friends in need

even in multi billion dollar business industries, times of crisis is when you learn who your real friends are.

twelve states of being

someone told me that you could actually tell a thing or two about the state a person is in by the songs currently on their mp3 player. so to ascertain this hypothesis, i thought i’d share twelve songs on my current playlist.

• blessid union of souls – i believe
• bon jovi – these days
• dave mathews band – the space between
• death cab for cutie – marching bands of manhattan
• dire straits – brothers in arms
• green day – 21 guns
• journey – faithfully
• linkin park – shadow of the day
• nirvana – smells like teen spirit
• pixie lott – use somebody
• the script – the man that can’t be moved
• tracy chapman – fast car

so what can you tell about me from this list?

office of unfettered omniscience – how may i help you, o fortunate one? ~ penelope garcia

this morning, i was told that the future of communication is technology. in the future, he tells me, you won’t need to see people face to face anymore. i will be able to extract all the data i need though a new integrated data management system.

what if i want to meet people face to face? i asked.

now why would you want to do that? he replied.

i’ve been hearing a lot lately about how social networking over the internet is taking over people’s lives. just a coupla days ago, i heard over the radio how some kids got stuck in a drain in adelaide, and instead of calling their family or police for help, they sent an s.o.s. message via facebook.

just a few weeks back, i was in the forest with some friends and a group of singaporeans come to join us. obviously, there is no electronic signal of any kind in the hutan right, well you should see these two girls suffering from chronic internet withdrawals! they became maniac cranks that snapped at everything. every time our group went on walkabout, they would be checking their phone signals for wifi.

i need to update my blog… i need to update my blog… my readers! omg, i will lose all my readers!!! one girl mutters over and over again.

and she becomes depressed and got no appetite and complains about mosquitoes and the cold water and the humidity and the mud and all the trees. nasib baik la they join us only for two nights. any more than that and she would be psychologically incurable.

this girl is proof that there are people out there whose entire lives have gone techno cyber. there is almost no character, no personality left to her physical being in the real world, but people love her online. apparently.

there is just something so wrong here. and i’m not just saying about the young-lings. i got a retired uncle who cannot get enough out of his new iphone 3G and has spent the past month downloading music and snapping photos and surfing though different applications.

and i fear that i might someday be swallowed by this revolution. not because i can’t live without technology (because i would happily go on forever without checking emails etc). but because everyone else has gone digital and i would be sucked in just to keep up with them.

and the day will come when it is deemed anti-social not to be a cyber geek.

the first world state of mind

i actually had a lot of expectations in venturing to western europe. of course i wanted to see the art and the history and all. but i had expected a wise air of maturity. a sophistication. all that stuff they told us in morals and ethics classes about a well-behaved civil society of cultured people.

you know where i am getting but mind, i was not completely disappointed. flying over germany was exactly how i envisioned a first world country would be. solar panels. wind turbines. and then in the train to the airport, i notice a little graffiti in the tunnel walls and thought, its okay, we got some creative vandalism at home too.

but as i traveled to paris, the graffiti got more and more and from tunnels, they spanned onto walls of almost the entire track passage. in barcelona, the graffiti crept onto parts of the train. by the time i got to rome, the trains are completely covered on colourful spray paints (pic).

and while the trains themselves are efficient – they come every five minutes, tops – but they are old. i suppose it says something about their engineering if old carriages like those are till used, but i remember standing in a train station in paris feeling kinda disappointed that the train arriving was a box-shaped thing with doors that snapped like an impatient french lady.

heck, i remember taking the train back to my hostel in paris one night, and a drunk man sat beside me and started mumbling to me. he went on and on and on. i was still a few stops from my station and i swapped seats since the train was not full. people looked. it was not nice.

i had maybe too high of an expectation of what a first world state of mind would, or should be. appreciation for health and well-being was one of them. but here’s the truth, majority of the locals i met smoked. you think a lot of people smoke at home, well double or triple that make them all chain smokers while you’re at it. in a crowded street, every other person you see is smoking.

