hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is. -h2g2-

there are several types of writers in the world who should be hanged by their keyboard cables. there are the disaster-prone shot-in-the-dark writers with absolutely no sense of direction. there are the straight-down-the-line textbook structured writers with no room for forsaken imagination. there are also writers who write just for the heck of filling a page with words, which usually don’t make much sense even at the sentence level.

then we have writers like mimi, who tries very, very hard to inject as much wit as possible in her content starved essays, finishing with what feels like a mushed up concoction of all of the above.

i’m not saying that i’m a very brilliant writer myself. i believe i have a reasonable mastery of the language. as a self-aware writer, i believe that my strength is also my weakness. i am a livewire. i am experimental in my essays that i tend to respond rather poorly to criticism from people who i feel are not intellectually exciting.

i hold linguistic aesteticism highly and i only appreciate essays that have profound sense of style without being too airheaded in content. this should not be mistaken with essays with mega flowery language and descriptions of sceneries that seem to go on till kingdom come.

i guess what i’m saying is i like quality work and i expect such standards of myself and of others. i feel that other writers in this here company have a pretty good grip over their writing abilities. i would even say that they do have that pizzazz.

all except mimi.

you know, it is one thing about not having any zing for the trait. but it is a whole ‘nother story when you try to tell others who they should write their already beautifully sculptured pieces. and it is one thing to be stuck with crap assignments with a million blunt angles to figure out. it is a whole ‘nother thing to pick only the best ones for yourself and force the leftovers down other people’s throats.

… and ma’am, having that attitude so does not help.

It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level. -marvin, the paranoid android-

i saw an accident on the way to work this morning. not like it happened smack in front of me. more like the aftermath. it was quite graphic tho.

it happened on the way to the lpd highway heading to the puchong entrance from sunway. three cars are pulled up on the right side of the road [because the left lane had a number of junctions, so i guess this choice pissed off less people]. all cars had either their bonnets, boots or both dented in. the car drivers [all men] looked more pist that ruffed up.

i think the incident has just happened. the three men looked like they’ve just finished clobbering each other and are on their handphones probably calling their wives/ girlfriends/ mothers/ lawyers/ tow truck agents/ etc.

in the middle lane [it is a three laned highway] were a pool of debris consisting of bits of glass, a mirror and bits of car parts. i think it was a pretty rough accident.

… which did not go without casualties.

sprawled lifeless in the pool of debris was the accident victim, which cars slowed down to kay poh pay respects. there was not much blood, so i think it was a blunt-object-to-the-head sorta collision.

two motorcycles stopped at the left lane, walked over to the victim and tried to divert traffic away from the body [which substantially eased the traffic buildup].

here’s what i think happened. a car [probably speeding], tried to avoid the victim by making a hard right. but there was heavy traffic on that lane, so he floors his brakes instead. the car behind him [also probably speeding] does not brake in time and crashes into the first car. the car behind the second car does the same. somewhere in between all this commotion, the poor victim lands underneath of one of the cars.

all three cars move over to the right lane and start bitching at each other. the victim is left in the middle of the road.

say a prayer for the cat. amen.

i still miss you like crazy

… and the madness still hurts.

wet. mud. sweat. blood. kept on walking. pick up truck. kept on waking. capsized. locked out. i saw you. you saw me. we kept on walking.

dedicated to my brothers who walked with me through some of the most unforgiving conditions of borneo. i see you now for the strength and determination that you are – how we helped each other and laughed together.

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you’ll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you’ll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve watched all your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

-dire straits

when reality is your roller coaster ride

the ONLY way to ride through this…

… over seven hours’ worth of this…

… fashioned by this…

… is at the back of one of these!!!

muddy when wet, dusty when dry. i have arrived in ba kelalan. woohoo!

the people who organised my trip to east malaysia thought that it would be funny to drive through the two pieces of brunei. i was game.

