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





Tuesday, December 08, 2009



Life moves fast. and it's easy to forget that as it flutters by, new memories are being made. athalia and i have started a blog together called These glorious days. i like to think that it arrests the everyday mundane moments so that we can grow old safe in the knowledge that we're leaving behind a trail with which we can use to reminisce.

you can journey with us by clicking here.

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Genusfrog [ 2:41 pm ] | 1 comments

Thursday, October 01, 2009



There's a big difference between working very hard for the man and working very hard building your own house.

i've slogged before as an employee. it feels like chickenshyte. you feel like they're sucking the life out of you. and now, i'm slogging as a business owner, but i'm feeling the difference. it's tiring. it's more tiring. and sometimes, it's just downright rubbish, but when you sit back and look at the work you've done, there's a sense of satisfaction because this thing now belongs to you. and you've planted a tree into your own business' frontyard. and when this tree starts fruiting, i'll be here to pick it up. and for all the exhaustion, i've not been feeling as spiritually bankrupt as the working hours suggest i should be.

i guess i'm seeing some purpose behind all the rigours of my current life.

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Genusfrog [ 6:08 pm ] | 3 comments

Friday, May 29, 2009



What started off as an abbas saad feature on soccernet led me down a very nostalgic trip along one of football's more local memory lanes.

it's 1991. i'm eleven years old. my school buddies are stanley wong and munadzam. we share a common love of two things: gila gila magazine and the johor state football team. 

that year, johor wins the malaysian semi-pro league. abbas saad is the top scorer with twenty odd goals. we go to the malaysia cup final to face selangor. i don't know about stanley or munadzam, but this is a particularly big match for me because five years prior, when i was six, i saw selangor demolish johor 6-1 at this same stage. 

but on this cup final night, that guy above, ervin boban, struck three past selangor and we carried the malaysia cup home. it was one of my best experiences ever as a football fan. and until today, that team - with abbas saad, alistair edwards, ervin boban, nasir yusof, a young annuar abu bakar, captained by salehan mohd som and managed by mike urukalo - will always be one of my favourite, if not my alltime favourite, football team.

my dream would be for johor to be in the final of the malaysia cup again, when i can bring my family to watch it at the stadium. i can imagine the conversation already.

me: kids, the last time johor was in a malaysia cup final, papa was eleven. and he saw us destroy selangor.
kids: but pa... we live in selangor.
me: no we don't. who said? who said?
kids: pa. subang jaya is in selangor. my school badge has yellow and red on it.
me: where got? i don't see any yellow. that's blue, son. stop pretending to be colour blind.

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Genusfrog [ 4:38 pm ] | 2 comments

Wednesday, May 27, 2009



It's quite fantastic, but last year i forced myself to watch a champions league final that i dreaded to watch because i couldn't bear to see either team win, because of one reason alone. it was to be my tenth european cup final in a row. this year's is eleven. i don't need the preservation of a record to spur me on tonight. i've been all catalan for weeks now and will continue to be till the final whistle and, hopefully, well beyond. here's ten years of european cup finals for me.

1998 Real Madrid 1-0 Juventus
Saw it at: Gratton St home, Melbourne
Was in Melbourne. We came home after a late night, I think, and I popped on the tv. I was a new Juve fan at the time, and was heartbroken at the score, with something like 10 minutes to go. I would later realise that this was their third successive final and I guess that made me proud.

1999 Man Utd 2-1 Bayern Munich
Saw it at: Gratton St home, Melbourne
Already a four-year Liverpool fan, this one was a no brainer. That same season, United snuck in two late goals to beat Liverpool in the FA Cup (I think) and my heart bled for Bayern over this one. Distinctly remember staying up for this one.

2000 Real Madrid 3-0 Valencia
Saw it at: The Avenue home, Melbourne
Remember watching this and thinking (a) who is this Valencia, (b) is this what it's like in the Spanish league, and (c) this does not feel like a cup final.