i have nothing against smokers, but i am just shocked by the magnitude. there are cigarette vending machines almost everywhere. people in business suits smoked. parents would smoke in front of children and even while pushing prams. young people, old people, rich-looking ones, homeless, boys, girls, there is specific no demographic to it.

there was a time i was sitting on some steps in trastevere, rome, and a girl with dreadlocks asked me if i had a lighter. and i told her that i did not smoke. she had to pause awhile to register that idea before moving on to ask someone else.

and the LITTER! oh. my. god. they litter everywhere. there is a bin there, but they still litter. i think this is my greatest shock. name it, they’ve discarded it. sweet wrappers. cigarette boxes. cigarette buds. used plastic cups. bits of whatever. in germany, not so bad. paris, more (to my absolute shock and horror). as for barcelona and rome, there was a joke in my hostel that those two cities smell like washrooms – and this is not completely untrue.

crossing roads. in germany, they wait until the little red man turns greens before they cross the streets – even if there are no cars on the road. in paris, if there are no cars, they would sometimes cross the smaller road even if the little red man is not green. in barcelona, if you gather a group big enough, you can stop traffic. in rome, if you run fast enough, you can get across the road before oncoming cars bashes you to bits.

the homeless and beggers on the street are not a nice story. i mean, homeless and beggers anywhere is not a nice story. but over here, i am confused and a greater part of me really does not know how to feel about it. i see immigrants, mostly illegal i am told, on the streets, and refugees and gypsies – all looking for a handout. they tell me stories of war and dead family members and how they come in search of a new life.

and i hear stories about syndicates and how they use these sob stories of the war to pry for money. they wait at the gates of great churches and cathedrals and bear family photos. a number resort to stealing and pickpocketing – i hear so many stories of these too.

walking on the street at night, i see some streets staggered with drunkards, with a bottle in one hand and a foul word on their lips. they eventually collapse on the steps that would be their refuge for the night. steps that are more often a monument of some of the oldest and greatest civilisations in european history, or in the shadow of one, at least.

these are just some examples of my experiences. i had a brazillian roommate in barcelona who shared the same concerns. the latin american people are more caliante, she tells me. i tell her that asians are friendlier.

you know how there are all those campaigns at home that tells us to look to the west for technology and and the first world mentality? i fear that i don’t quite know what is that first world mentality anymore. for the most part, i am undecided about how i feel about europe. i have no regrets taking the trip and would certainly do it all over again. but, you know.

there is something about roving in that continent that gives me the acute awareness of my asianness, and a sense of pride that i have for being an asian. there is just something about these europeans that i just don’t want to be, and i can’t quite put my finger on that that is.

and it is not that europe was a terrible experience. i had loads of fun that i will share with you on the next post (wait for it! it’s gonna be awesome).

maybe i just went about europe the wrong way. maybe things would have been a universe of difference if i stayed at one of those posh hotels with thick embroided drapes and egyption silk bathrobes. things might have been different if i took those fancy tours with a flag waving guide and everyone had matching hats.

but this is the tale of the poor backpacker who walked in the back lanes of europe and found some of the cobbled roads a little uneven.

huh. it does kind of tingle. ~sylar

today, i am a clock repair person whatever you call it. i know what you’re thinking – postgrad in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis and here i am with a screwdriver in one hand and a non abrasive cloth in the other, fiddling with the gears and pendulums.

personally, this is awfully interesting and i am actually having an awesome afternoon. it is an atmos jaeger lecoultre. a prized clock, seriously. no batteries. no electricity. it runs on perpetual motion powered by gravity and springs that react to temperature changes to move the gears. how absolufuckinglutely cool is that?

i watch how even small changes in how the pendulum sways affects the gears rotate, and how that one glitch moves from one part of the clock to another, eventually to the minute hands of the face. how every detail in the clock works in harmony. a mechanism of perfection.

and the atmos is a complete self sustaining piece of perfection. very, very beautiful. the more i pursue this curiosity to understand the mechanics of this clock, the more i am rewarded by perfection and the knowledge of how it works. its harmony and how it is beautiful.

