Horrigins
A review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There are valuable life lessons to be learnt from the colossally proclaimed treasure trove of rotting cheese that is Hollywood, and just today, I learnt that things in life tend to work themselves out as long as you snarl a lot and have the ability to sprout bone claws from your knuckles.

And that seems to be what the entire of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is about. The entire movie can be very aptly summed up as Hugh Jackman snarling a lot and stabbing people, and when he's not stabbing people, partaking in all manner of socially unacceptable actions and brooding in the dark shirtless. In an attempt to really highlight his pursuits of the intellectual, he takes a merry jog across a meadow naked.

But Jackman's revelations aside, there are many things to be said about this movie, and they're best said after acknowledging that there are two possible audiences for this film.

The first is inevitably the armies of X-Men fandom that walk amongst us unseen. Quite fortunately, I don't happen to be a part of this demographic all that much. My background knowledge about Wolverine and the other mutants that star in this series of moving pictures is best summed up as everything that's on Wikipedia, and easily accessible to anyone who's looking for some entertainment if Youtube videos won't load at a pace that isn't rivalled by that of the Blob's. (Alright, alright, I just found out after reading the wikipedia article on the Blob that he's able to run fairly fast. But shut up now, this only proves my point.)

The second possible audience for this film is consists of anyone who's looking for a spectacular potpourri of explosions, sparks, and people leaping at each other while yelling battle cries that would make Leonidas cringe.

The third completely non-existent (statistically) audience is composed of hopefuls that think that there's the potential that Origins might actually have a decent amount of character development and intellectually stimulating dialogue. To get a better idea of my opinion on this after watching the movie, picture someone hoping that the movie will possess the aforementioned qualities, in the form of a thought bubble hovering about their heads. Now picture this thought bubble being viciously shredded to pieces by a furious Hugh Jackman who is now standing behind the doomed hopeful while panting very, very heavily, claws fully extended.

Allow me to explain this whole thing by giving a bit of an introduction to the movie. Origins covers the a-bit-of-a-bloody-giveaway origins of the mutant Wolverine, from X-Men, who possesses the ability to sprout bone claws from his knuckles and regenerate a ridiculous amount of flesh and bone (No, really. I'm not just referring to the inexplicable protagonist shield. He really does have this power.) It basically starts off with him as a rather sickly child sulking in the 19th century. His fate as a the subject of a blockbuster movie allows him to live all the way till the present day while looking exactly the same, all the while slaughtering chockloads of people with his half brother Sabertooth. Eventually the snarling duo join some secret government team of mutants and go around abusing African villagers, which upsets Wolverine deep inside his fuzzy heart and makes him leave.

You can see precisely where this is going.

I can't really give away anymore of the storyline because that would spoil the entire thing, but thank goodness that isn't really possible, since Origins is going to disappoint hardcore comic fans and anyone who so much dares to hope for a storyline. Comic canon is broken even more than the realism of the human physique in this movie, and the storyline is can essentially be summed up as a series of events, which in all of them, Wolverine gets extremely angry at a particular person and proceeds to try and stab him, while slaughtering and intimidating boring, blank slates of ordinary people and other mutants. The whole thing simply feels like an excuse for Hugh Jackman to rip things apart while snarling. The whole thing seems to be stitched together and even Hugh Jackman's regenerative abilities wouldn't save it.

But I hear you say "Ah, but kind sir. Is that not a perfectly legitimate direction for a blockbuster movie to take? Things blowing up and innocent African villages being terrorized are perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment." This would have been fine (except the terrorising of African villagers.) had it been executed with more flair. During the course of this automated beat em' up, Wolverine performs many action movie staples, such as being chased by a chopper while on a bike, and then proceeding to destroy both to an equal extent, despite the fact that he wasn't even trying to do that to one of them. He does plenty of pouncing and stabbing and so on, but all of it feels rather bland and doesn't feel like anything we haven't already seen. Most of the action is really just composed of Wolverine or his brother being stabbed in someplace nasty, which the audience responds to by cringing and making a plethora of supposedly sympathizing sounds, but that's all there is to the action. This is inevitably trouble since that's all there might have had been to begin with.

