Legacies

You know there’s this one thing I have long known, but never previously shared with anyone, neither in public nor in private...

Not that this is a particularly secretive nougat that should only be kept within the confines of my skull; I just suppose the opportunity never presented itself…


Twenty four months: that really, is the longest period of time I could spend at any given place or institution.

This is the duration long enough to be marked by epochs and cataclysms; for history to be written, new standards to be set, achievements to be celebrated and looked back upon in times to come, meaningful relationships to be made —and detrimental ones to be killed.

And perhaps most importantly: critical life lessons to be experienced, absorbed, and learnt.


Dragged on for longer, and the burden of memory and familiarity becomes unbearable; the weighty baggage of experience and contempt start to swell up into a pool of trauma.

Twenty four months is the longest amount of time before I pass from being too comfortable to being too sick, and before I get stunt from growing and get encapsulated by the very spheres I set over myself.


As the sliver of realisation falls, comes a reality that liberty and release looms ever closer beyond the horizon.

I now liken myself to a four-engine winged-tubed craft at one end of a runway, waiting for four green lights to signal at the other, before putting thrusters to full for the imminent pressure-differentials to do their aerodynamic witchcraft.

And then, freedom.

Golden

Carnage

The world is filled with it.

Amidst all the beauty, all the joy and all the wonder that is life, there is so much that is not so.

You left so many reminders of youth lingering in my head. What is it like to be 18? What was it like to be young, to be new, to be fresh, to be innocent and untainted by the struggles and the realities of life?

I see it in your face. I see it in your eyes.

We… we’ve lost it all.

We’ve all lost it.

What was it that took the fiery sparkle from your dark hazel eyes? What was it that put those wrinkles on your face? What was it that aged you down?

Was it one turmoil all too many? Was it one event too nasty?

And as for me?

From life’s bloodbaths I’ve lost enough of myself to cynicism and bitterness, a permanent shade of jade hovering over my corneas… a young child inside shies away from the senses of the world, scarred by the burns of life, and the need to grow up.


There is so much in my life that is going so great right now, and so much can so easily be lost.

But losing won’t kill me.

Not anymore.

Not after everything that I’ve gone through.

Not since I was the boy I used to be.

Last Legs

 

My recent disgust and distaste at almost everyone around me has been the cause of a huge self-driven mental and emotional wall.

This walled-garden of mine is serene, quiet, and predictable.


But this forced, self-imposed isolation is a lonely and testing existence.

You tend see all those around you in a considerably less-than-favourable light, and the cycle continues, deepening into ever more catastrophic feedback loops.

Can’t exactly say that I’m delighted or pleased at the current situation, but I’d rather it be so than to stoop down and accept alien values, ideals or realities for which I do not share, or beliefs that make every sinew of my soul cringe at the sheer monstrosity of their absurdity.


I was once passionately empowered against religion, against the belief of imaginary omnipotent men/women/being[s] floating in the blue skies above us, and I thoroughly railed against the people who lived their lives under these ridiculous little umbrellas of illogic.

That was one lesson in life I never forgot; I still haven’t the slightest respect or regard for religionists or believers. The greater their beliefs, the farther I wanted to be from them.


Today, I am empowered once more.

Today, I say enough to stupidity.

I will not be cowed into accepting nonsense, misinformation, prejudices or idiocy, just because that’s how the way the world is, or just because that’s the norm.

There is a better way than this.

 

Branches

 
Facebook. Wedding. Pictures. And metallic-silver 5 Series’.

I start to picture myself at 35, a rather successful well-to-do engineer, a bachelor pad perched high atop the skyline with spectacular views of the city, and a 5 Series of my own —this the mid-sized executive saloon that has been the unrivalled gold-standard of it’s class for almost three decades, this the model that has made the Bavarian company famous, this the car that has fascinated me since childhood.

A pair of monumental KLIMAX floor-standers with an equally impressive front-end to match, huge portions of glass offering panoramic views in a small, cosy apartment, and an even smaller bedroom.

Dreams, I snap out of my mind-wandering to tell myself.

Dreams that may full well not come true.

Which is also equally fine, I think to myself. Having nothing to do with the flamboyance, the glamour, and all the gay, living a “small” life of bare minimums rid of all excess.

I figure I’d appreciate life —and everything else— more this way; living lean, living clean, and living simple.


