Misconception

Or rather, deception. This word defines the world we live in. Think of the most pleasant sounding thing that you’ve ever heard or read of describing something you have no experience with.  Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I guarantee you that when you get down to it and get your hands dirty, you’ll soon realize that ‘dirty’ is not what it sounded like, even though it is what it actually is.

I’ll give you an example. People talk about campus life like it’s heaven on earth. It isn’t. I can guarantee that no one can put their hand on their heart and say that it is. Sure, it may be heaven in comparison with working life, but that is like saying the shit in your toilet is gold compared to the shit in the sewers. Those who claim that they can actually honestly say they enjoyed their campus life are liars, and if anyone were to tell me that I haven’t been living my campus life properly or to the fullest, my response to such people is simply that they haven’t been born properly or to the fullest either.

But I digress. Back to deception. This is not seen as a problem by many people, as they’d say “y’know, that’s life. That’s how things are in the real world.” Maybe so, but it shouldn’t be. Why it is so is simple. Being straightforward puts people off. It’s like fast food. Tell them up front that they haven’t been prepared to suit individual needs and are therefore generic and may cause health problems isn’t going to sell the product as embellishing with lies, saying fast food help you make up for lost time, bond with families and all that other nonsense you see on fast food ads, will. And it doesn’t end there. Deception is found everywhere. Get a job thinking the only people you are going to meet are your colleagues and bosses and half the time you get endless encounters with people you don’t care for but have to mingle with anyway for the sake of the company’s profits. Or you get a job thinking you’ll be an artist by the conventional sense and you end up being a photographer and videographer.

In the corporate world, I get it. You need to please the source of income. So you need to be subtle about reality and embellish every single detail to ensure that the first impression people get isn’t ‘shite’ until they really take a closer look. However, there are times when you have to be so subtle that people can’t read between the lines because there doesn’t seem to be any. Then these people get baited and feel betrayed but they cannot blame the source of their feeling betrayed because they’re told they didn’t look closely enough. But that’s fine, because it’s all so that people can make a living, right? Like hell it is.

I remember reading this old joke from an old newspaper column in a museum-ish place in Cameron Highlands. It was generally about the campaigning periods that precede elections. It went like this: a few guys died and were told to choose if they wanted to go to heaven or hell. They checked heaven out and decided it was okay; serene, calm, relaxing but rather uneventful. So they decided to see what hell had to offer. What they saw was unending feasts, booze, flamboyance, extravagance, debauchery and every imaginable pleasure known to man, guilty or otherwise. So the guys chose to go to hell. But when they actually got there, it turns out that they had to do manual labour, had no rest, consume excrements and bathe in fire with oil as soap. In other words, nothing like the impression they were given. They went to the Devil himself to voice their dissatisfaction regarding the deception, to which the Devil replied “oh we were campaigning, so of course we had to seem more desirable.” Moral of the story was simple; know that what you see is not necessarily what you get, so choose wisely. This was a lesson I learned the hard way, which made me understand the need for deception.

But I can’t help but think that this just isn’t the way to do it. Because of that, the company that had my services for three months (bless them) had a half-arsed worker who did things half-arsedly when doing social related work, and being generally enthusiastic otherwise. They could have had someone who was genuinely enthusiastic about the whole package. And I don’t have to deal with social chores that I couldn’t care less about, but admittedly this is just me whining about work.

Speaking of university, recent events have reminded me about how I went in without anyone knowing me and left just as I entered; without anyone knowing or remembering me. However, I do remember a number of people. The nosy fellas, the overly social dudes (neither are necessarily bad traits, come to think of it), the intelligent and analytical one who feigns ignorance, the ladies who can tell the difference between stimulating and revolting drama, and the ones who were there to go with the flow but end up being in the spotlights. These are people who, for better or worse, I would like to remember or don’t mind remembering. Then there are the lying whores, passive-aggressive bitches, ruthlessly selfish and hypocritical pricks and the turncoats that shift every time there is a light breeze. These are degenerate vermin I wish I never met and would love to bludgeon them to oblivion with their own empty skulls. Why do I have such animosity towards them? Deception, simple as that. If only they could comprehend the irony in some of the filth that escapes their mouths. It makes so little sense that it’s funny when I think about it now. Then again, I hope they never will, unless the one enlightening them is one of their own kind. Or an axe murderer. All I know is that I will not be the one to do so, unless I turn into an axe swinging psychopath.