So that's what the entire thing is: A series of rather bland action scenes stitched together by a dilute storyline that swooshes down the drain without much fuss. If you've got ten dollars or so that you need to desperately rid yourself off because they have a terrible secret written on them that marks you as the target for some undoubtedly religiously funded organization of assassins, then by all means, purchase a ticket for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and leave the cinema pondering that maybe fleeing from those assasins in the two hours spent watching the film would have been vastly more thrilling.

Walking a Lonely Rope 

This seems to be an odd thing, and in fact completely impossible, thing be doing in a building, and in a very small room, in fact, but I'm walking on a tightrope. I've been doing that since nearly a year ago, before which I was rather contented to stand on the side of the tightrope and watch people nearly teeter over and point at them and go "Whoa, that guy nearly teetered over!" 

Well, I suppose there must have been something appealing about it, since a while later I jumped on (or rather, was dragged on by a group of very persistant people and after a while, I found that I rather liked it). So for a solid nine months, I've been walking on this not-so-much-solid-as-wobbly tightrope (that you've provided figured out is metaphorical by now and if you haven't, then never attempt a conversation with say, Mr Valles) and I've found several things to be true. 

It's very hard to overtake people when you're on the tightrope, and when you try doing that you end up falling over because people that are in front eventually get annoyed after a while and inevitably start displaying their amazing ability to kick behind them while still staying on the tightrope. So after a while you decide you might as well just admire their posteriors and tiptoe behind them at a pace that could almost be described as "merry", except that there's nothing very "merry" about the whole business of getting kicked if you don't. 

It's also fiendishly difficult just staying on the infernal cord. It gets very tempting at times to simply lean over to one side, since you've got the justification that you could quite easily compensate by leaning over to the other side ready, which comes in quite handy when you're looking for an explanation as to how you ended up lying down and staring up at people walking on a tightrope, the point at which the you now might turn to the you then and very sardonically raise one eyebrow and declare this whole idea to be "Perfectly executed". The response is usually silence, although if the fall was traumatic enough a "shut up" might be heard. 

So what I'm doing right now is creeping along on this piece of rope, hoping that I don't fall and if I do, then someone might think me lying in the mud an eyesore and yank me out (Quiet, children) of it and slap me down (I said settle down) onto the line that seems to be standing in for a compass that said it'd be back in a while and it just had to settle this one thing. 

I hope it gets back soon, because everytime I look at my feet I know precisely how I stand on the line. 

Squatting Ideas

Every so often, and I really mean this, I'll find myself sitting in a school canteen where dustbins have been liberated of the social obligation to wear their lids, and I'll hear a distant voice of a rather nasal and high pitched quality proclaim something nearly as annoying as itself. 

These incidents happen to coincide very closely with the times in which I start weighing all the pros and cons of the Internet. Usually, the nasally voice is allowed to continue with its gummy bear muffled ramblings since the alternative would mean me getting closer to its source, but I still can't help but wonder during those moments whether the Internet's advantages outweigh the terrible scourge of most Internet memes. 

Yes, that's going to be the topic of this article, and while you're probably digging trenches for the rhetoricky, rant-ish invasion about why can't all these people just grow up and start making up phrases of their own, that's only going to be part of this article. The other part is hopefully going to be a soulful attempt to remember what memes used to be. The end of this paragraph's probably a good place to start, so let's get to it then. 

Memes, when you boil away the thick black coating of Rickrolls and bodily fluid exchange, are really just recurring or continuous ideas within a society that are transmitted from one mind to another by way of a completely mentionable act: communication. And that's never been easier (seeing as how technology tends to get better in every aspect other than eco-friendliness when going forward in time) given advent of the Internet, phones and large buildings with nice hollow spaces right in their middles which make it very hard for you to have affairs (or one, if you'd like) with your attractive secretary(s). 

So with the mention of the Internet and its ability to proliferate memes like a cold does in a Chinese train, the thought of testing the durability of your router may have occured to you. But hold that thought for a second. Memes are something more. (No, just put the router down. Really. It's not going to be worse.) 

Every form of "received wisdom" is a meme. The concept of wearing clothing (some, at least) in public or not going spelunking in your nostrils (those who do have developed apathy shields that would greatly ensure their survival in the event that Halley's Comet came over to grab its belongings. So on further reflection we're mostly safe.)  are all memes. They're generally well accepted ideas that have been deeply rooted into many different cultures, and the cultures that don't have these memes are either exiled or considered "damned outrageous". And the thing is, many memes have served us well, because without memes, it would be practically impossible to get anything done with large groups of people (With the exception of rioting. On second thought, scratch that. Rioting's no exception.) because of the absence of a common idea or set of ideas that unifies them in some way. If it weren't for the meme that stealing and murdering were bad, we wouldn't have a legal system. If it weren't for the meme that goats are by no means a form of standardized (or vending machine compatible) currency, we wouldn't have, well, currency. 

