A Tentatively Apocalyptic Morning

A wedge of sandy orange light pried my eyes open, not so much as apologizing for the unsavory experience before it pointed out that the celestial bodies were generally in an apocalyptic sort of mood at the moment. They'd apparently had enough of the little blue git, infested with all manner of parasites that they'd told him time and time again to get rid of. He'd apparently grown attached to the swarming abominations and disturbingly enough, didn't seem to mind it when they called him "Mother Earth". This had greatly upset Mars and Venus who were generally very adamant about the clear definition of genders, not that that had anything to do with them since they were planets, but minor details like those certainly weren't going to stop them being filled with righteous fury.

I had discovered this intragalatic dispute when I stepped out of my hostel room and took a quick glance at the sky. The sky was a bright orange, and in between the sun and us was a thick veil of dust that might have suggested that it was probably time for humanity to start going back to their nomadic roots and start living in giant sandcrawlers while scavenging off the ruins of prior civilization for a living. The sky was now an expansive desert of nothingness, the dust in the air passing off for sand and making the sun seem a lot more sweltering than it would have alone.

The desert was complete with bedrock, bedrock that tended to grumble a lot and spit lightning into its giant planet of a spitoon and wasn't quite content with being where it currently was. It spread, its blackness slowly contaminating the nearby orangeness and very soon, you had to look for the orange in the sky before you saw it, which meant that if you unaware of the orangeness to begin with then you would proably lost out on a lot of it.

But it had made a crucial publicity error. It spread so much, became so prevalent that it no longer drew any attention. It became the backdrop for a sky that was filled with nothing but itself, and everyone eventually ignored it. It didn't take this too well. It left, taking the furnace-like shades of orange and the fog of dust with it, leaving behind a vibrantly blue and slightly confused sky by three o'clock in the afternoon.

The weather, if anything, is erratically bipolar.

No U

It's one of those little things that's always bothered me that would have made for an excellent and intellectually stimulating conversation practically made for accompaniment by a glass of red wine if it weren't for the fact that nearly everyone I know is under the legal drinking age. So that's made me grab this topic, shove it in a bag and throw it in a trunk, lock that trunk then sit on it indirectly with fifteen art history manuscripts as the middlemen, but now, despite still being under the legal drinking age, I'd like to talk about the use of hypocrisy as a defence.

Suppose someone accused someone else of performing something absolutely dastardly, something shamelessly unethical or so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that it deserves a smack on the head, just as a good follow up of matyrdom, like every saint should. The accused then breaks into a smirk, grin, or befittingly of his saint status, an enlightened and gentle smile and says,

"Well, aren't you one to talk?"

His will is done, and the aspiring prosecutor joins Rowan Atkinson on the path from a life of wonder and splendor to that of a linguistically retarded man with an unsettling attraction to teddy bears. He now looks like a moron and the formerly accused is now free to continue his work, but now with double the satisfaction and a huge smirk on his face.

But even aside from the fact that his accuser may have been guilty of hypocrisy, it still doesn't change the fact that the accused hasn't in fact defended himself from anything. He hasn't in anyway refuted the incoming accusation in anyway and he might as well just have pointed how ugly his adversary's tie was, and how ties are a bad idea in general.

And this might all seem well enough and self-explanatory in an over-the- top, one dimensionally portrayed incident like this, but in real life, which tends to have a lot more dimensions and thus a lot more space for the important stuff to get lost in, pointing out that an adversary is guilty of hypocrisy and then shimmying away from the dispute without having to actually defend yourself, and you can do all of that under cheery applause.

I realize that all of this really has a place in Latin terminology so sophisticated it has to be italics: Ad hominem tu quoque. But what I'd like to call attention to is the mind-blowing ease in which it can be performed and the frequency with which it happens.

Then again, I've probably done that several times myself, but I'm not sure that's the point.

