perpetual rush

Hey y’all! I’m BACK!!!

*gitu feeling2 celebrity, haha!

Sorry if this blog feels like it has been abandoned. In a way it is, since I haven’t even replied to any of the comment, and I’m sorry. Lately I’ve been either a)busy or b)stumped on what to write. My life is not so exciting you see, so I try to refrain from writing mundane things as to avoid being accused as attention-whore.

Ok, first thing first!

Thanks to Ints for inviting me to her housewarming BBQ and also for having me at her new house. That place is fabulous! Next time I need a place to sleep I know where to go, haha! My last-minute Sunday brunch with the girls also went well (Ints, jom makan Domino’s lagi! Tetibe teringin plak nak makan pizza ikan bilis tu!)

It has been ages since all of us got together, so it was a lot of catching up, and also a lot of gossiping information sharing. A few tips for you guys out there when buying presents for your friend’s housewarming party:

1) Buy gift early, or else like me you’ll end up giving your friend plants, when you know your friend is bad with plant. Ints has promised to take good care of Rudolph the plant though, but I have a suspicion that Rudolph will end up at her mom’s place instead (Tu nanti adela mak aku nak bawak balik rumah tu, when I told Ints about her mom complimenting Rudolph)

2) Don’t put your gift in misleading box. Ints opened a wrapped present from her friend to reveal a mobile phone box. Eee, bagusnye kawan Ints ni bagi die handphone untuk housewarming gift, we were all thinking. Then Ints opened the box to reveal 2 bars of herbal soaps in the shape of teddy bear (walkie-talkie for Yen and Gee we joked. Nevermind, it’s a private joke)

3) Don’t wear a blouse with buttons that almost came off loose, or else you’ll have wardrobe malfunction right smack in the middle of Pavillion and had to hurry from one shop to another trying on clothes to buy (Turak, this advise is for you. As, camne ni?!, she wailed. Cepat, cover dgn handbag! I said. Turak looked like a women afraid of being robbed. Banyak sangat duit kan? ops! Hahahaha)

Also discovered last weekend that a friend to a friend happened to be an amateur pr0n-star, after his video made the round at various 3GP sites. Having seen the video, all I can say is it’s a funny clip, with bits of sarcasm from the main actress. It also has the kind of fakery you come to expect from pr0n clips (Sayang! Sayang! OH MY GOD!)

Up next: Why the recent calls from telemarketers bother me.

Till then, laters y’all!

xoxo

I have 2 different eye creams and 2 different moisturisers that I use for day and night.

Do you guys think that’s too much for a man?

p/s I heart Dr Feelgood!

Dear readers,

I have been busy.

Ok, that’s a lie.

I just have nothing to write? How about that? Better? A tad pathetic really, that for something that’s supposed to chronicle my life, I don’t have anything to write in my own blog.

Well, come to think of it that’s almost a lie as well. I do have things to write but chose not to write them down.

On a somewhat stale and totally irrelevant piece of news, Turak is in KL, attending some God-knows-what courses on behalf of Government of Malaysia. Ok, not really Government of Malaysia, but…well, you know what I’m saying. She’s a public servant, so ’nuff said. She has been here almost 2 weeks and I’m only writing about it until now. Way to stay on top of the news, asm@di!

On another totally unrelated news, I’m thinking of switching job again. Don’t you think it’s time to move on when every task that comes your way doesn’t interest you anymore and makes you go meh? Or the fact that I resent people in my team for pushing the task to me when it’s obviously my work? I know, crazy right? But changing my job is a discussion in my head that is still up in the air so to speak. If a new job gonna happen, then it’s gonna happen. I think I’m just gonna put my resume out there and see how it goes.

Another unrelated note: I need to lose a whole lot of weight in 4 months. In November my sister is getting married and I don’t want to look like a blob in any of the picture. Ok, there’s bound to be some pictures where I will end up looking like a blob (it’s like, the rule of nature or something) but I would like to minimize the number of occurances, you know what I mean?