Memes, we can clearly see at this point, are ludicrously two sided (the number of two sides there are is impossible to conceive). It can either be the trusty concrete that we have our riots on or the sewer of humanity where our last hope, in the form of very talented humanoid turtles, lies. So the problem isn't the existence of memes, but rather recognizing which ones should be existings and which ones shouldn't. 

Because while memes can be useful foundational ideas, they can also become the equivalent of soft plywood supports for one of those kampong houses. It seemed like a great idea at the time when the rest of the house was made of soft plywood and its inhabitants consisted of the ocassional hummingbird that would fly off once the boards started creaking, but when its inhabitants atart consisting of walking things the whole thing starts to fall apart. 

My point here is that memes can squat on mental chairs that should really be given to new ideas after a good dusting. While some foundational memes may have been excellent several decades ago, they start to lose their appeal and usefulness today. (The example of wearing clothing comes in here again, and it's nice to know that we're going full circle and that all we need to do is start talking to serpents again.) The problem with getting rid of such memes, though, is that they really don't want to get off their arses, because some have been so deepy imbedded in our culture that getting rid of them seems unthinkable. (Like say, in the case of hoping for a Hollywood film that doesn't have a romance thrown in like soya sauce on ice cream.) 

So they sit there and shove away any new ideas that want to so much as offer them some Pocky. They end up being there for the sake of being there, and then the process of creating new ideas starts making funny gurgling noises that aren't very funny at all in retrospect. 

Internet memes being used so often in some conversations is a clear example of this. Once people start using those memes as placeholders for phrases that haven't been echoed by at least one world, then no other ideas can. 

Memes need to be constantly rexamined to make sure that they aren't irrelevant, and deciding whether they're irrelevant or not is going to take a lot of notepaper and a good supply of Pocky. 

Persuasive Accomodation

A few hours ago I did so relieve myself of the loads that made me suspect for a brief moment that I might have been detained for illegal immigration, and in a startling moment I flopped down (More of a roll on my back. The legs did flop down though, if that's any comfort) on my hostel bed and uttered one of the more startling things of the week.

"Yay, I'm back." 

I'm trying desperately to rationalize this action as simply having been a slip of the tongue into oblivion, and then I realize, with several generous servings of dismay sprinkled lightly with stir fried hopelessness, that the expression (the smug bastard) is probably right. I've seen the hostel so often that it's probably becoming my default accomodation, whereas my actual home is becoming something akin to one of those summer houses in Zanzibar that you can only take the word of your estate agent that it still exists. 

So for the time being, I've been constantly reminding myself of the perils of hostel life to hopefully bump this hostel room down a bit on my list of preferred accomodation, and since the list consists of two kinds of accomodation at this point, my actual home and this room, then it shouldn't be too hard to bump it down to the required level of tastelessness. 

So if anyone does see me in the hostel, please try your best to make my stay here as unbearable as possible. 

Spotfrights


Few roles in a play let you feel as close to divinity as fiddling around with the lighting. And I'm not talking about fiddling with a set of tiny switches backstage while you tell yourself that truly, this is as close as you get to divinity. I'm talking about sitting in the control room, pompously or not, depending on your choice, and getting what is perhaps the most authoratative view in the entire theatre and then deciding who gets to be visible on-stage. Believe me when I say that power trips are equally likely to happen with the director and the elevated elite in the control room.

At least, that's the impression you get of the job at first, until you're tasked with something requiring about three hands and fingers of lengths that would anger any pianist into attacking you. The moment you enter the control room in your (well, my, actually) hazey power trip, you are greeted with a panaroma of knobs and switches that would look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's been to one of those open houses showcasing cockpit interiors.

There's what can only be described as an absolute spread of switches in the control room, and that's for lighting alone. There are fill light switches for nine sections of the stage, individual spotlights for each of those nine sections, then an additional larger spotlight for each of those nine sections again. Then there's additional switches for adjusting the color of the cyclorama (A funky screen that would have appealed greatly to the Beatles. Basically a screen disguised as a wall at the back of the stage that can change color in the most psychedellic manners.), and finally two random switches for side stage spotlights. I think that covers about three quarters of the switches. There's an additional (a very trendy word by this point) quarter somewhere that probably requires the synchronized turning of two keys or something along those lines.

