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Sometimes, when I drink too much coffee, I can listen to my thoughts as they start bickering with themselves and my to-do lists in my head, to be specific they are around the pre-frontal cortex area... I can find a nice place about two-thought-steps (if thoughts could take steps) back from behind my eye-brows and nestle between two gyri (i.e. between a fold of the brain), as if to sit on a bean-bag, and start wondering why my thoughts bother to replay themselves with things I can't really be bothered with; until, I start wondering about the name of the part of my brain I would be sitting at, and realise I cannot recall the brain's anatomy I pretended to study at school, then the space between the imagined distinct consciousnesses will gradually fade, and it will be noisy all over my head, and I will get lost again.

The Auntie who sold fish cakes and other-fish-related-processed-food-products

There was a woman, in her early forties, who sold fish cakes and other-fish-related-processed-foodstuff at a snack store that she owned. She was gradually turning into a fish. Well, sort of.

It was not as if she grew scales or fins or gills, but her lower lip became larger and protruded, as did her eye balls. Her jawline and cheeks sagged, and her nose grew flatter and the distancebetween the nose and mouth, grew wider. In the emoticon sense, her expression grew to be more like this -
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- which, if one would stretch his imagination in the right direction, is an expression that would really make any woman look more like a fish, let alone a woman who was sort of gradually turning into one.

The last time she had sex, which was the first time after a long time since the previous time, with her husband, with whom she married for a reason she could no longer remember and who was 15 years older than her, something even more strange happened - her belly began to swelled up over the next few weeks days. A few months later, before she could concluded that she was pregnant, she gave birth, on the toilet bowl, to about four-dozen fish balls. After getting over the shock, she collected the fishballs, and rinsed it clean, and deep fried them, and put them on satay sticks, three-by-threes, and took stock, and deep fried them again just to be sure they were thoroughly cooked, and brought them to the store for sale - as the special item of the day.

Since the incident, she did not want to have sex anymore, and her sexual frustration made her sulk even more, which in turn, made her look like a fish lagi even more than ever.

Seven tau-gay legs

There was a spider, that had seven legs, that were not proper spider legs - black and hairy. Instead, they were made of tau-gay, or green bean sprouts. She had lost her eighth leg in a fight.

Despite her handicap, the spider was with a lively spirit who enjoyed the occasional practical joke. Once, she was in a store, that was somewhat like Singapore's version of the Metropolitan Museum of Art store, pretending to be brooch. When she was caught, she laughed mischievously in such an infectious way that nobody could then fault her for trying.

She would have danced a little if she could have, but she could not, for her legs were soft and flimsy. She had accidentally stepped into somebody's warm bath water, and her tau-gay legs got scalded and became somewhat flimsy ever after. This was to her greatest regret, as she had loved dancing.

If she felt bad for herself, she would think of her friend, a spider who has cabbage leaves for his legs. Imagine, all eight legs! Cabbage leaves! All too big to fit on a little spider! And all slightly curved! He never walked a single step from birth. If he needed to get anywhere, he would roll his way there. Like a tumbleweed! Except he bruised more easily! Let alone dance!

Tau-gay legs are really not too bad! Or so the spider with tau-gay legs would remind herself comfortingly. She would sing or hum her favourite song to herself. It was ABBA's Dancing Queen. If she let anyone hear her, they could feel sorry for her and go on and on about how dancing was not a big deal. This would then make everything more difficult to bear.

Jazz and Recorders

I am writing this from Starbucks at Liang Court. They are playing jazz on the speakers.

I always thought that hard-core jazz was difficult to understand. By "hard-core jazz", I mean the music created with a piano, drums or bass perhaps, and a saxaphone or trumpet or both; I mean the jazz without Ella Fitzgerald or the boys from Ipanema or anybody singing in general; I mean the music without songs.

I vaguely wish that instead of making me learn how to play "three blind mice" on the bloody plastic recorder, my music teachers from school taught me how to appreciate jazz, or baroque, for that matter. Then again, it is only because they did, that I can take it for granted that I once knew, and have since forgotten, how to play the recorder.

I must remember this the next time I hear the neighbours' kid practising the recorder - that dreaded-elongated-whistle-of-a-thing. And I should be glad that there will always be some neighbours' kid practising the recorder. (Hey, I was "that kid" before.) And that maybe they are just trying very hard to teach me how to appreciate jazz.

Farting Freely - A big plus point of Teleworking

I've read many articles about the pros and cons of teleworking. Mostly, these articles discuss how working from home saves commuting time, but threatens the family life. I think they leave out the most important point that makes working from home worthwhile - teleworking allows one to fart freely.