Before I go, I wish to talk about that newspaper column I mentioned. This was written in a time where, I imagine, there was less fuss about political correctness and people don’t look between the lines when there are none. As the local newspapers evolved into the way it is now, I can only wonder how people tolerate, let alone condone, this kind of overly deceptive writing, and how people actually live with it. As someone who reads only the newsy bits and throw everything else aside if it wasn’t written by Jeremy Clarkson, you can imagine how I yearn for such brutal honesty, even if it is exaggerated. But that might not happen because someone politically influential will read between non-existent lines and end the writing or even literal life of the writer.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

Reviewing the months

Going through these three months of mine at Write On Media, which incidentally will be merged into Blue Inc. soon, I discover that, to my disappointment, as a writer you are still a journalist, meaning you still go out to meet people you don’t care for for the sake of having something to write about. That’s a major problem for me as I count myself among the people who chose to go into this profession to avoid meeting people. A terrible misconception on my part, caused by the equally bad misleading conception perpetrated by the Internet. As a result, I am taking an escape route which leads me straight into the very pit from which I was trying to escape.

Even so, it’s not all barf and crap, as I am a tech writer to be specific, so there are some benefits, such as getting news of new headphones, speakers and computer parts entering the market, promising to turn your entertainment world more real than the real world itself. It’s not all moonlight and roses either, because, more than anything else, you get news, most which no one cares for, like some telco having some deal with some other company for some reason or other; unless you own said companies or have some major shares with them, I doubt you would have a drop of rat’s piss to give.

Then there’s the next problem I have with this field of work: photography. What was once a hobby of the rich is now a job of the poor. Sure, some people may enjoy it, and these people are called photographers, and are paid to do nothing but that. That’s not the case anymore; with every Tom, Dick and Harry having a DSLR following the DSLR boom, everyone is expected to be expert photographers as well, including people like me who couldn’t give a flying toss about following dumb trends of what’s ‘fashionable’ and believe the eye to forever be the best camera. And this is a problem because whenever stuff comes in to be reviewed, we need photos of it to go together with the writers’ opinions of it and since the Internet is as unreliable as it is helpful, we have to get our own hands dirty and get shots of our own.

Now let me just get things straight: I have no problems whatsoever with people who are into photography. I believe it can be a form of art and that photographers deserve their madly high pay because they are artists. But to force this onto people who are less than uninterested is just too much for me to handle, not to mention the bandwagon that is the DSLR boom, birthing twits who claim to have a passion for photography but setting their unbefitting DSLRs (which deserve better owners) to full auto mode. That is, as I have said many times before, like having a gaming mouse and playing nothing but solitaire and minesweeper. I’ll admit to committing the crime of using a DSLR on full auto, because I simply couldn’t care less and have no choice because I know nothing about DSLRs when I was being sent away to take pictures during events, but this sort of thing is just inexcusable for people who claim to be passionate about something. I mean, wouldn’t you willingly go and find out more about something you like doing? Sure, people are unwilling to admit that they’ve jumped on a bandwagon to follow a trend, and this is precisely why they are twits.

I find trends to be like a pandemic disease; something the whole world has or is doing, most of which I’d rather not affect or get anywhere near me. Notable ones were the Sony Ericsson Aino from over five years back and DSLRs a year later. And there’s the elitist iPhones, which I don’t remember when it started (somewhere around 2007 I reckon), but is the longest lasting one I can remember. And Samsung, which started shortly after but is now competing with Apple to be the longest lasting disease in human history, not to mention slowly becoming equally elitist as shown by their Galaxy Gear, which only works within the higher ends of their own range of phones. And I hate them because people get it because it is ‘cool’ and then drop it a second later. Sure there are people who pick up a DSLR and keep on learning about photography and end up being pretty good photographers themselves, but most, like I said, get them to take hi-res selfies and then leave them somewhere or other to be a dust magnet. Same with the phones; people pick them up because everyone has it, then buys a new one whenever a new one is released, even if it is released a day later, and is the exact same phone as the previous one except in name.

But I digress. Point is that I have to deal with stuff that I don’t care for, and that just makes me hate them when I initially didn’t, and other things which I don’t care for but don’t mind doing. Then comes the thing that I came here for in the first place: reviewing games. Despite only getting two at most, this is the only thing that’s stopping me from storming out the front door and never returning at the end of the first month. Some are not really satisfying (such as F1 2013), while others, like Pokémon X and Y, were a major source of joy. This is as close to living the dream for me as it gets. Unfortunately, as always, sweet dreams end abruptly and sometimes you get nightmares instead of pleasant ones. As mentioned, I only get to do two a month (there are only so many games being released every month anyway, and I’m not the only writer around), some of which are crap anyway, and your words do not remain your own when you have an editor looking through your final product.

