HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAN. SEE HAN SEE.

Had lunch with Avhan and his girlfriend today. God, he is so good humoured.

I'm queer for the past. I want make a 5-issue serial autobiography. "anticanonical". 8 pages each with images of frozen motion in between.

Two days ago I didn't think I would graduate when my parents were here. I didn't properly submit a piece of work and I thought I would have to wait for next february to graduate. As of two hours ago, that is all sorted out. I am not proud of any work I did in university. I predict I'm going to work hard my entire life atoning for this.

I live in the past. I daydream. My eyes glaze over and generally, there are many pregnant pauses in my conversations. I am not pragmatic. I thought of the term pragmatic idealist to describe myself, but that's a pretty vague term in itself. Like karma avocado. karmavocado. I sometimes remember what I dream these days. I had a vague dream of walking through white halls and finally reaching a fish market. Another one was in something like a refugee camp and then an Italian girl comes up behind me, wraps her arms around me and whispers in my ear, "Norfuse".

The problem about any piece of writing I turn out will be that it will have no direction. They are always incomplete. I have to find a way of tightening that ambiguity.

Sometimes I think one of the reasons I am such a failure when it comes to quitting smoking is because of all the times we used to sit around and have a beer, sit at the cyber cafe, san fran coffee, kerrys, gcb, wherever ... with a cigarette. I don't have a physical addiction, or even an oral fixation. Mine is more of an emotional dependency. I like to sit down occasionally, with a smoke and a beer, and just think about the good times. My next favourite time to smoke is after I cry. I'm not sure why that is.

I agree with Mikko. It would be good to have those times back, just for a while, because God knows those days aren't coming back again. The lack of responsibility was sweet, I am glad I appreciated it then. I am totally excited about the future, but the past has served me well: the good and the bad. I have to admit, I am a reverse optimist, and I only really remember the good things about the past. I don't think I would have done anything differently either - and how lucky I was to be able to do the growing and friendship making in such an electric city in such a beautiful, warm country.

The picture of the shopping cart experience is somewhere in my files. I am going to search for it!

this is a way of purging emotional baggage. I cherish some experiences in High School, among others, the first time I drank with you, Joli, Yan, Rish, Avhan, Nish... Alleena. That night was fucking crazy, did we go bowling beforehand? The shopping cart. Keeblers roasting on an open fire, an occasion left for another night at Rish's. "Free willy" coming from the radio, running full-tilt screaming girlfriend at each other, it sounds cliched but I would do nothing differently. My memory is shot to bits, but it comes back at the most elegant times. After saying something, it will remind me of something else, and I treasure the nostalgia. I'm not sorry I remember the good with the bad. Because neither would make the extremities of depression or elation quite so attractive.

I'm not trying to renege our friendship. I'm never the only one with insecurities, it just feels that way. Otherwise, they couldn't be insecurities. Those feelings are no longer contemporary, that is why I can casually write about them. If you ask me now, the way I'm treated is directly proportional to how I treat other people. It sounds scientific but it's not. Also, the way I'm treated depends on how I permit other people to treat me. It has to do with doing something unconnected to your agenda and in the end, obtaining a little satisfaction towards that agenda. Serendenpity.

There are some distinct memories I have surrounding 11th/12th grades, KLCC, seeing movies in large groups.

I feel bad that you felt that way Han. I have always genuinely enjoyed your company, and have so since we were properly acquainted through the 'song game' we played over that summer (with various others), giving rise to 'The Pimps'. I always marvel at the fact that I made some of my best and dearest friends in my final year at ISKL, and kick myself that I didn't hang out with a lot of you guys longer. Maybe our friendships came at the right time - perhaps I would have punched you had we spoken properly earlier. I am embarassed that I didn't notice you were mad at the way you thought people treated you, although I am sure people always loved having you around, so I don't know who is misinterpreting.

There was a time we watched Lethal Weapon 4 in a huge group, with Juan, Imran, Johan, incredibly large, and we sat at San Francisco Coffee together. I realised that I wasn't talking and that no one was talking to me, that people thought I was angry. The more signs I noticed, people avoiding my eyesight, straight out ignoring me, the more angry I got. If everyone in the room thinks your drunk, lie down.
I saw the skinny one on saturday, we went to the Royal Academy of Arts and glimpsed two exhibitions. The summer exhibition of RAA luminaries and an exhibition of a German expressionist named Kirschner. The summer exhibition had assorted things like sculptures and paintings. The sculptures were interesting, they stood out, a kitsch plastic crucifix, an elephant with a rabbit riding on top of it. There were alot of paintings. The one of those I enjoyed were as follows - "Dream Garden", a giclee (?) print that I think was two photographs developed onto one piece of paper to give the appearance of a shimmering image. What you think is the sky is in fact also the faded image of a garden wall. I am reading Premoedya Ananta Toer's "The Earth of Mankind", as if Dickens was in Java.
Listening to Blackalicious and Mos Def recently.