2001 Bayern 1-1 Valencia (Bayern win on penalties)
Saw it at: West Brunswick home, Melbourne
Was somewhat chuffed for Bayern because I saw it as poetic justice for losing final three years prior. Today, I regret it. It's a shame that Valencia never won Big Ears in their two giddy years reaching the finals.

2002 Real Madrid 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen
Saw it at: West Brunswick home, Melbourne
How to forget that Zidane goal? I followed Leverkusen's road to the final very closely, through a magazine show on SBS called World Soccer. And I remember supporting them helplessly, hoping in some way that Madrid would not be able to pull off the boring win. Ok, so it wasn't a boring win. But it was still boring.

2003 AC Milan 1-1 Juventus (AC Milan win on penalties)
Saw it at: Gasing home, PJ
Ah the hype. Was up on the couch with Win and Ern (Milanese) only to witness my Italian side bow out with some piss poor penalties.  European Cup final support-success eludes me one more time.

2004 Porto 3-0 Monaco
Saw it at: Gasing home, PJ
I was rooting for Monaco on this one. Morientes was inspiring. Their victory over Madrid was the highlight of that season's tournament. Porto was vile. They'd been vile since beating Celtic in the UEFA Cup final the year before. Again, the team I back loses. 

2005 Liverpool 3-3 AC Milan (Liverpool win on penalties)
Saw it at: Gasing home, PJ
Until this. This glorious cup final to end all cup finals. This masterpiece of drama, football, inspiration and fandom stirred to become the pinnacle of my 24-year career as a fan of the sport. Yes, I was on my knees. Yes, I was crying like a baby. Am damn proud of it.

2006 Barcelona 2-1 Arsenal
Saw it at: Gasing home, PJ
Was living out on my own already but made the trip back to Gasing to catch this with Win. For the second successive year, I celebrate a European Cup victory. I'd already been partial to Barcelona since the late 90s, so to finally see them succeed in Madrid's sport - and deny Arsenal at the same time - was quite sweet. 

2007 AC Milan 2-1 Liverpool
Saw it at: Centerpoint mamak, BU
Oh the heartbreak. I grumbled all night with Adrian and Chris half winding me up, half probably not really knowing whether to feel sorry for me. I kicked at a mamak chair (lightly). Both teams were poor. We were just poorer. We had the more romantic road to the final, taking out Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea. But they got their revenge. It gets worse.

2008 Man Utd 1-1 Chelsea (Man Utd win on penalties)
Saw it at: Mamak at Bayu Puteri, then Original Kayu, Aman Suria
Grudgingly went downstairs to catch the game and was quite pleased that no one was winning it until the mamak closed midway through the second half and chased everyone out - a move that shocked me enough to handle either team winning. Drove out to Kayu to finish off the game. It stretched till penalties. B****rd Terry. I will never forgive you. Hah.

And so, tonight, I begin my second decade of catching European Cup finals. I still call it the European Cup. I grew up reading books that called it the European Cup and even if the competition's name has changed, I will always prefer to call it by the name of the tropy. Here's to ten more years.

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Genusfrog [ 4:55 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, May 22, 2009
AND SO, MY MASSIVE WEEKEND BECKONS 

This could be a monumental weekend.

one of those big career weekends.

sunday. then monday.

send up a prayer.

amen.

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Genusfrog [ 4:42 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
ON PARTICIPATING IN HISTORY

Maybe i've just witnessed history in the making. history, i guess, is the kind of thing you don't know you're participating in until it's over. but it felt like history ... in the making.

it felt like one day, i could tell my kids that i was in that very kelana jaya stadium when anwar ibrahim announced he was ready to take over the government. maybe one day, if "916" becomes something of a landmark, people will look at that 20,000 strong meeting and say that it all started happening again there. i could tell my kids that i was in that crowd, waving the malaysia flag whenever i heard something i agreed, clapping when i heard something worth clapping for, and keeing quiet either when nothing moved me or when something moved me deeply.

i don't know if 916 will be fondly remembered, like the berlin wall or march 8, or if it will become another piece of recyclable in the trashbin of miscellaneous history. in that sense, attending rallies for story-telling value is a bit like betting on blackjack.

i'm glad i wasn't just there for story-telling value. and i never play blackjack.