Edit: I realized that the fancy Latin phrase that I said had to be in italics was in fact NOT in italics. So yeah. I just went back and edited it in hopes that no one would notice. Then I explicitly wrote an update note at the end.

Write...

Just yesterday I started writing that dreaded extended essay and I did a little bit of a double take, followed by an intense five minute yawning session. The stuff I wrote was some of the most tasteless bran I'd ever written. If any piece of writing had to come with a glass of water, this would be it.

I can't remember the last time I wrote anything that was particularly insightful, but then again, maybe no one does either. (Well, that was depressing. Never doing that again.)

Should probably dust off the old notepad that doesn't actually physically exist but shh it's an expression. Start writing out whatever first comes to mind and see what dark crannies that leads to.

Tiiiiooooommmaaaannnn

Posts I wrote during the Tioman trip, in an air conditioned resort room next to the comfortable open air balcony that doesn't try to freeze the living shit out of anything in it, posts that are probably utterly irelevant by this point but that I'm still going to put up anyway.

Day 1

Today's the first day of the bet.

In the elevator, felt a little bit woozy. I'm sure that this is in no way indicative of my future status today.

I've noticed that while Cancy has coffee in her bag, she hasn't drunk it, whereas I've already begun not drinking coffee. Clearly this is why she thought she was going to win. I figure that if I can last till the hyperactivity kicks in for her, it'll be a home stretch all the way.

The sounds of garbled conversations and Bob imparting Malaysian wisdom to all around him and the humming of the bus are... Soothing.

Yellow Submarine is infinitely better as a song you're on a moving bus staring at the sea.

Apparently Cancy drank the cup of coffee and then fell alseep. But coffee takes a while to kick in. It also wasn't a cup of coffee by my prescription so I'm going to try and badger her into drinking another later on.

Watching clouds moving past other clouds in the sunlight. I'm not sure anything beats that.

The ferry is tiny, and it tries to make the trip shorter by freezing its passengers till they get there. But then the boat starts rocking a bit, and that makes up for everything.

I'm writing this as I lie in a comfortable, uncomfortably enough, double bed, but essentially, I'm skeptical that this is in fact primarily an ecology field trip. The food's good, the room's are beyond anything we thought we'd get, and all our rooms are all on stilts and suspended above a scenic pond. I sat there and watched it for a good ten minutes and birds swept down and glanced the water just for dramatic effect before smugly flying away. So the accomodation's wonderful, if not touristy down to the last overpriced detail.

About the fairly minor ecology aspect of this trip, we constructed our Ber-something funnels, made to chase insects out of leaf litter we collected into bottles of soapy water that are to insects what vats of acid are to government agents, with the exception that they actually succeed in killing what they set out to kill.

A while after that we treked over to a forest and planted our eggs while we raked up wads of leaves to the melodious sounds of "O nom nom nom" and "Guns don't kill people".

During dinner, with a complete absence of any leaf litter whatsoever, the kind resort staff supplied customers with a pot of piping coffee at the buffet spread. I decided at the time, for some reason, to point this out to Cancy who very politely enquired if I wanted some. I declined even more politely and started thinking about nothing but the merits of tea for the next few minutes.

I actually intend to start drinking leaf water as a substitute for the bean solution that I love. At least I'll get some sort of hot stimulant in the morning.

Day 2


Can trees go above the canopy? We spent hours measuring trees and we still have no idea. More of a question for the philosophers.

We trekked back to the same spots in the same forest to measure the height and diameter of trees this time. Ants apparently found this objectionable and expressed this in the most dental way possible.

Snorkelling afterward was best described as a tune to the sound of salt water entering nasal cavities, people gawking at the fish circumventing them, and people emulating fishy schoal behaviour but with a camera.

Tragically, the forest night walk was replaced with what sounded like a fairly uninteresting return to the intertidal regions and mangrove. We later found out from those bored or interested enough to go that they ventured down to the mouth of the mangrove's river and saw igneous rock and sand.

