No matter how hard I work or how much I make, that which I want the most can’t be earned with any amount of effort or bought with any sum of money.

Life’s greatest irony is that the best thing in life is free.

It’s been a while since I wrote something in there and to cover it all… well.. i really can’t remember all of it.

I guess the most important thing is… I feel happy. Tired for sure, since I haven’t actually mentioned it here, It’s been 2 and a half months into my new job and things are going pretty OK. To be sure I have less time to myself now, working late and so on, but the work is definitely fulfilling.

The Oral Stage is working towards it’s final production for the year, The Seven Deadly Scenes, a production true to it’s roots and a youth theater company, employing the talents of many bright young individuals in anthology of short plays.

Other than that… well… I guess there’s always all those things I wonder about the future… about belonging and other things… And I suppose… lately, I’ve been feeling at peace with it. Maybe I’ve finally learned to deal with it, or maybe I’ve just given up worrying. But whatever it is, as December beckons and 2008 draws to a close, here’s to hope and better tomorrows.

Working in the line I’m in, ones time is precious. Sleep is a luxury and time away from work is to be carefully rationed and spent purposefully - as anyone for that matter who works the kind of hours I do would agree. So it’s kinda disappointing that someone would just blow me off like I didn’t matter.

I mean, there we were trying to make plans for the evening, you said you just needed to check with your family if anything was up and would get back to me, that was perfectly understandable. After all, family is family. But then to let me know at 6:30 as I knock off work happily looking forward to dinner that someone else had invited you last minute to another thing and you wanted to do that instead and ‘maybe’ move me next week… well… I’m lost for words really.

I only asked if today was OK because I knew I had time I could commit (how much harder this will be once the crazy starts again next week…) and we’ve been saying for while now that we should do dinner one day… and above it all, I really did look forward to the company.

To top it all off… I found the time to help you out when you needed it, despite my workload. I gave my weekend and Sunday, despite my other responsibilities, doing things that anyone who has ever done would know is tedious and time consuming, because i knew it would make you happy, because it would help your career and simply just because you are my friend. I’m not trying to hold this against you. It was my pleasure doing you the favor, I don’t regret it and I don’t expect anything in return.

Just that I hope you know how much I value my time and my friends, you among them.

To be fair, I really shouldn’t judge, after all I don’t know what transpired in the hours between after we talked and 6:30, but from my perspective, whatever it was that really happened just left a really bad after taste. Not the way to start a holiday.

“Who knows? We might be thirty and still single…”

I wish I had the courage to say, even hidden in jest, how much I would give if I could, so that would never happen.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

well not quite… it’s more like 370… and kilometers.

So here I am, posting from the fourth hotel romm i’ve spent the night in this past month, courtasy of my company and this photography assignment I’m on.

For those curious, i’m on a speed trip to visit all 20 public universities in Malaysia and photograph all their facilities. It’s a speed trip because I have less than 1 month to do it.

So far, aside from the Klang Valley area universities, i’ve visited Unis in the northern states of Perak, Penang, Kedah and Perlis, and currently i’m on the southern leg, which has brought me to Malacca and Johore. (which makes me wonder why doesn’t Negeri Sembilan have a Uni?) I’mm be back on thursday night, and after a rest on friday, i’ll be off on a gruelling 7 hour drive to the east coast where i’ll visit Pahang, Trengganu, and Kelantan. Following that I’ll be on a plane to Sabah and Sarawak.

So yes, after this trip is over there will be no state in Malaysia left that I haven’t visited.

Things that have struck me so far these trips:

1. Malaysians are really nice people. Seriously. Being out in the country and interacting with people from all sorts of different backgrounds just makes you wonder WTF the goverment is up about “racial tensions”.

2. OMG KL IS SO EXPENDSIVE! For example I saw Satay go for 35 sen the other day. It hasn’t been 35sen in KL since… 1996?

3. Piracy is well and alive. It’s just that because they cleaned up KL so well that you think piracy is dead, but let me assure you the latest movies, TV shows and software are still up for sale just like the good old days. Just not in KL.

4. It seems the more famous the hotel, the more expendsive the internet. For example, in the Bayview penang, internet is rm20/day. Here in the Crystle Crown JB, it’s rm10/hr or rm30/day. Where as in this cute and cozy B&B in Malacca, it’s free.

5. Living alone in a hotel room is sad. Hotel rooms are either double beds, or single queens… like how a heart is always made for two.

Anyway, runnign out of time so i’ll stop here. Will write more when I get back to KL.

I’ve never really talked about the header you see above this site, which is the most prominent object on the site design wise and it’s what imparts a great deal of the experience of my blog.

I made it in school, my final year of university, from scraps taken from my final year project. The logo represents me, you see it used on my personal card as well as watermarked on my work. The weather reflects my state of mind.

Often sunny and bright, or sometimes sad, dark and gloomy, but none the less always alone in a vast open field. The vastness because there’s really so much in my life, so much to enjoy, so much to cherish, so much to share… the loneliness because despite all I have it’s something I tend to feel.

There is a button. You can make my day, with your company and kindness take the rain away… (or push my buttons and make it stay) but one thing remains the same… it’s still a vast open field.