When one is at the office, one cannot fart freely, for fear of being laughed at, discriminated against, or nicknamed the 'fart boy/girl'. Although this causes not so much distress (as it's been a bane since young - when we had to go to school - except that we do not seem to have so much gas when we were younger), it is still a luxury for one to be able to fart freely, as loud as whatever, when one works from home. It is especially great, when you let out a loud fart, and then you realise it's a smelly one, and that it's one of those farts that make your stomach feel instantaneously lighter. Every time I fart one of those farts, I think to myself, wow, this is what makes teleworking worthwhile.

I tend to think that this mostly affects people who work in air-conditioned-high-rise-offices more than any other type of work. This is because we have the tendency to pretend that we're very serious and clean and picture perfect, and therefore, feel the most fart-conscious at work. As we have to be in the office for most part of our waking hours, farting freely is a luxury. Maybe if we all change our attitude on farts, it would make us less uptight.

The doctors and nurses have to be serious and clean and perfect, but they're educated in the biological working of the bodies, and so, are obliged to accept that farting is natural and not a big deal. I also suspect that it would be difficult to disapprove every fart as their patients won't really care and would fart anyhow, and disapproving every fart would make them unnecessarily busier. Thus, farting freely is not a big deal.

It's gotta do with the air-conditioning, I think, as not all hospitals are air-conditioned. Also, I suspect people working in the service-line at air-conditioned departmental stores will also feel the pressure to fart carefully, but they can't really work from home anyway, so well, let's not rub in it.

To digress a bit, I suspect rice-farmers, of all professions, will be the most cool about farting, because they're always bending down, and it is quite impossible to stifle or muffle farts in that butt-sticking-in-the-air position.

I wonder if people are motivated to climb the corporate ladder so that they can get their private rooms (and not share offices with others at work) so that they can fart whenever. And that explains why those "high up" are not so keen on teleworking, because being in their private rooms, they would no longer deem the freedom to fart as luxurious. Maybe when I find my way there and get a room to myself, and I get to fart big farts freely, I would think to myself, wow, this is what makes being a "Director" worthwhile.

In the meantime, I shall be satisfied with maintaining that farting freely is a big plus point of teleworking, or shall I say, it's a big Pro(ooT!) of teleworking.

If your family is also disapproving on your loud farts, then this 'pro of working from home' doesn't apply for you. Sorry then, that it sucks to be you.

The above arguments should also apply to the freedom to dig one's nose.

Days of Thunder

A couple of days ago, I bought a copy of Days of Thunder on VCD for only 1 dollar. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman starred in that movie. I watched it a few times when I was a kid - from tv-re-runs.

When I first saw the VCD and the screaming yellow gaudy price label, I thought to myself, wow, as lowly as VCDs are regarded nowadays with the threat of high-def DVDs and blue-ray DVDs that they say are not really DVDs... 1 dollar is really too cheap to sell such a classic movie's VCD, right? Surely it was worth a little bit more. Maybe 2 or 3 dollars more perhaps?

After all, the one bad thing about VCDs are just that one has to get up in the middle of a movie to change from Disk 1 to Disk 2. Sure, sure, they say that the DVD visual and audio quality is way better, but really, how much quality does one need? Like how many languages are you going to read the subtitles in? Anyway, I'd rather save some dollars from this expenditure and spend it on increasing the thread-count of my pillow case.

I decided to buy the vcd. I thought that it might be nice to re-run it on my laptop on a casual evening and fall asleep watching the pretty faces fall in love. I remember reading from a magazine article about how when Tom Cruise first met Nicole Kidman on the set of Days of Thunder, he was so smitten that he got his people to call up her people, and they dated, and fell in love, and got married, and attended many Hollywood gala-events together. It's a really great fairytale on-screen-couple becomes off-screen-couple kinda story.

Nevermind that her hair was all frizzy and he's actually shorter than her. Nevermind that they're both broken up, leaving us with that weird-but-not-weird-in-an-interesting-way-movie, Eyes Wide Shut, and are probably off sleeping with other people now. I figured that I could allow them to remain, in my impression, as in my childhood, and as in "Far and Away" (another movie starring them as a couple), in love and happily married to each other. It takes a little bit of denial, but it doesn't really hurt anybody and nobody cares, so I just indulged me.

When my computer couldn't read the VCD initially, I was understandably a little disappointed, even though it was just a dollar investment's - I had hyped myself up.

Yet (after re-starting my computer and successfully played the VCD), it was not as disappointing, as when I was watching the show mid-way into the Disk 2 when the disk suddenly jumped - from just when they were flirting to the part they were lying in bed together. My immediate thoughts were:

ALAMAK. No wonder (this VCDs) were sold for 1 dollar only. Nowadays still got censor out the sex scene one meh?