Anyway, it's this mind boggling number of switches that really makes the lighting job very difficult. The nice lady that was kind enough not to leave us floundering (mostly out of concern for the equipment) drew us a reference diagram of sorts for the different numbers of the lights and which portions of the stages they corresponded to. It really did make things a lot simpler so all me and Damien were left with was frustration. Since the diagram wasn't divided into a table with labels like A3 or B4 or anything that would help you visualize positions, and so the switches weren't labelled in that manner, we ended up having to constantly refer to the tiny table scrawled (very kindly) in blue ink under the pseudo-illumination of the small lamp that you're allowed during the operation of the lighting, since the control room is apparently tasked with the role of housing the invisible machinations that run the show from behind.

So we did a rather shoddy job of allowing the hypothetical audience to see the faces of our undoubtedly nervous, and therefore grateful actors. But something rather surprising happened halfway through the last run.

We started improvising a bit. As opposed to referring to the terribly written (by us, I should add) set of lighting cues based on the script, we started improvising. We knew what was going to happen when and where, so we started referring to the diagram (not written by us, I should add again) and turning up whatever lights we thought were necessary. All this in very angry whispers in the dark.

I suppose as you do this again and again the numbers corresponding to the different lights become a vital part of your anatomy, and that would explain the labelling deficiency, and clearly we've yet to achieve that.

But regardless, it was fun, and it really was the sort of thing that's going to keep me from throwing my arms up and yelling at the people in the control room "How hard can it be to get some damned lights on?"

Footnotes while on the Run

Hello there.

A bit of brief writing before I return to bed from whence I crawled.

I was just in the process of rushing an application for the purposes of entering the mystical NRP, or Nanyang Research Programme, if you're pedantic about that sort of thing or if you're giving a speech and you have to let the nice ladies and gentlemen know precisely what they're attending the speech for.

The whole process of signing up for the project was a bit finicky, but I suppose that's all part of the process of being incredibly complicated. Well, not really. I can't really complain, though a terrible misintepretation about the concepts of am and pm led to my submission of the form being about ten hours late, which somehow seems more erroneous than one day when you write it down.

There hasn't really been much time for writing over the last two days, and the barrage of tests will finally descend into rancid waters while waving their neatly typed tentacles in the air and making all manner of screeching noises, then it'll probably take about a week or so for them to reemerge the very badly damaged (though still freshly shiny) reactor of a long-sunken nuclear submarine that was previously unaccounted for.

Quite honestly I'll be quite glad once this whole test period is over.

I mean, life's about doing the other work, isn't it?

Of Knee Jerks and Explosives


It was not a few weeks ago that I sat rather dismayed in the school canteen, and was bracing myself for the increasingly threatening AP Chemistry class looming on the horizon, its view denied to me by the school (compound). After a while I gave up trying to stare through opaque concrete and look like whatever organs in my body were responsible for generating hope had been extracted by way of liposuction, I attempted to proceed up the stairs when I was stopped by the principal in this particular course of action.

Well, I wasn't really stopped by the principal. Not directly at least, though he did hint that he would appreciate if I wasn't in my class by making an announcement calling for a gathering in the school hall, a gathering that was to be attended by a good amount of everyone.

So about five nerve wracking, nostril assaulting minutes later I found myself seated in the hall next to an entire row (or column, depending on whether you were viewing everything from a bird's eye view, which if you weren't, would mean that that particular group of students would be standing on seated one each other's shoulders) of people with bags of kimchi that were digging away at the side of their Ziploc bags with spoons they managed to sneak out of the compound's cafeteria.

This continued for a good twenty minutes or so, during which we were continuously reminded to contact anyone that wasn't here to make sure that they weren't in danger of being harmed by whatever was in the school compound (or not), not that there was necessarily any danger since that hadn't been announced yet, but it was absolutely vital that anyone missing was to be accounted for, lest they... not be here.

