BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Wednesday, June 28, 2006
I want to disappear completely, and never be found. I want to go away from everyone so that I can only be with myself, and God, and nothing that bears any semblance of the harrowing world can find me, so that nothing can chase me to kick me in the teeth.

When I started working, and up till a few months ago, I was filled with enough desire to do well, forge strong relationships and serve - not my bosses - but my products. today, i sit here with no motivation whatsoever to pursue these lofty wants. Not because I just lost it but because the genuine enthusiasm I once had has been chewed up and spat out like bland gum. Now, all I'm left with is a desire to not exist.

I really do want to disappear. It's very reminiscent of the oft-vilified ostrich and its escapist defence mechanisms, but how nice it would be if for one day, or two days or ten, if no one I knew could reach me, or see me, or speak to me. And all of the horrors of this maddening world, this world that hounds us all to our deathbeds faster than flowers have time to grow and be smelt, will just melt into somewhere, or become gasseous or something similar. I have no desire to drive home today, it is just another roll of a stone in this Sisyphean boredom.

Meaning to life? Purpose? Has my church not thought me well?

There is no meaning to this drudgery, this unending connection of mediocre days. And there is no purpose in this gross mundanity, certainly no purpose in attempting to excel. My whole working life is a sham, a true-blue joke that conspires to take good men and mess them up in time for an early grave. And if resigning from a job was any less predictable and ordinary and commonplace among those with whom i ply my trade, I swear I would do it. But I refuse to be predictable, or ordinary, or commonplace.

So instead, I'll just wish to not be here. Goodbye cruel world? Hah... i only wish I could mean it.

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Genusfrog [ 3:02 pm ] | 2 comments

Monday, June 26, 2006
When i was a kid, i wanted to be a zoologist.

I wanted to be a marine biologist. It would have been so cool to work with marine life, like manatees or whales. I also thought, maybe, I can work with big cats too. Big cats are the best.

Whenever I told this to someone, they would tell me "Why don't you just be a vet?".

But I didn't want to be a vet, I didn't want to treat rabbits and poodles. I didn't want to do small cats.

Apparently, we all start off with dreams, and then as we grow up, many of those dreams die. For those among us who are fortunate enough, the death of a dream is replaced by a new dream. It doesn't make the demise of the first dream any less meaningful - it is still a truncated future. But you can't complain if you replace it with something else. You certainly can't complain if that something else is more achievable, yet comparatively special.

I guess I could be a marine biologist today. I guess I could be diving off places to collect plant samples, or be sitting in a lab studying shark behaviour, or perhaps I could be working in zoo negara giving injections to sick tigers. My brilliant career as an animal man never happened.

But I've replaced that dream with other things and I'm happy enough with the way things are going. Going into the world to fulfil a major dream of yours can be frightening - my ambitious dream fulfilment right now is paralysing me with a fear so inexpressible, I guess, well, I can't tell you how.

And maybe I would never have become a marine biologist. Maybe I would never have become a zoologist. Maybe when push came to shove, the fear of potentially living that exciting life, or that life replete with hands on contact with animalia would have crippled me into inaction, and I never would have dared to try.

It's hard enough to dare to dream, being challenged to dare to live that dream is even worse. but why is it that we fear so much the very things we want so much? Is it enough to blame it on a fear of failure? Of loss? Or do we intrinsically not want to fulfil our dreams, so that they can always remain limitless and infinite, and our potential heroism unbounded by the harsh constraints of reality? What's the point of dreaming if you must wake up to fulfil it?

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Genusfrog [ 8:25 am ] | 3 comments

Monday, June 19, 2006
It's textbook knowledge that God brings things into your life so that they in turn can bring out the worst in you. It's like stirring that calm chrysenthemum tea so that all those gross leaves and petals all come back up to the top. today, the Almighty orchestrated an encounter between me and v drive.

Where i work, v drive is the death-knell of shared drives, bearing all the hallmarks of the major evils of this world such as murderers, rapists and paedophiles. in the top ten list of crimes to humanity, the v drive would sit somewhere between 8 and 10. Bearing the speed of an 87 year old pakcik uncle man in a 1979 datsun in a taman going over speed bumps and the crashability of a 13 year old in a BMW z4 his father just acquired and whose mother hasn't yet driven, v drive was in fine form today, purple patch and all.

Which of course, led to a half-an-hour long curse session that featured what came close to every curse under the sun. At one point, i wished that the maintainer of v drive suffer death by slow-motion gnawing of rodents, and among other mortalities, trucks and fearsome beasts. I also cursed that saliva be remitted onto the necessary graves by loved-ones, and that ill-wishes be hurled onto the carcass of the deceased.

I'm feeling much better now, of course, and i have since rescinded all my curses, asked for forgiveness, and instead, blessed the maintainer of the system with "fulfilment in his life", wishing his work on the v drive to produce fruit that multiplies. I also blessed him to die a ripe old age, peaceful and painless in bed, surrounded by cute squirrels who chant his name long into eternity.