Before I continue, let me just say it up front that I respect my editor. In fact, I respect everyone here, as they really know what they’re doing. The only issue is that, when two styles do not match, the writer may lose his at the discretion of the editor, simply because the writer writes his opinion in his own flair and flavour, while the editor needs to make sure that readers know what the writer is on about. This is a problem for me because I like to write in long and convoluted sentences (as you can see) and leave some ambiguity in game reviews. This is especially so when a game is as good as Pokémon X and Y where I want to hint on certain features without revealing too much, not to mention the word limit lest I fill the whole magazine with one game. The editor does his job and makes necessary amendments which, alas, makes me feel a tad disappointed because when I read the version ready for print, it feels as though I didn’t write it, but someone did attempting to mimic my style of writing. I don’t blame him, but it just doesn’t feel right for me.

Then there's the fact that I only get to caption pictures which I provide myself. Might be because I'm new, but I don't get the full press access to game images, and I'm sure as hell I can't just Google them up, as one does not simply take screenshots of a 3DS. Sure, there are some phone cam pictures, but I can't use them firstly because they suck and secondly the magazine need high res pictures so that the graphic designers have some room to do their job. Not sure exactly how that works myself, but that's the way it is. At any rate, when I don't get to do my own captioning, it is up to the editor to do it and since I cannot know what images he has chosen to use and how they caption them, errors, like in this month's issue where Venusaur has been misidentified as Bulbasaur, are bound to happen. I say that because, after all, you don't expect the editor who watches over the entire magazine to research every single game being reviewed, do you? 

Actually I do, and especially when it comes to Pokémon. But then again it can't be helped because as it turns out I'm the most knowledgeable one when it comes to Pokémon in this company, despite my missing Generations 4 and 5. So I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much when I wish that trivial mistakes like this are not made because trivial or otherwise, they are still mistakes, and when you cater for a narrow target audience, they are bound to be nitpickers such as myself and thus do not let mistakes slide.

Incidentally, GameAxis, or GAX as it is now known, will soon cease publication, with the December issue being the last. From then on, it will be integrated into HWM as a 10-page section, the way the original (Singaporean) GameAxis apparently did. This saddens me, as the only surviving English gaming publication is Malaysia is finally dead as a standalone publication and maybe for good if they later decide to kill the 10-page section altogether, and all that’s left for Malaysians are English imports, mostly from Britain and some from America, and countless other Chinese publications from who knows where, and woe be unto readers if they mirror content from China the way PC Gamer Malaysia did with the original from Britain. I say this not out of contempt of any kind, but merely due to the fact that the land of the greatest pirates can really show the reason behind their resorting to piracy. Keep in mind that they have news mistaking a buried fap tool for a mushroom of some kind so they are evidently not the brightest bunch, though such gullibility might have something to do with their addiction to censoring as many things on the internet as they can. Make no mistake, though, that the brilliant among them can be truly brilliant and are the reason China is rising as an economic force to be reckoned with.

But I digress. Again. So yes, 2014 will be Malaysia’s first year of having no more English gaming publications and everyone will be going online to keep tabs on new developments (which, I guess, everyone is already doing), and with that, my affiliation with Write On Media; it's the sole reason I wanted to be here so badly in the first place, and the only thing that made the other nonsense that no one else cares for even bearable. And in the process I have reconsidered the possibility of being a shrink. That’s just maybe. What I do know for sure is that Pokémon‎ X and Y are awesome and I will be spending some time as a lifeless bum on it the way I did with Emerald, and probably the first game I will consider properly playing competitively, despite the amount of luck involved to prepare for such a thing.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

The Emergence of a New Heart

A simple comic I found today has completely disrupted my ability to do anything but cry for the whole day. I mean literally cry, with tears actually flowing down my eyes. This is the comic on question:

By Lark. Original comic here.

This is testament of my emotional instability; a comic based on a game I have never played before affecting me so strongly makes me feel really miserable about it. And yet, it conveys such a strong and inspirational message, using equally powerful words and drawings that I can’t help but going back to looking at it more. And ending up crying some more.

For those who do not understand, it is about a player who has played Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the Nintendo 3DS, who stops after the release of Pokémon X and Y. Isabelle, the secretary of New Leaf’s mayor (who is the player) laments that the mayor may extend her adventure with the release of Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies and The Legend of Zelda: a Link Between Worlds shortly after, but sincerely hopes that the player will one day pick up Animal Crossing again.