… because it meant that i would get four stamps on my rather blank passport in a single day:)

we drove south up, from miri.

a toll, shortly after the sungai tujuh immigration checkpoint at kuala belait. this is the one and only toll in brunei. or so that i was told. brunei has a toll? whoever thought…

the exit (entrance, if you are coming from the other direction) of the southern end of brunei, as we journey northwards towards limbang in sarawak. can you believe that the two bits of brunei is really not joined to each other by land at all. i’ve always thought that somewhere at the tip of something, the people would be able to cross over, but no. even for local bruneians, to get from one piece to another, they are required to go through customs and immigration.

no parking here… or here.

boards promoting the use of the malay language is found all along the road on southern brunei. every few kilometers, there is one. also, every signboard is written in malay and jawi. they are pronunced the same way and mean the same thing.

it is interesting to me that they refer to the language as bahasa melayu and not bahasa melayu brunei. very p.c. from the linguistic point of view. all that jazz about bahasa malaysia or bahasa indonesia or bahasa melayu singapura (which i am almost convinced is a dead language) are really all dialects of the same mother language. it is linguistically wrong, therefore, to even refer to them as different languages. but they are anyway. in reference. for purely political reasons.

the linguist digressed.

meat is one of those things that needs to go through customs around here. brunei is also one of those countries which prohibits alcohol to be sold, entirely. so the locals who want to get their high would cross over at this checkpoint, buy their booze on the other side of the border and bring it in. there are, naturally, a number of watering holes on the other side of this checkpoint.

to get to the other piece of brunei, we had to drive through limbang town…

… which has the weirdest signages in their toilets…

… the scariest dentists…

… and i swear has the best damn roti bakar in the world!

back on the road. this is at kuala lurah, muara. i’m standing on malaysian soil. yonder the river, brunei. just like that.

and yet, for just that distance, we had to ferry our car over.

the northern piece of brunei has rivers on both sides. which means two ferry rides, each lasting a total of thirty seconds, tops.

if your car’s got an anchor, your can’t drop it here. at puni. in temburong. on the northern checkpoint of brunei. yea, the place’s got a sicky name.

eight hours on the road. we arrive in lawas.

something strange is in the air

definately. everyone in the office is definately high on something and i regret to report that it might not be weed. that’s the strange part. my editor is by some stroke of luck in a remarkable mood. the designer revealed a sense of humour that i previously thought never existed beyond the smooth plastic finishings of his coffee mug. between the ed, the designer, a fellow writer whose cynicism seem doubly amplified today, another writer who woke up this blessed morning and decided to wear a fliry skirt to work, and lil’ ol me, i can almost swear that the rest of the office is conspiring to file a long, long complaint against our intoxicated department.

extreme happiness is an incredibly deceiving and extrodinarily effective mask.

i have a flight to catch in seven hours. i have not packed. i am still receiving sms reminders from team members of what to bring. cw reminds me of towels. hz reminds me of passports. zz reminds me of ponchos.

wyn and i have gone nuts. as i understand the latest arrangements goes something like this: we’re still seeing each other, but we are not going to see each other. something of a test for ourselves. if the physical element is removed from the equation of our relationship, are we able to function as two independent individuals in love with each other? personally, i don’t see this any difference from having a long distance relationship, just that the call costs aren’t as extravagant.

i suppose the real challenge is to see if the feelings we have each other will wear off in due time. he’s starting a new career and i am travelling all the time, so i guess we both have our own thing to focus on.

or so i try to tell myself. over and over and over again.

that thing they say about truth in repeatition… it’s slow. it’s uphill. sometimes i feel that i am still on the ground and nowhere near the sight of the top. or the half way point. or even a third.

maybe it is not because i can’t. maybe it is because i don’t want to.

on my side, my days aren’t so bad as i have plenty of people to meet and all. but my nights are awful. loneliness is one thing. insecurity is another.

i’m hoping laughter, real or faked, can keep these demons in me at bay. it is not easy.

so don’t mind me if i am immensely happy or exceedingly cynical or deathly morbid or jumpy from one end of the spectrum to another just like that, over the next few weeks.

god knows i’m dying inside.