A ha! Thanks for clarifying that for me Vin. The grading system at my university is also on a first/high or low second/third/pass/fail, but it's different at most other universities here. For the completion of a degree, however, our system is a little different - you don't get ranked first/second class etc until after you've completed an honours thesis (a 4th year), where you need a low second class average to be admitted. If you only complete the three years, then it's a 'pass degree'. My average is hovering between a high second class/low first class, so if I don't buckle and complete the honours thesis (only 16,000 words, but on what subject in international relations?), I'm looking at a LLB and a concurrent diploma of languages at either Monash (where Shehraz is), Uni of Adelaide (where Nish and Avhan are) or at the Australian National University in Canberra. I'm not sure where a B.A. majoring in political science (international relations) and english is going to get me. An LLB is another three years of study, but the benefits of taking one at any of those universities would be outstanding (all are excellent universities with great law programmes, as far as I can tell by my research). Or I could just stick out the honours year and go into a Ph.D in poli sci the year after next. The foreign service looks appealing. It would be kind of neat to live close to Nish and Avhan in Adelaide. Hehe. I would be so drunk.

Or maybe I should put education on hold and get a job. *gasp*

A self-help book? You were born from the loins of Anthony Robbins! The man who can't get stains off his rug, but regains his dignity when he does. The turtle wax that you can burn, key, stain and still have a smooth lustre on your car. Ok, rant off. smell my cheese. I say one thing and everyone jumps my nihilistic bones.

Because it's smelly and it's a small passage. The more you attempt to cram within a given space, the less chance it will get purged. I've been rereading this site, the author published it as a book as well as fully on the internet. It is a Postmodern "theoretical fiction". It focuses of study range from Dean Martin, Bilinda Butcher and My Bloody Valentine, Kathy Acker and Walt Disney.

What do you want to do, Han? Why do you say everything is likely to finish down a toilet?

Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my youth. Visiting London and keeping in constant contact through text message and not even bothering to meet up, is not cool.

I graduate in 18 days, and I'm not sure what to do with the rest of my life. I got it into my head to begin learning Chinese. I'm going back to Malaysia in September. Christ. It's like everything is all likely to finish down a toilet. The money dance. The marriage dance. The poverty dance... Everyone's dancing and everyone's got two left feet.

Notice the change in format.

This inspired me.

Did that picture inspire you? How cute! I hope you take something significant from the thing. I mean, where is the lighting, why do the women have bored looks on their faces? ad nauseam...

I am trying to do a whole bunch of shit. Mostly photography. And no sex.

I call a vote, this is a funny blog. However, there is history to it. I don't expect people to understand what we are talking about. It would take a concerted effort to make this public, right now it is "our" blog. Read by us. Written by us. Inaccessible to everyone else. Who wants to make this private? A show of hands, please?

warren ellis

I talked with Warren Ellis briefly, his response to a question about science was interesting. He finds science almost poetic. He admitted to being very bad at science, and yet he has just released a science fiction graphic novel entitled Orbiter, about the last manned spaceflight.

"The Space Shuttle Venture disappeared from Earth orbit ten years ago, taking a crew of seven with it. This final NASA disaster committed the Earth to programs of robotic discovery flights only. No human has been in space for a decade.

The Venture has come back to Earth, ten years late. It only has one crewmember left, an insane pilot, and extensive instrumentation and assets that weren't on the Shuttle when it lifted off. It has organic skin over its ceramic-brick hide, and Mars dust in the undercarriage housing. This is the story of where the Venture went, what happened to its crew --

-- and what it means to an Earth that's given up hope of walking across the stars." Taken from Warren Ellis's website

He writes exciting stories. He gave vent to his cynical side in Transmetroplitan, in a city where you can by practically anything as fastfood. Powdered children, anyone? He repeatedly challenges my assumptions. He can repeatedly challenge YOUR assumptions, daily, here with his crack ensemble of assumption-challengers.

Actor's Studio

Ming Jin from the Actors Studio sent this to me, "Days are very busy now and we are all very tired. On Tuesday, June 10th, KL had a 3 hour downpour and there was a flash flood which totally submerged and devastated Plaza Putra. We lost almost everything and barely made it out alive. That's the story. We are still salvaging and cleaning up whatever videos, books etc that we can save. It's a mess.

We're hanging in there and been very positive about building up again. New venues for sure, bigger and better."

Rish leaves tonight, he hasn't even bothered to get back in touch. He reads this website, he's betting on being thrown a really nasty comment from the bag-o-mine that is already a little-too-full. But fuck it. Rish, if you read this, hear from you whenever, "man".