddenly doesn't sounds like such an exciting year anymore. but trust me, deep inside me is a frigid little cyber person who's just too afraid to join in, and he's trembling with fear and renewed post-Social-networking re-enthusiasm.

And if I haven't said it to you yet in an effort to make conversation : Happy new year !

Hips and Hoorays

2009-12-24T09:44:00.000-08:00

"And we have sign off!"

Says our TV Producer bouncing over towards us at 4pm today.

Christmas eve was spent in the Singapore tourism board office presenting the final print ad ideas to the client for their 2010 launch. It's about 12PM, all went well and we're doling out highfives and 'merry christmas for tomorrow!' hugs.

Hey Mr. Tough

2009-09-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

I went to Dr. Fish today with Doug and had my feet and fingers eaten by hundreds of little black fish for 10 minutes. It was quite electrifying. And if I hadn't had know about having to pay for this, I would have had my feet out of there within seconds.

Quantum sex

2009-08-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

I don't listen.

I'm very guilty of not listening I say to Lin. (after switching off the television.)

I worry that I'm getting caught out for not knowing other people know this, and they'd think I was more of a prick for it. But the truth is I do tune out. I do have many 'Saving Private Ryan' moments when I lose audio and just see a mouth moving in very slow motion while my mind runs off chasing the last words that had just spouted from my mouth and then when it's caught them, begins interrogating them.

If you were that person, I apologize. I'm Sorry.

I tune back in when Lin says something about quantum science. Well it was the word 'quantum' that caught me. What? I ask to which she says that she could well have been explaining quantum science to me while I'd been tuning out all this time. Um. Ok I guess I mutter but then you never really hear the word 'quantum' being paired with science do you? She smiles, I call bluff, saying that not only do I not believe that she's been droning about quantum science, but I bet she doesn't even know what the word means. 'Quantum?' or 'quantum science/ physics?' I don't know, 'Quantum' I guess. I dont really know either.

I throw my mind back to Quantum learning. Something to do with ESP and brain waves and subconscious learning techniques. It was a book my mum had given me after I'd finished Supercamp (a quantum-learning summer program).

So how could you use quantum in a different prefix... like Quantum ...Sex? 'We could have quantum sex?' No, "I doubt it" I say. I think Quantum sex could (more likely) involve me sitting on the opposite side of this room and maybe thinking about masturbating and then when I somehow think myself into a climax you'd maybe concentrate on and (hold that thought) and feel a tingling. In the best case scenario we might simultaneously think about (or think we're having) an orgasm.

Er. Ok. She replies, now slightly disturbed.

Hmm, lets settle this. I say pulling out the iphone to google it.

We lie in bed for a while waiting for the application to boot up.

'Thats... a pretty bad definition' I say after reading it.

'I... should get home' she replies getting out of bed.

I try wikipedia.

Hmm, maybe this is more like quantum (sex).

Rise Above

2009-08-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

I bought a (piano) keyboard the other day.

I just walked into the apple shop on my way to meeting lin at the taxi stand, stared at it, enquired, and then proceeded to purchase it. It was for my dad I rationalized to Lin as we lugged it down the escalator. I set it up that night and played chopsticks after everyone had fallen asleep.

I just didn't realize just how hard it'd be to train my hands.

It took me 74 tries before I managed to record somehting that bore any resemblance to the tune I head in mind.

I 'ran' 21km last sunday. I'd put together a playlist that ran out a quarter way through and then when the music stopped, I'd broken down for a short while. There were some spectacular moments about running in an organised half marathon at 5am. My fondest was running across a highway 50 meters in the air. And when the sun came up as we were runnign out of town, I felt like one of the marines at the end of Black Hawk Down, or maybe the camera guy in City of God (only I wasn't really running). I was listening to the dirty projectors when I finished my last K. They stopped playing just 20 meters before the finish line.

I remember thinking for that split second as I pulled out my earphones and listened to Eminem on the lout speakers (singing that 8-mile song) that I could do anything. I could walk into that Muaythai gym that just opened below the office and go 50 lessons and become a contender, that I could fall into the ocean and uncover a japanese zero wrecked on the ocean floor. That I could walk into the client meeting and wow. That this could all be a part of my great new life. That I could buy a 200 dollar keyboard I didnt know how to use and then play it.

I stop and listen to my recording of chopsticks.

and I might be wrong.

ReviewOtron

2009-08-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

Today I unleash

REVIEW-O-TRON...

It's oh so QUIET

2009-08-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

I reach into my pocket for a dirty piece of crumpled tissue paper I'd been recycling over and over till it was drenched and limp. I think I'm slightly allergic to these couches.

We're lying belly down on opposite sides of two parallel couches in a rather small but sunny meeting room trying to think of a new way to shoot an old commercial.

My nose feels a bit numb.

I draw my bright yellow Nerf gun and squint through one eye, down the plastic sights, at the small black sheep laminated on the glass door. There's a sharp sound of the bullet's suction cap sticking to the door. Doug takes a shot and we slowly get through about 60 rounds of nerf ammunition.

At 6pm I'm out the door on my red hybrid bicycle. It rattles across a grassy field towards the river where a couple of soccer players have just started warming up.

I coast down past Zouk (a popular night club) where the staff have just started setting up.

I watch the sun setting at a traffic junction and free wheel down the slope that leads to my house, where I'll take a shower and try and figure out what to do with the rest of my night.

the next day I'm having a highclass ramen (that only serves the facial parts of the pig) in a shopping center staring out at the river watching tour boats pass. I'm chatting on MSN and then shadow box in a small meeting room before handing in a small pile of scripts I'd done earlier in the day.

At 4pm I'm looking up scuba lessons. then later that evening, I'm having a nightmare about my ex-boss not forgiving me for leaving my old work place. Then I'm waking up at 9 to cycle to the office to shower and wait for my toast to toast. 'The coolest thing...' as I'd told my creative director here 'was that I had this giant bag of coins that I used to save up for the vending machine at Ogilvy to buy diet cola. I'd brought it here only to realize that Diet cola and Breakfast are free .' - that was probably not the best thing though I did feel that it'd be better to try and mention one of the more surprising 'best things'.

The other 'best thing' of course was having a life. And as my bike bumped along the grassy field yet again towards a cold pint of beer in a watherfront Japanese inspired sports bar, I wondered just how much more of this I'd have to bear with before I'd finally accepted that this is how things will be from now on. till it fades and 7pm comes and life in general feels like a chore.

I crumple up another sheet of random ideas and drawings and scrape a pile of eraser dust into the bin and think about the part of me that misses the war.

Not a griffon, but a...

2009-07-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

"Feathers are my paint. Over the last ten years I have developed my own technique and style using feathers from road kill, cat kill and dead pets. Recently I have moved into a new source of feathers. I have been trapping and killing the registered pest, the Indian Mynah bird. With these feathers I made Mynah Collie 2007, a feathered dog, one of my dog flu series..." - Emily Valentine

On and on

2009-07-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

The GigaPudding flops out onto the plate gleefully wobblingly - almost exactly as the japanese televison commerical had predicted it would.

I don't know why I'd waited so long to make it.

I guess I was a little scared to fail.

But I walked around the office that morning with the large 1-litre novelty pudding wobbling side to

side in my trembling hands and a disposable cup filled with disposable spoons asking people to have a go.

I'd sent out a mass email to the department the day before saying that I would do exactly this.

In truth, I'd always just loved walking around the office with generous servings of food - you feel like for a moment, everybody loves you. People pause, stop you in your tracks to say hi, ask you how you're going, smile, gourge themselves with a silly grin and then thank you. No, thank You.

So that's how I'd planned to leave the office - carrying a precarious wobbly pudding, through the various departments at 10am.

That afternoon, there'd be pingpong in the 'bouncy room' - a very sterile looking meeting space that'd been temporarily transformed by some of the guys into the perfect table tennis arena. I'd eat a pretty awesome burger, sit in a concall to say goodbye to a client and do some handover stuff. I'd write my last emails and make a timesheet correction, before processing my 'out process'. I'd sit at

my old desk and yack and take some joy in folding and wrapping things up - like my telephone and ethernet cables. I'd hang around till 5.30 - when the townhall meeting takes place, where I'd sit one the same step I'd normally choose and listen before opening a beer and heading out to the balcony and saying a few farewells. This is where Stephen (our chairman) says he'd read my blog the night before (which I'd flogged in my farewell email) I'm still quite tickled. 'Thanks' I'd grin.

The sun is setting on Robinson road. I'd always loved the view from the balcony at this hour.

I grab the oversized crumpler that Maurice and Renee had given me when I'd first started work as a junior here and wave goodbye to the department with a glass of white wine in my other hand.

That evening I'm at the pub, and we're drinking to Michael Jackson (who I'd uncannily refrenced in my last blog entry). There's clearly a pretty serious MJ conossieur on the decks I comment to Sonal - who is clearly the biggest fan at the table. I recall that once in primary school, while our substitute teacher was sick, I'd taken it into my own hands to entertain the class by sing/scatting the entire Dangerous album from cover to cover with my friend (who could moonwalk).

Eventually, everybody arrives and the day slowly burns up like a warm kindeling memory I'm already having trouble trying to pen down.

TTYL!

2009-06-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

(last office email)

Hello,

It's my last day here, so I thought I'd write a quick mail to try and thank you and say gooybye to you (and everyone else in the office) as well as let everyone know not to email this address anymore, as I can't check it.

Thank you for making this place home to me for the last 4 years; for always smiling or nodding back at me when I grinned your way. For the opportunities, goodmornings, deadline-extensions, sympathies, constructive comments, compromises, polite excuses, noise tolerance, meeting makers (that I didn't learn to respond to till last week), elevator rides, youtube videos, hi-fives, advice, lunch, rehersals, beer, ideas, stationary, coffee breaks, strategies, second chances, cigarettes, pats on the back, feedback and vending machine change you've shared with me over the years. It's been very emotional, and I'm sure I'll forever cherish these years like a mature man looks back at his University days while he changes his child's daipers. So thanks again.

Finally, I'm going to attempt to make a Japanese 'giga-pudding' in the morning, so if any of you are interested to discover what a litre of pudding tastes like, please by my desk on the fourth floor to try a piece.

Otherwise, I'll see you later on...

Facebook,

or Gmail,

or here

or someplace else

soon.

Moonwalk

2009-06-07T17:28:00.001-07:00

10,000 hours is what it takes for anyone to become good (not just good very good) at anything. This is what Eugene tells me after I tell him of my resignation. Lin worked out for me the other day that if you practiced something for 5 hours a day everyday, it'd take you about 5 years to achieve the said 10,000hours. in 10,000 hours anyone could go pro at anything. And unless you allocate the next 10,000 hours wisely, you'll fall behind.

We're in the billiard room of the Raffles hotel, and I'm nervously making the cheese sticks disappear between sips of beer. He continues on several other theories, drawing pyramids in my sketch book, writing figures, sighting names followed by generous quotations. I nod a lot, and try where I can to interject and query where I can. I feel heavy. And I'm trying to fend off the alcohol, but it's already in there mixing up my feelings.

He was going to tell me - before he had heard the news of my resignation, that he was proud of me I'm guessing. But, he had instead been told of my departure from the company and this moment had been suddenly over shadowed by a grim showdown that was already taking place.

He would have said something to me if I was his son. He would have told me I was being foolish. That I am loved. That I needn't look any further. That I'm about to make a big mistake. But he couldn't because I wasn't. And he didn't have to, because I already knew it when he'd called me to set this meeting up the same day I'd written to him, even though he was on holiday, and had just flown into the country.

I was at the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) a month before this with Joe and Kim in Melbourne about a month ago. I'd gone looking for a book that I couldn't find. and had instead bumped into Noelle while she was looking at this book of oriental snuff bottles. She asked how I was doing at work. and the answer was quite crummy, which was quickly remedied by a 'but I' might be leaving soon', 'oooh' she replied, 'to a boutique firm?'. Yeah, I replied - a bit embarassed at how transparent the decision was. 'Oh, don't you worry' she said, it was one of the best days of her life. She'd told them to stick it and sashayed out of there...

'Nah', I said to her - a bit sad even then - 'I'm going to have to gently moonwalk out of there.'

Eugene looks up solemnly between thumbing through his blackberry over his famous horn rimed spectacles. He manages a smile before continuing.

I am, in his words, determined to fail.

And I am.

'Find my feet' I say, 'spread my wings', 'broaden my horizons.' I type in various exit emails over the next couple of days. What opportunities can hope to find out beyond what I've been given here? 'Myself' I reply. Walkabout. failure. the ground.

The showdown ends in a cozy little restaurant quite near my house.

'Let's have one for the road' he says. We settle for a pino, and the restaurant manager - who turns out to be a friend of his, comes round and we have a short discussion about his cuisine and the childlike proposition behind his flavors. And as I sit and listen to the man I'd always regarded as the 'Master Yoda' of Advertising, I feel the the gravity of my words rise to meet my face.

I don't 'Yada' what I'm asking for he'd explained. (Which apparently is Hebrew for 'know intimately' - as Adam did Eve. (but that is only 1 of 6 intepretations for the word.))

And I don't know. I really don't Yada yada yada what I've just done, where I'm going to be, what good it'll be.

I'm swollen with fear and anxiety.

It hits me then too that I sadly don't actually know how to moonwalk either.

Nobody's first, and you're next

2009-06-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

'Don't take it too seriously', cautions text message from Eugene on Thursday.

'It's not real'.

'In fact', (he'd continue later, with a grin on his face)

'It's probably one of the worst things that could ever happen to you...'

I remember being an intern at DDB Melbourne, flicking through 'the Work' - a book compiling advertisements from around asia and australia - and spotting an ad I helped make at my internship and Ogilvy Singapore a year before.

I felt my heart leap a little as I gleefully ran over to my mentor at the time, hand wedged between the heavy book's pages. He politely looked over the campaign, squinting at the details, and patiently trying to read the body copy.

Grinning, he looks up and slowly punctuates 'So! Adrian, Chan : Art director - you must be on the list!' 'The list?' I gasp (heart obviously still in throat), 'Yep, the rankings' he says flipping through the pages of a magazine called 'Campaign Brief'. And sure enough, I was listed there, somewhere near the back, on stripe of red, no more than 4 millimeters high, #700-n-something, a place I shared with about 20 other people.