There weren't even the rolling around in bed. It just fast forwarded to the after-sex talk.

Precisely in realising that the censor standards were more stringent then than now, this incident then really drove home the point that the time now is different from before. The time has changed and so have I, for I am not just contented with romantic fairy-tales, and I am not accepting of abrupt censorship anymore. I am now an adult, and I want to watch unrealistically-beautiful people, whom I would never meet in real life, having hot passionate sex.

And I suppose this is part of growing up.

White hair and Pulp fiction

Today, I changed my hair-parting a bit and discovered that I had new strands of white hair. I knew that they were growing on my head from around that spot, and I would like to believe that they were the ones I had plucked out, say maybe last month, but they're probably new, for mainly two reasons.

One, the ones that I had plucked out were about the same length as the ones I spotted today. I don't think my hair can grow so fast.

And two, I plucked out two strands of hair last month, now there seems to be more than two. I don't exactly know how many more there are, but there seems to be more than two. This, to my dismay, means that if we let the number of strands of white hair on my head presently be "X", then altogether, the strands white hair on my head = "X"+2.

I just rolled my eyes at myself. I know you couldn't see it, so I thought I would tell you I just rolled my eyes. You would think that one would need a mirror to roll one's eyes at oneself, but since the rolling of eyes doesn't require the receiving party to witness the eye-rolling, I didn't need to see myself to roll my eyes at myself.

Well, anyway, at a time when I was feeling less sensible, I formulated a theory that since it must be caused by something that my head was constantly being overexposed to (whoever heard of white armpit hairs?), and that I spend most of my time in the office or generally indoors... Fluorescent lighting might just be the cause of these things.

My parents, on the other hand, will recall with pride that when they were about my age - which is under 30 years old, they didn't have problems with white hair growing. And then, with concern, and instead of subscribing to my theory, they would say that white hair grows because life is generally more stressful now than before, and that I'm ageing, faster.

Come to think about it, that sounds rather strange too, actually. How could I possibly be ageing faster? It suggests that not only I can travel faster than they travelled, I can grow to a biological age in a shorter time than what they took to grow to the same biological age.

I haven't read Einstein's theory of time or relativity or magic enough to even know if it's remotely related to the topic at all or not, but... the idea that people are ageing faster than they were before, sounds like a spark of a plot for a futuristic movie starring Christopher Lloyd.

Christopher Lloyd, incidentally, also has a head full of white hair and thus, he would be perfect for the movie. Perhaps, it would feature how, into the distant future, babies might be born one minute and then pass away of old age in the next hour.

Maybe it would not be so much of a Physics-fiction movie but a Bio-fi type. (I'm also thinking they should start being more specific than just calling all of them "sci-fi" movies.) Perhaps, we could have one scientist, who's into stem-cell research or whatever else there is to research on, postulate that the fluorescent lights caused the super-ageing process; and there'd be another scientist, maybe a pretty psychiatrist, who would try to attribute it to stress. Then Christopher Lloyd's character could be yapping around and pretend to explain some scientific thing. Then, just to throw in some moral to the story, Master Pai Mei would come by and say that white hair is due to having too much pride. In the olden times, only old people would have white hair because it's a sign of being too filled with their own ideas, and that now even youngsters have white hair, and that's really too bad.

I know I could have saved us a lot of bullshit if I had just changed my parting again to hide all the white hair on my head, and honestly treasure my life better and spend it more wisely, before the time comes for me to be unable to hide white hairs by changing partings. It's just like how I know I could change my take on any experience and make it moralistic and learn from it and be wiser and develop myself better; say for example, in this case, I could learn to be less proud and self-obsessed about the white hair. But really, even if I saved up on the bullshit, I would spend it on other bullshit anyway. And then eventually, I'd just grow old and die. (White hair is an obvious symbol for the transience of life.)

Maybe Samuel L Jackson could cameo in the movie, sporting a black suit and a crown of brown hair in tight curls, reprising his role as Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction and kill everybody.

Himself included. Just for a dash of dramatic irony.

It sounds like a good B-rate movie already.

By the way : You light up my life

Hedonistic Sunday (for Mr Akutagawa) Part 3 of 3 - "Gentle Ghosts"

In Spinning Gears, Mr A drank whisky, and was on medication for insomnia (from which an overdose killed Akutagawa). I do not understand why though, he didn’t seem to drink some more. He didn’t seem to abuse alcohol. I’m saying this from my impression of him from the stories, and I have not yet researched on how he lived his life. While not advocating that alcohol use is for everyone, I think he could have given it a go before killing himself, even as a short-term solution of sorts.