Frankly, I love it. I love the fact that someone’s deeds are appreciated and remembered, even if the deeds are unreal and are appreciated and remembered by mere data. I love the fact that said someone’s presence makes the lives of others whole, their departure mourned and their return so eagerly anticipated. A part of me wants to experience this, because it feels like a priceless emotion to feel. I want to have the same feeling, in such a scale, because it is something I have never felt and something tells me I will never feel. And yet emotion of this magnitude is beyond what I can take, that every time I so much as think of it, I break down in tears.

I also love the message that old games should be picked up again every once in a while. Pleasant experiences deserve to be rekindled occasionally and the same goes to friendship. Especially friendship, even if said friendship is with fictional characters. That said, this may be the nostalgia addict within me speaking, as I myself do not have many of such powerful and pleasant experience to speak of.

And so ends my quest for achieving emotionlessness. Every time I manage to discard my heart and soul, new ones emerge in place of the old ones, only slightly harder, but infinitely more brittle, than the previous ones. My emotional instability grows with every attempt, and now I question myself if I have the right to ask others to not be affected by emotions if I myself break down this easily.

As I write this (and flood my keyboard in the process), I have decided that I will do all I can to not forget this comic. Despite the emotion being too much for me to handle, I cannot bear to let go of the inspiration that it provides. It is also a reminder to myself of how much I can be affected by the experience of another, and how strongly I feel for it even if I myself have had similar ones.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

The Lock of the Past, the Key to the Future Finale

The ghost of the past haunts me no more,
Never have I felt such freedom before,
To no longer be shackled to the ground,
To which for so long I have been bound.

Now from immense burden I am free,
Two thousand days of pain now behind me,
Free from darkness and free from light,
Free from the duty of an out phased knight.

Along with my soul I cast away my heart,
Nothing left to end, nothing left to start,
The vortex of the void now in place of my mind,
Nothing left to hold or leave behind.

Free at last from the lock of the past,
Unshackled by a key to the future,
Free from the die that has been cast.
Free from pain and free from rapture.

I now bid farewell to the ruby rose,
As the gates of the ruby castle I close,
The one who gave me life as I tore my world apart,
The one to whom I dedicate my works of art.

With no more pieces left to mend,
From mortal coils I now ascend,
As the final chapter comes to its end,
Total control I now extend.

Keeping up with technology.

So recently my father has just bought a smart TV. I’m not sure what the salesman told him when he was out shopping for it but now I’m getting the impression that said salesman probably said something along the lines of “it can read your mind and change the channels without you needing to lift a finger and download the entire internet for you to browse whenever and however you like.”

Many people have mentioned that technology isn’t like a TV drama series where you can record and watch whenever you like; fail to keep pace and you’re left trailing behind forever. It’s thanks to people who do not move with the times like my old man that stand-up comedians have things to joke about. That said, not every old person is stuck in the past. There are old people who are completely in touch with the times without forgetting their age. Well, not forgetting their age is really beside the point anyway.

Sometimes you have people who are so badly behind technological progress they tend to fly years ahead instead. Most of the time these are overly egotistical people who are afraid of being wrong. Such as my father. The kind of people who think “ooh I have a smart TV or a smartphone or whatever so I will now want to surf the net without using my laptop.” Yes, because typing in the address of a webpage on your smart TV browser using the remote control’s arrow buttons to select individual letters and numbers and then inputting them one by one is so much more convenient that typing it with a keyboard.

Maybe this is just me having a sluggish smartphone, but whenever I have my laptop easily accessible, I would chose to surf the net with it rather than using my smartphone. I would think that even people with tablets or the latest flagship smartphone models would still prefer a laptop or a netbook, even, over other mobile devices for the sheer convenience of a keyboard with physical keys that don’t compete for space with whatever your screen is displaying.

And now thanks to that, I’m feeling that the full potential of the smart TV is wasted on merely watching TV or some pirated low-res DVD movie. Maybe I should convince my father to get a PS3 as well since, let’s face it, he has no chance of using it to its full potential without me and it’s unfair that only he gets to use it to its full potential in his way.

And on that bombshell’ adieu to y’all.

The First Step Away From the Land of Birth. Rev. 1

Just a revision of a previous post with the same title. The reason for the revision is because I needed a writing sample for my application of a job I'm after. So here it is, a less vulgar, more tour-guide like version of it. It's also longer, because there was something significant that I forgot to mention.

My first experience outside of Malaysia happens to be Bali, one of the southern islands of Indonesia and its greatest tourist destination. It was a holiday that my friends and I have planned for over a year, which was reason for me to rejoice and despair at the same time; because it was an island of a neighbouring country which meant a similar culture. Part of me wanted to go somewhere further to experience cultures completely different from ours, while another was glad that the similar culture, and language, incidentally, meant easier communication. Despite the similarities, there are some differences worth noting though.