And after what seemed analogous to a nervous, tie-wearing, thick spectacled acountant finally getting down on his knees beside a gorgeous woman that he's known for about twenty minutes and popping the question, the administration finally called upon the superintendant from the nearby police station to give us a bit of an exposition as to why there was no reason to panic.
The reason why there was no reason to panic was that a "war relic" had been discovered in a construction site not far off from the school, and while there wasn't any danger to anyone in the school, our rather convenient distance from the war relic made us a candidate (and winner) for being a base of operations for the getting-rid-of-war-relic procedures.

And it was at that point that a good amount of atmospheric murmuring (rather loud murmuring, as the sound of over a thousand people speaking in hushed voices tends to be) was heard, though the superintendant did say that wasn't anything to be worried about and that the disposal and school hijacking procedures were completely safe to anyone that wasn't the kind of person that wanders into construction sites for no reason.

Dr Hang then concluded with the stirring instruction that we all bugger off for the rest of the day to ensure that we didn't annoy the nice policemen, save for those staying in the hostel, of course, who buggered off across the field to wander about the structural integrity of its foundations.
So that was a rather eventful episode, but what was particularly interesting was the reactions of the school population.

Before the news was broken, there was a ridiculous amount of frantic speculation, and a good number of people looking very grim and staring into the distant clouds, commenting that if the administration was doing its best to account for every single person in the school then there was sure to be a proper reason for such measures, and that reason was probably almost as grim as they were.

There was also an observable population that was rather prophetic, insisting that they had heard from credible sources that could not be named that it was most definitely a bomb that they had discovered nearby.

There was a good number of people annoyed at the twenty minute wait, and there was at least one individual that was annoyed by the nearby scent of kimchi.

The varying degree of responses to the single event of an assembly that not yet justified is interesting, and to a certain degree, amusing.

This amusement is further fed by the crowd's reactions after the reason for the assembly was revealed. Some immediately started looking for nearby exit signs while others evangelized the truth of the "war relic" being explosives. There seemed to be a recurring theme of either "the police aren't telling us the truth of what the relic is" or "the police aren't telling us that we're not actually safe". And to the latter response, you have to ask the question: Why?

Why wouldn't the authorities (a more faceless, authoritarian term for "police" here) reveal that we were in danger, and proceed to evacuate us if we were? While there existed the possiblity that they wanted to keep panicking to a minimum, there wouldn't have been much possiblity of it spontaneously detonating after it was discovered and the authorities were alerted, and there wouldn't have been any chance that they would have started working on sending it on its merry, explodey way till everyone was safely evacuated. The suspicion that the authorities or the government is hiding vital information from the people it is meant to protect/ the country's citizens is a knee jerk reaction that could potentially make someone walk funny if we aren't careful.

But maybe these suspicions are vital to maintaining the integrity of our national system. If we enquire, we open the possiblity of ignorance. But all that considered, surely we could have done that in a manner that didn't involve flailing our arms to make references to Hindu mythology.
And the twitch reaction aside, there was the rather paradoxical reaction of cheering after Dr Hang declared the rest of the day to be absolutely nothing. It was a rather impressive leap from people construction conspiracy theories and fearing for their lives to overall cheerfulness at the prospect of a break for the rest of the day.

That was nowhere near the leap of witnessing my entire cluster gather in a single room and cheering at the aftermath of the bomb actually being disposed off in a completely un-subtle fashion. And as I stood there trying to get a glimpse of the disappointingly, not-very-devastated construction site, I thought to myself, we sure have strange selection of responses to the prospect of adversity.

Dear Diary

Hello there WordPad. There's been something I've been meaning to discuss with you lately, and it's about the whole concept of people talking to inanimate objects. No, no one needs any help of any sort. I'm talking about something that's fairly commonplace and that people don't really take issue to much. I'm talking (for about the second time now) about the topic of diaries.

No one really seems to be bothered by the fact that when someone writes in a diary, they're not recording the events of their day for the purposes of tabulation, or to maximize their door opening efficiency. What people that write diaries are really doing is talking to an inanimate object. They tell their tiny little books about things that happened today at work that are responsible for the creases on the back cover of the very same book, and that they're very sorry about creasing it, but they just need to get this all out so that they feel much better.

Diaries become a form of very submissive, accomodating, and in all aspects, incapacitated confidants. They can't really argue back about how compromise would have been a great thing in that situation or that the writer really is that much of a hindrance to the mental processes of others. In fact, when you think about, they can't really agree with anyone either.