There is a deep recess of wrath in me, which i have never considered to be among my chief sins (gluttony, however ... oh let's not talk about it). But i did! I felt a hatred in me that was tastable, so much hate you could touch it, you could click on it and drag it around. So it's been a blue monday, bluer than the bluest monday was blue, still, it's like that. Every enzyme in my body hates the v drive. it is an abomination, to be utterly wiped off the face of the world when our escathological ramblings come true. it will go where the antichrist goes, into a burning pit of shame, to be consumed forever by wrath. the guy who maintains it, however, god bless him. he has the worst job in the world.

So to mr v drive maintainer, i'm sorry i cursed you to die a combination of gruesome deaths. i hope you reach home safely today.

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Genusfrog [ 4:16 pm ] | 1 comments

Friday, June 16, 2006


I would be Italian.

Italy has good food, good football, and beautiful cities, cities like the historical Florence or the grandiose Rome, or the elegant Venice. They've got a beautiful countryside. They've got a wonderful language. They've got great history, and rich culture. The women are good looking (of course) and so are the men (which means there's a chance i'll be good looking too). they've got a vibrant arts scene. heck, they've got great mediterrannean weather. they've got the alps in the north! they've got a volcano in the south! they've got high fashion (though i couldn't care less), fast cars (i care only a bit more) and great architecture! (yeeahh!!). Ok, so they've got an embarrassing WWII history, and their football gets embroiled in match-fixing scandals once every 25 years, but apart from these minor blips, Italy has got it all.

So ya, if i had to be reborn in a different country as a different race, i'll be Italian. in fact, i'll be Florentian!

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Genusfrog [ 3:07 pm ] | 1 comments

Friday, June 09, 2006

David: This Jacker chips has deodorized palm olein

(pause)

Fergus: Hey do you think the word "deodorant" has anything to do with God? As in, the latin word.
David: Hahaa! Deodorant?
Fergus: Yea. What do the constituents of "deodorant" mean? What's "dorant"?
David: Well, "odour" means a smell, and "de" means to remove or take out something.
Fergus: Ooh. Oh ya. So it's got nothing to do with God.
David: No...
Fergus: I see, it's de-odorant, not deo-dorant. Right.

(pause)

David: When I was young, I used to think that "understand" was to "not derstand". That when you didn't get it, you "derstand".
Fergus: That's cool.

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Genusfrog [ 3:17 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 07, 2006
You know that facial expression we make when we are with good company, we're having laughs, and we're all smiling, and then we have to part or walk different ways, and then we we walk off, and we're alone, and suddenly we know that there's no more need to keep on smiling, and then our smile falls... and sometimes, when the realities of our lives outside the comfy distraction of good company sinks in, we go from a smile to a despondent fallen look. And for just that one moment, the joke you were sharing, the laugh you were having, just vanishes and is forgotten, if only momentarily, nonetheless, it completely disappears. And in that one moment, the joy of that temporary light-hearted moment is replaced with the grim realities, the back-to-work feeling, the drudgery of unending labour. The brief joyful moment will resurface, potentially only within minutes, but it will no longer be experienced with the kind of immediacy and honesty as it was originally experienced - now, it can only be fondly revisited, as a moment that has gone by. Lke childhood, or adolescence, it can never really be relived, just remembered. Yes, i think right now, i'm remembering a smile from ten minutes ago.

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Genusfrog [ 2:17 pm ] | 28 comments

Monday, June 05, 2006
Maybe this is just a dream. Maybe i'll wake up from this as a Colombian druglord, with one of those moustaches, a name like Marquez, two bodyguards outside my bedroom door and Miss Colombia lying next to me. Maybe it'll be like a nightmare, all these hounding editorial problems crept into my night's sleep because, perhaps, just prior to falling asleep, i was reading a newspaper story that misspelled my name, and while turning the pages of that newspaper, i came across the cinema listings, and just because of that, i fell asleep and dreamt up a life as a Malaysian 25 year old working as a fulltime subeditor/part-time filmmaker subbing stories about people who run foul of the law and making movies about people who get mysteriously killed. Maybe i'll wake up as soon as i hit "Publish Post" and find myself in this bed, large enough for five, with cheap liquor on the bed-side table, a ceiling fan slowly swirling above me, and the yellow Colombian sun casting weird venetian shadows on my yellow mansion walls. There's a rifle within arm's reach. I can feel my moustache. And as i bat my eyes and realise that the 25 year old Malaysian experience was just a dream conjured from some exhausted slumber, Miss Colombia rustles in her sleep, whispering "Marquez, Marquez...", and i realise that everything, for now, is ok.

Click "Publish Post" now.

Like... now.

(click)

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Genusfrog [ 1:15 pm ] | 1 comments