new modem

did you catch it? did you catch it?

fine, so this is a day or two late but Barack Hussein Obama is now no. 44. Leader of the free world and all that. I'm not American, nor do I usually want to be, considering what the country has been through the past decade or so (can you say Bush?), but since this guy clinched the Democratic nomination I have had to grudgingly admire (and envy) Americans for the mobility their society affords to its best and brightest.


On to more pedestrian topics, CNY is around the corner. I can already feel its fiery breath in my skull as the heat takes over. Why does it never/ hardly ever rain during Chinese New Year? Did the astrologers who set the date manipulate the weather so to add to the suffering of celebrants? I've been reading too much sci-fi. I've read almost everything else in the bookcase and it is unfortunately addictive. No hidden meanings or moral preachings, pure entertainment. Much like watching E! but with no epilepsy-inducing flashes. I digress. CNY. Right. Anyway the whole thing must be messing with my head and twiddling with the little knobs which control my internal soundtrack. To give me Damien Rice. Not even new stuff, but the 2003 album. Freak. Depressing stuff.

You know that strange sensation where it feels like a lot of time has passed or a lot of things have happened in a short period of time but you can't actually place your finger on what has happened and you can't even say if anything has happened but you feel as if it has? I'm sure there's a phrase for it, but I don't know what it is.

[back in 5-6 days]

pax?

Israel has declared a cease-fire. Now, I've been rethinking my position on the conflict - although I do not condone the severity of the war waged by the Israelies, I do understand their reasoning.
more after lunch

almost end of the week update

I have been lazy. Forgive me?

So here's what I've been up to this week:

sent out summaries of research findings (finally)
- sent copies of thesis to participants who made requests
- received request from city council to present findings at a mini-workshop (! hahahaha)

applied for first job, wednesday 11am
- received call from company, wednesday 3pm
- phone interview
- second interview friday morning (blah, job not as interesting as I thought it would be)
- to know in a week or two if I got through to the third and final interview

finally bought clothes in KL
- topshop dress (that takes care of CNY)
- basic shorts

finally got a hair cut

And in between all of this, the usual going out, getting high, and a smidge of baking. I like KL best at night. You can't see the filth and the riff raff then. The lights wink at you as the car passes through the city, denizens of the city slave away in their little high rise cubicle-prisons.

Bright lights, city nights. Stay in the car, turn off the lights.

I read this some days ago and meant to link it but forgot: on kindness
food for thought. and something to aim for.

move aside metafilter

because viceland is my new favourite site. go. now. thank me later.

hargh

As far as awkward family dinners go, that took the cake.

Not a word exchanged between the two in the car, through dinner, and on the way back. Jesus effing christ.


In the meantime, I'll entertain myself by choking and hacking my throat out.

homecoming

A number of things.

I've been finding it difficult to make my usual observations about the things and people surrounding me - strangers, acquaintances, atmospheric descriptions etc. Something about this particular environment makes it difficult for me to turn my gaze outwards. I find it especially difficult to empathize with the people I see here, something which is compounded by the fact that this weather is inconducive to long walks and public transport here is the shits. So I sit in the rarefied and filtered air of a car, in a little bubble that isolates me from the outside. Like almost everyone else in this country. No wonder we are so antagonistic to one another. Each one of us alien, each one of us the other. (ref. to Foucault and Arnold for more on the gaze, Said for the other)

There's this strange sensation that dogs me here. This is home, I know it to be home. But it feels like I've stepped or been forced out of my skin here. It is, but it isn't. Theorizing about this in the shower has led me to believe that it stems from the fact that this place and this house is home not by choice and not because I have made it so but purely because I happened to grow up here. I had little say in this. It is home by default. In contrast (I know, I know. I'm romanticizing the past.) I had an active role in making myself a home in Sydney. That was a deliberate choice - taking four years away from this place, to assimilate in Sydney and to submerge myself completely in a different place, culture (hate using the word and stereotype of 'culture' but I'm too lazy to find the right one), maybe identity. Two homes - one passively so, the other made as such. How now brown cow?

While I'm on the subject of different experiences in the same locale conditioned by ethnicity, I remember talking with D about how each of us experienced Sydney and Malaysia respectively. D found Malaysia hospitable, fascinating, and contradictory. People were unfailingly nice to him here, more so than in Sydney. The dysfunction of government and everyday life in this neck of the woods was a sometimes refreshing change from the usual. In contrast, I found greater hospitality and openness in Sydney. The way everything ran like clockwork without ever seeming hurried there charmed me. Maybe the two experiences were that of outsiders. He, as the 'mat salleh' visiting a postcolonial country, experienced a culture eager to please the white man. I, as the untypical Asian in a country of migrants both established and recent, experienced - what exactly, I still don't know.

April is still months away but I can't wait to return. I'm considering doing what E did and returning a week before my family comes. But for different reasons. I want the chance to be in the city alone one final time, as I so often was these four years but especially the last 6 months. I want to see it alone, without people to usher around the sights. Ride the familiar bus routes, walk my favourite tours of the city. Surprisingly or not, I enjoyed the solitude. And the freedom that came with it.

i keep trying to see if my pupils are dilated but i get confused cause they do seem to turn into saucers when i lean into the mirror but i also know that they dilate to take in more light to adjust to different focal points. see - coherent. still. night.

grunt

Woke up after a late afternoon nap. Scrambled eggs for dinner cause there's nothing in the fridge. Add truffle salsa. Open the chewed-up newspaper. And 'gong xi gong xi gong xi ni' goes off in my head. Fuck me.