But moving a decade backwards to the here and now is July the 14th with which I wait with indifference. As the days draw closer and closer, hope still seems to spring eternal.

Hope that I will pass the two particularly troublesome subjects, hope that a normalised curve will be employed and that it will favour me, hope that things will turn out alright.

But then again, a fool’s hope it may very well be too.

If indeed I fail any of the two papers, my graduation day will be pushed further into the future, the completion of my degree prove to be lengthier and far more costly a battle than what I had hoped or wished for.

But if there is any consolation, it is that the reduced workload of three subjects per semester would make life easier, and give me more time to do the things I want, as well as the life I would rather live.

And if I do manage scrape through without any failures —and heavens do I not hope and wish that I do— then that too, would be a wonderful outcome.

There’s the dream thesis topic I get to do, there’s the huge sum of cash not needing to be used, there’s the whole year I’d not need to spend in university, and let’s face it: who likes the idea (and the consequences) of failing?

 

Yellow

 

Issues.

I have lots, and lots of issues.

Childhood was a pretty rough time for me: the targeted isolation I suffered from cousins, the name-calling at school (my middle name makes for easy verbal abuse even for the most uninspired of people) and then, finally, as a teenager completely alienated and disassociation with society as a whole.

It’s three in the morning, and I have a paper to sit for at 8.45, and I haven’t a clue why I need this to be written.

The exams —ah those blasted three subjects— were essentially over and done with on Tuesday, the last of them engineering subjects that one needed to worry over. The two papers remaining I’ve already passed with coursework marks alone: 29/30, 39/40, 10/10, so the marks go.

Almost exactly the way it was last semester, I remind myself.


I have since (the ‘conclusion’ of the exams) been letting almost each and every relationship vegetate away, for in the solace of these four walls and the umbilical cord of glass fibres and pulsating flashes, I have found space.

And serenity.


Hypocrisy becomes of me tonight, as my innate sense of selfishness takes over, yet again. I think to myself the certainty of me dying a pathetic old man, lonely from lack of/non-existent social interaction perhaps not, miserable from the sad state that would become of me in my old age most definitely yes.


Questions, questions, questions, but always without the answers.

Jumbled bits and pieces of incoherence, fragments of discontinuous thoughts, a whirlwind of chaos: one would be right to think that I’m going insane.

But then again, what is insanity when properly kept within the confines of one’s mind? After all, madness and insanity are only relative terms, subjective in themselves.


I reckon the very posting of this entry alone would make it clear that I best be left alone to ponder in my lucid quasi-dreams. Peanut, anyone?

 

Days and Nights

   
Despite what the unending stream of dark and solemn posts would suggest, life has been… fairly good to be honest.

Haven’t had the want/urge/need to drink for what must be close to one and a half months now —so much so that I have decided to use my allocated allowance for alcohol for a tub of protein instead!

I have been eating well, sleeping well, working out, drinking litres and litres of water a day though definitely not studying as well. Strange as it may seem, for the entire past three years, this has got to be THE least stressful and/or pressured pre-exam period I have ever experienced, despite the coming three papers being perhaps the most instrumental in my life.

I feel little, if anything.

Perhaps one day —and one real soon at that if I may add— I will look back at this, and deeply regret my being more concerned with my health/physique than the impending exams, but oh well.

Now I wonder what new is there to watch on Youtube today…  

 

Honesty

 

Another bottle of beer by the yellow lamp.

Another passing day.


Alcohol solves nothing they say, but fuck them: it sure as hell makes a difference. I know not the reason why I have managed to --over the past few days-- find so much peace, and so much serenity amidst so much uncertainty, the burgeoning amount of academic work notwithstanding.


I have also realised that so much of these “issues” have been my own doing: had it not been for my selfishness, my wanting the cake and eating it, all this would not be so.

Beneath this shell that perhaps pursues objectivity and rationale at a (somewhat) obsessive level lies an emotional core that isn’t always altruistic, nor cares or loves that much.

I guess inside, I’m just a menacing little kid after all.

But I’ll give you this: I’ve got the guts to admit it.

 

Food

It's two in the morning.

Having had the disastrous Mechanics II quiz we sat for today that I do not feel bad about since none of my peers did it any better than I did, all that is left is tomorrow's Solids II quiz in the evening.

But I'm tired like fuck, and nothing more is going in. I'm not a bloody sponge with infinite-absorption abilities, and my point of mental saturation was already surpassed last week.