A wow coursed through my shuddering body.

I was listed! I am in advertising! Yes. yes! YES?

In the years to come, I'd casually follow the Campaign Brief rankings, looking out for familiar names and faces of the men and women some of whom would eventually become my mentors, peers, and friends. We'd laugh about the rankings, making them out to be these absurd abstractions of ourselves. (which they are, right?) ...700+, 168, 24. Who's keeping track right.

right?

I'm standing in the corner of a club called 'Zirca' on wednesday night, trying to keep the horrible free-flow house whiskey down, while anxiously waiting for Datarock to come on stage when a cryptic SMS flashes. 'Congratulations! you're number one!' it says.

It's from Troy.

And I'm not sure how to interpret this, as Troy (once my partner) has been known to make cheesy puns, and I was trying to figure this one out. But then comes another this time from Ash. And another and then I'm texting back, clarifying, and then I'm getting piping the cruddy whiskey through my system and then I'm hammered and hugging people, beating down the ground with my feet to Datarock... fa-fa-fa fafafa-fafa.

it's not real!

So. totally. not real.

yay?

um, hi

2009-05-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day we'll spend in melbourne as a family.

It's been quite a trip and though I've been slightly less emotionally involved, than the rest of the members its been really good for everyone I think.

We went to visit my younger cousin Chris who is slowing coming out of a coma (he sustained in a skiing accident), and is now in rehab. 'Talk to him' my dad instructed. So I told him about the Wolverine movie, and how it's pretty gay, and I think he caught on and maybe clutched my hand a little tighter. Though maybe I was just imagining it, he seemed to respond well, as I slowly recounted all the games worth and not worth playing this summer. I told him how 100 bullets ends and how America now has a black president, and showed him pictures of people in singapore on my iphone who have sent their wishes.

I rub my hand through his hair, trying to imitate my hairdresser. There's a long groove beneath my thumb where his skull was fractured and then cut open to release the swelling. Apparnetly the doctors had opened his skull, removed his brain, kept it in cold storage, and only just put it back in.

'Hi' I say again, unsure how to continue.

His eyes roll back over.

Dad is demonstrating a kung fu move on mum, in the corner of the room who's actually laughing. This - though arguably insensitive - actually comes to me as a relief, as they'd been real-fighting for the last two days.

I remember kung fu fighting Chris. Making him cry. Taking him clubbing. Lying about the meanings of acronyms. talking about the grossness of periods and vagina juice. I remember him telling me things he thought 'were gay'. I remember telling him how gay he was.

I clutch on to his head and imagine that he does too.

'Good luck' I whisper into the groove on his head, 'I love you'.

55th

2009-05-08T23:46:00.000-07:00

this was a speech

About as far back as I can remember my grandparents have always been my ‘grandparents’.

‘Grace’ and ‘Eddie’ would only be terms I’d come to grasp much later in life…

Their house and life was always one giant treasure chest to me; filled with quirky eccentricities, and things far too exciting to find in our regular family home. Replica Swords, Starwars, whiskey, stamps, power tools, air rifles, naval mapping equipment, rare vinyls, retro clothing, vintage books, vintage porn, aviator shades.

We’d watch black and white slides of a family grow up in new guinea, of navy men dressed in white saluting a bride and groom, in the exotic backdrop of Burma.

We’d hear stories about an epic romance between a man at sea and his relationship with a beautiful sepia photograph of Grace. And how she’d never been kissed and how she waited for him on a distant shore. And how they raised a family between journeys aboard great steam powered ships all the while fleeing an evil oppressive government.

How they braved a new world, sacrificing everything, and surviving on instant mash potatoes, and selling their worldly possessions for what they have today.

2/17 Bowen street Camberwell is a testament to this life.

A life so foreign, exotic and resilient I sometimes wonder in awe at how I fell out of it.

Today, it’s all mostly packed in boxes in a garage that my parents have been slowly convincing them to discard each year.

Today they’re sitting two identical lazy-boy arm chairs, watching the television. switching between Nickelodeon cartoons (grace’s new favorite past time) and then switching back to catch Mariah Carey on MTV at the commercial break. They’re Sitting on a well worn couch by the kitchen, making sense of the bible together. They’re in front of the computer, jointly typing an email - eddie is on the keyboard taking dictation from grace, as she leans in to correct typos.

So tonight, they’re here, sitting up right in their seats, being humble and attentive. They’ve battled cancer. Sailed the 7 seas. Are fluent in 3 languages, Mastered 3 versions of windows and most of the internet, raised 6 children, (including myself and my sister.)

Tonight they’re 55 years old.

And I just wanted to say. ‘Wow.’

Monkey Love

2009-05-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

My sea monkeys discovered sex. The office hasn't really been the same since.

The Heart of Darkness

2009-04-27T04:06:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what we were looking for, but we'd left Mellow Mountain in a hurry, forgoing 'around the world' by Daft Punk (which I was really digging).

Dragging our feet across the sand, I was convinced (as I'm sure the rest of the group were - though now I maybe doubt it a little) that we should head toward the horrible but beckoning sound of some Gwen Stefani track. And the flames.

We get about half way, and then decide to slow down, eventually grinding to a stop. But how will I know? Asks Ollie. I point to a string of fairy lights, and squint at them. Lights like spiraling tentacles are spiraling out like tentacles. 'That. is how you know.' I manage to spout.

A woman - or something that resembles one - cackles at us, waving a bucket of green liquid at us as we back away.

Ollie squints and nods. I believe we have and understanding.

Later that evening, we're huddling in the hotel room. I'm drawing the demon on the floor, and slurping Jameson straight from the bottle. There's a window, and perhaps there's something beyond it - a whale I think. it must be a sperm whale to have been able to squirm up the driveway. Someone makes a comment about the patterns in the ceramic, I think it's a complaint. but we're all startled by the knock on the door, where we meet a black guy with a french accent. He murmurs something about a cigarette, and we eventually find him one. He'd be lying face down in a pool of his own blood less than an hour later. None of us would figure out why, or the extent of his injuries.

All we knew was that this place - the sea palace. Haadrin. was evil. and we should hide. run inside, find our, selves and disappear.

The Ocean

2009-04-27T03:34:00.001-07:00

The water laped gently against the fine white sand, forming a straight moist ledge - like the top of a chocolate eclair.

the entire beach is practically empty, apart from us and a few small huddles of hippies smoking outside their apartments.

Then from out of nowhere we hear explosions behind us. I turn round and am smacked in the eyes by bright burning phospherous flowers. Ther light is searing my fully dialated pupils which seconds before had been straining to see sharp edges on the sand.

The Yai bar is blasting Moby's 'why does my heart feel so bad'. I think. It might have been another song. But it's strerching my cheeks, as a large smile forms between them.

The ground below me feels like creme brulee cracking under my heels.

'Come over here' marc beckons. He'd found a smalled sub stream running parallel to the ledge. 'This part feels like walking on captain crunch'. I plod in excitedly, and he's right.

"I think I've found a moment" I tell him, but he's texting.

"I think I'm really happy". I go on anyway.

I then notice that my cheek - which had been involved in a minor scooter accident moments before) is acheing because I hadn't stopped smiling.

And then I decided right there and then to double check and interrogate my happiness.

But another tune comes on, I think I know its from the Forrest Gump soundtrack, and I grin again.

Earlier in the day, I'd been floating in the ocean rocking back and fourth with the froth, when I vaguely overheard a female voice singing what I thought was 'memories' (my ears were submerged) I rolled over and started swimming toward the sound, and then noticed a long but visible (and audiable) distance away, a small blonde female head is bobbing up and down in the sea, literally belting out these random tunes.

Marc has stopped throwing a frisbee and asks if I can hear it too.

I giggle a bit. but I'd thought it was amazing at the time.

Standing back in the blackness of the captain-crunch beach once again, and quite thankful the fireworks were kept short and sweet. My SMS sound goes off again, but I don't really need to see who it is or what it says. I already know. And I'm happy. I just know.

They Ran

2009-04-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

'Hey...' I flaied frantically as we approached the half way point.

She didn't hear me, so I keep trying to run harder and catch up.

Closing the distance, I realize that we're both panting in chaotic symphony.

I keep chase but she's almost deliberately slipping away; evading my arms reach, and then she isn't and I manage to land a sweaty finger on her shoulder.

Pulling out an earphone, she looks back at me slgihtly puzzled but also quite breathless, but never slowing down in the slightest.

My music is off, but I decide not to speak in a weak attempt to guise my dwindeling lung capacity.

So instead I make a 'v' with my fingers point at my eyes, before pointing at the bridge in front of us, and then repetitively bang a straightened palm down across the tops of my fingers on the other hand to make a 'T'.

She flashes a toothy grin, before shooting off towards the bridge.

My muscles panic for a second and squirt acid wondering if she'd understood - as we're already at the foot of the bridge, and she's still bounding up it.

"you're pretty quick", I pant later.

She's panting too but only grins back.

"Do you always run this quick?" I manage to squeak out.

Thats her normal pace she says.

"Powah. I haven't gone that hard in a while" I say to console myself.

And maybe flatter her.

When the man comes around

2009-04-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

The last month, has been quite forgettable and destructive.

I'm not sure how many units of alcohol have been consumed.

Or how my credit card got maxed out. Or why people smile at me and shake their heads when I open the minibar at the office at 5 pm. I'm not sure what I feel aside from disgust. I'm not sure what's kicking in my stomach. I'm not sure what time I came home or if I passed out. Or who I tried to talk to. Or how I got tackled by a bouncer and hauled down 2 flights of stairs by my neck.

I can't remember.

and I don't particularly want to.

Chuan came over the other morning; I was wasted. 'Hey, hey hey' I said to him, 'So hey, like you always see movies and read the books about the guy who goes back into time to stop himself from doing something (and then gets stuck there). But why don't you ever see the guy from the present jumping into the future to discover his full potential (only to be stuck there in the future)? Is it that much of a logical enigma that it has escaped fiction entirely?' - Actually I doubt it has - but it was early in the morning.

I told Daniel about this later in the day (cont..) I think you'd possibly look back (from the future) and go 'wow!' - I don't recognize myself. I don't remember wanting to do any of these things that I've done. I didn't think I'd be married to her. or get tied down to this. or get that deep into that.

But then there's the other scenario where you catch yourself looking at a much much more predictable scaled-up version of whatever you are right now. Like a lateral job move, with the exact 20% pay-raise doing the same old things just under a different fluorescent tube.

What if the future you saw you and burst into tears, because he'd spent every day of the last 20 years of his life trying to return to being you. What if you realized at that very moment that that was your renaissance, the two of you meeting in the future, that you'd just be this nostalgia-hugger person. And that rather unexplainably, you'd just both arrived and met at that moment simultaneously.

I'm not sure if you could consider either alternative much happier. Either way you'd have strangely missed out on however much plot you selectively skipped forward to - and didn't really get anything out of it - It would essentially be like slipping into a coma for several years and then waking up. Or alternatively spent that time drunk and drinking.

Daniel says we should make a film about it.

There's not much point, I say.

It'd just be like writing a spoiler into the synopsis.

Or in my case - just waking up tomorrow.

I woke up that tomorrow though, and would remember one memory ; A single thread that strung a series of deep and desperate feelings together, culminating in a delicate series of kisses.

It was at that point that the tomorrow guy saw me and told me to get my shit together and run.
run after that feeling.

Pngcows

2009-04-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

The fondest souvenirs from February.

Bicycle

2009-03-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I went for a bike ride that involved me getting hit by an unparking car.

I wasn't hurt too bad. I'd lost a bit of skin off my foot and had an elegantly bruised big toe, but was mostly unscaved. Unfortunately, the front wheel of the bike was crushed under the car, and both my rear view mirrors shattered on impact. Fortunately, I was wearing a helmet and my iphone was safely burried in my front mounted basket - which acted like a roll cage, preventing any damage to it at all.

I remember sitting on the curb, in shock, trying to figure out if my bike was still ridable. And then looking at dark clouds and listening to the thunder and then flicking through my iphone contacts trying to think of who to call. I felt a little hopeless.

Even mum couldn't help.

An hour before the crash I was cycling along the Singapore river toward the marina where I stumbled across a field of lovers. literally hundreds of lovers, lying in the grass, hand in hand.

Most of them looked like blue-collar foreign workers. It was a fine Sunday at that point, and no one could have predicted how drastically the weather would turn.

I sat there waiting for the rain, which came, and then Marc's SUV pulls up with Sarah riding shotgun, and then we dismantled the front tire and slammed the booth.

I'd interrupted something. I could tell. I stared at the rain drops pelt the window on he way back, and saw something strangely familiar - a green and gold trishaw, cycling away from the marina.

And then it struck me that I'd cycled past it before . Passing them at a light, I glimpsed in and saw the rider (now covered in rain) bending down to kiss his sheltered passenger.

I sighed to myself in the back seat, thinking: wow, what a shitty day and what a manly/ romantic invention the trishaw is.

Haunted

2009-03-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

A voice called out to me from the emptyness of my bedroom at 11.55pm on Saturday. I'd been trying to get into 'Resistance 2' on plastation, but I really couldn't, because well, it is just a dumb game. I'd just gotten off the phone with a rather distant aquaintace (who I'd once upon a time found attractive) who was inviting me to 'go party'.

The voice simply said 'Stay', 'please stay', 'you need to stay'.

And at that point I knew it wouldn't be the brightest decision I'd ever make.

but I went out to meet her to party.

I am a ghost.

Last night Kim described this effect as being 'super vague'. But thats what I am - a person who should have been in his room coming to terms with the secondary fire functions of his weapon in Resistance 2, now standing at a bar with a pint in hand. I sink like a cannon ball, though webs and webs of small talk. I'm introdeuced to a girl called 'Zerol' ('zero' with an 'L'). I'm yawnning and choking on my own cigarettes in the smoking room. A guy called Reggie tells me about his burger wrapping job back in St.Kilda. An private banker from Morgan stanley jokes about the frailty of his career. Noel, the modeling agent is walking in as I'm exiting to yet another bar.