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Genusfrog [ 2:52 pm ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, September 09, 2008
MOVING

Today, i move.

yes. after three years living alone, in a rented apartment that gave me all the privacy i could have asked for, i've decided to move.

i'll now live in a downstairs room in a reasonably spacious house. my new landlady is an 80-year-old aunty who yesterday showed me albums of yellowish 1970s photographs of her british mixed chinese grandson from the 70s.

my room is cosy. i'll make it even cosier. audrey asked me to make it bohemian. i just might.

i picked up the keys yesterday and paid two months' rent. i don't always show it but this move means a lot to me. i have a lot of friends whose apartments get completed next year. in 09, at least four of my friends will move into places they bought. sometimes, i think, what am i doing? i'm not only moving sideways, i'm moving from living in my own apartment to renting a room.

where am i going?

yes. where am i going? the truth is, this move frightens me. it stone cold frightens me.

but i'm ready to be frightened.

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Genusfrog [ 5:31 pm ] | 1 comments

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
ON LOOKING DEPRESSING

If you don't know who this guy is, he is michael owen. that's 2008 ashen-faced bedraggled-looking 5 o'clock shadow michael owen. it's incredible what a few years in the wilderness can do to your countenance. in 2000, this same michael owen was the fresh-faced beacon of hope for english football, the darling of liverpool.

what changed?

ambition, perhaps. after the 2004 season, owen would ask to be transferred to the bloated real madrid. liverpool received pittance for what was their biggest star but one season later would win the european cup while owen watched from a tv set somewhere in spain. he would spend most of his time in madrid sitting down and eventually moved to newcastle, where he is now.

there's just something about post-madrid owen that doesn't look right. maybe it's something that the mid-20s does to someone. or maybe bad decisions leaves a shade of defeat on the faces of some people. maybe it's just the really uninspiring photoshoot that the fools at newcastle fc put together for their new home kit. can someone please explain how what was once england's most exciting young striker can look so depressing at what should be the peak of his career?

i had a friend once, this girl, who used to be a bit like a young michael owen. she was really on fire. she served at her church, had a gigantic singing voice, and always sounded either thoughtful or excited. she loved GMB, the indonesian worship band, and used to tell me that i should jam with her one day so she can sing some "raawk" songs. once i sent her home from somewhere and she played a cd and sang really loudly over it - a really passionate person she was. this was in 2004. then i lost touch with her.

this year, i discovered that she lives in the same apartment block that i live in. a few floors up. i see her sometimes, waiting outside or walking to the lift. and when i do, i stop and talk to her. most of the time, she has very few words to say. busy. project. tiring. but you know what? it's not even about not having time or energy. like owen at newcastle, something about this friend has been taken away from her. once she was really spunky. now everything about her seems dead. as a friend - or an old friend - i really don't know what to do.

yesterday was day 12 of my give me 40 days. i prayed first for her. then i prayed, funnily enough, for michael owen. i hope both of them find their feet and start to get some joy into themselves soon. lord knows, if anyone saw me last year, they'd have thought the same thing.

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Genusfrog [ 11:49 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
POST-EURO SILLYNESS

Ok. euro 2008 is over. here's a selection of europe's finest, while they were kids. try to guess them all. note, not everyone turned up at this year's euros, but all are european, and in their correct positions. even the bench is proper. and the coach.