First of the differences is the traffic culture. In Malaysia, people use their honks in a sort of ‘get out of the way’ or ‘what are you doing?’ kind of way. I’m confident many drivers will agree with me, more often than not, that the honks will start blowing when someone is slow to respond to a green light. The same can be said in almost any situation where emergency braking in involved, be it when someone tries to make a turn off the main road only to realize he will not make it without being hit by oncoming traffic, or when someone cuts a long queue when a traffic light notorious for being red for extended periods of time finally turns green for a mere couple of seconds. In other words, Malaysians use their honks very aggressively, and rarely for any other reason.

In Bali, however, things are a bit different. Actually, things are very different if I’ll be honest. There, people use the honks in a ‘hey, notice me’ or ‘look out, I’m coming through’ kind of way. The way it was meant to be used, if I may say so. I’m not saying that they don’t use aggressive honking over in Bali. It’s just that, it is so much rarer. As a result of all this though, you hear the honks almost every minute there, but each time you hear it doesn’t make you feel guilty of committing some sort of offence or like the guy who just sounded his honk needed to spend seven centuries in burning hellfire like you probably would here.

Let me give you an example.  Imagine a narrow road with only one lane going in each direction and there is a fast car coming behind a slow lorry. In Malaysia, the driver of the car will drive up next to the lorry when the opposite side is clear and honk while giving the 'I’ll kill you’ look, sometimes even showing the finger, before speeding up and actually finishing the overtaking manoeuvre. In Bali, when the driver of the car sees that the coast is clear on the opposite side, he sounds the honk, which catches the attention of the lorry driver, who notices that someone wants to overtake, who then proceeds to slow down and drive a little closer to the edge of the road so that the car can overtake a little easier.

Now, there are a few things that I’m unsure of, first of which is if this kind of driving style is an Indonesian or strictly Balinese style. I am also unsure if this driving style is the result of the narrow, single-lane roads that I described above which make up most of Bali’s traffic network. What I’m sure of is that people should drive like how the Balinese drivers do. I don’t know if drivers in other countries drive like they do, but those in Malaysia really should learn to do so.

Then there’s the language. As our history classes in school have taught us, the first Malays came from Indonesia, who made a stop at Singapore for a few generations before going to Malacca. So it would make sense that the language we use today is still very similar. But what I want to point out is that, sometime in between the first Srivijayan price and the establishment of the Malay language as a language on its own, the two branched out into two different paths of evolution, the same way animals would evolve differently if part of the population of a local specie migrated to or was transported somewhere else. 

To put this description into actual experience, they use words which we don’t normally do but are aware of the existence of such words, we are sometimes confused by their choice of words when they speak and we understand them when they speak but not every single word in a sentence. This goes both ways I guess, because they would probably experience the same. 

That aside, many other things remain similar to Malaysia; the flora, the fauna, the food, the architecture, the lack of a nightlife, and probably most important to some, the cutthroat prices that helps one sharpen their bargaining skills. 

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

In Strength is Weakness.

I’ve recently come across this Singaporean writer (whose identity I shall not disclose now because I intend to flame) who writes great stuff. Mind you, I am envious of his works; I wish I could write like that. I’m thinking he probably has a few online bestsellers to his name.

That is, until I came upon his post on depression.

Not that he got anything wrong. In fact, I agree with most of what was written, especially the part about people who say ‘just get over it’ don’t actually understand depression. On that note, I would like to add that people who say ‘just let go’ should also shut their trap. Personally, I feel these people who have lost nothing should only be given the right to speak regarding this matter once they themselves succeed in letting something go; like a limb or a young loved one.

But I digress. What I am trying to say is that he got it easy. Being able to only meet 5 friends in the span of 9 months, among other things, you lucky bastard.

But what I also realize reading his account, his episode, his version, was that, by reliving it, by recounting, by retelling the entire process, or rather the recording of it which is involved, one gets the chance to reflect on what exactly happened, to check every detail, in detail (oh kill me), to discover what went wrong, where and how to fix it. The power of retrospection, I guess. So I shall do the same. Which means another read for you. Or reread, if you already know of this tale before. Enjoy, if you’re into that kind of thing. Otherwise, well, we’ll see what ends up being the outcome, won’t we

Right, where to begin…

May 2009. The first week of the first semester of my second year as an undergrad student.  Without going into detail, it should suffice to say that the big circle of friends that I was once a part of splintered. And I, foolishly bearing responsibility for being part of the squabble that started the whole mess, returned to my old self, the solo hero, the lone wolf.