'This place is haunted' I tell a friend who's too preoccupied with his girlfriend to notice, "I was wondering why I hadn't been here in a while, and now I remeber." The motions come effortlessly, swapping of business cards, chitchatting, throwing in a slightly curious adjetive before a common retort, smiling, hugging someone I'd only met twice, the cheek kissing, the swaying by a crowded bar while waiting for drinks, watching the ripples in my pint, looking un-preoccupied. Somehow everything is all alot more loaded. A look from a girl standing across the bar is enough to set me wondering myself into a conundrum. The cold rush of the aircon escaping past an exit that I used to bounce back in on, instead condenses a film of water on my back, causing my shirt to stick. The gyrrating crowd on the dance floor is thicker than usual and seems imprevious to a guy carrying three cocktails.

By the time they find me, I'm normally on the dance floor, annebriated and thrashing my limbs to the music. I'm yelling over-enthusiastically trying to fit very simple emotions into catchy sound bytes. I'm prowling around an office meeting looking for annoyances. I'm secretly snarling at anyone who doesnt diredctly say hi or acknowledge my vague presence. I'm smoking - violently. I'm rambling about how remarkably shit things are. I'm drunk.

And then, like magic, I'm back in my room, where a porno on television is the only lighting. Where I dream about the death of a boy and how his father had to sit on the coffin lid to prevent the stray dogs on the street from running off with more of his limbs.

I'm sorry I guess.

The voice simply says 'told you so'.

Dark was the night

2009-03-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 6am yesterday, to stand infront of the mirror and rehearse my bit. I was to present the television and the print work for a rather large pitch that morning. Be zingy I told myself, be manic, feel excited - c'mon it's something you destroyed yourself over.

the months leading up to this moment were a long bumpy process: I'd started the year on a high, after returning from a pretty awesome trip with to japan. Things were really bright especially knowing I'd be comissioned to work on a large installation job for Ben and Jerry's on my return (which was quite fun).

I'd left japan with a bit of anxiety though, Jac and I had fought on the last night and even though there were lots of good times, I couldn't help but sense a drift and that the trip had just highlighted many complex things that I wanted to bury and just float on. The installation job was really interesting, but all together probably a bit too taxing.

There were many days when I would question everyhting and get very very little done. How many meters of chicken wire does it take to make a 2 meter hollow whale-cow? or how do we make a 12 foot purple caterpillar ? and having made it, should it glow in the dark? How will we suspend the huggy-hands? How do we make giant tears swirl upwards and mutate into globs of orange goo?

While cute, these were questions I had to takle on an hourly basis for 2 months, and I soon found myself locked into an existential calamity. I would stand in ikeas and textile markets holding up sheets of cordouroy asking Stuart if it felt chocolate-ty enough, arguing in the lighting section with Maurice about the density of materials needed to pull the catterpillar's torso off.

Meanwhile, things between myself and Jac seemed to be deteriorating at a rate I couldn't comprehend. I found msyelf at ends with everyone. I couldn't seem to wrap my head around people's happiness, or their lust for life. I couldn't understand why I wasn't more fulfilled. I mean I had a perfectly chirpy existence, get to paint coke bottles into cow-skin colored penguins for a day job, liked my life and was (in hind sight) really really loved by a fantastic girl.

but the fight in Japan was raised more and more and lay between us like the DMZ, and our sparse meetings started turning sour, we agreed to seperate a week before valentines day, and for the first time ever, I started crying after drinks.

The installation was over. and with it, all my distractions.

I fought with Jac more often and decided that it wouldn't be a fantastic idea to end the seperation on valentines day, so we did it the next morning.

Singlehood began at this place called the boomerang bar on a humid Friday afternoon. It lasted about an hour, while I cheerfully ate a steak sandwich and enjoyed a few pints with Stuart, Eric, Daniel, Kelly and Peter. I eased its way into simple conversations, and wandered through my phone calls and SMSes, into 'I'm sorrys', 'oh, oh shit. are you ok?s' and then of course the more cavalier 'but they're so many fish in the seas' and 'welcome back to the clubs' ( I know, I know, its so arcaic but you dont stop hearing it)

By this point, things were getting strange. I felt cut off from anything wholesome. I went back to work at the office, which made me a little happier (just to be surrounded by people and normal predicaments again). The weeks that followed were a very turbulent series of fluctuations between having it together and 'fucking it'. I was able to pull myself together in small bouts, and the work kept me working, I even got some nice briefs.

So I'm staring at myself in the mirror. telling myself to be bold, be charismatic, be caffinated, be inspiring, be arrogant, be anything but who you are right now.

The meeting itself is tight, we manage to get all our ideas though (I think) and I'm still a ghost (I know this because after the meeting, I'm hovering around the exit desperately trying to land a smile on someone but no one sees me.)

I opened up the windows this morning for the first time in a long time.

I hope the sunshine helps.

It's tough lovin' in post apocalyptica

2008-11-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

I hit Fallout 3 in a hard way. It's so good.

It's what I've sort of been waiting for for almost 10 years now.

And its pretty gay that I'd rather play fallout than come to bed.

Things I'm worried I will run out

2008-08-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

There was a point today when I sat down to consider a few things I depend on but that I may very possibly out-live and never completely own again.

My red blanket is one of them. its been with me since before I was born, and every night it gets weaker and limper and the threads and stuffing are scrunched bent and folded in between body parts. Maybe one day it will be as small as a hankerchief and then I'll be able to carry it around in a breast pocket. But either way I'm quite sure it will disintegrate one day from now.

Maybe one day when the goodness is gone, I should frame it instead of throwing it into the washing machine again.

Another is my yo la tengo shirt - a green shirt with a smiley face that I bought at the corner hotel in 2002. I'd gone with Thom who'd bought the exact same shirt. It was one of my favorites, and it'd always be the first to be worn after my laundry was dry. But I got it autographed in 2006 when I saw the band in Singapore, and it'd sat in the bottom of my wardrobe since. I guess that was when it ran out of wears.

There are quite a few photographs that I'm tagged in on facebook. not all of them are of me. I'm not sure if they are mine. But I'm worried that when Facebook goes bust (like these things do) they'll be trapped there forever, and I'll never get another glimpse of them again.

There was the smell of the wash room after the last time you used it and a few bits of hair coiled around the drain that I stared at for a while before I picked them out. They definitely weren't mine.

And when I sank down into bed that afternoon I worried I'd run out of book to read, and then I worried about the hours I'd loose sleeping; the time I'd just spend feeling awake and restless.

And words.

jelly legs

2008-08-09T23:29:00.000-07:00

It wasn't a strange morning.

It was nice outside, and lunch was at one.

But everything was strange: the act of opening a comic book. unwinding the bandages around my leg, waiting for the restroom. It was really hard to understand why I was doing anything at all.

I questioned and counter questioned everything that followed.

Why are we laughing?

Why did I make that joke?

Why is the film I'm talking about relevant?

Why are things so nice?

What is my objective in saying anything at all?

Jac eventually smiles at me and asks why I look so sad - after all, it was my big idea. I brought this strangeness here. it could have just been a nice day. And she is nice. As she waves and says goodbye and disappears into a taxi outside my front gate, I feel heavier. Heavier than ever.

I have a Calzone at one. And the trick to eating a calzone is of course maximizing the use of the stuffing. Much like eating a pie or a crepe. The most challenging part being the rope-like-pastry on the edges. I cut around them, while leaving just enough 'flat' pastry connected before I lather some mince and cheese on to it. The trick is of course is just to stay on it; to only cut things big enough that I can chew on, then concentrate on chewing until of course there's just the empty plate below me. Then I get on the crutches and make sure to make a little noise as I can as I lift and land up four flights of stairs.

Deciding to sort through the materials for Stephanie's wedding powerpoint, I open a manila envelope and empty some photos onto the desk. I open itunes and try to find a suitable track. I wonder what kind of music I would like to be married to. And then I start to make a play list of songs I think are romantic. I think Neil Diamond would be nice. Though it doesn't make me feel particularly nice. I delete a bunch of photos that have been repeated, and then I send out a desperate text message before I sieve through the physical photos until I can't seem to see them anymore.

A warmth is traveling though me, on me, down me and its getting tapped between my fingers. Everything is warm. And as it flows and ebbs and pools, I sit here on the floor with one leg elevated. Just marinating in it.

And as everything around me starts to get wet with warmth, the nice day outside uncannily clouds over, and as the family car pulls out of the drive way, my chest heaves uncontrollably and the snot streams down past my lips and the strangeness is gone.

And the day finally feels quite normal.

Last Stands

2008-08-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

So I was looking through newborn baby pictures from a colleague tonight on Facebook, and was scrolling through the long list of comments. They generally fell into two categories: the awws and ahhs and oh-so-cutes about the child, or semi-cool/clever statements about the new parents with undertones of their soon-to-be lives.

Being a friend of the couple, I decided to join in. I mean I'd already congratulated them twice verbally, but this was facebook, so it was for the record, so I sat there perplexed, wondering which camp my comment should join.

Sarah sent me this article about hipsters the other day. It was from Adbusters, and the thing that struck me most about the article was about the hipster need to stay ambiguous. To stay undefinable and nonchalant. Hipsters don't like being called or identified as hipsters.

According to the article, the Hipster-club DJ chanted: 'If you don't care, we don't give a fuck!'

Anyway, so I'm stuck trying to think of something clever/unrevealing about how I really feel about babies and the sort. Would an 'aww so cute' cut it? even if it were sincere? and worse still - is it too passe? I worry for myself for a moment, before typing something quite unremarkable.

My mother asked me ( in a quite unrelated conversation) the other night if I still had feelings in my broken leg. And yes, I do. But I also had to smirk to myself. Because what I was wondering that moment as she asked the question was if I really was feeling was the leg or the trauma from trying to guise those feelings.

I don't think I'm a very savvy or accurate hipster, but I do feel a certain desertion of emotion from my life. And I'm not sure what the departure from snags and emo kids meant, but it left me feeling pretty cool and culturally relevant.

I read this article about Nirvana and Kurt Kobain, and how he used to break down and cry during concerts, and sometimes it'd be so bad that he'd not be able to finish the set. I listened to a bright eyes song about the first day of his life. I put on my favorite Wilco album. I listened to Ben Kweller till I got bored. I starred at pictures of babies on facebook. I felt my legs, and rubbed the good one against the air-cast.

I drank whiskey by myself.

and yawned.

And as I started to feel worse and worse, I decided that it was better than feeling nothing, and that perhaps I'm still pretty snagy and am less and less compelled by my own argument.

Bedroom Radio

2008-05-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

music I made while I was broken legged

Dolphlungren Biscuits

Hey Matthew, I love you, come again and give one more Mat.

2008-03-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've never really enjoyed these shows. It's not the content. I really do like the stuff on display generally. I quite like the venue too, well not in a huge way but it is (for lack of a better word) very cool.

The artist tonight is a pretty, mousey-looking girl who I've met several times since joining the OIC (an online drawing/art club of sorts). I don't think I've ever spoken to her properly, but her stuff is quite refreshing, and tonight, I'm staring at a magic maker drawing of two people fucking. I'd been drawn there by eaves dropping on a couple who'd looked like they were quite serious about the work and were talking about their favorites. The red haired lady had brought the Scotsman here and I'd rather unassumingly tagged along. The Scottsman, releases a farting sound from his lips, and mutters something along the lines of it being his least favorite, followed by a string of slurred and heavily accented profanities. The redhead rises up to articulate what exactly she likes about it, at which point the scottsman (now thoroughly aggravated) says something to the effect of 'well if that's how you feel, have a goodnight'. I head footsteps walking away behind me, followed by a heavy sigh and a muffled statement from the redhead.

I hadn't realised, but in the tenseness of the situation I'd actually reached for a large hand-stitched beaver (also on display) and was now pretending to be throughly engrossed with the reverse of its tail.

I feel a hot flush come over me. before I hear yet another resigned and muffled statement form the redheaded lady who is still standing behind me staring at the picture.

At For some reason I turn around and say 'I'm sorry?',

The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness

2008-02-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

Noel has a theory.

There are two types of really successful people in this world, the people who see what they want and then work really really hard at getting it, and then the type who just have it in them and have to constantly eject visions out of their systems. Example: Man sees a vision in his dream, devotes his life to realizing it, comes out on top eventually.

Of course there is no guarantee that your vision will be worth anything, but there should essentially be a feeling of immense success and liberation from all other things - think doing a really massive crap that you really needed to do, that makes you feel really awesome, and then take that sensation and times 10 (?) maybe more.

Anyway, we thought about this.

'But don't you find the people who love their jobs the most are also the people who hate them the most?' I ask. 'no' he replies, 'please explain.'

Yeah, so you see.

Take this guy in our office, he loves his job. He's great at it. He's been doing it for like 20,000 years now. And he wakes up and just keeps needing to shit out this amazing crap because it's tearing him a new asshole. But, he's constantly burdened and surrounded by people who don't love the job as much. He can't understand. He's frustrated. He accepts their lack of enthusiasm. but their failure is perceived to him as being linked directly to what he does and he can get quite crabby a lot, and not in a hissy fit kind of way, but like in a totally deep-seeded underscoring kind of crabby way. Dig?

Noel Shrugs.

I haven't really convinced myself .

But essentially, the more you love something the more you criticize it, get depressed about it and well, out right hate it... right? It's the history of sexuality. It's the law. You don't stop loving it, you just start hating it more than anyone else does as well.

Then Noel does an impression of a cereal selling monkey.

Which is actually really funny.

Waiting

2008-02-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

I woke up several times the night before.
I don't know why, but when this happens I generally start pacing.

Its tense, and my room and sheets are filled with the kind of vibrating anxiety and urgency I'd forgotten about since high school.

'It's at that point. You know?' (I explain to Stephanie and Adrian 3 nights after)... drafting text messages, setting mini ultimatums, reminding yourself that things are going to be ok.

The pacing is followed by rehearsing.

'Hi', hi sounds good. Hi's familiar, Hi's inoffensive enough and disarming. 'Hey', I mouth instead. I remember Scott once pointed out to me in uni the odd necessity to start SMSs with the word 'Hey'.

Closing my eyes again. I have another dream and think of Walter - the subject in 'the Gift' (by the velvet underground)- a boy who'd successfully posted himself to his girlfriend cross continent only to be accidentally stabbed in the head by her kitchen knife (which she useses to pry open the freight box).