On beauty news, have started looking after my skin, because I don’t want to be called ganyut. By anyone. Ever. That said I have purchased moisturiser and what not and also have got in the habit of applying toner and moisturiser before I go to sleep. This is addition to 5 kinds of supplement pills that I take everyday for a variety of reasons. Next on the list of item to buy: anti-aging/anti-wrinkle/firming/double lifting cream (did someone say overboard? Yeah, I don’t think so too)

I think that’s enough news to squeeze into one entry don’t you think? See, I told you I’m lying. I do have plenty of things to write about after all.

You know you love me.

xoxo
asm@di

Note: Below is something that I wrote for NaNoWriMo back in 2006. I was busy with work then (still am actually), and so only managed to write about 2 chapters, with the 2nd chapters still stuck in outline mode. I had a vague outline of what the whole story should be, but no, I don’t have a proper story (with no ending either) Except for some grammatical corrections here and there, below is what I wrote almost 2 years ago. I hope you gonna like it.

~*~

It was raining when Edan gets home. He is soaked from head to toe, no thanks to a car driver who just drove through the rain puddle and splashed him. He, at that unfortunate moment, was walking on the sidewalk from the train station. ‘I bet he did it on purpose, that bastard’, Edan was thinking, as he peeled off his wets socks from his left foot while balancing himself on his right, wobbling slightly as he did so. His new shoes, his expensive new shoes (Dunhill, which he just bought yesterday) lay sadly on the shoe rack, the rain drops glistening on its shiny leather surface, a few grass stains at the left toe. ‘That bastard!’, he’s thinking again angrily. In his mind he’s convinced that the driver was out to get him. Then he realized how absurd the thought is, how outlandish, and yet can’t shake off the feeling from his head. He rebuked himself for these crazy thoughts.

Today has not been a good day. This morning on the way to his office, he stepped on dog shit just as he was about to cross the road. ‘My precious new shoes!’, he unconsciously blurted out (did he really use the word ‘precious’? How pretentious!), then started to vigorously shuffle his left foot on the grass. To and fro, to and fro he shuffled. When he’s convinced his shoes is clean, he resumed walking to the train station, all the while muttering curses under his breath.

From there on it just got worse, everything turned shitty. The train that he took to work broke down for half an hour in the middle of the track, making him late for work. He should have taken his car instead to work, but this morning he didn’t feel like driving. After all, why should he stress himself with the traffic? But he wished, how he wished he was driving to work this morning. Being stuck in a train is nothing like being stuck in traffic, the stress is greater, and it’s simply killing him. The helplessness of not knowing when the metal contraption will start moving again, people all around him looking bored, or stressed out just like him. The voice from the tiny intercom overhead kept saying that the train would move again in ten minutes, but from experience he knows it’s not true at all. Ten minutes, what a comforting short amount of time, but when stuck underground in a train with hundreds of other people and running late, ten minutes seems like eternity, an eternity that Edan wished would end sooner than ten minutes.

He didn’t understand why he felt so upset by the train breaking down this morning. It’s not like it has never happened before, it’s not a glitch so uncommon it should rock his world. But there he was, angry and upset and also a little bit sweaty just because the train broke down again, he who has experienced it a lot of times. Why should the incident this morning be different than any other times? (and there was nothing different about it either) But there he was, standing in a train with a face that can curdle milk (his mother is fond of saying that whenever he sulks), just because a train broke down. You’re not a true city dweller if you haven’t got stuck in a broken train at least once, someone told that to him when he said to him (or was it her?) that he’s late because of that. This was back when he first started living in the city. What a bold statement, he had thought then, thinking how he could never make a statement like that. What a confident way of putting things in perspective! But now, now he knows it’s not a bold statement at all, the man (why he keeps feeling that it may be a woman who said that to him?) was simply stating the truth - in the city, shit always happen.