From the first week when it all began, I dreaded the end of every day. The last class of the day meant going home, plummeting into a dazing stupor, awaiting dinnertime when I would have dinner with friends which, deep in the back of my mind, I feared I would lose due to circumstances beyond my control again. By the time I returned to being a loner, I stopped having dinner with anyone but my own shadow altogether. And after dinner, it was going home, again degenerating into a lifeless puppet until it was time for bed, which I also dreaded because it meant waking up without a sense of purpose, going to class with a heavy masquerade, acting as if nothing ever happened until classes ended, which the cycle then starts all over again.

Now, I’ll admit ahead of time that I have never been an optimist. There is a fine line between optimism and self-deception; a line so fine that by all practical means and purposes it doesn’t exist. All that said, I do not view myself as a pessimist either. I never presumptuously felt that my life had meaning, that I had a purpose to achieve while I still breathe, nor have I felt that my life was a joyful one where even the most impossible dreams come true. But despite all that, I looked forward to the day that followed every morning; to be just in time for class before the lecturer started, to have the lecturer scream at a noisy class like a schoolteacher would children and secretly laughing at those who felt cold water being poured on burnt areas, to plan our group presentation at the end of the semester in a way that will blow away everyone else’s, to kick the sandbag out of shape on training days, to steal as many kills as possible in the DotA streaks at the nearest cyber cafés during the weekends. The list just goes on.

Well, until shit hit the fan, from which point I wake up, thinking to myself “not this shit again” as I head for class only to fall into a daze throughout most of the lectures, having nothing to look forward to until bed time when I think to myself “not this shit all over again tomorrow…”

By this point I knew I needed help. The benefit of majoring in Psychology and minoring in Counselling, I suppose. But being in Kampar, a tiny little town with barely anything, realization was the easy part. This is some 200 kilometres away from KL where I am from and familiar with, where everything is just a short distance away, even via public transport. So I talked with one of my lecturers who was a registered counsellor, and had a few sessions with him. This proved to be useless because he seems to think that the situation which I am in is not as severe as I make it sound, though this might have something to do with us not having a proper counsellor-client relationship. He is still a person I respect, but due to such circumstances I decided that he can be of no help to me. So I decided to get formal help in between semesters. Which also proved to be a waste of time when your semester break is only 3 weeks long tops.

I was unwilling to suspend my studies to fix myself for a couple of reasons. 1) Who knows how long this would take? 2) Should it not turn out well (again), all that time waiting would be for nothing.

So I soldiered on for the 2 remaining years of my degree course, despite being aware that the longer my mind stays fragmented, the harder it is to fix later, even if still possible. As time went on, the despair that I felt waking up every morning started to wane. Until today, I am unsure if I no longer feel despair, or it’s just that I am so used to it that it doesn’t feel like it’s there. One thing that I know for sure is that the anticipation of the events of the day did not return; the feeling of looking forward to pleasurable experiences did not return with the diminishing of the hopelessness.

From that point on, I was in the company of people solely because I had to; we either had assignments to complete, presentations to plan, or some other business to attend to. Never just because. I never had the luxury to go full hermit mode. I had to see faces which I sort of fear will never see again in the same positive light, faces that I just don’t care for, but slightly wish they weren’t there because they were polluting the scenery, and also faces that caused my predicament; faces that sort of put me in a relapse, faces I wished I could punch, pummel and completely trample on and get away with it. Seeing all these faces did nothing but reinforce my already sturdy misanthropy.

As a result, I have trained myself to be as completely indifferent to as many stimuli as possible. This meant that I do not have a flying rat’s shit to give about anything, which also meant I did not need to pretend. I did not need to put on a masque, which was tiring as hell, because I have gotten used to genuinely not care.

By the end of my course though, some of the people that remained rather close began to have me tag along whenever they have something going on, be it a weekend off to Ipoh or even something as simple as dinner, which I grew to accept as often as I could. Ultimately, all that held little meaning. They were, regrettably, merely friends of the phase, who revert to being mere acquaintances as time passes.

I have 10 close friends, who have remained so from the very day they gained that status. They are like the brothers and sisters which I didn’t have. But even among them, all but one know not the details of the hell I went through. To them, I have not changed much, if any at all because in the 2 years we have almost never met, I went through the full journey from depression to indifference.