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Genusfrog [ 4:51 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, April 07, 2008
THE MALAYSIAN DREAM II: THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

Freud said that as we go through the early stages of life, we repress unpleasant things. these things have a way of creeping back, and sometimes, they show up as psychosis. he called this the return of the repressed. film academicians like to use freud to study horror films. they say that sequels are all about the return of the repressed.

now i'm not exactly going through a return of the repressed. but i'm facing a comeback that's in some small part cause for mild horror. yes, that 2.5-pronged bearded monster from the suburbs otherwise known to me as the malaysian dream has reared its head once more.

i promised myself last year that my life would never be the same again. i would live near the poor. i would stand by the discards of this world and share my food and shelter with them. i promised myself that i would live a life of revolutionary love expressed through identification with what the bible calls "the least among you".

why is it then that i catch myself lured back to the suburbs? is this temptation? if it is, i know now the very texture of that which creeps in to curtail a life of abandoned difference. it is predictability. security. normalcy.

can they coexist? i want to give my wife and kids a memorable life. a life that includes both the security of a family home and the counter-culture of identification with poverty. today, i'm asking myself: how does one do it? how do you unshackle yourself from the trappings of suburban comfort and still give your future family the kind of life that is rich in learning, assurance and safety?

in horror films, you can kill the threat as many times as you like. there's always a last shot that tells you the threat is still there. today, i'm asking myself: is the malaysian dream like the threats in horror films? the kind that keeps coming back until you sign off on a 300,000 dollar house? maybe when i do that the sequel will end. it's like the final girl getting killed by the slasher. the final girl never gets killed by the slasher. she always escapes. she always survives.

today, i'm asking myself: will i always survive?

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Genusfrog [ 5:55 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, October 01, 2007
RAINY DAYS

It's been blustery. it drizzles most of the time and rains when it doesn't. the sky is an indecipherable grey. like candy floss that forgot how to be candy.

on the road, there are puddles and the grass is sloshy. from my desk, i can see a distant hill, and it's a grey-green. i wonder, if i painted that hill, what colours would i mix to get that colour? it's so drab. almost as drab as the sky. and everywhere, over everything, there seems to hang this cloak of melancholy. a rainy day laziness that makes you think about life and the past.

i remember a comparable evening in melbourne. i drove down royal parade between rows of fiery autumn trees. the sky was dull. that drab melbournian autumn sky. and as i drove under those trees, the leaves started falling on my car.

all the leaves are brown. and the sky is grey.

and here i sit. older. changed. in an entirely different world. the people around me are different. but the thoughts in my head are the same. i'm thinking that i love this landscape. this windy place with its watercolour finish.

i love these rainy days.

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Genusfrog [ 9:49 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
THE NEW MOVIE

It's strange when you leave a past behind. you walk for the sake of going away, and you forget that in your haste to leave where you were, you're actually going somewhere else.

three months ago, adrian asked me what i thought it'd be like one year from now. maybe we all won't be doing the same things anymore, no longer hanging out in the same group, no longer having the same routines.

it turned out much faster than next year. three months was all it took for our lives to be completely flipped over. today, it bares little semblance to what it was this june. do you ever get that? like you've just walked out of one life and into another, and everything is now different?

i first felt that when i came home to malaysia and then broke up with laura. i felt like a movie character who had just stumbled into the wrong film. like clint eastwood's cowboys in a hong kong art film, or robert de niro's gangsters in a b grade zombie flick. it's weird when you move on in life and live out an entirely new routine, surrounded by new things.

but now it's different. right now, it feels like a sequel under a new director. the new director likes a different palette, so he changes the colour scheme a bit. he thinks that some of the characters should interact differently, so he readjusts the dynamics between the main players. some characters are killed off. some characters are being drafted for a mid-movie arrival. the setting is augmented but by and large the same. and though it's nothing as radical as walking onto an entirely new set, it is essentially still a distinct and new movie.

i'm living in this new movie right now. i think a few of us are. some parts of it are nice but other parts of it are really hard to watch. it's a movie with a few more giddy ideas but it's also got a lot more deep sadness. and sometimes, the poignant soundtrack moments mask the fact that there is a bitterly painful subplotline going on underneath. as the lead actor in my own narrative, i can't say i know what this new director is doing.

just please don't kill anyone else off.

