L'été Abstrait

Pain. It’s a sensation that most try to avoid. Physical pain becomes an instinctive avoidance as you learn through the experience growing up.   But emotional and mental pain, no matter how hard you brace yourself for an event that would potentially cause you significant hurt, is never instinctive. No matter how many times you go through an emotional hit, the feeling remains evocatively humbling. There’s no training, no number of hits you can take that’ll make you stronger.   I suppose I’m the idiot who always believed in the goodness of people. That deep down, there are souls that are meant to find their purpose and would like to share their Dharma with you. But the brutal truth is that most people are born asleep, live asleep and die asleep. They live a life completely centred on themselves and are only involved in their own personal stories. Today, I felt pain that honestly, could’ve been avoided if the person causing it had stopped to feel. If she had decided to pause, to ...

The song by Billy Joel rings true today. When you reach a certain age, you begin to go through the different milestones in life almost as though you were viewing it through a lens. Every blink is a decade. In my mind, it felt like only yesterday that I left Melbourne for Malaysia. As I sit here, I can still vividly remember the taste of the air, the unmistakable tinge of coffee that permeated through the balcony door from the Brunetti's cafe down below.  Blink . And it's 10 years later and I'm sitting at a desk job that I hate; a job I had to take because my media company failed. I was questioning the very purpose of my existence. Am I meant to be mediocre? Here I was, stuck in a job where I had to commute 50 kilometres daily (one way!) where the only thing I looked forward to was what was being served for lunch. Everything about the job felt wrong to the very core of my being, but I had to do it, because I was told that it was time for me to grow up. Be a man. Marry the wo...

When I look back at my days, conjuring memories of my youth and the sheer recklessness of it all, it almost feels as though I was remembering the life of a stranger. My days, and by extension, nights back then were always filled with back-breaking laughter with friends who always seemed larger than life.   “How are you not surrounded by friends these days ?” Asked an old friend, one I haven’t spoken to in years. “You used to be as comfortable chatting to the person sweeping the streets as the person who owned them. What changed?” she mused. The answer that was lingering at the tip of my tongue felt too naked for me to share over a phone call.   I answered In the best way I knew how; by ignoring the truth. Burying it is better than baring it, I thought.   “I grew up, I guess.” It’s natural for us to grow up avoiding the hard truths. I suppose, the hard things about truths are that they inevitably expose a part of you that you find difficult to live with.   We all have...

 You're always told that when something bad happens, it's usually because life has grander plans for you. It's our natural support mechanism as a society, one that allows us to stride through the bad times unscathed; to literally pick yourself up and move on. Coincidentally, it also keeps us from going insane. I've also been told that there's no such as thing as luck, that the reason it's called dumb luck is because only 'dumb' people believe in luck. Others have told me that we make our own luck. Well, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't matter which ideology you believe in. The ebb and flow of life is such that there are always going to be good days and bad ones. If there are only good days, how will we be able to appreciate the high of having a really, really good day after a succession of bad ones? Interestingly, life has been giving me notes, whispers, guidance; sometimes in the most strangest of places and inopportune of times. It...

It's been quite a long time since i've last penned anything on this blog. It's simple really; since my day job involves a hefty amount of writing, blogging no longer seemed like a hobby. Like a moth to a flame - only i'm neither - I'm constantly drawn to things which provide neither solace nor redemption. I feel like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Or Neo, naked in a gooey tank waiting to be clamped by Morpheus and the Nebuchadnezzar.  A wise writer once said, 'If life was easy, there would be no point in living, as I would have learnt nothing at all.' I used to believe that. I understood that life - and its many trials and tribulations - is like a theme park ride which you have no control over. It starts before you know it and just before you realize you're having fun - it's over all too soon.   A lot of people use their private spaces with which to vent their anger and frustrations. I have neither. Inside me, is a cauldron of mixed emotions i...

Sometimes it’s pretty hard to fight for something that was never yours to begin with. It’s a fight that you know you can win, but the glory is a pyrrhic victory. The battle I’m talking about is love and one that is fought with our very souls.  The truth? Love, unconditional love, comes from the divine. A gift from the heavens above; as a piece of solace in this tumultuous ride we call life. But what if the love that you feel is towards someone who you never should’ve fallen for? What then? Do you blind an eye to the love that you feel? Or silence the thought in your head and enlighten the person you’re in love with, that in truth, she’s the only one you’ve ever truly felt for. That she’s the one you think about when you listen to a moving loving song or the last face that you wish for before you fall asleep at night. Your heart beats a lone beat, and your dreams caress you to a field of thoughts where your emotions are allowed to roam free. Free to believe and love as you please....