Or maybe some people don't use a diary for the purposes of ranting. Some uses them to record thoughts and ideas and fantasies and the sort of things that would get them funny looks and would most probably end up having their daily actions recorded by someone else.

What diaries offer is something that human beings simply aren't capable of offering, and that also means that neither is a substitute for the other. Diaries are an entirely different market in terms of social interaction. They provide a neither agreeing, nor disagreeing companion, that doesn't say a word till you're done, and in fact, doesn't say a word once you're done anyway. What they offer is something that you can talk to without ever having your unique or strange ideas and perspective shot down before you've had a chance to fully get them out. Diaries are essentially psychological vaccum cleaners.

Wouldn't you agree?

Things that Rooms Say

One of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that when I set out to do it, I usually don't get very much done at all. The creative process usually involves me sitting at my desk, tapping the table as if trying to extract whatever ideas might be burrowing under its nonchalant woody surface, and often shifting over to lean on the hand I'm not leaning on, possibly under the assumption that if the screen in front of me is viewed at a particular angle, magical glowing words will emerged from the sparkling ruins of the screen and present me with an idea.

Another of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that I just can't seem to do it in a word processor. This doesn't make much sense at the first thought given my legal history with handwriting, but what I mean here is that I can never seem to write an article or blog entry when I'm trying to do it in a word processor, yet ideas gush out at a rate envied by Asian floods whenever I talk to somebody on Windows Live Messenger. It's the most infuriating sensation to have had a wonderful conversation (Misnomer really. The person on the other end usually just sits there and blinks, and coughs up a one word response like "okay".) with someone, and then to sit and stare at what you've written over the last five minutes only to realize that it would have been a lot more beneficial to your literary ego had you done all of that in a word processor, as opposed to chucking the lot at some bewildered person who really just wants to get on with reading sappy fanfiction.

And the exact thing happened to me not too long ago when I had a conversation with Kylie about rooms. The subject of the conversation was initially how barren and depressed her room looked like after she had taken all of her postcards, posters, poems and alliterations down to accomodate her brother whom she was letting to move in because she was "nice". The subject then shifted to what her brother had in his room and how the very same room that she thought looked dejected would be troubled and deranged given a month's time. And then I commenced my solliloquy regarding rooms.

Rooms seem to say things, and while this is the sort of thing that could very well earn me a jacket with comically long sleeves I don't mean this in the literal sense. Rooms are mostly mute, but a quality they do seem to possess is the ability to convey a certain message based on the things in them.

Even an empty room says something, usually something something along the lines of "Hello, I'm empty. I don't really like this."
A room painted a eye-eviscerating pink would probably convey the message that it desires is the state's recognition of its freedom, while a room painted a relaxing coffee colour with patterned lampshades, a somewhat obese looking sofa possibly responsible for the obesity of people, and with all floral curtains drawn urges you in a reserved, butlery sort of voice to "let me take your hat and jacket for you sir, just sit down and I'll fetch you your loungue jacket." Rooms, as a whole including the things that are in them, seem to tell you precisely what their purpose is.

My hostel room, for instance, seems to constantly remind me in a mental voice befitting of humorless public relations officer that I am currently residing in an institution, and that I should probably take a rest so that I may resume my studies the next day and achieve great things and possibly break a few ethics along the way. The overall demeanour of the room tells me that I'm in a building built for the purposes of educational accomodation, and that I can't deny it. But precisely what it is that gives me that impression, I can't quite say. Perhaps it's the stock-like feeling off the room, so much that you can imagine thousands of the same room being churned out in automated factories in China and shipped over in plastic packages, but overall it does say "Sleep here so you can study later."

My hostel room also occasionally tells me it's probably time for the 10:35 role call, though it's a while later that I find out that that room happens to have actually come from China, and enjoys sleeping with nothing but striped underwear on. About a minute later I find out that that was my roommate, and not really much of a room at all.

And amidst all this imaginary conversations with accomodation I'm not quite sure why rooms seem to say anything at all. Maybe it's the accumulated features of the room by way of our contribution that speak of our personalities (or hygeine standards), which end up conveying a message, or in the case of an empty room, the lack of it. Perhaps a room is the best example of the accumulated visible effects of things that we leave behind, slowly piling together in corners the location of which you can't explain, though you're pretty sure you once knew why those things were there.

I'm not really sure how to conclude this, but I'm going to anyway by stopping right here, and might possibly hit the sack (no other word for this blast door of a mattress), and be reminded its quality.