The morning comes soon enough.

Humming bird

2008-02-10T06:54:00.000-08:00

Chinese Newyear came quickly.

Between the pitches, 70s themed company AGM, and a rather foggy Tuesday night, I find myself time lapsing through a Wednesday afternoon.

I'd worn the new shirt I'd agreed to buy and save for the newyear - a Topshop number with lots of red stripes and buttons. The rain had just lifted and condensation was forming under the rims of my not very functional sunglasses.

I'd bumped into June and Jude on the train before. 'But I never expected that' June tells me, refering to the contents of my Robinson's shopping bag - which include 20 pots of play-dough and an ounce of mouldable sand. Jude notes that my shirt is really from top shop, and that he owns one too.

If you're so clever, why arn't you rich?

2008-01-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

Pure is a party on an island that I never knew existed - largely because it only has one building on it (a yacht club).

Drinks are free between 7 and 10, so there are plenty of people milling by the bar and outstreched arms weaving with deft precision towards the moving trays of Vodka limes and VB pints (a beer considered quite novelty in Singapore).

I'd gone with Michelle, a journalist, who'd intoducted me to quite a few people from fashion and media. And I'd even bumped into Chuan (My neighbor - and not really form fashion or media), spotted a few Clients as well as Yang, a photographer who'd recently moved here from who I'd been bumping into quite alot recently.

Pure is a book of photographs showcasing 25 local celebrities. Naked and crying. Each book is going for $10,000 and Includes dinner.

Proceeds go to Cancer.

5 shots have been taken from the book and are on display behind the party's reception, the Most popular seems to be one of a guy named 'Mark' who has a long line of wet snot running down his chin - by far the most confrontational thing on this display that night.

'I can't beleive Mark let them use that photography without any DI (Digital retouching)' someone comments approaching photo.

People's thoughts on the photos seem to be the hot topic.

Noticing the Dominic (Pure's creator and photographer) in the vacinity, so I walk over say hi and shake his hand while congratulating him. We're approached by a crowd-photographer asking us to pose for a shot. I ask Dominic politely if he'd like to replicate a pose He'd shot of two young female models crying into each others shoulders. He thinks for a moment and then grins, extends one one arm and walks towards me allowing me to pour my best look of faux agony and sadness into his padded shoulder.

Later that night as Michelle and I are considering getting something to eat, I Notice Chuan (who'd been moving around the party in search of cigarettes) approaching the photo wall, then turning towards a skinny lady dressed in a tight fitted high cut dress and loose-fitted knee-high pointy-boot-stilettos, carrying an expensive looking Hollywood Cerise colored box of Dunhill cigarettes.

For some reason people seem to dress better on Thursday nights.

To my delight she pulls one from the box and hands it to him, so I quickly approach her, introduce myself and politely (and faux-apologetically) ask if I too could bum one.

After doing a quick one-over she smiles and says 'Maybe if you beg.'

'What if I bat my eyelids in quick succession and add a few W's to my pwretty pleases?' I ask while opening and closing in quick succession my eyes and inserting a few W's in to the word 'pretty'.

She faux-laughs, smiles, hands me one from the pack, and after one bar of conversation,
tells me 'You're so cheap', before doing a quick tuck-turn and ushering herself away from me.

Realising that I actually did suddenly feel quite cheap, I decided I'd best shut up and just enjoy the good value.

Rewind

2008-01-19T06:32:00.000-08:00

'The whole world is a shop. One giant fucking shop.' proclaims the man with the moustache on a white stallion , pulling further and further from the camera.

I've noticed over progressive runs through downtown area the rapid transformation and reconfiguration of the city. Shop windows been stripped of their christmas content (apart from the smug and conveniently ambiguous festive husks) and then being replaced with oriental onnings, polystyrene gold nuggets. Red Chinese lanterns replacing the long strings of blue-neon lights.

All over the Orchard roadside lie piles and piles of christmas debris - long tincel wrapped tnedris that used to house and support elaborate lighting systems, are chopped and piled on top of each other like the trimmings of trees. Silver bells made from plastic, are rolling around between the feet of sunday shoppers. The collapsed husks of christmas trees covered in astroturf are now bound by the same ribbons and decorations they used to support.

At the mid point of my run, a gigantic hand and Chinese head are towering over me from the top of a huge scaffolding - (that I assume is soon to be the rest of his body.)

In my bed later and in the novel I'm reading, it is still Christmas. Only this time in a Diner in LA sometime in the late 80s. The protagonist, Clay has been chain smoking throughout the novel,
and has stopped to stare at/ mention a pile of decorative Christmas presents. The kind I always used to lust after as a kid. The giant box with a huge ribbon in the fanciest shimmeriest cellophane wrapping paper.

I wonder why I didn't see any of them on my run.
Maybe it's because they're kind of recyclable.

On Thursday I was at a brainstorm with Stuart and Mark, and during one of those moments when you go completely off topic/ doing work, we digressed to bitching a little about what we did (advertisements).

"So he asked me, 'Stuart when's the last time you were just blown away? You know, taken, you had to put down what you were working on and just ran out to buy it (the product he was working on) And I said 'never', 'never?', 'never.'."

"He thought about it, and then agreed".

We had never been influenced by even our best ads. Unanimous. Not since the late 80s. Never. Maybe even before we started making ads, none of us had.

We are the placebo-present making people - who'd want to deliriously unwrap the placebo present you'd just spent the last 6months + research wrapping? We'd spent our professional lives art-directing and expending huge amount of brain activity trying to make sure that people, like my childhood self are enthralled and drawn toward the potential of the mysteriously friendly, and not-over-art-directed box, and believed.

Naomi Klein talked about wanting to reach up to the sky and touch the back-lit acrylic shell logo outside the petrol station.

I still do.

There's something magical about the ineligibility of a glowing plastic logo.

We used to steal them in College. Road signs, street lights, billboards, sandwich boards, posters, the price of petrol, corporate art. And just like trapped insects, they would cease to be the morning after - reduced to large, inconvenient (and usually dirty) chunks of industrial strength acrylic and a series of dead bulbs.

Much like my holiday in Hongkong when I was 8 and I discarded the present the hotel-Santa had given me thinking I'd be better off with one of the larger boxes under the decorative tree -it was even heavier- and I knew just by holding the flimsily wrapped oblong that santa had given me that I really didn't need another volume of the Hardy Boys.

Needless to say, I was miserable that night.

In Special topics in Calamity Physics (Pessel, 2006) Our Heroine and protagonist Blue Van-Meer valedicts from her class giving a speech that celebrates the goldfish- when your entire life is surmised by the last three seconds, everything is new, there are no hangups, no histories of depression, no rejection scars, no baggage. The goldfish is the perpetual student. the person who never tires of learning, the most progressive species who constantly embrace and evolve 3 seconds at a time.

I wonder for a moment if that's whats happening here.

I wrap, I unwrap, I disappoint, am disappointed, I forget, and then on friday I'm in love again.

I want an Xbox 360 elite, an I phone, a Macbook air, Alexander Mcqueen Adidas sneakers, an Aston Martin, Copies of D&Q comics and tickets to broken social scene. I would pay hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars for these things.

Maybe I should start writing ads for them and save a little money.

Yawn.

Far, Far Away

2007-12-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

At 5.45pm, the sun is peering through dark, threatening rain clouds. I don't think I've ever seen the city in such high contrast.

I pass from one patch of sun to another, running shoulder-first through bystanders, shoppers and commuters. I can feel the Arches of my feet straining against the odd leather straps in my not-so-good-for-running shoes; They Tug and chew into the insides of my feet - which now feel raw and like something I'll regret it tomorrow.

I'm at the padang when it begins to rain rain - a sensible and nice amount of drizzle that builds slowly and then crescendos into thunderous machine-gun claps. I bound past a few people huddling under a bus shelter, past a valet escorting a driver out of his vehicle with a large golf-sized umbrella, and make my way toward the Esplanade bridge.

At this point my shoes, now damp, are sawing deep blisters to the insides of my feet, and as I sprint towards the river to the sounds of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch; I'm squinting though the warm rain running through my hair and then my eyes; through the yellow lens flares and back-lit rain: on the river - a sea of irregular floating white spheres are rocking with the tide as far as the eye can see.

There must be thousands of them, giant minties, mentoses and mothballs, strewn across the river, bopping in a synchrony.

'Where are we?' Asks a jogger to another between heavy breaths
(a scenario I recall from a Nike Advertisement I saw a while ago.)

'I don't know' She replies (bewildered) '... I've never run this far before'

They stand there hand on knee, huffing and baffled, staring at something neither of them have witnessed before.

Tomorrow is 2008 and there are others, 20 or so, standing there under the bridge, drawn to the shelter and the bopping balls.

I reach for my pedometer, wrapped in a ziplock bag in my pocket - I'm still 5.7 kilometers short of a standard half-marathon.

Bowen Street

2007-12-27T09:47:00.000-08:00

I returned to the living room of two(dash)seventeen Bowen street Camberwell, home of Grace and Eddie (my maternal grandparents) as well as plenty of my pre/circa/post adolescent memories. It is also the birth place of this Blog - though many of those earlier articles were lost in a tragic but not very note-worthy incident.

When they first moved into the house it was 1988 or maybe 87.
My family had moved into a house just across the park form here on range street. It was my parent's first 'dream house' (according to mum), and my grandparents who had previously stayed in their newly emptied family home, had decided to downsize and move closer to us.

It was here I came to watch starwars, and the place I would have starwars explained in great length and detail to me (I was three); a place where Jake the Snake beat the shit out of hulk hogan with a collapsible chair (and then fed him to his snake) after dinner; a place where I was grounded for half a year during the final days of year twelve; a treasure trove of odd adult pulp fictions, exotic weponary (like my uncle's old air rifle, and a collection of blunt/display combat knives, sabers and a samurai sword), rare LP's and of course (and most memorably) the collection of technicolored 70s pornographic VHS tapes that were always under lock and key.

I pashed my first pash here, and passed out here after my first big night on the piss.
The computer inside still retains lengthy soppy ICQ histories from conversations with (fashionable at the time) aliases like ~pInKieGuRlie^_^ and DarKaNgEl4eVa.

A car pulls into the driveway. ( As many have on many eventful occasions over the last 20 years.)

It's Kim's Holden.

Grace politely offers some juice or 'cider'- but the non alcoholic kind you'd expect grandparents to offer. 'You forgot this' Eddie says holding up a blue CD. 'I didn't , it's yours' I reply. I glance at kim, who is snickering covertly.

that night, I'm on 59k - a window seat.

The Aircraft is particularly humid and the flight quite non eventful. the Guy next to me, a tall Moby-looking physiotherapist is talking to me about our futures. He's bound for London to find his love, and eventually return there for a year to work, he thinks Singapore is the city of the future and that in 30 years time all big cities will be modeled on it. I agree but am not too convinced. I start work tomorrow and had left Kim a rather soppy SMS (as SMSes go) as I'd left the terminal before.

I'd been christmas day 24 hours before and we'd been trying to coax Kim's little cousin into entertianing us for a little while. 'Lets go for a walk (cigarette)' says Kim (rather resigned ) to myself and Clare. So we take a walk round the block though a rather incandescent christmas afternoon, kicking small acorns across the pavement while Kim thralls a rather domesticated reed she'd plucked before across various picket fences. She still thinks I look more like a stingray than a Panda. I do my stingray face (which makes her chuckle in an unpolite way.)

As her Holden pulls away from the front steps, Grace's eye's are pink and she's on the verge of tears. I wave to her form the rear window - at which point I wish I could have taken her with me or just held her for half an hour. It was only yesterday afternoon that they'd fought over what channels to watch - Eddie's into MTV and Grace likes Cartoons. 'you just skipped over the best part' she yells at Eddie, who'd briefly flicked over to the Video Hits Christmas special to check if Wham had finished and Mariah Carey had come back on. She was visibly upset about not finding out how timmy had been saved from the Lavapit. 'You're so selfish' she yells 'inconsiderate!' at which point Eddie quickly flicks back to her cartoon. 'She's started watching cartoons again,' he explains, 'she really likes those japanese ones with the pretty eyes'.

I'm in her arms, and she's thanking me for bring her back soggy hash browns and poached eggs.

How do I deserve love like this?

I'm not sure.

I tell Kim I'll see her in February. And give Adelle a big hug and before that Clare, and the night before Jackson and Stephen, and the morning before Dawsey and before that Dom and Michael, and Eddie and Bebe, Robyn, Ian, Grace, Liz, Gigi, Brian, Carrina, Jess, Dad, Chloe, Mum, Canjida, Rosaline, Sean et.al. Hug after hug after hug, until Kim again at tullamarine. She tells me how she can't believe it'll be a while till I'd next be back there in melborune.

My boots are heavy as we walk away from each other.

See you soon.

You, Me & Ripponlea

2007-12-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

The Lucky Coq, is a garishly colored colonial building sitting on the corner of chapel and high street. Large vats of fruit flavored vodka are suspended above the barman, beyond which are diecut levers for their house brews 'blonde coq' and 'black coq'. Somwhere inside Dawesy and Danish are nursing two large pizzas, a vodka & soda and a scooner of draught.

They're discussing a Christmas present they'd gotten from one of their clients - a giant sunshade - like the ones you normally use for your car, only for humans - one human.
'ya got to chuck it against a wall, and then boom! there's your tent!', 'that's awesome!' I reply (sincerely) - Unknown to me at the time was that I'd be carrying around this anti glare hut for the rest of the night.

Pizzas there are 3 dollars and as australian pizzas go they overwhelmed me with the sheer amount of meat and leaves stuck to the dough. The girl across from me is having the same toruble I'm having with keeping the topping off her lap. I crack a joke about how I'm astro-turfing the bar floor which gets a few laughs, but the rain outside is keeping me anxious.

A third scooner, helps calm me - there's something about the weather that's keeping me jittery. I tell this to the petite asian girl next to me, she looks at me funny, before replying that it's perfect weather to stay in and just curl up. I decided to maybe just stop thinking about the weather, and end up talking to Dawsey about boobs.