as i turn the dials and clean the chrome body of the clock, i suddenly find myself in a sylar frame of mind. oh excuse me for having a heroes moment here, but sylar has definitely evolved to be one of my favourite characters – psycho killer and all the emotional conflicts and all.

i am intrigued by the idea of symbiosis. how perfection works. and an understanding of how perfection works. isn’t it curious how we can create things that work perfectly to perform a function, but we ourselves cannot work, much less live, together to achieve that harmony?

and looking at the situation of the world, i get angry. i mean, who would not? wars. people killing each other. people polluting the environment. and you actually come to a point where you don’t exactly give up on the world, but you attempt to release yourself from such association, whereby you regard those who disrespect life as lower life forms. and come on, this is logically justified. i really cannot have that high of a regard for a rempit who snatches bags or for a person who litters on the streets, for example. these kind of people are glitches in the system. those who ruin the symbiosis. the perfection.

on the flipside, when you actually encounter someone who are exceptionally upright, you develop a respect for the person. they bring a balance to the force.

and then – in the sylar frame of mind – there are those who are special. who exceeds what is normal extraordinarily. those who are diabolically evil. and those who are supernaturally good. no matter what. and you just want to know how the live their lives that way. to be regarded special. HOW? and i guess, what makes them tick.

i know. i should go home. it is too close to the weekend for deep thoughts right about now. you’re right.

last post for 2008

that’s right, lads, you won’t be seeing postings again for the rest of the year. though, if you do meet me in person over the next few days, do come on up and say hi and we’ll take a cuppa kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

2008 had ups and downs, but it certainly was not a bad year after all. i got several people to thank for it. you wonderful blog stalkers who have followed me on my journeys. the akurians. the pint sized kids who – in the past few months – made me understand why imagination is by leagues, far more important than knowledge. and most importantly, J – whom you can thank the tinge of cheeriness in this post (and person!) for.

as a tribute to the year that will soon conclude, here’s some highlights of 2008.

it is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. ~ ralph waldo emerson

to point out the bleeding obvious, i think that our people don’t read enough good literature. of course we read. but a lot of us read too much trash. gossip and entertainment are good and all. i personally like a juicy one once in a while to make my life feel less pathetic. but for a lot of people, it kinda just stops there.

what bugs me most, is that some people are actually proud that they are non-readers. start surfing facebook, and you will see notes like, “what’s a book?” in the ‘favourite books’ info section. and since we’re on this section, hands up, how many of you proudly declare that “sleeping” is your favourite pastime? i honestly cannot understand why you would do such a thing to yourself. of course everyone likes sleeping and a lot of us can certainly do with a few more clocked hours of sleep a day, but this is not something you want to point out as your favourite pastime. i must say that i am horrified.

and i can understand when people say that they can’t handle heavy literature. hey man, that’s fine. but not all books – or reading material for that matter – are heavy stuff. there are plenty of decent articles in local magazines which are light and non-trashy.

as a writer pulak, it breaks my heart when editor tell me that readers don’t like long features. the new trend is to scatter as many photos as possible, with short descriptions. wt-? and we wonder why there are so few malaysian writers out there that stay in the industry of writing long features. and then as a result of this pulak, there is a lack of good reading material in our circulation. macam mana nak pull the interest of the already lazy reading malaysian out there?

it is a vicious circle, i tell you. it might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me. i am a reader and i want good stories. i am a writer, and i have some pretty damn awesome stories to share.

the difference between a man and a boy is, a boy wants to grow up to be a fireman, but a man wants to grow up to be a giant monster fireman. ~ jack handy

i am not happy. can you tell?

not politically motivated? the musical chairs the parliament members are playing now? NOT POLITICALLY MOTIVATED?! of course they are politically motivated! they certainly cannot be morally motivated. and it is honestly far for being socially motivated. and because everyone sitting in the dewans are too occupied holding on to their power seats, this also cannot be motivated by national economics (personal economics simply supports the point of this being politically motivated).