For me usually just two pints of Kilkenny would do to silence the voices in my head. Voices? Alright. It’s not that I hallucinate hearing people talking, or anything serious like Mr A’s condition, but I do think too much about this and that, and I have my ghosts. Ghosts, for example, that help me think in my sleep about my mother after the alarm interruptions and decide for me to get up to change clothes. Ghosts that make me run around in my dreams and that don’t allow me rest enough to appreciate a good night’s rest. Ghosts, I would say that are gentle, and can be quietened with a bit of Killies or drinks drunk in the proper way.

I wonder if anybody had introduced Mr Akutagawa to the proper way of drinking.

Now, I am not an expert at drinking, really, really; but, even I note that there are roughly two ways to drink.

One way to drink is the “drowning-one’s-sorrow-way”. This is not the proper way. But, anyway... before drinking, one prepares by marinating one’s temperament with sense of self-righteousness and self-pity. Then, before drinking each drink, one must visualise that the drink is infused with the validation of self-righteousness. One may choose to season the drinks with a dash of spite or self-destructiveness. This may help to increase the sense of self-pity. Since drinking this way, would lead to more depressive and lonely feelings, letting one become a worse sourpuss and more dislikeable, it is recommended to only drink like this with people whose friendships one wants to put to the test.

The second way to drink is the “proper way”. This is the way I would want to recommend to Mr Akutagawa. One begins with planting a magic seed of the desire to escape from the real world in one’s heart before drinking; after which, one must allow the alcohol to nurture this little seed. When it begins to germinate, one may notice how things surrounding the little seedling become warped, illogical, and trivially amusing. That is the power of the magic seed. Shower the seedling with delight, smiles, and some more drinks. When it grows big enough for one to climb onto a branch and swing around when the wind blows, one should slow down on the drinks, but still drink enough to sustain the tree so that it doesn’t wither and die.

After drinking the proper way, one would likely find oneself drifting off to sleep, having been rocked like a baby on a tree top. Well, at least until the branch breaks, all is well. Maybe, Mr Akutagawa would have liked that for a while, and be less hard on himself.

I didn’t write the above for Mr Akutagawa to read, because I know that he is dead, and I’m not delusional like that. I do dedicate this to Mr Akutagawa, even though I’m not sure why, perhaps it is out of my respect for him, or perhaps, it’s some sort of thank you or hello. I may wonder if what I wrote is good enough to be dedicated to him, but I must stop myself from pursuing the matter, for it is inconsequential.

What is more consequential, is that I wrote the above for you to read, in case you have not been properly introduced to anything I had just elaborated upon, and you needed to be introduced. As usual, I hope that it was enjoyable to you to read.

What is most consequential, may be that I wrote it mainly for myself, in case I forget myself, for a lot of things can happen in seven years.

Hedonistic Sunday (for Mr Akutagawa) Part 2 of 3 - "Mr Akutagawa"

I picked up a collection of Akutagawa’s stories. This is the first serious fiction book that I was finishing since a long time. I was down to the last story, which I read this morning, as my too-hot cup of coffee was cooling to the just-right temperature for me to drink big mouthfuls. I like very much to drink coffee like that.

The last story, Spinning Gears, apparently was an autobiographical account on Akutagawa’s neurosis and growing madness. This reminds me to confess that I used to spell neurosis as “neutrosis”. I think I was dyslexic, but many of my friends disagreed with this, which made me think that I had put in a commendable effort to pretend that I was not. No matter. This, too, I suppose, is inconsequential. I must remind myself that nobody is going to cut me any slack because I am a recovering dyslexic, or confused with being an ex-extrovert or whatever.

In the story, Mr A described the nature of his neurosis and paranoia. He described seeing translucent spinning gears, hence, the title of the piece. In real life, Akutagawa killed himself at the age of 35. That’s seven years away from how old I am now. When I first heard of Akutagawa and that he was a prodigious author who killed himself at the age of 35, I thought he was another one of those indulgent authors who had no responsibility towards their families and exhausted themselves with velvety chocolate melancholia, and who could not empathise with the rest of us, proletariats, who have to work for a living.

When I am through with the second story of the collection, though, I knew that I was wrong, and his melancholia had to be more sophisticated than I thought. He wrote about some endearing characters, among those who are horrifying. This shows that he must have recognised some very endearing aspects of life, just that it was not enough to sustain him. A man who could write with such precise and delicate sensitivity shouldn’t have been easily misled nor disillusioned by the mere superficial hypocrisy of his time. He must have tried very hard to find a philosophical way out of his hell.