Later that evening Dawes and I are in a 'fucking huuuge' maxi taxi (quote unquote the taxi driver) and on our way to the Gertrude Nightclub - a speck life in an overgrown industrial landscape, lit by tiny serialized flashing bulbs. It's here we read the birthday book with Kim and Jess - a pretty energetic social worker who I'd get to know better by the end of this post - and according to the birthday book has psychic mind controlling abilities and may one day be in need of psychological help ( but apparently so will Dawsey.) She's telling me about horse riding before learning to walk, apparently riding a thorough-bred down a beach isn't all that, I should warn Serene about this as it could make or break her ultimate daydream fantasy which currently would be :

'riding a stallion down a beach on a Tuesday morning.'

At 9 I'm sititng onthe steps of Melbourne central station with Jess, trying to use the compacted anti-glare hut as a windshield. she's trying to explain the practice of 'zoning' to me:

Jess: 'Hmm, lets see, where could we imagine we'd be?'

'In the future! of the universe! where cars have taken over the people as citizens of the world!' I yell triumphantly. Jess pauses for a second and umms 'I was thinking Zurich.' 'Zurich?' I ask. 'Yeah Zurich', Jess confirms. 'I've never been to Zurich' I reply, 'Niether have I, but thats the idea', I stare at the multistory carpark above 'Digiworld' and 'CrazyJohn's mobile world' - all lit in fluro lights - Zurich!

Later that night I'm back at the Coq, and wedged under her arm and next to Emma. 'You're my fourth Asian friend!' says Jess, 'you're my only Kiwi friend!' I reply. My brain is swelling and swirling and it's all a bright warm blobbing lava lamp. I'm using words like 'visceral' and phrases like 'the cultural drip of melborune', while smoke and ale pass in and out of my lips. For a moment I'm talking to Bradley, an up and coming radio producer who eventually wants to make documentaries, and his sister Emma, a pretty brown haired nurse who is also form Newzeland and lives with Jess. With Mervin, who I'm explaining the cultural drip to. My head is a surf and I'm capsizing neck first. 'dots!' says Jess. She's grinning, kim's grinning and I hadn't a clue what she meant but Kim is waving at us from a moving taxi. Dawsey's down with the plan too, which somehow comforts me - I mean there's only a handful of things in this world that dawsey wouldn't kill - and thats a comforting sort of person to spoon in bed.

I'm passed a broken corona bottle and breathing through its yellow-stained neck. 'Wow you got it all', 'yeah' cough, 'Feel. Awesome'. I'm, I doing eyebrow-semaphore with dawsey from the between the legs of a coffee table while Jess sits firmly upon the dining table while Bradly dances around the stove with glowing knives and something is burning. There's another person

7am, we're huddling out the door, and walking up-draft to the marker green map jess had drawn on her fridge the night before. My head feels like a hardening marshmallow, and my mouth is parched and slicked over with 20 flavors of bad. We're at Ripponlea, and the automated MET operator is telling us we've got another 12 minutes of cold to sit through.

Dawsey says 'It's gonna be like in that film',

'We catch the train, wake up, and this place will never have existed'.

So I take a picture, just to be sure.

Scenic World

2007-12-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

The days following the Singtel pitch were slow and rather sluggish, I felt like I'd expended all physical resources, every milligram of Barocca, multi-vitamins and steam had been washed out or depleted from my system.

For the first time in a long time, I sat in a park with Roy eating (what would soon turn into food poison).

Roy really likes geometry, and appreciates good geometry. 'See that line?' he points to a beam running up the wooden table we're sitting at. He then proceeds to explain why he chose to sit where he is sitting based on the perspective of vanishing point of where the beam slips under the table top.

He didn't want to look into the awkward gap between the beams - It's a visual irritation he doesn't need, and on the flip side he gets to enjoy a perfectly composed asymmetrical view of converging wood beams.

I take a bit of my (soon to be giving me food poisoning) super-hearty roast beef sandwich (10 bucks from simple sandwich). It's pretty tasty at the time and so hearty I'm using neck-muscles to yank pieces of it out of my own hands (in a side-to side motion).

We stare up at the overcast sky, and I take a deep breath.

'I'll be in on a plane this time tomorrow.' I think to myself.

Awesome (exhale).

Zoukout 2007

2007-12-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

I tell Marc really need to pee, 'Yeah, me too' he replies.

We'd been queuing up in front of the human slingshot ride for about 20 minutes and were about 2 people from the front.

Skiving on sundays isnt really skiving, it's just like checking your facebook page 3 times an hour from home but witout the benefit of being naked

2007-12-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

Work was surprisingly cold today.

Let's do this thing! I said to myself (internally) trooping off the balcony and back into the cold cold office. Surely there can't be too many distractions at work, especially on a sunday afternoon.

I refresh facebook.

I'm trying to draw one of those speech bubbles filled with amazement (the ones with lots of pointy cerated bits that connects back to its point of origin with a lightning bolt.)

It's 7pm.

I think about getting dinner, while I wait for a file to save.

At 9pm and I'm resealing a half eaten bag of rather tasteless cornchips.

at 10 I'm caller number 10 in an automated taxi telephone que.

11pm. Time to get naked and refresh facebook!

Heartsplits

2007-11-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

'Thank you' she said, as we hugged awkwardly over the gearbox.

It was strange - it was exactly what I had planned to say - so when she got out of the car, and I shifted it into park and I got out again and hugged her (but this time upright ) and said the same thing.

'thank you', I said

there isn't an appropriate reply, so I stand there for a few minutes watching her open the front gate and work her way back into her house.

Later that night Vincent is welcoming me to the singles club.
'Hey! (he says with a high volumed burst of enthusiasm) welcome to the Singles Club!'
I grin hard and agree with him that its a good thing.

Walking out to the river for another cigarette I can't help but catch a glimpse of the Novotel facing clark quay.

'I wonder what it would look like if I made a map of our relationship' I wondered Renee earlier that day. I had imagined some kind of oddly shaped venn diagram, operating between two oddly-shaped shapes, between which lay the streets of both our houses, several bars around town, a few indie nights on fridays, dinner and a lunch at a japanese-italian fusion chain restaurant, and of course the river. the comic section of boarders, the office corner, Quepasa, Spinelli's.

It's noisy again like it was before. Ambulances, police, something good meeting something bad. Or something bad, somekind of emergency... I stood there on the edge of the railing just plotting into nothing.

I'm there again, letting it all replay.

'thank you' I say into the air.
it doesn't reply...

Tonight could last me all my life

2007-10-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the pavement on Orchard road, Andrew (our super switched-on intern) and I have assumed the sitting bull position.

"If you could see one dead rockstar, who would it be?"...we sit there for what seems like 10 minutes before conscious dialogue resumes. playback: Lennon, Johnny Cash, Hendrix, Elliot Smith, there's a list, I forget ' I was never really much of a Hendrix person', 'his sets sound different all the time', 'He was stoned'... 'the toilets are too far and complicated'. We yawn. I am reminded of when we heard that Tony Jia died - that was an odd moment in the office.

The guy in charge of the site rece, tells us once again that the power's out and the drills are all out of battery. 'We'll have to wait for someone to deliver us new drills.'

It's 4am. Fair enough.

about 25 hours before, it's 3am I'm in 'Bert's lighting studio' with Eric and Martin, putting the final touches on a pretty huge floor mural, in preparation for a shoot at lunch the next day. Eric is handing me a paint brush coated in white paint. he's grinning and says 'go for it', I take the brush, and fling a few splatters across the paint.

Friday 5.30am, I'm lifting myself out of my temporary bedroom, I'm sitting in starbucks waiting for Yang - our photographer, I'm drinking a Barocca, the guy at the counter asks if I work around here, Yang replies over SMS 'no thank you I'm not a coffee person :)'.
That night I'm singing karaoke, with out new CD from japan, who is very conscientiously articulating his marriage/sexlife seesaw theory to me.

I am trying to say what I want to say without having to say I love you

2007-08-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

'Ok' I say to Roy, I think I'm up for doing a second cartwheel.

With hands spread above my head, legs apart, I get ready for the tumble.
It's always a bit exciting, because like spring board jumping, it's an activity I don't do very often.

'Now' I yell, and the camera clicks and there's a few seconds of pause as we gather round the camera and look into the view finder.

'Hmm, in tandem?' - Lyn could do a hand stand at the same time.

Then we were distracted by the sound of fireworks in the very distant distance. Everyone is craning their necks to catch some glimpse of something - but it really is very distant, that and my backyard really only has 2 views - the one that looks into the trees, and the one that looks back at my house from where the trees are.

At yum cha with the family this morning, Jason tells me about how he'd taken his family down to see the fireworks, the night before. 'There were all these people with their mobile phones out, taking pictures of the fireworks - I really don't understand why' - I gather his non-understanding has something to do with the poor picture taking and reproduction qualities that come with mobile phone cameras.

I think I've tried to shoot more ambitions things on mobile phone cameras.

Watching last night's footage again is funny.

the music playing in the background is very tinny and the warm film grain add to the nostalgia of something that only happened about 10 hours ago. "Haai, mah name's Chubby (inaudible lisp) mah dah's chubby, mah maaah's chubby, evunh mah dawg's chubby... (Roy laughs)" In a nother sequence I'm roving around the living room with the camera. Cheryl turns to the camera momentarily blinking like a deer in headlights and then diving to the ground, squealing and hiding her face from the lens. Pointing fingers direct the camera to Lyn, who's sunk into a sun-bleached couch next to Sam, who's grinning back in the semi-dark darkness.

I remember grinning back, before walking through the room to Lyn's side and perching the camera on her shoulder for a short while as she comes to. I'm zooming into her eye as the camera fades to black.

The air outside is damp and the smoke from our cigarettes thickens the mist, creating a bit of a haze. With each blend I finish, there's a plume of fruity mist that rises from the froth. I reach for the garden hose to hose down another jug.

Earlier that afternoon, when it was just Stephanie, Taddy, Ho and me, we sat on the patio listening to Jens Lekman's new album wondering if anyone would actually come to my party. It's a nice day for the album, the rain had just let out and everything is yellow (my parents just installed these yellow onnings into the backyard)... I saw a story once on TV about this little kid, who was saving money for a pet, but his mum had once been attacked by a dog, so a pig was the closest thing he could get, this has of course nothing to do with anything, I just get so nervous when I'm talking to you.

'It's nice' says Taddy grinning with one of my lemon/sherbet/peach-vodka/grapefruit infusions in hand. This is good because I kind of had a hunch he'd like it, and it's always nice when a hunch works out.

Nancy

2007-08-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

Mum picked me up from the station as usual tonight, only I wasn't going to join her for dinner, instead I was to meet a friend for a slightly posh meal at 'Prime Society'. I ask her how her day has been, and mums like 'yeah busy I've been trying to sort out the photos, you know there are like 50 years, at least yeah. of these photos.' '50?' 'Yeah, maybe more'. 'Uh huh' I reply with my comic book open in my lap.

'Don't look in the guest room' she says, 'it's like a war zone'

Peering in for a moment it is quite a mess, I never knew we had this many pictures of ourselves. It actually looks like she'd ransacked the place. Old gutted albums hanging of sofa arms, their contents strewn across the floor in little clumps - the 95 clump, the 82 clump, the 83 clump. On the study table is a more carefully constructed clump, complete with yellowing little caption sheets she must have written over the last 50 years - wait that can be right - well over however many years of photos we have stocked.

There must be hundreds, of these tiny little yellow captions neatly written, torn from their perforated sheets and inserted beneath ...well a majority of these photos. One reads 'Smile Batman!', another - 'My first trip to the beach' - I never really understood the whole firstperson thing, I mean surely that was My first trip to the beach, why couldn't she have written 'Adrian's first beach' - the impersonations go on. I think I've read a lot of these before - 'My 2nd birthday'. Maybe one day when I grow up I can show these to someone young and fool them into thinking that I was a super genius, or at least had sophisticated and feminine handwriting.

"It's really not that bad" I tell her as I continue up the stairs.

How many people will ever read those captions?
I wonder how many she had in mind when she wrote them.

Coming home later I walk in on her still deciphering the clumps and the albums.

"You were such a cute kid" she reminisces.
I look in the mirror.
Man I hate this haircut.
Mum thinks my hairdresser -Bobo- hates me.

She Chuckles fakely as she hands me a green cloth bound photo album. 'do you want to see your father's old girlfriends?' 'Sure,' I flip open to a page of wallet sized photos, 'You should see what they write on the backs' she fake-chuckles.

Nancy :

Dearest Kenny,

Drink hot coffee,
burn your lips,
and remember me,
with love,
Nancy,

16.12.1970

Caption reads 'Nancy Kok' - written in slightly stylized all-caps, red ball point pen and on a sheet of ruled paper with crudely hand- beveled edges. There are two others with names, none on hand beveled paper though, a Suzane Chin and a Maggie Khoo, pretty but well, yeah very blah 'please remember me/the times we had etc..' all also dated similarly around the end of the year in 1970. That must have been when I left for Melbourne I guess? Why the hell am I even checking out my dad's ex's ?

But damn. That's awesome Nancy.
mum's so totally jealous.

Aaaarrgh

2007-07-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's Friday night and I'm desperately trying to consolidate some files of some pictures I'd seen on Google for a meeting. The color wheel is spinning. Click, drag, clink it into the stuff-it-expander, Noink! all done, print, 'shit!', click drag 'NO NAME' widget into the recycler, yank the plastic thing out, collect printouts from photocopier, rush back to meeting - all with a half eaten strawberry tart in mouth. There is some gum on the table, which I unconsciously unwrap and eat. The combination is not super.

Sometime on Tuesday (earlier that week), Stephanie turned 26 and I sent her an SMS : 'happy birthday stefarnie law!' - not very funny. I'd tried to get organized about her present this year too (well more opportunistic than organized), and had (with a lot of Sarah's help) gotten a kick ass acrylic necklace spelling out the word "AAAARRRGGH!" in a kind of 60s horror B-film font.

Anyway so tonight (Friday) is her celebration and the meeting I'm in has already rolled over into the table's reservation time.

Later at a place called 'the secret garden', we'd all been doing the catchup chat over calamari rings and nicely breaddy bread thing, when sometime in between the waiter clearing out the plates and us wondering where our mains, there's a small lull in the conversation during which she reaches over for Taddy's hand and makes an announcement,

'He proposed to me last night.'