Igneous sand is black in color. I don't think I need to explain how this variation in colour is the most awesome thing that could be done with sand.

Day 3


Today was really more of a wrap up than anything else. We went back to collect our quail eggs and got readings indicating that the spots we picked were essentially quail refugee zones. We walked down a bit to one of the other team's sites and found out that that was bollocks, of course. Where one of the teams once had two eggs in their petri dish, they now had three significantly smaller ones.

Leaf litter was also sorted through. At least, I assume it was, since I was busy trying to guess what Vera meant by "the opposite of Malay", which according to her is Indian. A few moments later she was equally confused as us as to why this was so, so it's all good in the end. Taboo is excellent for exposing politically incorrect beliefs.

A while later we were told to embark on a photographic treasure hunt for some organism or the other. My group knew the trauma associated with spending twenty minutes on the first clue and mopping up the remaining eight in fifteen minutes, which I’m sure we all still insist is the fault of the lycan growing on the tree right next to the bar in which we were given the clue which was way too discrete about its lycanthropy for its own damn good. In any case, after we ran to and from the bar where the teachers lazily supervised us in between sips of their martinis, we had the rest of the day to ourselves.

Ideally, the immediate to do would be to gather up a bunch of mates and proceed to scour every reachable inch of the island for amazing sights that we weren’t shown just to demonstrate the monotony of our education system. The problem then was that either a good majority of us had already thought of that an hour before the rest of us did and had already fallen down the crevices of some obscure rock formation elsewhere or had conspired to hide in their rooms and not answer the doors, because Cancy, Adhit and I couldn’t find Dom, Movin or Divya, and there was the general consensus amongst the people that could be found that the people they were looking for couldn’t be found either.

We couldn’t find anyone in the resort, so we figured that we’d try the beaches since we’d been talking about faffing about near the mouth of the nearby mangrove’s river.

All we found at the beaches and the mouth of the river were, respectively, the beaches and the mouth of the river.

So all in all, no people, but still a good find.

























Went back a while later to find out from Kylie, who we’d passed by earlier on, that Dom, Divya, Aaron and Movin had shimmied over to the mouth of the river AFTER we left. Movin’s inexplicable disappearance was explained by him creeping over to the nearby forest and swimming in a natural pool by the trail we took earlier on. Dom had declined time alone with Movin based on the prospect of parasites in the water. Movin, being naturally repugnant to all forms of parasites, swam about for a good hour before heading over to join the others in saltier water.

It is not Dyiiiiing

In about seven minutes, my phone would have unwillingly transferred all of its photos over to my computer, and saved all contacts to its SIM card, and beyond that, it will be laid to rest in a casket of one-time-use plastic and other materials intent on the destruction of the planet. There, it will lie in silence, contemplating the days in which it had a purpose, and the companionship of some wanker who subjected it to all manner of unfair acrobatics and kept whipping it out and pointing it in the direction of the unforgiving rays of the Sun.

It will contemplate the seething ungratefulness that came with comments about the sub-standard quality of its speakers, the unnnecessary hardness of most materials used for paving floors, and the terrifying, moist embrace of an adolescent's lipid-coated face.

And now it will be swapped out for a new model, a superior model, fresh faced and eager to be of service, not knowing yet knowing the terrors of the sweaty trouser pocket and the subtle yet unspeakable torment of dust from the hostel windows, nor the communal sighs of every phone that it passes by, who all remember the days in which they emerged from their motherly packaging into the world newborn.

Even in the last moments of its life it is told to pile its legacy into the trophy cupboards of other electronic devices, those bastards.

But despite all these transgressions commited against this kindly courier, it submits to fate. Partially because it's a phone and it doesn't have a damn say in the matter, but also because it knows that it's done its duty. It's dutifuly played catchy Beatles songs when told to, it's captured glorious suns because no camera was around, and it's saved its person from many a chemistry lesson through shamelessly downloaded mobile games.

Maybe it's also had enough of hanging around with people who pretend to read the minds of electronic devices, but that's just wild speculation.