Even as I returned to the heart of the country and finally sought proper, professional help, only the psychiatrist that initially took my case thought I had clinical depression, as he had to do the full assessment. The other psychiatrists who did the follow-ups, however, thought I was very much fine because of the way I showed no despair and no signs of low mood, to which I spiked the argument that it was possible that I was so used to being depressed that it was no longer evident. The 10 sessions of psychoanalysis to which I was referred to ended up not being a complete waste of time, but did not really achieve any obvious change either.

As the days go by, the mundane life remained. Nothing made more sense than it did before; nothing was more meaningful than it was before. My mum got me a number of self-help books regarding depression and with every book I go through, grows my feelings of envy for those who have ‘found the way out’ or ‘have seen the light at the end of the tunnel’. All which makes me wonder if I was missing something, or if I was doing something wrong. Every single case talks of a phoenix rising from the ashes of a mangled and horrible past while I pondered as to why I remain ash stored in a burial urn ready to be scattered across the winds and the seven seas.

And hence, I have no one to thank as no one actually did anything meaningful. Not even the 10 brothers and sisters of mine because everyone is also going through life as a university student, which I now suspect to be the hardest phase of them all in life. And as I do not enjoy or benefit from sharing, I do not do so unless asked. Which of course I don’t get asked because everyone has their own shit to deal with. No sense getting more shit than one can handle.

So that’s it. Anyone who has any idea of what I’m doing wrong, please let me know. Except the not sharing unless asked thing, because I did once and realized it did not make me feel better nor did it feel like a heavy load off my shoulders. Tried and tested, doesn’t work. Oh and on a side note, there's this one particular book which said that one gets depression 'not because one is weak, but because one has been too strong for too long'. Sounds like nonsense to me. Thoughts, anyone?

And of course, although completely coincidental, I have to thank a friend of mine for unwittingly introducing me to the existence of this writer. Who in turn taught me a method to achieve some cheap publicity, something which I despised.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: This is a confession. I always feel very guilty when I am with said friend who unwittingly introduced me to said writer. This is because I feel that we get along exceptionally well, which isn’t a problem, except said friend is the significant other of one of my brothers. So, to said brother, if I have ever made you feel insecure, I apologise from the bottom of my heart.

The First Step Away From the Land of Birth.

Right. So last week I was in Bali for a holiday; one planned over a year ago. Now, I’m not going to be talking about sights and food and whatnot; you can go look for some crummy tour guide or something for that sort of stuff. What I’m going to talk about is something that I feel for on a personal level, and that is the culture there, or rather, the difference between theirs and ours.

First of the differences is the traffic culture. In Malaysia, people use their honks in a sort of ‘get out of the fucking way’ kind of way, where if someone is slow to respond to a green light by more than a second, other drivers behind will start blowing their honks away, never relenting until their temper has been cooled. Which may be a good 100 meters later. That, or they use it in a ‘do you have mud for brains?’ way, where it used the same way a short fused bugger would be scolding another for some mistake someone made. In short, Malaysians use their honks very aggressively, always scolding people using the honks instead of their own voices.

In Bali, however, things are a bit different. Actually, things are very different if I’ll be honest. There, people use the honks in a ‘hey, notice me’ or ‘look out, I’m coming through’ kind of way. The way it was meant to be used, if I may say so. I’m not saying that they don’t use aggressive honking over in Bali. It’s just that, it is so much rarer. As a result of all this though, you hear the honks almost every minute there, but each time you hear it doesn’t make you feel guilty of committing some sort of offence or like the guy who just sounded his honk needed to spend seven centuries in burning hellfire like you probably would here.

Let me give you an example.  Imagine a narrow road with only one lane going in each direction and there is a fast car coming behind a slow lorry. In Malaysia, the driver of the car will drive up next to the lorry when the opposite side is clear and honk while showing the finger through the window, before speeding up and actually finishing the overtaking manoeuvre. In Bali, when the driver of the car sees that the coast is clear on the opposite side, he sounds the honk, which catches the attention of the lorry driver, who notices that someone wants to overtake, who then proceeds to slow down and drive a little closer to the edge of the road so that the car can overtake a little easier.

Now, there are a few things that I’m unsure of, first of which is if this kind of driving style is an Indonesian or strictly Balinese style. I am also unsure if this driving style is the result of the narrow, single-lane roads that I described above which make up most of Bali’s traffic network. What I’m sure of is that people should drive like how the Balinese drivers do. I don’t know if drivers in other countries drive like they do, but those in Malaysia really should learn to do so.

