when i’m weak, i draw strength from you

so i don’t know where my brains and words been at
and i’m not sure if they’ll be back
these pages and phases have a knack
of filling up the spaces time attacks

while i gather my head around the thoughts that spilled between the lines of twitter and work i’ll leave you with some lines that reverberate around the bare walls of my little concrete living space.

i lie awake, i’ve gone to ground | i’m watching porn in my hotel dressing gown

and i’m sure you know me well | as i’m sure you don’t | but you just cant tell | who you’ll love and you who you wont

lovers, keep on the road you’re on | runners until the race is run | soldiers, you’ve got to soldier on | sometimes even right is wrong.

Kosketa minua Älä käsilläsi Vaan niin että tunnen sinut | Halaa minua Älä käsilläsi Mutta sielussasi | Minä kaipaan eskimo-ystävääni

by the water’s edge

just like it was last year, a sober dip in the pool, last drinks and embraces and with the final departure of an abraham, summer’s over.

my sister, bro-in-law and niece are down for a visit but the first two proper projects for the year have decided to kick-off at the same time with the same insane 3 week lifespan and i really dont know how to sort it all out. throw in an apartment to fit and furnish and the thought of it all needing to get done before month’s end – its enough to make you want to slip into a small corner and cover yourself with a blanket with your thumb in your mouth listening to radiohead.

everything seems to be running to stand still before fasting season begins and merdeka holidays kick-in. it’s going to be an interesting month of rallies, accomplisments and failures – mistakes and misdeeds and somehow i’m ready for it. if i can just see my kitten graduate from med school, get a nearby posting and everything else coming together reasonably well, i should be home free for the rest of the year.

this is it, i’ve walked and drank myself across the green fields and i’ve reached the river. time to jump in. see you on the other side.

Summer of ‘09

Iphone wordpress menu says “tap here to begin” yet it seems I’m already in the middle of the summer of ‘09.

It feels like this weekend has been the peak- that point in summer which encapsulates the summer’s flavour n raison d’être – perhaps even for the year as well.

This afternoon sipping beers n Guinness off the balcony of a bare 22nd floor penthouse flat we basked in the glow of one of those moments. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Evolution.

The boys were back in town for jay’s wedding but we stood amongst each other as men now. We somehow won the fight for our Darwinian rights and now find ourselves in the thick of adulthood- husbands-to-be, industry shakers n makers, corporate slaves and property owners.

How did we get here?

I’m not sure what the four legged mammal said to it’s reptilian predecessor but i think I’ve realized that the point is: we’re here, there’s no turning back and we’re all in this together.

Viva la vida – champagne supernova style.

time for a breath

whilst it looks like i havent had much time to breathe these couple of months, i’d say they’ve been pretty relaxed to the point where it may seem like i’ve actually slept through most of it.

july is looking like it’ll be a different story altogether. summer will really kick off with a bachelor party to organise/attend, a home to build, two wedding events, a short stint in singapore then a reunion with my 1 year old made-in-the-USA niece.

somehow in between all that i need to realign myself, my goals, my direction, my passions. while things happen and things get done, i need to figure out all over again – what is it all for?

anyone know the answers?

—

after joining for a while now, am finally starting to get into the twitter thing.

—

for example – a tweet from #aplusk introduced me to this :

“Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, “you owe me.” Look what happens to a love like that, it lights up the whole sky.” – Hafez

~

the moon is half cast tonight
pale and off-white
with a star that seems to drift
veering away from its sad glow

the night air is still
the tree leaves don’t move at all
in the quiet
you can hear them say
“i can only hold on
as long as you do”

painted faces

want-to-do list

no, this is not where i write about the girls i’d like to sleep with. it’s just that my life has been bogged down again by a never-ending post-it note of to-do items. and i suppose that’s life/work and i’m fine dealing with it, even though every time i strike items off the list, it gets replaced by ten more items. but, what really sucks about the never-ending post-it note of to-do items is the fact that i don’t remember what i want anymore. all i know is what i need to do. but in honour of the 3-day weekend, i’m taking an hour off my weekend sleep to post a list of things i WANT to do.

