A New Start

 
This is my ninth draft, and is one that I intend to publish, instead of putting to the bin like all the others before. 

I have so much to write about; me being sick of almost any and every one around me, and almost any and every thing.

But nothing I write would be fit for reading.

In between the weights and the jogs, the whey and the Quarter Pounders, the studies and sleep, I have neither the time nor energy for anything else.

I couldn’t for the life of me muster even a coherent post, despite the repeated attempts.



I miss home so much.

I miss my family. I miss the valley. I miss alcohol. I miss drinking with my dad. I miss driving that wonderful car. I miss my closest and best friends.

A few more months to go, and another four subjects to pass.

Life, for now, seems unbearably arduous, and impossibly long.

 

I Made It.

Honestly, I feel like deleting every single post I wrote for the past five months.



Success is sweet, though watching your closest, truest friends and comrades fall most definitely isn’t.

Theirs is a solemn reminder of the grave consequences of not having made it through.

Theirs is a bitter reminder of the human costs behind the thick cold faces of ruthless academicians who trump the “standards” flag.



Where most expected —especially coming from me, of all people— is the relentless gloating and praise of all the wonders and joys of life, there shall be none. 

This seriously isn’t at all funny, or worth celebrating for.



I am lucky to have just scraped through, to have saved a brand new Gen.2 and twelve additional months to repeat two subjects.

These were perhaps the two most expensive marks in my life.

Beginnings

   
Children. They are everywhere around me, lurking beneath ever so thinly veiled membranes, but just peer through the words, the conduct, and right in the depths of those shallow souls is that malicious, malevolent child reigning supreme in them full-grown adults.

They say pain is what we need to grow —that without trauma, or other extraordinary life-changing crises, we’d never learn, or progress above and beyond that which we are.

In recent months, the overarching thought has perhaps been that of immaturity, the (fortunate, unfortunate) need to grow up, not losing one's humanity, and compassion.

Lessons in life... that life is not a fairytale, a romantic illusion, or a fanciful novel, that life is not a house full of comfy beds and giant sofas with an eternal cash tree in the backyard that bears fruit rain or shine, that the world is not a fabulous land of joy and wonder where good and just is always triumphant, or that things will always work out for you.

Life indeed is short —definitely short enough not to be spent over the little things or the little people that bring you displeasure and discontent. And also too short in fact, to be wasted away over the inconsequential, the irrelevant, and the obsolete.

Times have changed.

It's time to grow up.

I’m moving on, and I’m definitely not sorry that a few of you won’t be coming along.

 

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?

 

Automobiles, Thoughts on

  
Cars are many things to many people. For some, it is merely a mode of transportation that ferries them from A to B. Some think of it as an extension to their wardrobe, an empty shell that represents their ‘fashion sense’. Many use cars as instruments to express the depth of their pockets, or their towering heights in the social ladder. Then there are the rare few who buy cars because of the product’s actual performance.

And by “performance” I did not mean 0-60 in four point three seconds. Or four point three one seconds. Not that it matters anyway, since it is unlikely that the vast majority of people who actually care about these things are able to shift gears that quickly to begin with.

Nor are the lap times of a confounded TV-show's test track that does not and will never properly evaluate the “performance” of a car (e.g. the real boys test in Nürburgring and Fiorano). And even at that, it’s not as if 99.9% of car buyers out there are going to race their precious cars in race-tracks every day.

Most would use their cars on the roads to get to work, to pick their kids from school, to live life. And it is in these circumstances that things like NVH and fuel economy, after-sales support and practicality becomes paramount, not what Mr Fuckson said of how fast the car could get round his little circuit.

And thanks to the said arse-head, a horde of other stupid people who think ‘sports‘ is Good, and everything else is Bad, we have manufacturers tune suspension systems so hard and rides so harsh that make these cars (and the people who drive them) a complete joke —outside of Mr Fuckson’s circuit, of course.

Where things count most is where people miss out most: ride, handling, NVH. Nothing is more important than how a car gets you to your destination. People often think that driving/travelling makes them tired, but never have they once stopped and put their “wonderful” car with all the characteristics of a horse cart as the source of their fatigue.

But when they finally do, it wouldn't matter anyhow, since particular non-essential reasons (the vehicle’s excellent fuel economy, *perceived* low maintenance, safety and aesthetic features) outweighs this extremely critical unimportant negative non-issue point.

It’s not as if the 25% savings in fuel costs could pay for the higher priced vehicle to begin with, nor —ironically— cover the cost of the more expensive replacement parts —parts that will have to be replaced someday, either way. Friction, wear and tear, are universal effects that applies to any and every thing. 

Safety is indeed important, and does indeed seem particularly so when airbags explode deploy with metal shrapnels that finishes the driver off when the accident itself did not, while at the same time, so too is low maintenance, especially when the accelerator pedal sinks in on itself, and when the brakes refuse to engage. Pretty hypocritical, don’t you think?

But then again, none of these really have anything to do with the manufacturers in question, since they did have those components sourced from other manufacturers, which brings me to another point: cars these days are just a bundle of parts where no one really makes anything. Everyone makes something. German, Japanese, American, gearboxes, spark plugs, control systems or electronics —you name it. 

Oh sorry, did you actually think car makers made these stuff, and that some make’s “stuff-that-goes-into-the-bonnet-of-said-make’s-car-is-magically-better-than-others”? That somehow, just because it goes into a car from country Y the part lasts longer than the part that went into country X's car? 

Time for a reality check then.

To exchange large sums of cash for a product with it’s make being one of the primary reasons ranks as one of the *MOST* stupid things one could ever do in life. Putting one’s John Thomas in the hands of an insane butcher comes to mind. But then again, I suppose the majority decision is always the right decision, which is why the best argument for democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Majority's choice could never be wrong, now can it?^*

I beg to differ.

 

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…