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Genusfrog [ 9:01 am ] | 0 comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007
THE FAMILY FACTOR

My family went all von Trapp this weekend. we do this sometimes, gather round a table and sing songs for hours together. my dad had this idea that when we came home for our annual mooncake festival celebrations, that it had to be a singing night. so we played this game, singing oldies, with one person singing one line of a song and the next person continuing the next line. we played until someone couldn't remember the lyrics, and then that person had to choose a new song.

you know, when i become a father, i want my family to be a singing family. it doesn't matter if nobody knows how to hold a note. the point is that i want my future family to live in full abandon, expressing themselves through songs with little inhibition. family shouldn't be too inhibited with each other. mine sometimes is but sometimes isn't. and i like my family best when we drop our guard and dare to be weird or funny or different together.

i'm really enjoying my weekend back home in muar. there is a feeling of certainty and security. the feeling that some things never change, and that somewhere in this huge, bizarre and everchanging world, there is a group of people who are gonna be exactly as i expect them to be. and on rare occassions like this, being with my family makes me feel like a 7-year-old again. in the larger scheme of things, it didn't last too long: about four hours. but for those four hours, it felt like 1987, and i was a little kid again. and we were all together, being family.

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Genusfrog [ 4:45 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, May 28, 2007
LEASEHOLD

Leasehold property make me feel sad. they remind me that at some point, everything that you try to hold on to so tightly gets taken away from you. sometimes by some strange and mysterious force. sure, you set up home, decorate it, put in some plants, maybe even live a life there. the cracks in the paint, the drippy tap and the windows that don't open properly after a few years, all trick you into believing that you've settled down. but 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.

i don't like to lose things. i just don't know how to hold on to the things i have. if i had it my way, i would probably never change anything in my life but i know now that when the weird hand of removing starts waving, there's nothing more you can do if you're not the one it's clutching. after a while, it just becomes a routine of moving what ought to be meaningful things along some factorial conveyor belt, to be passed on to the next loser. who i might add is only one because he too has also just lost.

i wish i had more freehold friendships. the kind that nobody can take away.

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Genusfrog [ 11:32 am ] | 1 comments

Thursday, May 03, 2007
QUE SERA SERA

As you grow up, you learn to make calls. you learn to say i want this, i want that, and this is how it should be. and so you keep growing and growing, and you keep making more calls and more calls. and then somewhere at the start of the middle of your life, you forget how to make calls. all the i want thises and i want thats become i don’t know what i wants. all the this is how it should bes become is this how it should bes. when you grow up, you forget how to make simple calls.

i didn’t say i wanted to have sadness follow me. maybe i wasn’t listening closely. maybe they said something meaningful between the ad breaks when i was chasing commercials somewhere else. i missed the part where they teach you how to make the hard calls.

the jesus and mary chain said in psychocandy that “there’s something dead inside my hole”. i feel like that every day, that in this empty shell, i’ve put to sword the last few shreds of my youthful optimism. maybe it’s the beginning of the end for my brash twentysomething gunghoism. when they told me at new life that the old has gone and the new has come, maybe they didn’t know that the old that went was a cock-eyed optimist with a heart on each sleeve, slain in the name of love and a future. maybe they didn’t know that the new that came was a tired, wounded shadow of his former self, more content conversing with fatalism than jesus christ himself.

he’s come full circle. he’ll go circle again. wait and see.

wait and see the future. the what’s in store for me. pop philosophy has never been shy dealing with the wait and see. i was in a karaoke room two days ago, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling as the cock-eyed optimist got crucified once more, ripped from the middle and left to die staring into a useless pale sky of dim karaoke lights. and while i stared at this ugly ceiling, pop philosophy churned out one of its finest theses yet.

que sera sera. whatever will be will be.

lodged somewhere between the right-most end of predestinative calvinism and the left-most end of meaningless nihilism was this little pop gem: que sera sera.

maybe that’s one way of saying we won’t have rainbows day after day. maybe it’s a rose-tinted way of preaching the gospel according to psychocandy. that when they say whatever will be will be, they’re actually saying that something will die inside my hole.