There's second of silence.

'Wow !' I exclaim - 'wow?' - largely because I didn't not know how to process the information, except that I knew - should be happy/ surprised/ enthusiastic. so 'Wow !' it was, and luckily I was flanked by two of her girl friends and an equally astounded Julian who all jumped in - so I think we pulled off the momentary sonic bang of enthusiasm that was needed.

'Congratulations! ...I'm, so, so happy for you' (...I continue) - how is it that my oldest and closest friend gets engaged and I'm suddenly digging around in the expression bargain bin?

how didn't I notice the ring? How is it she's getting married?

Tonight she's 26, about to get married and just bought into a nice little flat with Taddy - her soon to be.

----

"What do you reckon girlfriends and boyfriends talk about?" "on the telephone?"
"Yeah, like this", "I don't know... they say I love you?", "and I love you mores'?", "haha yeah and let's kiss tomorrow!'", "and your eyes are so pretty I miss staring at them", "Honey" "yeah... honey" - "honey pie!" "Honey?" , "sweetie?" etc...

14 years later, we're at home club and we'd been eating calamari rings, dancing and are now a bit drunk and propped up against each other.

"Why didn't I cry?" she asks, "Cry what, when?" - "when he proposed... I didn't cry." "why do you even have to cry?", "Oh you know you were saying your other friend cried" (the friend She's referring to is June, who started crying when her boyfriend proposed to her while scuba diving in a reef - she was then .. forced to come up for air or something). "but people don't always have to cry, I probably wouldn't", "No! but I'm crying now!".

And for that moment - whilst I'm hugging happiest person in the whole world - I wonder if we'd ever really really figure all these things out.

Anyway Steffie, here's to figuring it all out - and I don't think you could have picked yourself a better person to find out with. Someday we'll sit and compare notes, but in the meantime: Congratulations! Wow! I still can't believe you're getting married. and yeah, don't worry about forgetting to cry - that's just silly.

If you always get up late you're never gonna be on time

2007-07-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

it's been a while since I last posted

Since then, Roy's become a dad, Wongo and June got married (not to each other), or are at least they are planning to. I met up with Liz 6 months after Just steak, and she's moving to Melbourne. We had a chat over japanese food today about moving to the various suburbs there. 'Isn't Fitzroy a bit dangerous?' she asked. I think of Dawsey. I say'maybe', but honestly. Really, 'yeah, maybe'.

Kim convinced me to join Facebook which I did. I've since gotten 132 friends, all of whom have become zombies and try to bite chunks off me consistently - I was a zombie once, but I snapped out of it. why do zombies breed zombies and why are they so cool ? I still don't understand the zombie phenomenon.

So now, Lauren freelances for a rival agency, a new installment of harry potter attracts many people to go see it. Steve's sister Ros comes down and I take her to eat 3 chilli ramen at fareast square. Die hard 4.0 launches and is the best movie ever, while the trailers to Rambo 3 and some unnamed film to be released early January next year kind of get me a little bit too excited. Mike's wife is a month from popping, and apparently she'll be a national day kid. the simpsons motion picture is finally out, and The entire season 6 of 24 has been pirated, downloaded and is now being devoured by mum and dad.

So having seen all these things happened. I decided to sit down and paint my tank.

So It's all painted now.

Things I won't remember

2007-06-19T07:39:00.001-07:00

It's a slow afternoon and I find myself yet again, sitting staring at this layout.
I hate layouts, which is why I'm focusing my efforts on deboning a rather tasteless piece of meat (chicken breast).This has become a bit of a ritual since My gym instructor spotted me in the gym no longer than 4 weeks ago and pointed out to me that though I'd been coming here for a year I hadn't really changed too much.

I'd always thought the point of gym was to offset things. not to change them.

Anyway so I've been eating ritual things and getting good about eating chicken breast.

I toss up whether or not to go white or charcoal with the background, this is a difficult decision because it's the opening page. I've tried monograms, and over saturating, and black but it all isn't likable; this is the story of a chic looking/dressed woman who discovers her husband, or as Adam phrases it her 'lost love' retunring while pressing herself up against the glass window to her exclusive Far-East-Developed Condominium, (a pose that required him -Adam- to rather rackwardly man-handle our photographer to get). Charcoal it is!

Bang bang

2007-06-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

good memory

2007-06-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

Sitting in fancy swivel chair, I squirm around trying to find a fun pose for Kim's camera.

Opposite us, a pretty gril sits behind a messy desk with a vintage type writer. She's deep in thought and the key-levers are doing little mexican-waves as her fingers scroll across the keys. The sign on her desk reads somehting to the effect of 'buy a poem!' and I catch a glimpse of a few names scribbled down in some kind of list: kim, bill, and some other things.

Two girls who make up 'pencils and needles' are there and we buy a bunch of nice things form them including this hungry bag thing. Kim even scored a free pair of bipolar, felt-earings. Bargain!

Good shiny things

2007-05-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've joined facebook! It's slightly awesome, I can't really explain why without soundling any geekier that I already proabably sound.

Also my portfolio is now on a blog, at hothotlead.blogspot.com
It's more or less a testiment to the last 2 years of my advertising life.
Meanwhile, other good things include:

Going on holiday, having people post things on my face book page, kim, my grandparents joining Skype, catching steve merchant on 24 season 6 and listening to the new Wilco album.

thanks world!

I'm charging cover at my funeral

2007-05-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

It's almost midnight in singapore and a large crowd of folks are gathered around indie-pop-thump-doof club - Home club. Channel V (or maybe MTV) are there but not in a big way, and lots of skinny scene kids are strutting and leaning and sitting around with imported beers in their hands. I'd paid my $15 + free drink, and there's a local rock band called the Great Spy Experiment rocking out their rocky stuff, And for the first time in singapore I see my first crowd surfer bouncing across the outstretched arms.

Their manager or producer or close freind had just died nights before, and tonight was some kind of ewok-style sending off party (so I'm told).

This was his favorite song -Brang! brang Buuraghnng thump thump bump and a passing waitress says 'cool shirt!' as she walks by.

I'm clutching my free imported beer, and even though I'd never heard of, less met this Wayne person, I take a tall sip, straighten up my teeshirt, and start dancing the best way I know how.

Thanks Wayne, and rest in peace.

My stinky poo faced turd

2007-05-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentelmen, Family, and friends, there was a time when giving a speech about Chloe would have consisted of me coming up here and opening this speech with 'chloe is a stinky poo faced turd', I'm here to talk a little about that time:

Chloe and I met quite abruptly in a hospital late one afternoon in May. It was an awkward meeting because well, she wasn't the person I'd expected to meet. This tiny pink jelly-person who would not stop crying or sleeping. It was at that moment that I decided Chloe was going to be a lot more interesting than I'd expected.

For the next six or so years, it would be a strange bitter sweet comic romance. Chloe was a slightly stubborn and pudgy thing would eat lots of sweets, cry a lot and hated having to share. As far as I could tell she really just enjoyed being pampered, and sleeping, and more often than not just sat on a patch of grass, at the edge of the pool or on the top of a slide, contemplating silently, refusing to budge or come down.

So after pushing her into several swimming pools, down slides, into the grass, down stairs, I'd moved on to coaxing her into eating things like dog poo, spoonfuls of English mustard, and generally strapping her into every disaster my imagination could imagine. Before long she came to accept that her life had other plans. Mine.

And I can't really remeber when, but a strange thing happened. She rather unwillingly started to play along. running around the house, swinging sticks, throwing punches, building forts, digging trenches, bleeding, drooling and crying all over the floors of our house in singapore. We became rivals, and we fought over everything little thing under the sun. Monopoly games would explode into fistfights, we'd smash each other's lego houses, strangle each other till we turned blue. We shared a room, we sang multiplication songs to each other, we pitched tents in imaginnary jungles, and would start out pretending to fight imaginary beasts before turning on each other. And before she knew it she'd quickly turned into a boy.

Today, Chloe sits on the floor in the guest room of our five bedroom house cutting stencils from paper, and gluing the silhouettes onto cards. Some pop song is playing in the background and she's enthusiastically singing along as she shimmies around the room, while embellishing each sheet of artcard kind of fuzzy character from 'Winnie the Poo'. I think these are the invitation cards most of you would have received about tonight. She's an emo kid who's a sucker for romantic comedies, who listens to songs from romantic comedies and reads epic novels about comic romance. She loves shopping and face wash and keeping to herself while she completes a winnie the pooh jigsaw puzzel over several days.

Watching her now, I can't help but wonder how alien those boyish days were. After all she's still the little pink jelly baby, who I first met all those many years ago, the one who likes good food and sleeping and sitting pensively in her little corner of the world. Where did she go? My tenatious rival who almost choked me to death, my ackward little side kick, my trench-digging companion. How unnatural it must have been for you to have put on such a brave face, and take everything I dished out with your chin up and a grin on your face.

So here's to you,

My stinky poo faced turd
My a disenchanted sidekick,
My awkward little hero,

Thank you for everything, your resilience, your bravado and your ability to always keep bouncing back to be by myside no matter hot hairy or estranged the situation or predicament may have been.

You were always able to take and give so much more than I ever could.

Happy 21st! Chloe chan

Have I passed through this night?

2007-03-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's a hazy evening, and everything is super saturated, I'm looking through slats and everything is a warm blur of static and stuff. In walks this girl I'd met, lived with and married a hundred times; Each time a to a different occasion and theme.

I try really hard to be funny and weird and all the things that people have gerenrally thought were attractive about me, but her interest is waining. I'm grasping at straws and am not really happy with how it's all working out.

In the evening I sit down to watch a movie I'd never seen before, but have somehow lived through a few hundred times in a tiny spot of my subconcience. It's hard to sit through, I don't really know how to feel so I clasp at a few familiar things on my desk; a keyboard; a browser window; an icon; the smooth edges of my Wacom tablet.

I think there'd been a moment, when she'd lent her shoulder into my stomach and looked up into me. And drunkadly I'd stared straight back down and slurred some less than remarkable reply. Something registers that this uncomfort will probably go down in my memory for the rest of a little while.

She gets up to leave as the heavy velvet curtains begin to close.

I grin, and wave a cheery wave until she's out of sight.
Then, plunging back into a velvety sleep, we're together again,
wishing that life hadn't had disturbed us in the first place.

Sleeping Lessons

2007-02-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

There's someting about a heavy dose of MSG that keeps me very sedated and horizontal. So very often I find myself that way after and during large chinese banquets - like weddings and granpeople's birthdays and in particular Chinese new year. This lunar golden-pig new-chinese -year was no exception.

I'm woken sometime early in the morning after a rather saucy and marathon evening on Friday, by two very hyperactive little boys, who don't hesitate to pounce on my bed and then clobber me with their Nintendo DSses. 'Pokemon!' one yells, between several well placed thumps on my skull; mum stands in the doorway laughing.

Before long I'm plunged into a drowsy decathalon of eating events and family photo-taking sessions; often listening to big serious poeple making small cracks about how fat they'd all be getting.

My fingers smell like an odd combination of scented paper and snack-related grease.

For many many moments over ther next few days of I slouch around feeling like a hemmed up woolly mammoth, stuffed with MSG and tossed chinese salad, constantly being irritated by the little spears and prods of loved ones proposing visits, long distance phone calls, my smelly fingers and the consatnt (and very very annoying) sound of what I can only describe as mechanized oriental ringtones from these plastic chimey things that come with newyear hampers - what's more they have motion sensors !

In one weekend my house had turned into a very juvenille Myspace homepage.

I guess there is alot to whine about when its hot and you're sleepy and feeling fat; but it all came together one night, when for first time in a long time I found myself sitting on the garden porch.

Somewhere behind me a group of men and women usually too busy to get off their mobiles while they peckyouoneithercheek had gathered on the floor infront of the television to battle it out over sing-star. While infront of me, 6 toddlers had transformed the garden into a carnival of catch and grass stains. We all stand/sit/chase/laugh/cry there for a good 2 or 3 hours; thawed for the first time this year by the jarring noise of a karaoke machine, 6 screaming toddlers, mechanized oriental motion-sensor-chimes and the banter of 25 un-primmed adultswho'd jsut stopped complaining about how fat they'd be getting, and had started to realize for the first time that night just how little night there was left.

When you wake up feeling old

2007-02-09T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo I like about a family and a brave man who had his head shaved by a monk with a single razorblade in Myanmar.

I'm not afraid and um uh, kick your ass

2007-02-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Life takes another turn for the less expected in 2007 when June asks if I'd like to run a marathon this year. That was earlyJanuary, and now, $550 later, I have a digital camera, well no, it's not really a camera, but it's anew telepone build apparently for 'play'. Yes, it vibrates. Yes it is sleek and indestructible. Yes it has a dazzeling flashlight, GPS and a pedometer. and Yes it has the Beverly hills 90210 theme song for a ring tone. And yes, finally there will be a visual component to this blog. and yes, I could even sms my running statistics to blogger for the world to marvel at but that would be silly.

Today (sunday) Adrian and Roy ran 10.2 KM in 58.10 mins, at an average of 9.8 Kmph
For those who don't know Roy, he's pretty short and very... clean. I had a chat (in Roy's absence) about a hypothetical office party themed to super(& scifi) heroes, in which we decided that he'd make a good (but not to scale) Robocop.

My Secondlife with the thrill kill cult

2007-01-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

In late October I came across an article in Adverblog about 'Adam Reuters', a tech journalist journalist from Reuters who's heading up the first real world reports about the latest and greatest happenings in Secondlife (a large online gaming community).

It'd been about the 9th or 10th time I'd heard of it, and it'd become increasingly trendy to mention it and name drop it in marketing meetings. It'd get thrown around in brainstorms and round the office (just like how 'Friendster' and 'Myspace' are thrown around very flippantly ie:'Hey lets make a talking bottle of pop or a shrine to the legacy of intrinsic refreshingness or an avatar for sanitary pads!') Of course these comments are often greeted by 'oh thats quite cool, but I don't really know pig Latin' kind of looks and everyone kind of just looks around for a bit, stretches, and says let's go back to cracking the big TV idea for now.