i almost never express my views on local politics, but if anyone actually reads this, i want to tell you who this affects: the average-earning day-to-day working malaysian, who really, are getting just too tired of the political drama to care anymore for what happens in the dewan. it has come to a point where i really don’t care anymore who sits on the bloody chair. i just want them to pull themselves together. you don’t like who sits next to you? TOO BAD! live with it. ni bukan, sikit sikit nak merajuk, nak bantah, nak protest.

any first year varsity student studying elementary behaviorism will tell you that resistance will only fuel contempt. your job is to sit in the dewan and discuss what is best. if the other person won’t listen, you job is to settle it in the dewan like mature grown-ups, not to run to the media and whine and complaint.

let me tell you my reaction when i received the news yesterday via sms news feed: crap. i sighed. now the bloody dewan will be buzzing about this issue pulak. all the press conferences and meetings will have this as their topic, for at least 60 days when a by-election is due. kalau he wins, we will gaduh in the parliament about the win. if he does not win, we will gaduh in the parliament about how he did not win. the gaduh will be about manipulation, corruption, nepotism, favoritism, bla bla bla. this means, over the next three months at least, real issues such as the local socio-economic balance and financial issues will take a very neglected back seat. oh, the issues will be mentioned – but as prevailing problems hurled at each other, used by the other to ‘expose’ incompetence. but until the parliament stops this stupid game of musical chairs, no one will really sit to look into the issues.

the thing that makes me upset when she resigned, is that it is all part of the plan. it was all a set up. they have planned to let things simmer for awhile, AND THEN stir things up again. that she was never meant to hold on to that seat. she was never meant to serve. she was never meant to be the responsible one. and this makes me angry. that she was used just to hold down the seat for him until he can stand for elections again. that’s sad, man. i don’t know what you’re really thinking, datuk seri, but that is how it comes across to me. and that’s sad.

choose a side? choose a side? why the hell should i when it has actually come to a point when both sides are just as screwed up as the next one. i have always firmly believed that we should leave politics to the politicians, and a big part of me still believes it. suka hati you all la how you all want to gaduh in the dewan. kill each other off if you want to, i don’t care anymore what kind of bloodbath happens in there. janji, you fix our country, and yang berhormat, you better bloody well do it soon. i don’t care anymore WHO does it.

dawn of the black gold: malaysia tosses and turns throughout the night, and wakes up to the global oil price crisis void

i received the stream of smses with regards to the petrol price hike while i was at the terminal. great. it had to happen when i was berpuluh-puluh kms from home la. it had to happen on the day i picked to make the trip here la. any dungu can tell that it is useless to isi minyak at the airport because by the time you return to the civilised world, you’ll run low on petrol anyway. and any logical moron can tell that subang is the absolute worst place to isi minyak an hour after news like this gets out.

sigh.

this is not a blog post that disses the government. if you are looking for a cynic to vent bad language to the ministers, you got the wrong blog and i suggest you hop over to someone else. they’re not hard to find, seriously. i must say though, a lot of them are a tad harsh. i am going to be blue and black and an assortment of colours too by this price hike – especially the next time i need to fill petrol again (oh, very colourful, i assure you).

but i understand why what is done has to be done. i am actually surprised that it took this long to kick in. and by the looks to the weather, the buzz of the bees and the twitter of birds in the sky, i’d say we’re going to have to hold on for another possible price hike. it’s going to be a bumpy ride, my friends.

i’ve been monitoring global oil prices for a coupla weeks now. it really is not pretty. seriously, it is actually very disturbing and the worst, i’m afraid is yet to come. those firing bullets at the government need to look at this crisis from a more global perspective.

• oil prices have risen by around 400% during the past seven years and by 40% in 2008 alone (source).
• oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. they have now multiplied sixfold since 2002, compared with the fourfold increase of the 1973 and 1974 (source).

the million ringgit (i’ll tell you why ‘ringgit’ in a minute) question therefore, is what is the cause of the jump in global oil prices? the malaysian government is not the only ones making belt tightening measures that chokes the sides of it’s people. it’s happening in indonesia. it’s happening in taiwan. it is happening in america and in britian. it’s happening everywhere.

so, a cause, you ask? a move of global stubbornness and selfishness, if you ask me.

