Yoyos in the Sky

That this was perhaps the most unenjoyable Chinese New Year to me is definitely an understatement.

It’s just the most polite way I can think of putting it.

And so I thought my escapade to the Big City would be a welcome (and much needed) relief.

Disheartened, disappointed, frustrated and sad, I packed my things into the car and hurried off in the middle of the night without a care in the world.

Never would I have thought that so many things were being put to the test in so short a time, and in so many possible ways.

And if I thought driving two hundred kilometres down south to the thriving metropolis to see friends close and dear would solve everything --at least for now--, then I was to be proven utterly wrong.

But its all over now. What’s past is past. And it was all to be another lesson to be learnt. Even with all this being so, I definitely had a pleasant time during my stay there.

Thanks so much for the omelette sandwiches. For staying late despite the long drive back to Cyberjaya. For the lovely DAC. For the pint of Guinness. And for that afternoon drenched in green tea.

We are told from young to not keep unhealthy things --emotional baggages, and grudges especially-- against others for too long a time, but I cannot help but walk away from the past week doing precisely so.

Maybe just a little bit here and there.

Oh well. With all the hustle and bustle settled down and done with, I certainly look forward to the (very few) days ahead, spending time with family, the cats, the car and the coffee in this beautiful valley that is home.

It won’t be long before all this would again be a luxury, and nothing more than a mere memory of people and a place that once was.

It won’t be long before I’ll start missing all this, and wishing the academic hellhole in the island continent would be over.

It won’t be long before it’ll be time to go, again.

Another Late Night

It's almost 5 in the morning and I am still awake, gripped by a dark sense of dismay.

Petroleum is running out. The climate is at a critical point. A little over a billion people will —in the very near future— join the developing/developed world in its voracious consumption of energy.

Fusion technology is still half a century away at the very least. Carbon capture sounds like a childish fantasy. Wind mill farms don't really cut it. Nuclear stations cost too much time and money.

The country has lost it's lead in every single field to the once inferior competitors from South Korean and Taiwan. But instead of teaming up to get our acts together and to stand up to the challenges of the world, we're a nation gripped by ridiculous religious drama and a sodomy trial. Add that to a population intent on seeing even patriotic and unifying attempts fail, you know that we're in deep shit.

Lowering the scale to a more personal level -and perhaps upping the significance- is 3300 that awaits me, and the towering exchange rate and the heavy financial burden it will incur. 

I get the sense somehow that the coming decades will see humanity go through an extremely difficult and trying period, with deep and overwhelming changes to our way of life, and the way we see ourselves.

I feel like a fool and an idiot to worry over the problems of the human race, not least when a course in dynamics is impossible enough in itself. But is it absolute wrong to fret and to worry over things one has no control over, especially if there are smarter, wealthier and more-abled people in the world to lead us out of this pit?

All I want to do is to wake up in the afternoon tomorrow, step into my chilly air-conditioned car, burn a few hundred mils of black gold —putting my share of humanity's CO2 burden into the atmosphere— to get to town and have a lovely glass of white coffee.  

And when the festivities of the Chinese New Year is over, all I yearn for is to go out and get my freezing cold beer and drink well into the mornings with the people most dear to me, then speed through the city streets to get home.