Sorry for the long absence. I actually forgot what my password was. But worry not, for i have tons of backlogged stories to tell. So keep yourselves peeled. I think.

I never realized how a single scent could literally send you over the moon - until tonight. My shirt, car and now room is lightly scented in a very feminine manner. But the lady who did this to me is nowhere near my room. In fact she's miles away - literally. Perfumes do this to you. Never, ever, overdo it; regardless of your sex. It just sticks to you; an intoxicating, entirely all consuming sense of smell that over an extended period of time, warps into a seductive sense of taste as well. Now i'm off to bed smelling like a street peddling transvestite. It wouldn't be such a big problem if not for the fact that i'm growing quite fond of this chokingly sweet scent. I wonder if the reverse is true for girls? Who am I kidding. I'm sure it is.

We all imagine ourselves as the agents of our destiny, capable of determining our own fate. But have we truly any choice on when we rise... or when we fall? Or does a force much larger than ourselves bid us our direction? Is it evolution that guides our hands? Does science point our way? Or is it God that intervenes, keeping us safe? While it's been way too long since i've last posted anything of value up here, i'm sure you all would clearly understand why. Just as stark as the winds which are so callously storming through our fair nation continues to rage on; the same transcending emotion cascades through my very lifeblood. You keep hoping that you have some control over the very life that you lead. You believe that with every passing moment, another will pass in just the same manner; deliberately and ultimately decidedly. Yet you know that for every single opportunity that life gives you, there comes a reasonably high and altogether unfallible price tag. Like a bill with ...

HUGH HEFNER HAS THREE GIRLFRIENDS. They're all blond, beautiful and nearly a third of his age. (He's 80 next year). They all live at the Playboy Mansion and recently became the subject of a television reality series. Lucy Broadbent met them all. Holly Madison breezes into the mahogany inlaid library at the Playboy mansion. She's a vision of laddish fantasy - platinum blond hair, so brassy it lights up the room, a surgically enhanced cleavage, a teasing hemline, pouting lips and endless legs that plunge into six inch spiky heels. Her appearance wouldn't be so remarkable - this is Beverly Hills afterall - except that Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson look the same. Enough for the standing joke between them to be that they come from a blonde cloning laboratory. And all three of them happen to be the live-in girlfriends of the same man. And even that wouldn't be so extraordinary - except that the man they all share happens to be 79 years old, which is more than all...

No matter how much you try to smother the smell, it's still overwhelmingly present. It doesn't matter if you smog the hall with Starbucks' latest brew - there's no way in hell that sickly sterile smell is ever going to go away. As I sat there in the dreary lobby - on one of the most back breakingly hard chairs ever made by man - I stared silently into space. I shifted my body slightly in an attempt to physically distance myself from the growing sadness that's surfacing from below. I turned to look at my friend and instantly shared his pain. There's no hiding that he's been crying on all night; his saggy eyes and lethargic actions are a stark giveaway. I try and reason things out for him, but I know that deep down inside, it's a futile attempt. Neither one of us knows how or what the outcome will be. It was only then did i realize that this place was never meant to be a place of comfort. The feel, look and touch of the place is unitary in its purpose; to ...

I've heard this question asked a hundred, nay a thousand times. "Why aren't you seriously seeing anyone?" Simple. I'm really not into commitment(s) right now. One of my exes told me a couple of weeks ago that I'm too difficult, that my expectations are unreal. "You're wrong," I told her. "My expectations are very real indeed. What's so difficult about finding someone you're actually in love with?" She scoffed and told me that it was difficult to find someone to love if i wasn't willing to put in the time to love her in return. She was - quite obviously - right. I dated her for a couple of months. Broke up with her and saw her again for another two. She's definitely not a big fan. I'm so involved with what i'm doing right now that i can't even bother to call the girl that i'm seeing right now. I keep telling her that i'd call, but more often than not my days aren't cheery enough to even talk to any...

I've run out of things to say. Sometimes i realize that you only blog when you really don't have anything else better to do. Sometimes you blog because all you ever do is live, and you really do feel like sharing. It's about time that I admit to myself that i've not been 'living' my life. I've been too tired, too busy or too damned irritated to drag my ass out and actually do something for a change. So what do you write when you've run out of things to say? Nothing, i suppose. I could perhaps share a whole host of photos for all of you to enjoy. (and see if you're actually in them.. lol) But even that seems a little detached somehow. Yet, i suppose i'll still post them up, especially for those of you without an access to friendster (which i find really hard to believe.) Eh, by the by... who wants to buka with me?