• the iraq war means oil costs three times more than it should, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the iraq war (source).
• there is no shortage of oil in the world and its present price level was driven up by unreal speculation. speculators and hedge funds buy oil futures and say that this or that event may cause an oil shortage (source).
• the US economy, a $15 trillion giant which makes up 25% of the world economy, is in trouble, and could drag down world growth. the US central bank has cut interest rates aggressively and the US congress is planning an economic stimulus package to prevent a recession (source). the US federal reserve has auctioned another $75bn (£38bn) in short-term loans to the financial sector (source).

and didn’t i tell you that the worst is yet to come? all theories point to a further escalation in global oil prices. that’s right, it is only going to get more and more expensive. as of now, government oil subsidy budgets are already going bust. predictions point to the price tag hitting USD200 per barrel by the end of the year. analysts all over the world are bracing for impact. no one has ever seen this sort of phenomena before. from a very real point of view, it is exceedingly frightening.

today is world environment day. all the issues raised are real to a very scary extend. now, more than ever, it borders on a life or death hunt for renewable alternative sources of energy. now, more than ever, we all got to make that conscious effort to save and to conserve. it is no longer the question of whether you love mama nature and want to save the trees. it is more of that slap in the face that tells you that if you don’t play your role, you will not be able to afford the basic necessities of life because price hikes are inevitable.

if you take big paces you leave big spaces. ~ burmese proverb

i am deeply affected by the cyclone which hit myanmar. looking at photos of the damage over the internet especially. because i recognise those streets. the streets with enormous trees splintered all across them. i recognise those buildings. well, what’s left of them. those faces. unmistakably burmese.

photos of downtown yangon, were especially painful.

i was there, remember. just three months ago. i was there. walking down the streets of yangon as they converge around the magnificent sule paya. i was there. among the thousands of people coming and going right in the heart of the yangon. thousands and thousands of people in a hurry to get somewhere, to do something, to earn a living. struggling, yes. thriving, maybe even. alive, definitely. i was there. sitting by the banks of the river watching boats bob over them as the sun begins to set.

i was there. on an adventure that tested the core of my gut (literally and figuratively) about what it is to be an independent asian backpacker.

i learnt a lot on those streets. the side of the world which is insanely beautiful. the side of the world that could instantly drive me to tears. the good, the holy, the ugly, and the fine lines that divide the three.

some people have asked me if myanmar is manageable travel-wise. baby, if i could do it, so can you, but i have always made my reservations clear. do not go there is you are going to judge a country by your personal principles and beliefs. do not go there if you’re not prepared to let realities alter your perceptions. most of all, do not go there if you are afraid.

i am extremely worried about how the capital, and the people of the irrawaddy delta, and the mon and kayin states will fare this trial. you know if you have a house, and a storm tears it down, you will wallow for awhile and then start collecting sand to build a new house. well, what if collecting sand is what you do in the first place, and the storm takes that away from you? what if you had so little to begin with, and now you have less than nothing, because with nothing, you cannot get anything there.

i remember, while travelling in nyangshwe and bagan and kyaitiyo, how groups of teenagers would gather in the evenings. after work (teenagers work 10 hour days there doing whatever they can). after dinner. bundled in jackets, sometimes under a street lamp, which is not necessarily lit. it would be dark, except for what little light escapes a nearby house or the moonlight. between them one, maybe two guitars. these teens would joke about, but not a lot since everyday is like every other. but long in between these nervous laughter, they would sing. happy songs. sad songs. songs about love. love loss. life in general. in an hour or two, one by one, they exchange hopeful smiles, and head home to conclude the day.

i wonder if these children survived. i wonder if their guitar did. i wonder if they still sing.

most of the world blame the government. most of the world have never been to myanmar. most of the world have not seen myanmar, except what the media shows them. while i agree the singular point that the government is desperately ineffective, i learnt that the imposition of one’s philosophies onto another is not always the best solution. just because a mechanism works somewhere, it might not work somewhere else. asia is a patchwork of such failed attempts. see vietnam. see kuwait. see afghanistan.

i am very sad for the turn of events this country has been blown with.