Byestreet 21


I'm sitting in my room right now, and just for the purposes of context here, I'd like to point out that I really am sitting in my room. My room, as opposed to the room that was assigned to me that faces the highway, spouting up copious amounts of exhaust and soot, as if the drivers are trying to convey their mutual hate for me and my luxury of sleeping at that hour while they are condemned to slogging it down the highway in their comfortably air conditioned vehicles. But anyway, I really am sitting in the room belonging to me, the one facing the rather large field that spews out colonies of exotic insects that asail my room light while I express my envy at the lady who sells drinks at our school, who happens to own a bug zapper shaped like a tennis racket, with a rather intimidating lightning-bolt in the center of it. Truly, that device is the closet you will ever get to reliving Greek mythology.

Back to the topic of me being in my room: I love it. I've never quite appreciated my room, with its dastardly pink cupboards, constantly declaring their pride in their lifestyle choices, the gaudy shade of green that plagues the walls, verging on breaking into the chorus of "Give Peace a Chance", and the haphazard combination of pillows on my bed, with pillow cases of such random variety that they emulate a family with siblings of stupidly different age groups. One has clothed bears on it, apparently going through some sort of species identity crisis, while another seems to be channelling its desire to be a kaleidoscope. But while they're all so terribly gaudy they're an essential part of the monstrosity that is my room. And I've never really been very fond of it until the point where seeing the same room appear in every single door on nearly every single floor got slightly monotonous at times. The rooms in the hostel differ only in terms of which tired, homesick people they contain, so it's refreshing to be blinded by the psychedelic qualities of my room again.

But it wasn't so much my room that I thought about after returning from a fairly gruelling day of setting people on fire and pushing back carts filled with explosives that could possibly set people on fire. I had a brief exchange with the wonderful Irsyad (this here being just for him) on what we would first do upon getting home (our respective ones), and I did so reply that the first thing I would do would be to get a pot, pour some water into it and set fire to that water, then once that water had enough I would proceed to unload a good chunk of noodles, an egg, and a few frozen wantons into the mixture, then let it burn a bit more just to make a point. The point being that I would probably be really hungry by then, and that I couldn't remember the last time I cooked noodles for supper in the whimsically described "wee hours" of the night (possibly morning based on the general wee-ness of the day/night at that point), though I can remember that it definitely wasn't in the last three weeks.

So while I was actually doing that, I stood around and admired the semi-sheen that the kitchen floor had. I wasn't used to it, since over the last three weeks I had been more accustomed to admiring how much of the floor I could see. There were a few specks of dirt near the stove, but drastically different compared to the few specks of stove in the hostel pantry.

At that point the contents of the pot aimed to change that and it occurred to me that I should probably adhere to the Geneva Convention and just eat the damn thing.

It was very tasty. Very much tastier than I had remembered it being. But then again, maybe it wasn't so much the actual food that was tasty, which I thought was the only possible case till this point. Maybe it was the clean chairs that contributed to the tastiness of the noodles, hopefully through indirect means. Maybe it was the fact that I could finally cook that bowl of noodles that made it so much tastier. Maybe it was everything but the food that made it so good.

I remember, this sentence adding at least twenty years to my age just by writing it, that there used to be a restaurant called Baystreet 21 at IMM. It had a very conservative, leathery sort of colour scheme to it, and there were dim hanging lights that exhumed photoscopic veils onto the tables. There was also this big wooden board with a ship relief carved onto it. Soft lounge music would play in the background while you carved into your Dory, making the lounge music an impromptu hymn, but that's killing my point here. My point is that it was cozy. It felt sophisticated and comfortable. The food may not be as good as I remembered, but the actual place definitely was.

Now, the place has been renovated into a diner's about as organized as my pillows, with very large tomatoes and lettuce covering the walls of the place, some of which were provided by customers leaving in disgust. The whole place looks like a McDonald's branch, and the only thing missing here is a Reminiscence meal of some kind. The food isn't even that good anymore. But then again, maybe the food just as good as it used to be. Maybe it's not the actual food that's declined, but the overall restaurant. But then again, maybe what I remembered it to be simply appears so perfect because of nostalgia or some other vague poetic term. Maybe that warm, pleasant Baystreet 21 never really was that toasty and enjoyable, but I still miss it all the same.