So deciding that I am the new-dog in my agency, I went to the website to check it out. (and that was the last time I posted a bloc entry, bought another computergame, received any phone calls, did any work, had a life)

Fristly, Secondlife - it's whats known these days as a 'MMOG' - Massively Multiplayer Online Game. It's boasts a population of 1,500,000 + players, with thousands of players joining each week. It's free, and works like... well it's easy enough to play it's kind of like the sims. But whats blows the bottom out of it and what really excites people about it is the 'economics' of secondlife : Second life runs on Lindens - virtual dollars that are roughly pegged to the US currency so you can always trade them for real cash and walk out a rich an happy person. Anyway we'll get back to that later.

So I was born sometime early in the morning, on a Sunday Night, naked, into the tutorial module of second life - this funny garden like place where all the virtual fetuses (affectionately known as noobs) learn to walk, fly, push, move, and interface with things, so flies, pushes , moves, and eventually passes the final test.. after receiving the standard issue set of clothes, skin, eyes, teeth etc, I jump into the portal and go straight into the big bad world, in to what would be known as my 'home' for the next couple of months. I large car yard in the middle of the desert with lots of exotic vehicles (any by exotic I don't mean Ducatis and McLarens I mean like General Greviou's wheelie missile scooter thing from Starwars episode III). Anyway there are a few others standing around, and for a while I feel like the Arnold in the Terminator, only wihtout any dignity or purpose.

It's dark and there are dodgy people who look like departmental store mannequins running around bumping into things yelling 'I'm new here!' 'Hi!' 'Hello!' 'Do you speak Espanola?' (clearly I can't speak or spell it either). I spend the first 40 minutes adjusting my avatar to look like ... Well, hot I guess. And then go out and make some small talk and within minutes meet this other newish person who asks me to teleport with her to this tropical island with many little colored balls. I'm instructed to sit them on with her and it activates a pashing sequence where our avatar's lips are locked with each other and wet kissing sounds are coming out from my PC speakers. Damn. This is kind of fun in a really demented way.

So Secondlife, affectionately known as SL to the insiders. Is a fantasy world where there are no boarders between game content and your imagination, it's a gigantic sandpit where everything conceivable is buildable, possible, and achievable - if you have enough Lindens. You can start a bar, gamble, an army, a design a line of fashion, meet members of a virtual band and record a song with them, painstakingly recreate all of Frank Loyyd Wright's houses, and all the while having lots of cyber sex and (hopefully) earn a buck or two. It's the manifestations of 1.5 million people's deepest and most disposable fantasies and it's HUGE.

By the end of my first month, I'd also started a Girl character because well - it's rather boring being a guy seeing as I already know how hard/shit it is/can be. And Besides you get to adjust your own body proportions - yes breasts - and then see yourself naked! Which was more than enough incentive for me.

I'd be rushing home from work to work on virtual relationships, earn Lindens anyway I could and then turning to the shops to work on my avatar's look. I took just about everything I could get my hands on from wigs, to inflatable unicorns, to sex organ 'attachments' to a giant singing/spinning fish. I even got to having a bit of 'sex', which well... is weird and not very inspiring, more often than not just made me feel a bit sad and awkward.

Anyway long story short, I had a pretty good run, I met alot of lesbians, freaks, geeks, held an art exhibition, and collected a huge amount of junk, from high heels, to samurai swords to well the giant singing bass. So weird but so good (in a awkward way).

For more information (or to simply sell your soul to the lindens) check out SL

Just steak

2007-01-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

It's 2am and I'm sitting alone inthe driver seat pulled up in the carpark opposite a night club I'm supposed to meet a date and some of her friends at. It'd been raining earlier in the evening so there are many puddles on the floor and everything is shiny. And I'd already drafted several SMSes deciding whether to go in and look for them or just head home.

So far things hadn't gone too well.. well they hadn't gone badly but things could have been better, Like dinner - I felt really bad letting her take the bill. Especially when I had ordered the strip loin steak and ate most of the escargot. But she'd insisted since I'd paid for everything else before and seeing as I didn't really want to make a scene of it, I let her.

Previously we'd met on Newyears day (post coutdown), it was nice, she was nice, I was wearing a pair of cheap plastic illuminating devils horns that dad had purchased in shanghai, and was drunk - but not yet slury. My friends had met her freinds at the bar and we were talking about Australia. Then after a day of SMSing, we'd met for lunch, where I think we settled that we were both rather interesting people and that there's be a follow up, dinner - tonight - followed by drinks at a place of my choosing then we'd split and go our seperate ways or something like that.

It didn't go too well I guess, somehwere in between I lost the plot and it got weird. We'd gone for drinks with both our freinds which had pretty much split the table, and then I hung aorund the bar for a while more while she left with her friend to go clubbing, I'd promised to meet them after. (which is why I'm in a shiny rain covered carpark to begin with).

I remeber Adrian (Steph's boyfriend) asking where we'd gone for dinner to which I replied 'Just Steak' - A pretty uppity steak house with a very .. well retardedly blatant name that didn't do them any justice. He laughed asking rather rhetorically 'so was it just steak?'

Outside the club again after having dragged myself out of the car, across the carpark into the club and on and off the dance floor several times, we're standing at the taxi que. I offer her and her friend a lift home but they politely decline.

Getting back into the car, I reach into my pocket for my ipod and instead fish out a business card. It's from Just steak. Seeing as I can't seem to shake the awkwardness of the night's chemistry, I just chuckle to myself thinking how succinctly the restaurant's name had summed up the entire evening.

667 The neighbour of the beast

2007-01-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I last blogged, I blame second life. It's a sad excuse.

Anyway, Christmas 2007 was an odd one. I'd been shopping or walking or guided touring somewhere with my family all day, and I'd just gotten into the door. Dad's dressing my in thermals and miscellaneous woolen things, which I'm fighting to keep off.

At 7 I'm in a train carraige that's half full on my way to a station that I'd been at the day before but can't really remeber the name of (it's the one at the end of line 3) . A man has taken hold my of hand and a lady is leading against my back, it's a bit strange, but I don't really know how to tell them to piss off in chinese wihtout sounding rude, so for about 20 minutes I just stand ther being clenched and leaned on. A Boy walks down the caraige throwing little advertisements at us.

I watch an ad for a thermal/slimming productthat involves the product being wrapped around a fish tank and then being frozen in nitrogen. Unsuprisingly the goldfish in the competitors' tank are dead.

Matthew Barney

2006-10-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

T: booze and green fanta, a winning combination
im getting shitfaced with Ronald tomorrow. Then perhaps we can get high and lose our sanity over Matthew Barney movies.. I fucking hate Matthew Barney

A: hahaha, yeah! I should ask him to do an ad one day

T: as long as he can work in a giant metaphor for testicles, he'd do it

Every Day is like Sunday

2006-10-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

Especially when you work Sunday and then the immediate public holiday following Sunday.

Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy...

life as art

2006-10-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I excitedly showed Roy these ads in the latest edition of 'The Archive' for Axe (Lynx) Deodorant. The Campaign, titled "get a girlfriend", was basically shots of different guys with really dorky acomplishments like: a guy posing with a human-sized sphinx he'd made entirely from lego in his living room, and another guy proudly posing next to his high score on a arcadegame machine.

Roy laughed heartily and then recovered and paused and then said: "So, they're a bit like you right?".

"I guess", I replied (this time, not so enthusiastically).

Short term memories

2006-10-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

So we're all sitting around this coffee table sucking on our caffinated drinks.

I've got a biro in my mouth and Maurice is saying something about how it would be really cool if product X would make you do something like that. Mike furrows his brow and Michael remains glued to something else. I cough and try and add somehting to the scenario, 'maybe it should so somehting more like this' *I motion an activity to them. "You know? like that movie?", someone chuckles, someone else replies 'I guess it could work'.

Michael is trying to tell me somehting but all I can do is continue to plug another idea of my own in my own head; see, there's this guy and he's only a hand, and he searches for his soul mate this other hand and together they can twist open; wait, what if we got an ad that you could urinate on. 'Hmmm.(well punctuated pause) No.'- general consensus; right but it's like thermal paper like the kind of stuff you make hypercolor teeshirts with; right but it's about feeling .... yes I guess it's; no it's ok I was just kidding. Seriously, 'just kidding' I add, and the biro's back between my teeth.

Impossible love

2006-09-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hey it's Mum's Birthday again!

Anyway seeing she's in Melbourne now and I deleted this speech last time entry by accident last time, I thought 'hey!' no better time than tonight to reintroduce it than now. Happy birthday mum. I won't explicitly mention your age anymore.

------------------------

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and family, the crowd

Hi, my name is Adrian, and I’m here to tell you a little about my mother.

50 years ago, which really isn’t that long a long time ago, Doris as we all know was the first of four Chinese children born to Grace and Eddie in Burma. From what I’ve been told, she was spoilt a spoilt little brat (not so unlike myself), and looked a little like a chubby boy. She liked shoes, and expensive things that couldn’t be found in her native jungle.

She liked to read a lot of boring books.
She always ate her vegetables.
And was a kite pirate.

She traversed the globe on great steam powered voyages with her parents.
She took to rock and roll and was given her very first vinyl by an American Sailor.

She mostly kept her hair neat and short.
She, never had as many toys as I ever did.
She learned to cook and take are of a family, long before I even had windows XP.

After moving around several other countries, she wound up in Australia, where she lived in a caravan, turned my age, drove a flimsy Volkswagen, when to nursing school, and had straight long hair that reached her bum. She went on road trips with her cousins, their guitars and sat on a lot of grass. At university she once made a boy who liked her sell his motorbike and trade it for a second hand Mercedes.

Somewhere in between then and now she became a nurse, met dad, put two buns in the oven, raised a generation of children, turned fifty and ended up here.

Today, at fifty Doris spends a lot of time in front of her computer, chatting with her children on the internet, she plods around the house, plays solitaire, goes to the gym, worries herself, deletes spam, tops up her ERP card, cooks delicious meals, and generally waits for the flock to come home. She spends a lot of time running around in her car doing errands for the missing flock. She writes a lot of email, and sleeps on a rather firm mattress… She only discovered cable television last week.

She’s a little hard on hearing, but generally says the right thing.
She’s a little sleep deprived, but that mostly my fault.
She’s started to nag a little more, but she’s also started to give in a little more.
She still likes shoes, her vegetables and boring books.

And she’s always been there,
Making each day a little less awkward and a little more familiar, each mistake a little less of a failure and a little more of a lesson; each meal a little less like plastic and a little more like home.

We had a chat on the phone not too long ago, and she asked me what kind of girl I’d like to marry, to which I replied, ‘probably a nurse, or someone in health science’; She never liked it when I patronized her, or when my hair was blonde, or when I’d come home just to pass out in her arms, or when I’d change my mind at 6, deciding not to come home for the dish she’d spent the whole day preparing. And she never stopped preparing them.

Sometimes I’d wonder if I’d still recognize her in those not too long ago years; if I’d have asked for driving lessons as she reverse parked her Volkswagen, or if I would have bullied her, or if she’d have still stuck up for me, or if I’d still like to have told her I’d want to end up with a nurse; But that’s not all too relevant tonight.

She came running into my room, 3 hours before I wrote this speech; she hates me leaving things last minute. “keep it short and don’t be an asshole” she says with a huge excited grin on her face. Tonight, is the first birthday party she’s ever thrown, and I am as honored and nervous as I’m sure the rest of you are to be here. Thank you all for coming, to celebrate her very first birthday party, and of course: happy birthday mum, thank you of everything I will never realistically ever be able to thank you for, I love you, and I wouldn’t want to be standing here without you.

Bad Ideas

2006-09-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Line for a Museum: 'Get fresh with history'

Name suggestions for colored soft drink:

Soviet Red
Orange Ooze
Gangsta Green
Battle Apple
Vile Violet

Lines for mexican flavored frozen chicken:

Why did the mexican chicken cross the road?
it was trying to cross the boarder.

Where do you find a Mexican Chicken?
In the Kitchen.

Line for Funeral Bonds: 'Good buy!'

Teeshirt for breast insurance policy : 'nice jug!'

Models vs. Hope

2006-09-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

We're on the road somehwere in Malaysia, KL. We're in a rented Nissan Sunny with my friend Lauren is telling us about this really hot black model she'd just casted for an estee lauder ad.

So this Guy is african (quite rare in Singapore) , great physique, toned, and hot really hot/tough (apparently), he even has a shot of himself in his resume butt naked humping a wall or somehting.

she then goes on to raise a few very pressing questions:
Where do these beautiful people come from?
what do they do all day between shoots?
Why don't you ever see/bump into them?
Don't they take Public transport?

All of which I really didn't give too much thought to: I mean who cares? right?

I think I tell her something along the lines of how I don't think it's true at all and as a matter of fact, I know it isn't, because sometimes I will choose to ride in paticular carraiges just because there's a hot girl/ there are hot girls in them. Maybe that makes me a horrible evil person; but it helped my arguement at the time.

So I'm on the train tonight, in my least favorite spot in the carraige: pressed up against the glass pannel right next to the doorway, reading my book when this lady walks straight into my profile, collecting my novel with her luxurious handbag. She doesn't looking back or apologise.

Now this happens quite frequently in this particular spot so I don't think too much about it, until I smell her; It's this really weird perfume that smells like japanese soft drink, so I'm inspired to look up and notice that she's really not pretty. No, in fact she's ugly, the of the kind of person I often have nightmares about the girls of my dreams turning into. So, remebring the conversation I had about pretty people on transport, I stake out the train for a while, and realise very quickly that there really arn't any hot poeple here.

I know, it's 8pm on the MRT proabably not the ideal situation to find modely looking people. Besides the only modely person I know gets picked up from work every night.

So I go back to my book and when I look up I'm one station overshot, so I get out of the carraige and as the train takes off, I notice the carraige next to mine was full of pretty people. Needless to say I was upset and felt gibbed, but also good about being retrospectively-correct - all at the same time.

It was weird.

Weary memory

2006-09-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will mark one year since I left Melbourne. I don't know why I still feel sad about leaving, but I do, there was somehting quite disapointing about the way it all wrapped up - I recall standing outside my Grandparent's (grace's and eddie's) house waving goodbye to Yasmin and Kim as they pull away in a marone Holden. It's too early, and I'm too tired and too hung over and upset and clutching onto a CD that kim had compiled while she was in hongkong. I remeber not being able to go back to sleep, and listening to alot of Joanna Newsom, and then speaking to thom on MSN.