I hope to change the header one day. It’s long overdue.

The life of an artist is centred around creation, the difference between work and art however is that work is created by the mind, while art is created by the soul.

While it is work that may feed our body, it is art that will keep us whole. Thus forget not in times of haste and commitments that the soul need be nurished too.

A reminder to myself.

“… emotionally stable, attractive and available. You can only have two out of three.” –Calvin, over Vent, which in a nutshell sums up my frustrations at finding a partner in life.

Dating on and off (and mainly the latter) for the past three years (God, has it been that long?) I’ve been with women who I’ve found to be amazingly attractive, but either in a bad place in life or simply hard to acceptably comprehend; ladies who are every bit practical and by all accounts comfortable people to be with, long term material, but mundanely so…

… and then of course, once in a very long while you meet someone capable of giving the cynic in you a swift kick in the head and make you believe just maybe the perfect person for you does exist.

Someone smart, witty, with exceptionally broad interests, someone who just in conversation makes you forget the tribulations of daily life and excites the idealist in you… and yet despite all those ideals, is firmly rooted in reality… practical and a go getter.

Someone who shares more than a passing interest, but a lot of the philosophies in life you believe in. Enough similarities you don’t feel like doing like Homer Simpson unto Bart, but enough difference that each time you meet her you feel like a a child with a new puzzle… so many facets to explore.

Of course, what in life is really but a tease after all, especially when it tends to be that someone so special… so close to perfect and unspoilt, is inevitably spoken for.

The cynic gracefully picks himself off the floor.

“All’s fair in love and war.” A lady friend of mine quipped the night before. But I digress… I’ve never been one to take what isn’t mine. Besides, what war has ever been fought without cost to those involved and those who just happened to be caught in the cross fire?

Perhaps perfection really is best admired from afar.

*sigh*

You know, I’ve heard people complain a lot of about religious fundamentalism and how religion sometimes makes people do stupid things (like suicide bombings, denying global warming, abstinence as effective birth control etc..)

But how on God’s green Earth do people start complaining that Christmas is too Christian?

Dee is ebil! She tagged me… XD

So here goes….

The Rules:

Link to your tagger and post these rules.

List eight (8) random facts about yourself.

Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).

Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

1. Why I am the way I am has a lot to do with the way my mother raised me. I am my mother’s son. Not to say my dad didn’t have anything to do with it, he’s done alot for me too… But my mom’s been the more dominant parent in my life. Tho I’m not “Momma’s boy’ either. I believe in a lot of things my mom doesn’t agree with… but that’s another story for another day.

2. I count more ladies as friends than I do guys. I just find it easier to get along with the fairer sex, plus they do make for more intelligent conversation (tho sadly it’s not always the case). Plus I find it’s easier to talk about things like my love of food and it’s making, relationships (and not just romantic ones), art and so on too. Not to say that guys are disinterested in the above or anything like that, I have some really interesting guy friends too. Just that we’re outnumbered at the moment.

3. Despite the above, I’m hopeless at dates and even worse at keeping a relationship. I’m so bad at it, at one point my dearest babe (yes you know who you are XD) suggested maybe I was gay and I barking up the wrong tree…

3. But I’m straight. I know because… well… like earlier while flipping through a book featuring 700 covers from Penguin’s (the publishing house) portfolio, i still paused to look at a stylised depiction of boobs… …and it wasn’t the stylization, it was the boobs. XD

4. My birth certificate says I’m buddhist, but I identify myself as being an unbaptised catholic. But strangely while I believe that God, in whatever form he may be in, exists, I do think that a lot of things that make religion is a good measure of history mixed with fiction. Why do I believe then? Well, I believe in the church’s mission to do good in the world. That in the face of human suffering the church has been there to help feed the needy and champion the oppressed.

We may not have been created in 7 days, but we are all still Gods creatures and we should at least be kind to one another and strive to better ourselves as a people instead of harping on fictional semantics on Godliness and so on.

5. I think love is something we learn. Sure, we all fall for people, but i think what keeps people together after all the fireworks are gone - love - is not something inherant in a relationship, it’s not something produced by a magical chemistry and it’s not a case of “it’s there or it’s not”. Love is something you develop. It’s made from many things and people make it differently, but in the end it’s something we make and have to work to maintain.

Give me time and on a whim, someone i fancy, or out of necessity just about anyone, and I could learn to love and care for her, deeply, truely and forever.

6. I love the arts. And I contribute my time in support of it not because of the career development aspect of it (tho it’s a nice bonus) but because I’m always the dreamer believing that the world can be bettered, and that because of the way it’s neglected the way it is by the powers that be, it’s a very powerful medium to slowly drive change in society.

We’re a society of sheep and robots. There are too many morons in charge doing things totally devoid of even a train of reason, let alone a sound one and I feel a strong artistic movement will help open the minds of many. We’ll work on the sound part after the train gets moving.

7. I’m a jack of all trades, but really a master of none. At times I feel I’m just too far streched. Right now the tech geek and the cook in me are feeling a bit of neglect, but the artist is having a pretty good run.

8. I want to be in love again too Dee…

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Calvin
Doreen
Andrew
Justine
Patricia
Michelle
Phoebe (I demand you get a new blog and post XD)