Tired though I may be, sleepy I definitely am not.

I am simply dying for something good to sink myself into. A good blog maybe, by a deep, witty and intelligent blogger. A good book that reflects upon humanity and our horrid lives in insightful ways that I never before realised.

I need a good read -one that will spare the mathematical regions of my brain, yet feed the rest of it with the profound knowledge that I would otherwise not have.

I've visited a trillion blogs, I have gone through pages listing hundreds of "good books", I have searched high and low in any and every search-able domain ...to no avail.

And no, I'm not in the mental frame of mind to open the book by my bed that goes on and on about evolution. Thank you Richard, but no thanks. Not this week, and definitely not tonight.

Sighs. What is a hungry boy to do?

Drifter

It's nine pm on a Sunday night.

I have done litte/no studying today. Or yesterday.

Or even, the day before.

The mere mentioning of the phrase "under mountains of tremendous pressure to perform and to pass in 3300" -as well as the other subjects- is akin to flogging to death the already dead horse one more time.

I have become used to living under the mountain's shadow. So used to it in fact, that I do not even fear living in the darkness anymore.

I have so much energy bubbling inside me. There is just so much I want to do. I want to read up on a good book. And then another one. Maybe even a third after that. I want to travel to the other ends of Sydney for example, and get lost. Taking thousands of pictures along the way, and thousands on the way back.

I want to draw. I am so inspired to take up drawing again, my previous 'personal frontier' -photography- having been conquered (veni, vidi, vici so the saying goes) and a certain Andrew having uploaded his drawings very recently.

I want to write. Write and write and write and write. I want to write on a myriad of issues: politics, technology, the stupidity of Malaysians, and -oh hell yeah- you religionists-die-hards and your ever so contradictory and hypocritical ways.

I want to go home. I want to see the people I love. I miss them so much. I want to see real people, not the fake hollow shells that I am surrounded by. People who actually have soul, people who are warm and genuine.

I want my freedom.

But alas, that all has to wait.

And apparently so too will my revision, as I continue being inexplicably glued to this LCD.

Strength

Insomnia strikes again.

In the middle of the night, being too mentally drained to study, and too filled with caffeine to sleep, the alcohol is making little (no) difference to me.

In the 3300 tutorial-cum-quiz today, I for the first time in many, many years, felt what it actually was to be so vastly inferior and sub-standard to a certain 'reference point', so to say in 3300-speak.

It was disheartening, and in that blaze of envy, I felt an overwhelming gush of (negative) emotions.

Yes, I'm certainly not the most gifted tool in the UNSW shed. And I certainly haven't all the intelligence in the world -nor even amongst my peers, for that matter.

Personality wise, well, that's even more of a no-brainer: from the bottom up would perhaps be an accurate description. Oh, and let's not forget the constant emotional outbursts that plague this blog.


But now that the evening/night has settled down, and played itself out, and that the chinks in my ego and the insecurities of my life have all been papered-over and pacified, I can't help but feel how tremendously nice it is to be me.

I have two of the most exceptional people in the world as my parents. I have a warm and wonderful group of close, life-long friends --people that I cannot be more happy or proud to know, or have known.

I am courageous with the things I know and for the things I believe in. I am a formidable combination of good looks, quick wits, and an ocean of depth and a wealth of intellectualism.

Luck, for the most part, has been on my side for the past half decade. And as horrendously wrong as this would sound, I have faith in the future always being a better place than the past.

Truth be told, it's good to be me.

Hell Below Blue Skies

So there I suddenly was again, onboard another Boeing craft jetting south through the massive Australian heartland.

It seemed just like yesterday that I was heading the opposite way -that 400 going ever faster with each kilometer it passed.

It seemed just like yesterday I landed at the airport in the night where my parents were waiting for me.

It seemed just like yesterday that I was suddenly home again, and where everything I could ever want or need was within arm's reach.

It seemed just like four months ago when I reached the flat and entered my room: a place filled with academic struggles and that very familiar feeling of frustration at everything I did.

It seemed just like four months ago when I finished unpacking to realise that beyond the double-digit circle of souls, there is no one, and nothing else for you here.

Engineering Mechanics II though, is unlike anything else I've gone through before. I am truly frightened to bits at incurring another term here that cannot be afforded.

I wonder why such dickheads are lecturing 3300. I wonder wish if there is even the slimmest chance of me passing. I wonder wish if anyone has tried murder doing something.