• write & record songs – with proper lyrics etc. even if it’s just a shitty voice and a guitar
• at the very least – learns some new songs
• draw, paint, make art – spend an afternoon making something myself, instead of buying shit
• draft material for a monthly column about my quarterlife crisis
• organise my lads mags, comics, bookshelf & dvd collection
• cook something new
• organise my liquor & learn to mix new cocktails
• organise my wardrobe
• purge facebook of non-friends
• re-design this journal
• go camping
• download the music i used to have on my minidisc player back in the day – deftones etc.

oh well, now that i’ve gotten this out of my system, it’s back to the never-ending post-it note of to-do items :

• get something for mom
• organise stag party for jay
• get indian wedding attire (wassit called again – a joopa?)
• sort out banking stuff
• sort out project penthouse
• do some chin-ups (and other stuff to make my arms look less pathetic)

—

as much as i miss travelling on work accounts, i think i’m secretly relieved i didn’t need to attend the meeting with the central bank governor of a middle eastern country. wouldn’t have had the peace of mind to enjoy this weekend as much.

—

i crossed one of the want-to-do items off my list today when the night before, on the verge of cancelling the trip entirely,felt stubborn and pulled in a new crew of mates to head out in search of a waterfall to desecrate. we hit the road at 7am, loading up on nasi lemak, feel good music, tiger beer, badly drawn maps, dubious google map directions on my iphone and four 7*rd rover crew rejects. the morning air was amazing as soon as we got off the highway and the vague directions of an old lady in a red (bicycle)riding hood steered us towards our objective. by 9.30, our shirts were off, nasi lemak devoured and beer cans opened in a cosy pool high up in the business class section of the watefall. didn’t want to leave, we could’ve taken stupid pictures, slid up and down the waterfall and sinfully bathe in beer all afternoon. had a solid lunch at batu caves, then a 5 hour afternoon nap followed by a rather glorious dump. chowyang dinner, midnight rain and watching wall.e on my bed – one line from the movie probably sums up this post better than anything else i can think of at the moment :

“i don’t want to survive, i want to live“

not quite i told you so…

…but i knew it was coming!

blogged about it here  : smoothe

maybe this article is right after all and i should’ve grown vegetables instead of studying all that econs stuff. for nearly 5 years…

gravity & light

work has been crazy close to 20 hour days
the weekend went by in lightning storms, pork ribs, bukit jalil highways and afternoon morning dreams.

life is plenty surreal at the moment.

—
which should you love – gravity – the stuff that holds you down or light – the one that keeps you up? may she always be a little of both for you.

—
read this on her blog and thought i’d share it here :

One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, greed, and arrogance. The other is Good – It is peace, love, hope, humility, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about this for a while and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

To which the old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

the joshua tapes OST

when people ask why it is that i came back to kl after going to university overseas (as if it requires a big explanation & a huge leap of judgement to understand), i struggle to come up with the thought process that it involved. to get to the real reason why i typed this post, let’s begin with the breakdown :

• yes, a certain kitten played a big part in that decision,
• it’s not that big a deal being part of some other country’s economy (look at the global economy being what it is now and see that it was all going to happen sooner or later)
• it’s like what i wrote in the article that was published in the star during malaysia’s 50th independence anniversary - i just somehow love being here (aside: the picture that’s the banner you see up there is the view from 10,000 feet just before landing all those lights glittering, welcoming you home)
• beyond all that, beyond the food, the weather, the streets that know my name, i love what i can do here with my friends, with talented people here, the dreamers with their dreams – i get the chance to do stuff like this :

 

we spent almost 4 months to write and record 7 songs to vie for the chance to accompany an up and coming Malaysian film called the Joshua Tapes. i’m not sure why the director thought we could do it, since the last original material we’ve produced was about 5 years ago, but i guess he knew our music tastes and knew our connection with the film and its material.

so that’s how we found ourselves locked in a studio in hartamas, 2am frustrated as hell with how slow the recording was going and how many takes it was taking to lock in the right timing for the guitars for this song just so that it would match the drums we recorded earlier.

we suck. we can’t metronome ourselves to save our lives.

the audio guy must think we’re idiots. bahir can’t bare to watch because every half hour is costing his production more than double what we initially budgeted.  jay’s already fucked up too many takes and we’re going to resort to plan B which will erase the entire intro to the song. i say let’s try it again. jay looks like he wished he never wrote the damn intro, benji says ok – one more time, the audio guy humours us one more time and does his trademark “coming right up” and presses record. just before the drums come in, jay’s timing is off again. anguish. 

okok – let’s do plan B before we waste another hour. jay looks relieved. the rest of us feel like we’ve just agreed to cut off a limb because the intro really builds the song.

audio guy says “coming right up”. hits record. jay starts on the intro that was meant to be cut off, and just before the drums kick in, he’s meant to stop playing for awhile to re-arrange the timing. he keeps playing. the 3 of us in the recording booth are about to get into another round of anguish, when we all realise that – fuckussideways – he’s actually nailed it. exactly the way it was meant to go.

called it what you will, a coldplay moment, a gay moment. i call it benji’s theme.