That aside, many other things remain similar to Malaysia; the flora, the fauna, the food, the architecture, the lack of a nightlife, and probably most important to some, the cutthroat prices that helps one sharpen their bargaining skills.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: You may notice that I’ve changed (finally) the background picture. This is because ImageShack is a completely incompetent shit that loses uploaded images and when you ask them to try to retrieve it, they make you go through useless and troublesome procedures. Since I’m sick of seeing a blank background I decided to get another, but because this setup of mine doesn’t not have Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator installed because I’m too poor (and lazy) to get another copy, I’m unable to make my own and thus shall resort to the raw materials provided by Capcom.

The price of freedom, revisited.

Perhaps I should have realized sooner, but I now know that not everyone can bear the price of freedom. With hindsight now I understand why, during my schooling days when motivational talks for students were a frequent thing, that those motivators would give me queer looks, mock and scorn me when they ask “what do you dream of?” and I replied “infinite freedom.”

Credit where it is due, I guess they did alright for realizing that they themselves are unworthy of freedom because they are unable to bear such a price. But for them to think that everyone else is as unworthy as them, well, that is a bit condescending of them, if not also egocentric.

Despite all that’s said I have no problems with people embracing freedom. In fact, as long as no one else in hurt in the process, I can encourage nothing more than I do freedom. Emphasis on ‘no one else’ because I also believe masochists are free to hurt themselves or deprive themselves of their own freedom if it makes them happy, as long as no one else is hurt. At the risk of stating the obvious, when I say hurt I mean physically and mentally, of course. No doubt there are sadomasochistic people who wish the entire world is as depraved as they are as they relentlessly attempt to introduce such depravity to their family and friends, but I would personally prefer that they keep their practices within their own depraved community, for everyone else is also free to live free and wholesome lives.

But I digress. The fact remains that everyone should be free and despite that, not many can bear the burden of being free. I’ll admit it’s not something I understand, but I will hypothesize that it has something to do with our violent animal nature, that some feel or believe that there is no point of freedom if they are not allowed to be agents of pain and suffering. To quote Immanuel Kant, “Peace amongst men living alongside one another is not a natural state. On the contrary, the natural state of man is that of war. War manifested not only by open hostilities, but also by the constant threat of hostility. Peace, therefore, is a state that must be established by law.”

This brings me to an old problem, one that I face every now and again. One so old that I have just decided not to mention it again; some things get old very quickly, especially unpleasant ones. The only difference is now I have just thought of establishing a bit of non-reporting to myself. Intentional ignorance, if you will.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: The word ignorance is a greatly misused word, mainly by dim-witted people. Ignorance is described as being unaware or ill-informed, which differs from stupid which means someone with a slow brain. This needs to be mentioned because I’ve had enough of my ignorant pillock of a father calling everyone who doesn’t think as he does an ‘ignorant’ person. This is unfair to other intelligent but otherwise uninformed people, and is giving idiots too much credit.

In Exile; the Heart of the Sword.

You can always trust the Japanese to not fuck up their own legacy. Despite the rearranged and rushed story and non-main characters not staying true to the original, Rurouni Kenshin was a good movie. Great theme song by One OK Rock, nicely directed by Keishi Otomo and of course, excellent, almost perfect portrayal by Takeru Satoh.

This is probably why I so much prefer Japanese tributes rather than their American sorry excuse of an equivalent. Take Street Fighter, Dragon Ball and Tekken for examples. Hollywood has half the right idea when they think that the original will only appeal to cult audiences, which consists of people who played the original games or watched the original anime, so to sell to everyone else, the whole movie is changed into - guess what? - hot babes and their boobies. That's something that will appeal to even the most uncultured barbarian (or rather, that kind of appeal is greater the less cultured and the more barbaric a person is). Most ironically, it gets hard to think that those 'hot babes' are hot because, well, when a whole movie is dedicated to proving that single point, expectations tend to get quite high. In this proper live action adaptation, however, I cannot help but notice so much beauty in simplicity; in the normal everyday person. But what do I know? I am, after all, part of the cultured cult.

Thing is, what they probably don't realize is that their 'cult audience' is much larger than they anticipate, and of course, what's the point of using those titles if you're not going to appeal to the fans of the original? Not only is the essence of the original lost, fans who turn up to watch are disgusted and people who know nothing about the original get the wrong idea.

From a different perspective, you could say that the Americans are very good at unconsciously making parodies. Not sure if that can ever be viewed as a compliment, no matter how many different perspectives we view it from. Pretty much like calling a fool a person who is proud of his/her decision to not think; softening the blow or making it more obvious?

Incidentally, it may be a little late for this but I finally realized where the title ‘Heart of Sword’ came from. Silly me for not realizing earlier.

And with that, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: For y'all who missed the clickable bit up there, here it is, 'The Beginning' by 'One OK Rock'.