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Genusfrog [ 10:00 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, March 26, 2007
THE MALAYSIAN DREAM

I'm all lost in the supermarket. I can no longer shop happily.
- The Clash

That's The Clash critiqueing the culture of consumerism and loneliness. shopping for a life can be fun when you start out. the world is a blank page for you to write on. but after a while, it gets tedious. you realise that the world is not really a blank page, but more like a multiple choice paper. and all the freeform ideas you have don't really fit into the templates for an urban life.

the malaysian dream. what would i do for it?

see, if that were a hyphothetical question, i'd be in good hands. but it's not. and essentially what i'm going through now is the phase where i count the cost of the malaysian dream and consider if it's something i really want to add to my cart. i don't know how they marketed the malaysian dream to you. to me, it's a condo, two japanese cars, a wife and 2.5 kids, a college fund and some investments tucked away somewhere. it's the life that everyone seems to want. everyone except me.

i've seen enough condos to know that after a while, they all start looking the same. i've seen enough japanese cars to know that they're all approximations of each other. and i've met enough young families to know that all of them are chasing after the same pie in the sky, wife and kids and dog all in tow.

why would i want something like that?

security? camaraderie? the part of me that actually wants it, is it responding to some intrinsic need for these things or is it just years of social programming? picket fences are only nice if you know what picket fences mean. until then, they're just a bunch of white sticks. so why am i so torn between buying into this malaysian dream and the opposite - living a life of sheer abandon, anarchic and impulsive, unshackled, adventurous and free?

have you ever met a guy who had pre-wedding jitters eventhough he wasn't about to get married? yeah, that's what it feels like. i always say that a man isn't ready to marry until he experiences pre-wedding jitters because it's only in pre-wedding jitters that a man properly considers the absolute finality and fullness of his commitment to the girl he's picked. and after considering it fully, and going ahead with it, you know he's in good hands, cos he's counted the cost.

the same thing stands before me. this looming, constraining life of rigid routine that i might grow to love one day, this arduously mundane back-and-forth populated with cute lovable loved-ones, this repetitive, self-sacrificing, self-controlled tedium, this boredom, this... this... normalcy.

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Genusfrog [ 9:09 am ] | 1 comments

Friday, March 16, 2007
TRANSIT

"Change is the only constant lah!", charlotte said as i quietly contemplated news of one of my favourite editors leaving the office in sydney.

"I can't live in a life like that. you know", i said back to her. "i can't live in a life where everything keeps changing".

i just can't. it saddens me too much to consider a life that is constantly in flux, forever renewing, eternally pursuing the next better thing. why do we do that? keep changing.

i'm really happy for my editor in sydney. she's getting what looks like a really ace job. and fair game to anyone who's getting good gigs lined up for them. some people will say that i've got a pretty good gig lined up myself, and that'd be true. but i just don't take to change so well after all. a few weeks ago, adrian asked me if i was someone who took to change well. at that time, i told him i get excited with change. and while that is true, i can't shake off this insecurity that's tailing me everywhere now that what looked like my golden season in my present office seems to have come to an end.

my lunch squad is dissolving. my favourite product was axed. i've changed seats so many times and i don't know anyone's face in this office anymore. some days i think i'm doing okay but if i really face up to it, i think i can say for certain that my happiest days in this office are behind me now. maybe another chapter has closed and i'm just not dealing with the fact that i'm smack in page two of the next storyline. maybe i'm mistaken in my assurance of where i think i am. people around me are moving on.

why am i still here?

when will i pick my bags up and get out of this one, very long airport holiday? you know when you're in transit, the airport bookstores become your best friend. there's something familiar in all bookstores: road maps, travel guide books, coffee table pictorials... there's something reassuring about seeing all these same things no matter which airport bookstore in whatever country you're in.

but my transit is not in an airport and there is no bookstore with all that familiar paraphernalia to remind me that some things always stay the same.