I wonder at times, why a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do so much good to me, my career, and my life, has turned into a hellish nightmare that I cannot bear to live with.

The Spiral

Chaos and insanity reigns. The world swirls around you. Dates and people and books and notes and formulas and theory and the pressure of succeeding -not just in these four subjects, but for the many more to come- converge into a continuum devoid of meaning or perspective.

You lose all your faith, hope and respect you had for those around you. They squander into insignificance; your relationship with them carrying little meaning, as they slowly decay into obscurity.

When those closest to you are farthest from you, when those you could always fall back on cannot support the weight of your most difficult burdens, when you realise no one will be there for you and no one can or will do a thing if and should you fail… not just this academic semester, but on all the greater vestiges of the would-bes of your grandiose life...

You will realise then, that you are truly all alone in all this, and no comforting words, or thoughts will bring you out of your own pathetic, miserable little grave.

You then wished you, along with all the other fucking little things around you, could just fall apart, crumble and silently vanish into the abyss, as the spiraling vortex sucks it all away.

State of Affairs

I kid you not when I say that I didn’t study today. Or during the weekend. Or that yesterday, when I did actually managed to study, it was only a pathetic flip of two pages in the textbook.

Mind you, two pages of intense, heavily compressed, deeply-encompassing theory and required-understanding is no small matter. But fuck that, it’s still shitty progress nevertheless.

And adding to it was the entire last week that I just lazed and drifted through. I depended on my course-mates to finish up the lab report, and complete the assignment.

Since the submission of the fifty-page, six thousand-word assignment that was worth 30% two Fridays ago, I have reached a point of complete and utter mental saturation.

I can stare at a page the whole day and nothing would go in. I could force myself to read through the texts and that would be it: empty reading. I could resubstitute things into a formula and redo an example again and again, and not know how to do it minutes after.

I don’t even fear the finals, which is strangely odd.

As the days and the dates change, all I see are just figures passing me by -the same way I see passing figures as I do passing equations and formulae.

Worthless, meaningless figures and symbols.

I have become bored and sick and tired to death with entropy, enthalpy, nozzles, stagnation points, critical points, internal energy, the units kJ/kg, kmols, m/s and all the ensuing mass of garbled, jumbled mess.

It is my own downfall, all this. It is me who chose such a course because of my own initial self ‘interest’ in this field, and having lost it, I haven’t the ability to go on further.

I’d imagine the pressure has just not built to such a point where the sheer prospect of obliteration and the consequences of failure would force me to get all this stuff into my head anyhow, by hook or by crook, regardless of ‘interest‘ or ‘mood‘ or other ‘nonsense’.

And honestly, I hope that day better come real soon.

I...

I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings, speeding my way down the Sg. Besi highway. Keane, and Dashboard Confessional were played loud on the stereo. The sun having just risen, the highway empty of cars, the hot, humid Malaysian weather barely that, and the ever so troubling speed limit of 90 km/h I never obeyed. Ms Lee and JLJC were often the subjects of these trips I made to the big city.


I remember my first time drinking before the sun had set.

It was with Ms Lee, where in my order of Pepsi, she ordered a margarita. Then me, with a RM15 bottle of Heineken -what ensued wouldn’t surprise anyone.

That was also the first time I hung out with cousins I had never previously knew; the age gaps between us had ensured two decades of zero communication.


I remember finishing the 6 p.m. Machine Control classes on Thursdays, immediately jumping into the car with the clothes for the overnight stay already packed into the boot beforehand, and (again) driving speedily to catch dinner and a movie with LSH. And the early, sleep-deprived Friday mornings back to Nilai to catch another class. The Script were frequent favourites on the stereo. Many a times I left for Ipoh later the same day, or for KL early the next.



I remember that afternoon with ABS. It was one of the best conversations I’ve had in months, and certainly the most Heinekens I’ve ever had at one goal. I got so drunk I had a hangover the next day, but still drove back to Nilai to pack everything into the car before making my way back to Ipoh for the final time.

But what I remember most of all are the drives back to Ipoh on those Friday evenings.