But now we must part, faithful mobile, and though I shed tears that are suspiciously close in chemical composition to eye drops, parting will be made easier by the fact that I remember you and your services, from the day that Steph called you "champagney" to this very moment.

Fare thee well, K530i.

PS: In all lightheartedness though, it was a decent phone and quite stylish, so thank you Sony Ericsson.

Just a Stub

He realized that there wasn't any possibility of him getting to his laundry. Not at this hour of the night, or depending on how you looked at it, the wee hours of the morning. He'd always liked to think of himself as an early riser, who apparently shunned the orthodox methods of falling asleep before the act of getting up and simply bypassing being unconscious altogether. That, he'd thought, was really just cutting out the middle man.

No one had really thought it necessary to tell him that sleeping wasn't the destination, but the journey.

Not a stiff yet

Apologies to my blog.

Work has been piling and there've been many things that've happened that can't be squished into words without much effort and self discipline.

I'm incapable of both, unfortunately.

This blog isn't dead though. It's just... going to be comatose for a bit. And starting to smell.

I'm not even trying here.

A lot has happened, but first it probably deserves mention that I just had what can actually be considered my first bowl of instant noodles in the hostel.

Alright, so ten minuets or so is stretching the definition of instant to the lengths of "not agonizingly slow", and it's not really the first meal (again, elastic definitions here) of noodles that I've ever had in the hostel, since that putrid polysterene-packed pasta technically counts, but I've never actually experienced the joys of having a steaming bowl, that isn't saturated with CFC, of noodles in the hostel. Until now.

The beauty of the entire moment was tragically stomped into the layers of dust on my room floor when the noodles didn't really taste that good.

I really need to get meatballs or ham. Anything to go with the noodles. And come to think of it, I ought to get noodles.

I'm counting on my hopes that Zeyang never finds out.

But while I'm on the topics of simple joys, I've found a source of euphoria: an alternative to simultaneous decapitation, dismemberment, and dismebowelment, followed by the hearty, alcohol laced bellows of a black scottish cyclops. I've discovered Captain's Ball down at the school track at five in the evening, once every few days or so.

It's especially fun when I get on one of the chairs and everyone starts overcompensating for what is apparently my towering stature. These poorly thought out tosses often result in someone in the canteen spilling his or her drink then swearing very loudly.

But now there's work to do, and I'd better get to it.

Of Plays and Pulling Plugs

Well, pus.

It looks like the play might not be going on after all. This means that those two weeks of surviving nights on nothing but sheer willpower, coffee, and sleep are probably going down the drainhole that the admin just unplugged, although in fairness, it's also sucking down any chance of this pandemic getting any worse, so I suppose the sacrifice of having our play solicit with RNA viruses in the sewage might be for a worthy cause.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this whole debacle. On one hand, we spent over a month drafting up concepts and writing, and we would really like to just perform it, but on the other hand that has unkempt fingernails that have been to unmentionable places and should have been washed a long time ago if it wasn't for the fact that its owner was a lazy prick, by the time we get this approved, it'll be next week, and that would mean little over a week (if we're lucky) of rehearsals.

That I think, strictly falls under the category of the ridiculous, so if the play's cancelled, it's a bit of a double edged sword, and I can't say that I regret having worked on this script, although just on principle I am angry at the administration.

Well, not really.

Shit is happening.

Well, the world's a mess, but there's no reason that Iran should.

Go on ahead and read up:

Timeline of major events in Iran and explanation detailing their Rubik's Cube governance system:

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/3354654.html

Twitters you should follow:

http://twitter.com/ProtesterHelp
http://twitter.com/NextRevolution

And something to stop you from unintentionally killing someone:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html

Shit is happening in Iran and the least we could do is at least follow it with the power of the Interwebs. To quote the fervent, boiling-over-with-righteous-fury Iran election guru Abbeh:

"The revolution will not be televised, it will be tweeted."