I call Clare in July, after a breif 10 day holiday there. its been about 6 months, and I'm in the departure lounge, and they are in Safeway at 11.30 am shopping for sleepover food. It was a decent trip, and we'd all hung out, and I'd talked alot about my new job, but I guess It'd firmed up that I wasn't really going to be such a big part of their lives anymore. It felt a bit strange. But we talked and laughed a bit. Sometimes it was really good, and at othertimes there was just this obligationary sense that held us together inspite of the occasional droughts.

I spent tonight worrying about the work I'd be doing tomorrow; I'd accidentally spoke to an old aquaintance on MSN, which turned out to be a good thing.

A friend from college called, and told me he was coming down for a few days. I think I suprised him when I said that I wasn't plannig on going back in a hurry. Neither is Jamie. I think she misses home a bit too, but is insistant on staying on in America; after all, She is going to meet Sufjan Stevens backstage.

Anyway this entry is just to remind anyone who still reads this drivel that I do remeber, I do miss you, and I do still have feelings in my left leg.

x x x o o o

IDA #1 The History of technology

2006-08-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up in Singapore, as far back as I can remeber I was into computers. We had a 286 and I was given a 5 and a quarter inch floppy disk , by a family friend - who also loved computers. It had space invaders, alley cat, and the pac man and frogger( which I never enjoyed so never played) on it.

Going to school, I met anouther 2 kids who also loved computers as much as I did and we did cool thing like mess around with the color settings in DOS shell, and made pictures and swapped viruses and eventually destroyed our own computers.

when I was 11 I got my very own 486 desktop computer, compete with windows 3.11 and the internet. I searched for my first porn site, used my first color printer to print a close up piture of a citoris, which I then brought to school to show my freinds.

Those were exciting times.

I Miss The War

2006-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

I wish the war was on,
we really worked together then.

Do you remember when
you held the horse, I slit his throat,
the blood ran, melting the snow?

When the meat was carved

the children screamed
and the women cheered.

Thank you John Vanderslice, Masterclass and Team Cup

Quimby

2006-08-10T08:17:00.001-07:00

'fight or flight' was the last topic for our corporate training class.

We were asked to make lists of things that stress us out; the first thing that came to mind was strangers: sharp, pretty strangers; People who know what they are doing and by inference know that I don't know as much about something as they do. For instance everytime I call my insurance company, I'm always petrified and leave it till last, or sometimes too late. I don't know why. Its just like that.

Also on my list was, asking for favors and asking for favors from from strangers

Gentle Art of Choking

2006-08-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

I've been attending this induction programme thing for new poeple in advertising and we've been learning about persentation skills, and how to judge a book by its cover and how not to.

So Friday came and we all had to make our presentations one to the regional chairman, and a 2 executive creative directors, and one looks to the other and they grin and make us feel good/hot/flustered/nervous/shit etc. I feel strange, heaty, like I'm in a trance, like the imaginary guy in my brain who makes the big decisions has smeared my career and run off with my imaginary wife.

Later, I relate the exerise to some of the guys while chugging a bottle of warm stout "I feel like the guy in momento."

I don't like concluding things; I think what qualifies for a good conclusion these days is a conclusion that keeps you thinking, guessing, that leaves the lights on etc. Alvin's MSN nick name tonight is "a happy ending is just a story that hasn't concluded".

Hmmm.

Dear Mr. Supercomputer

2006-07-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

I sit behind a small wooden desk; it's made of the kind of wood you can't really tell is wood, or just some eleborate synthetic trick.

It's July and my hair has grown long again and people at the induction programme are talking to me, asking questions about my life and origins to which my reply always differs: "I'd like to be known as a good person inspite of being spoilt by my rich dad"(pretentious/annoying/self dephricating) ; "I was born, it was a pretty protracted and agonizing expereince for my mum" (self-dephticating in its own way/ annoying).

Some of the people there think I'm quirky, and sometimes make it a point to tell me this- this is a compliment; it is alright to be quirky. that is until you're too quirky, in which case you jsut become self-dephricating/ annoying/ prentntious, which isn't good, but I constantly worry about/

On Sunday I attend a champagne brunch with a few of my collegues. who Like me are new to the company I work for, and also attend the weekend induction programme. I consider this to be a social privellege, as everyone present at brunch smokes(except me) , which somehow in my mind makes them the social elite of the weekend programme.

The following Monday, when a senior co-worker who'd overheard me talking about the brunch asks me how it went, I reply 'decadent' - which it was - In fact it was so decadent that I'd fondued a prawn for the sake of fondueing a prawn, and then eaten nothing but it's head.

In the Devil's Territory

2006-07-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

Kenny sits at the head of the dinner table in a very loose, tattered and oversized burberry teeshirt, "If you can play computergames all day, I don't see why you can't go to work".

I stare blankly into a bowl of luke warm double boiled chicken soup.

I am sulking.

"I mean why do you care about your sleeping patterns anyway?" he continues, " you're just going to sleep all day tomorrow and take the next day off, maybe we should get you some diapers, and send you back, I think you'd benefit better from moving around a bit".

Mum giggles a bit and I continue to pretend to ignore the conversation.

"I really think you should get out and go to the gym with mum tomorrow, and you know, move around a bit, you could borrow one of her maxi pads in case you start to, you know - leak." He chuckles to himself.

I'd spent the better part of lunch at the National University Hospital trying to collect a stool samples in the handicapped toilets. On the Drive home, mum enquires as to how I'd finally managed to get a sample into the precariously small jar, "I hope you didn't fish around with that shovel thing in the water, you never know who else's stuff might be in the water as well". I reassure her that I'm not always an idiot and she laughs, while I squirm around in the front passenger seat.

Earlier, the doctor had diagnosed me with Gastro-something-itis, possible inflamed colon, possible ameobic-bacterial- something or other, he says something about a colonoscopy and it's only after he pauses, smiles politely, and then winks that I figure "oh that must be the anal-probe aspect of investigation."

Feeling rather awkward, and not wanting to smile or wink back, I try to hold a defiantly straight face.

Bermuda Highway

2006-06-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

It's friday and I'm in the square room with Jacqui, who's trying to plan the night ahead, frustrated I try to explain why I don't think we're going to be able to get changed at my place, do dinner and then soldier on down to the 8.30 gala in 2 hours.

It's about $15.50 and a quater to ten by the time our cab pulls into the hotel lobby. Outside the taxi, many many people dressed to the theme of 'bling it on' are milling around, and a valet is trying to usher me out of the taxi as I sign the credit card statement. On the red carpet we're greeted by a barrage of flashes and starbursts from the various press photographers. I try my best to smile while frantically trying to remebr which side my better side is, and then realising I never really had one, panic, slip various smiles on and then finally when I run out grins break into a rather off beat laugh.

A woman frm the Straits times asks her photographer to take a photo of me, and asks where I got the golden cat broach from. I tell her it's mum's. She gets my name scribbles somehting besides it, before dad interjects and asks me what I'd told her.

A waiter pours a glass of champagne down by back, and a local celebrity/cum MTV-J/cum artist takes pity on me and helps fan my shirt for a moment 'you're back's all wet!' she exclaims. A tall blonde cigarettte touting model lands her cigarette butt on the back of my hand and I rember thinking how nice her top is. For a while I'm topless in the the bathroom, frantically fanning the shirt. Val tells me whatever I do, not to use tissue to dry a black shirt, that men are checking me out, that I was so drunk (on monday), that I'd been hit on by a tall guy with a champagne flute.

I tell Sam that I hate this point of the night, when it all starts to fall apart. Jacqui comes back and tells me about her interview with a girl from FHM and how she'd been entrapped into sounding dumb; Who comes to a bobo-chichi tesla technology fashion event and asks the patrons about the meaning of 'Tamasek' anyway ?

Later at zouk we're meeting and greeting more folk from the party before. The rain comes down and we're all trapped under the small white tarp outside winebar. More epople appear , who tell us its too crowded inside. I tell troy that it reminds me of a volume of the Sandman when a strom drives a whole bunch of odd-dimensioned dudes into an inn near one of the soft places. I rmeber somehting about the end of the world and get stuck in a conversation

Will is my friend

2006-06-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

William looks at me brows furrowed and then at the weight stack. Bending over, he pulls the pin from the 80 pound knotch and slots it into the 125.

Acid shoots into my calves. It hurts alot.

"So you're stronger than most of the guys in your (rugby) team?" I ask, voice wavering and feet spasming. "Yeah, I'm the strongest in singapore", he replies with a very straight and serious face. "But thats not hard", he adds, "We're not a very sporty people". I nodd and wonder to myself how it'd feel to be so self assured that I was the strongest person in all of singapore - I think of a story Thom once told me about a class mate of his who got put away after putting a brick through some guy's skull at a high school barfight. "See you're lucky, you australians are different, you embrace sport"; "Koreans are huge", "They've got mongol blood", "they're Asia's last hope", "There's nothing to do in ottawa but get into bar fights"... my feet patter on the rubberized floor.

Somewhere in an army base not so far away, National service men are assembling infront of a 5 foot 7 bronze statue cast from his body. he's now an architecht, who once dated Sylvia for 2 weeks. We met on a train coming back from gym training, I said I needed an ass kicking, and he delivered.

Armapocalypse

2006-06-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

The heat never stops, even when it rains the wind blows clumps of dampness that re wet things, laminating them like a gladwrapped dish.

I don't know where I am. but it's bright.
Sylvia smiles and I tell her that I sometimes find living here like being in a foreign film (creepy). She tells me that Paris is boring, and rather crap. I smell smoke, eat cheese parata and share a piece of deep fried chicken with her. Her friend John shows us photos of his family car, explaining how he photographs all the 'junk' in the car, so that when his dad drives it he can use the photos to re-composite the mess.

At work I'm sitting on a desk breifing in a gizmo-dalik thing to be built from a Coke bottle . An old man who reminds me a little of my grandfather is waving it around while slinging a seamstress' measuring tape around it. Weng (who I thought was called 'Wayne' for a long time ) is on the other end of the desk, brows furrowed, a little man is pacing quick frantic circles around his head. This is 'production' - a bunch of middle to post-middle aged guys, who come up with ways to make and cost the more bizzare stuff. They kind of remindme of Mulder's Lone Gunmen in the X-files.

Dad returned from Shen Zeng last Thursday with some new clothes and a telescope. I brought it to My neighbour's place where we had some brandy as the night manager lock up theball room floor in the Shangrila hotel. We talk about hypothetical businesses, and I tell him how impressed I was by the Lexus GS300 when it outran the Devil in 'the Omen', "though, they really should have showcased the keyless entry and ignition."

Joy Luck

2006-05-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

'So, How is your love life?' asks my cousin, her eyes lighting up for the first time tonight.
'Um, I don't know, a bit sedate? I haven't really been in a relationship since high school.'
I don't recall if she asks why, but I offer a bunch of excues anyway even subtely attempting to jazz it up in places. I still don't know why.

I push my knife through a soft pile of cold eggplant.

Her eyes glaze over again so I counter-turn to look to my right shoulder and then back at her again. Outside the window KTV hostesses are amassing on the street, trying to redirect the traffic.

A lady one seat away takes a sudden interest in me and we chat a little about art and the agency and her daughter's husband, who sails and graduated from St.Martins. 'I Always thought exhibits hug on walls, so I was a bit shock when I came late and they told me I'd missed it.' I'd like him I'm told - Charles - I don't have any friends called Charles, or Charlie. The only Charles I still remeber was a big oaf who had sex very loudly in share house, and then asked my timid friend David if he'd gotten a boner listening to them.

Paul is sitting on my left and between us (Charle's mother inlaw and myself). He works at a bank and really doesn't want to be here (dinner) , or there (banking) - He'd really like to be in alternative energy. 'like how George Bush was talking about turning grass into ethenol?', yes he shrugs kind of like that I guess, 'they use corn'. Anyway, thats what he'd do if he wasn't in banking. I have no idea what I'd do, maybe I'd try acid.

On the wall is a very realistic painting of a levatating girl sitting crosslegged in pink cowboy boots, fishnets, a matching pink bikini top, hostered revolver with a Om above her sombrero written on clouds.

"I really like that painting on the wall", I say trying to make up for loosing the prior conversation. 'Yes, it is quite nice isn't it? what school would you say it is?'
"I don't know? School?"
"Yeah, you know like cubist, expressionist, surreal.. is it surreal or surrealist?"
"I guess it kind of looks like a painting I once saw in a movie, it's definitely ...very um postmodern... is that a penis in her panties?"

Nobody turns to look.

Ghost town

2006-05-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's not yet dark, and there isn't a whole lot going on. the color wheel cursor is spinning and spinning and then it turns into a black watch and then back into a color wheel. This morning I'd watched giant sea turtles migrate on to costarica's pacific shore. Each liad 100 eggs, each egg gobbled up by seabirds. Soon Koaatis (rat like racoons) are on the scene doing the same.

The color wheel keeps spinning.

Two crocodiles are mating in the river, the national geographic has arranged for some strange jazz arrangement as a backing track.

Epitaph

2006-05-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Joquem Phoenix is on monitor one. He's in a white singlet, on a bed in a sunlit hotel room tempting Reece Witherspoon with aftersex peanuts. On monitor two, I'm messing around with blogger settings in the template menu deleting a blog I don't actually want to delete.

Ce la vie.

'welcome!' anyone who just logged on thinking 'damn I'll miss that crazy old crappy schmap' - I concur! For instance I'll will always particularly miss that entry that I wrote for my mum's 50th - which always scored supermega brownie points with humanity.
Now that it's all gone, I really can't regurgiatate it all over again,
so here's a brief recap of events that happened:

Eddie met Grace, they got married, they had my mum (Doris), who married dad (Kenny), who relocated us to singapore, where I now work, but only after being pryed from melbourne several times. Mum turns 50, I quit smoking again, cry alot, whine alot, start smoking, love/hate my job, feel lonely, quit smoking, feel nostalgic about college life and accidentally delete my blog by accident.

Welcome back commander !