Going back to Melbourne. Nov 17th. Thanks for the tip Maleik. (you're not going to stop me!) Wooo hooo! Telstra Dome here i come!!! Nosebleed tickets!

In the past few weeks, i've racked up a fair share of phone numbers. I have no intention of calling any of them. In fact, if we (ie, the boys in the office) were to pool the collection of numbers we have amassed over the past month we'd have our very own mini yellow pages. For a man, the act of getting a stranger's number is the most natural thing to do. The only issue is actually getting your act together long enough to actually bother going up to her and saying more than just, "Umm." It's one of the most barbaric ways of showing off our manhood. Aside from flashing our penises in public of course (i'm assuming that's still illegal). The bigger the balls (excuse my language) the bigger the amount of digits you'd end up getting. The term Big Swinging Dicks came from the mad house that is Wall Street. A street filled with ego filled, testosterone charged boys driving the latest Porsches with the week's hottest flavor sitting snugly in the passen...

"It's a sick joke," said a friend as he sipped his Coke. "Why do good guys always end up getting hurt?" I tried rationalizing it, failed, then subsequently tried to generalize it. I tried to make sense of something that; try as I might, bloody well doesn't. Good guys always, always , finish last. It's the rule of the game. And we always end up on the losing side. Girls (in general) play the game well. Imagine this: You're at a bar, a girl chats you up and asks you to accompany her home. I can say with absolute confidence that she will get you to follow like a dog on a very, very short leash. Now imagine if the situation were reversed . You'd still be the dog, but dear me, where's that bloody leash gone to? Exactly. It's not a dickey dick world we live in gents. Wake up and smell the bloody tampons (no pun intended). The truth is, boys are an easy bunch to decipher. We're like apes. We only ever want one thing. Give to us what we want...

Look, i'm not going to apologize for blogging less. My daily job is to write. And there are days when all i have..is writer's block. It used to be a pleasure inducing hobby, but now, it's become a chore. I really have nothing to write at all, even if my day(s) were filled with events which were 'blog' worthy. I spent the whole weekend at a seminar that can only be described as a downscaled version of hell, or as someone once mentioned quite aptly to me - Hell's Waiting Room. Thankfully, I brought along a book. Unfortunately I finished reading the first book after the first seminar ended. So I brought another book for the second day. Now, this book was so engrossing that I just had to finish it. So i did. Last night at 12pm. It was a 250 page book, and I finished it in a day. Definitely best book I ever read this year. It's called "Ugly Americans" just in case you were wondering. It's a funny world we live in. You never really catch a break. Eve...

By Micheal Anissimov Assuming a 1-megaton nuclear weapon, what are the optimal delivery points to maximize global damage and chaos? We are assuming a 1 megaton bomb due to simplicity - this yield is about twice that of the most powerful fission bomb produced by the US, the Mk 18, which used 60 kg of enriched uranium. With nanofactories, building extremely high-quality centrifuges will become easy, making large quantities of enriched uranium accessible to any organization with uranium ore. We will be able to do with a few centrifuges what previously required hundreds or even thousands. A few facts about uranium: uranium ore is more common than gold, mercury, silver, or tungsten, and is found in substantial quantities worldwide, including in southern Australia, Africa, and the Middle East. It is the 48th most abundant element in the earth’s crust. Pitchblende uranium (1% pure) is available on eBay for approximately $20/kg. The US Department of Energy has stockpiled 704,000 metric tons of...

"Girls can wear jeans And cut their hair short Wear shirts and boots 'Cause it's OK to be a boy But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading 'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading But secretly you'd love to know what it's like Wouldn't you ? What it feels like for a girl?" This is a snippet of a song sang by Madonna. I heard it on the way to Melaka in a car filled with boys. Yeah. I know it's weird. I don't really like the song. It's the preamble that caught my ears. A girl with the very sweetest of voices, in a very obvious English accent speaking over a broken beat. When Madonna starts singing, the song goes back to the beginning. I play it over and over again, wondering if there's any truth to her lyrics. In very many ways it is. I mean i don't have the need to wear high heels or mini skirts, but it's amazing to see how a girl with a knack for dressing gets away with more than just murder. Tight tank top, hyper min...

The word serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole 28 January 1754, in a letter he wrote to his friend, Horace Mann, the English resident in Florence. "I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right." I myself have been in a fortunate situation of experiencing some form of serendipity and I have to say, that when it happens (and always when you least expect it to) the whole universe seems to shift in one direction, and for an instant you see everything as it was meant to be seen. Like missing out on a late night movie and realizing the very next day that one of the people that went along was a stranger that you've been loo...