He’s supposed he was upset from not being able to control the situation, from not knowing what’s next, from helplessness. There was nothing he can do to make the train moves again (short of telekinesis, but that’s just his fantasy. After all, he’s not convinced there’s such a thing anyway). How long will it last? Did something happen on the ground that the people in the train, deep in the underground, are oblivious about it? So many questions, and yet so little answers. All these questions in his head, swimming around, just increased his irritation even more. Yes, that’s it! It’s not stress, it’s irritation! (how very not him to be upset over a broken train) Irritated because this was not how his morning supposed to be, this was not how his morning usually goes.

Standing in the train this morning amid others just like him, he saw a man in the corner near the door, a man so calm he was almost smiling. He looked utterly unaffected at all by what is happening. There’s no annoyed look, no angry tsking, no constantly looking at his watch, no making calls, no nervous fiddling with his fingers, in fact he looks happy. No, not happy, content, yes, that’s it. Oh, that content look! Edan had this urge to hit this man, this man who looks so calm, so content. He felt he should slap him silly and shake him and scream at him, ‘WHY ARE YOU SO CALM!’. The thought took him by surprise then, like he himself was the one who was slapped on the face. What prompted such crazy thought?

Is it crazy for him to envy this man, this stranger that he saw on the train, a stranger that hasn’t spoken a word to him, to envy him for his calmness? Could he have envied this man because instead of being calm (he has always been a calm person, why couldn’t he be calm this morning?) he did all the things the man in the corner didn’t do: he looked annoyed, and angrily tsking and looking at his watch every few minutes. When the crackly voice from the intercom overhead announced that the train was experiencing technical difficulties, he had immediately whipped out his mobile phone and called his office, telling his secretary about the damn train broken down, and could she push all his appointments for the morning an hour later, and oh, just rescheduled his meeting with that Daud guy, thank you. And then 15 minutes after the announcement, he found himself looking at his fingernails as if it’s an object that truly interests him, something that’s truly precious. He needs a manicure, he couldn’t help thinking about that then(oh vanity!) When the train finally moved, he breathed a sigh of relief (finally!), but still wearing the annoyed expression.

Now that he’s home, the bad mood persist, like an odor that lingers long after the carcass is gone. Instead of picking his socks and putting it in the laundry hamper, Edan left his wet socks next to shoe rack. He just couldn’t be bothered about some wet socks today. What’s the harm in leaving it there anyway? He could always throw it into the laundry hamper later.

Oh, he couldn’t be bothered with a lot of things lately. There’s always this and that and a whole lot of other things – things, hah! – that seems to get in the way, that makes him angry and sad. How can you describe a situation that looks right, but in your heart of hearts you know isn’t?

The truth is – and he knows how truth hurts – is that he’s not happy with his life. Sure, he got a nice house, owned and is being paid for monthly by him (“…bought a townhouse that cost a fortune, and he’s only 30!”, he overheard someone said that about him at a party last month. Presumably there were talking about his house-ownership status) Then there’s the nice car, more than nice really (Iz, his car freak friend said it’s a 2.0 turbo-something beauty but he couldn’t be bothered about that. It works, isn’t it?) that he hardly drives. When was the last time he drove that “beauty” anyway? He’s in relatively good health, constantly going to the gym and eating right (to the point of being obsessive, Iz had pointed out, that fat bastard with hanging gut and double chins) His career is going up and up, which is why he could afford the nice home and that beautiful car.

He knows he should be grateful for the way things are. Friends his age are not that lucky, some of them are still paying off their student loans (he got a scholarship) His life, as somebody told him right to his face, with a mixture of proud and envy, is perfect.

“Perfect my ass!”, Edan whispered to himself.

Why oh why he couldn’t master enough courage to tell these people, all these people that had told him that his life is perfect, that his life is far from perfect. That his life is far from functioning really. No, it’s not from lack of courage, but it’s because he likes to keep that illusion of perfection. I’m perfect! (oh vanity here you are again!)