With the sun about to set, a wonderful golden-hue was cast across the land. It’s boiling hot out there, but inside, the brand new air-conditioner of the brand new car is blowing an unending gust of freezing cold air. Andrea Bocelli is playing at at least a hundred decibels, as I (again) exceed the speed limit. With each additional rpm, the engine gets ever more powerful, rocking harder and harder with every speed increase -to a point where even the steep climb of the highway nearing Ipoh is no obstacle: the car just pushes through without a sweat. And it is roughly by then that the sun was almost completely set, where the xenon headlamps would have lit a million miles in front of me.

And then I remember reaching home. The drinks and the suppers with my dad, the chats with my parents, the white coffee in the evenings, my two cats, and the lovely meals.

Those simply were, the best times of my life.

I miss home.

Hours After Midnight

Another gruesome 14 hours in university. Another day passes. Another cycle beckons to repeat itself.

Before I plonk my head down onto the pillow and call it a night -something which I seriously need to do- I have this incessant urge to write.

Something deep. Something profound. Something meaningful.

Alas, there exists nothing within this skull but a tired and weary mind.

So I turn it off, and leave as little conscious intervention between my fingers and the keyboard as possible.

I have so many things to say.

I am happy.

I have been so for many, many days now. Despite the frequent, violent mood swings that would suggest otherwise, the unbearable stress and pressure to perform, despite the bastards and the bitches that plague my every living day, despite my moodiness --despite all this, there exists a deep, underlying current of happiness.

Of content, and of hope.

And belief.

Alas, after thirty extraordinary months, I have finally put things back in order.

I'm back.

Consequences Unknown

1 a.m.

Friday night.

In Sydney.

And this is me, having just gotten out of the shower from a gruesome sixteen-hour long stretch in uni.

I have decided that tonight, I will pour myself a strong one, and take time out for myself.

Just me, this yellow lamp, this huge bottle of whisky, my lovely set of earphones and a big fat internet connection.

Slaughter House

Last time I checked, we're three weeks to a month away from the exams.

Last time I checked, we're filled with so many assignments, so many reports, there isn't any time to study or revise.

Last time I checked, we're to pass all these stuff up on week twelve, the exams are on week fourteen.

How will four months worth of lectures, theories, and knowledge be crammed into the head, to be fully understood and applied to five final papers defies me.

That each semester costs forty grand is troubling enough, that the chances of not passing being so high is another pill too bitter to swallow.

"Save me" is so understated.





A friend tells me "it's not the end of the world".

I swing back and forth from fear, worry and nervousness to blissful ignorance.

Feels as if whatever I do won't make a difference.

Feels as if the war is already lost.

Differentiation

I’m feeling better by the day.

I’m not just feeling better, I’m actually happy.

I’m happy for no good reason at all; when I get out of the bed I just feel happy. In the shower, I feel happy.

I’m puzzled; when shit happens, when the bitches and the bastards fuck me up, I revert back to a happy state within minutes.

I’m under tremendous pressure.

I’m under five million Pascals of stress.

I’m aware of the arduous academic work the lies ahead of me.

But I’m happy.

Maybe its because I get to, and am finally living in my own skin. Maybe its because I’ve settled down in this ecosystem.

Though by no means am I at the top of the food chain -yet? Maybe. Who knows.

Simplification of my life I think, has worked exceptionally well for me.

Oust the bitches. Oust the bastards.

Kill the arbitrary constant: there will be no more mathematical integration here.

Down this alley we differentiate until only the necessary things are left. =)

Jumbled Emotions and Incoherent Thoughts by the Yellow Lamp

If I called it quits, threw in the towel, and let things die...

If I couldn't see past the past,

If I couldn't let bygones be bygones,


Will you blame me for it?

Will you blame me for the things I've said and done?

Will you blame me for the way I behave?


What if there really was nothing more to life than this?

What if none of this was worth the trouble?

What if the your life really was insignificant in the grand scheme of things?


Maybe this is how it all is.

Maybe this is how things end.

Maybe this is the way the universe works.


Surely you can't see everything the way I do,

Surely you think in a different light,

Surely you think I'm crazy.


Would you cut me some slack without me asking for it?

Would forgiveness lie waiting at the end of this road?

Would there be mercy when this is all over?

11th Hour

I love this song.

I think it's more of the context (from my POV) of the song that I like than anything else: the world around you is fast falling apart, through all the bitterness and all that was lost, the one you loved some point back in time is standing there with you. In one sweeping moment, bygones are truly bygones. Nothing of the past matters -there isn't a future left to live.

But its only in dreams, and in reality, the heartache lingers on.

Genius!