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Genusfrog [ 1:48 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, February 22, 2007
THE SPIRAL OF GROWING UP

When i was in kindergarten, i thought the time before getting schooled was much better. when i went to primary school, i thought my kindie days were more fun. when i went to secondary school, i wished i was in primary school. in uni, i was largely happy, but i did sometimes wish i was still in secondary school. now that i'm working, i wish i was still in uni. one day, i'll have to stop working, and i'll wish i still had a career.

the bible says that we are transformed from glory to glory. i dunno about you, but i sometimes think this whole ageing process sucks, and the whole thing looks like a miserable downward spiral, where we regressively dislike where we are, more and more and more. and so i ask you: is it just our attitudes, that we are always comparing whatever turf we've got with yesterday's green? is this whole enjoyment of life relative to what you've just left behind and how much of life you've lived? or is there an objective progression - or rather, regression - of how good life, as it was created, is supposed to be? am i observing something you also observe? or am i just depressed?

growing up is easy. but coming to terms with it is much harder.

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Genusfrog [ 2:42 am ] | 2 comments

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
THE COST OF ADULTHOOD

Chinese New Year is happening again. This year, it crept up from close to nowhere and suddenly, it's the third day and i'm staring a return to KL as imminently as my impending deadlines, both office and movie, loom towards me. and now i know something. Chinese new year used to be fun because as kids you could enjoy it for what it was.

sure, you had school looming on the horizon as well, but school rarely ever crept into the holidays. and even if it did, cos there's always that breed of sadistic teachers who give tons of homework whenever kids get a sniff of a holiday, that's all it was. work. but i find that as i grow up, it gets harder and more complicated to draw the line where the responsibilities of day-to-day life ends and where festivities begin. and i realise now that's why adults don't enjoy chinese new year as much as kids do. it's not really because they loose interest in fireworks, or that it just mythically "used to be more fun", it's squarely because the line between duty and fun is blurred.

i've been trying very hard to grow up these past two years. but all that growing up had a cost attached to it, and this was it. this was the cost and i think i've been paying so many part instalments, the whole ferari's almost mine now. and so this is it, huh. i've traded off simple joy for complicated adult bullshit.

what a deal.

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Genusfrog [ 5:09 am ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
I don't know that I don't know what I don't know
- Fergus, 22 November 2006

I had a good chat with vernon today, about growing up, buying apartments, getting married and doing the whole thing. Or was i really talking about growing up and not buying apartments? I think i was talking about not doing the whole thing.

I'm still wondering if this middle class life with two cars, a condo and some investments tucked away is what i want in life. i'm serious when i say that i'm closer to considering it's not than a lot of other yuppies who threaten the same tendencies.

I get really scared of the tied-down life. it's not fear of marriage. i dream of being married. it's not fear of kids - i dream of that too. it's the whole life that tends comes along with it: the labour. the overseas education funding. the loan repayments. the cars. the life insurance. the business. the utterly boring rat race. i'm scared because that kind of world is calling me and i don't know if i dare to answer

And now with large door pictures up and soon to be running, i already feel tied down. now you know why i'm afraid of my bourgeois future. it's already got one foot in my living room.

I still haven't decided if i want the malaysian dream. and everything around me is nudging me towards taking it. it would be so irresponsible of me to take it and then realise i didn't want it after all. how do i answer to everyone: wife, kids, my dad? i could never answer them. the shape of my life would be set. and i would just have to live it. why? because at 26 i had no balls to make a call. maybe no balls. maybe no maturity. or maybe no foresight. i always bite off more than i can chew. maybe this is one more bite.

I want a simple married life. not this complicated urban monster.

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Genusfrog [ 3:14 pm ] | 0 comments