He moved to the kitchen, peered into the fridge and got himself a bottle of mineral water. He stood next to the sink, opened the kitchen cupboard above it, and got himself a glass. He poured the water into the glass, slowly watching it rising. Halfway through he stopped, picked up the now half-full glass and thirstily gulped down the water.

“The thing is…”, he mused to himself, aware that he sounds like a crazy man talking to himself in this way, but he just couldn’t seem to stop. “The thing is…”, he repeated again to himself - this time with much more conviction, no longer barely audible – “… is that…”.

His mobile phone rings. Soon after, he’s lost in conversation, the thought pushed to the back of his mind.

Went out grocery shopping with my sister last Saturday when something weird happened.

Was paying for the groceries when the cashier, a girl about the same age as my sister, suddenly asked me in a friendly, almost sing-song manner.

“Awak keje kat mane?”

“KL”, I blurted out, a bit taken aback having a complete stranger enquiring about where I work.

Now, am I being perasan, or did the girl just hit on me? Tell me it isn’t so!!!

(kalau cashier lelaki yang tasty tu lainla cite, ops!)

I know, I know, it has been 10 days since the last update. Yes, yes, no excuse. This is the thing about real life. You do and do things suddenly 10 days have passed and people have started tagging your blog as dead *matila visitors menurun! nanges!

Anyway, quite a bit of things happened in the last 10 days. My friend Lala finally popped out a baby, about 2 weeks earlier than expected. I told her the baby gonna come in June, but no, no doctor said July, she said. Sekarang sapa yang betul? Aku jugak kan? Mrase tak prepare. ops! *matila carutan!

Have yet to see baby Arissa (that’s the baby’s name by the way) as Lala is holed up at her kampung recuperating. Although from the sound of her voice when she called me last Saturday, she doesn’t seem to be in pantang pon, lagi suara ala-ala ceria ada. Betol ke ko ni pantang nok?! ops!

Which brings me to the topic of kids.

I know most of my friends are hitting 30 this year, but what’s with the proliferation of profile pictures in Facebook/Friendster/YM/what-have-yous featuring their babies and kids?! Is this a conspiracy by the society to pressure me, the ever fabulous and bloody marvelous singleton, to become a breeder and hence… breed?! Gahh!! As a gay man, can’t think of self ever come in contact with a va-jay-jay as it looks rather gross and… cave-like (does this make sense?) *matila aku kene sembelih dengan pompuan2 yang bace blog nie!!

A confession: as much as I had thoughts - on a few rare occasions that involved lots of self-pity while listening to sad songs from the 90’s - of procreating with a woman, it’s not something that I ever think of seriously. To paraphrase what I told a friend, having a kid is expensive (Yes, I’m that stingy and selfish) Have you guys looked at the price of baby’s tote bag lately? Or the price of baby cot, pram, clothes, bottles? This doesn’t include things for the mother such as breast pump, and God knows what else. To top it all up, giving birth itself costs a lot of money!

But let’s be honest with myself and also with you guys here. Cost is not the real issue. Same goes for getting the woman, which I don’t think is a real issue either. I mean, there’s bound to be someone desperate enough to marry a pondan kan? It’s not like it never happened anyway. So yeah, it’s all back to the reason above: the va-jay-jay just creeps the hell out of me. Two holes and there’s a pleasure center called clit-something as well?! And it can actually fart?! I’ll pass.

Eh, ada kumpulan pompuan marah berarak ke arah aku ke?

*larikkkkkk!!!

On my most recent visit, the doctor - an elderly man in his late 50’s that seems to have too much talcum powder on his face - decided to have a little chit-chat with me. After asking about my work as web designer and about how he can get a website up and running, he thought it best to dispense this piece of (conflicting) advice to me, because I had indigestion.

At your age ah, I think you already need to get married. Someone to take care of your food. This problem you have, all because not eating properly. Don’t let your stomach be empty. *slight pause* But you know, single is also good. Got a lot of freedom. If I can I also want to be single. Can do whatever I want.

Motif cakap pasal kawin?! Sentap!

Of course, that was a much “gentler” experience compared to the one I had a few months ago in another clinic. The doctor - a sturdy elderly man that also happens to be in his 50’s - told me to get on the weighing scale. Even at home I usually dread doing it, but this time I had no choice. Once he saw the figure, the good doctor shook his head and then said:

Aiyo, manyak gumuk!

So memalukan ok! *nanges!

It was a working day, right around afternoon, when I received a call from a close friend a couple of weeks ago.

“As, aku nak mengadu ni“, she said as soon as I picked up the phone. I readied myself to hear her complaints.

A few months ago this friend turned 30. Recently she has started taking Imedeen (you know, the internal skincare product to slow down aging) and it has been showing some results. So she planned to buy more and discovered that if she buys in bulk from the Imedeen boutique, she could get it much cheaper. Ecstatic to share this info, she called everyone to ask whether they want to buy Imedeen along with her.

First she called me (this was a few days before the above-mentioned call) I said don’t want la, I want to save money. I have plans this year that requires some money so she understands.

Next, she called a mutual friend of ours, which I shall call Z, and asked Z if she wants to buy Imedeen along with her. Z’s response totally floored her.

“Bahagian mana yang kau ganyut ni?!” Z shot back as her answer.

My friend didn’t expect that! She was merely sharing and Z called her ancient!

“Aku ni dah ganyut ke As?“, she wailed into the phone.

To which come my standard response to questions that I don’t think need to be answered.

“Motif?!”

~*~

Today I turned 30.

Life goes on. The world didn’t shatter to pieces as I thought it would just because I have hit the big 3-0 (yes, I’m dramatic like that) I don’t feel any different from yesterday. No, turning 30 wasn’t such a big tragedy that I imagined it would be.

Am I supposed to feel different? I don’t know. I always thought I should feel different, what with it being such a big transition and all that. It’s kind of a letdown really not to feel different, since for years I thought that would be the case and now here I am turning 30 and not feeling any different. The dreaded day finally arrived, and I don’t even feel dreadful.

Before anyone ask, no, I don’t feel ganyut. Feeling ancient is far from my mind. What I feel is gratefulness, that I get to live to see 30, and hopefully will live to see another 30 years and have an amazing and fulfilling life. So no, I am not ganyut and so do you my darling friend. We are 30 and we are fabulous and that is all there is to it!

~*~

The ganyut comment is a running private joke between my friend and I now. It’s like a comedy routine that never gets old (no pun intended) that we keep bringing up from time to time.

And the ironic part? Z is the same age as my friend and I. So much for pot calling the kettle black.

I don’t believe in regrets. It’s a dangerous habit to get into - it makes you pause in your life if you start thinking back and questioning yourself.

- Angelina Jolie

Hello!

This is my cat - a male kucing kampung - that I called Yayang. I know, how ‘creative’ of me. My sister calls him by another name and so does my father, so now he doesn’t response to any name. My youngest sister however ‘calls’ him by, “Eeee, benci aku tengok kucing ni!” (she doesn’t like cat. I know, shocking!)

Yayang however does respond to the sound of food, tsk-tsks and the clinks of crockery. He also responds very well to the act of people eating, so if he sees me munching, he will come and meow at me. Macam tak bagi makan, my sister would complain, since she feeds him day and night but this cat, aiyo, pantang nampak orang makan!

He likes to climb (his new hobby) furnitures, my tall stacks of books, basically anything that can he can jump on. He also like to wrestle with and bites people’s hands, complete with kicking the hand and all that. He does however only bite mockingly.

Since Yayang is only a tween cat, he doesn’t have the habit of meowing loudly yet and before that happen I’m gonna have him neutered. Now, if only I can find the time to get him to the vet…

p/s No, he wasn’t growling in that picture. When I snapped that picture, he was meowing to my tsk-tsk sound to get him to look at the camera.