In Continuum.

This entry shall be a quick update on the things that have come to pass in the past week. I think we ended off with the Coldplay concert that happened on Monday, and I am still experiencing the withdrawal along with Justin and Kevin - especially the latter. Kevin has been in a sort of depression after the concert because of how good it was, and I understand. It's like that thing I said earlier about graphic novels, you feel sad to know that any graphic novel after Watchmen is never going to be as good, let alone better. To know that every concert happening after this one is going to be worse, at least for a long time, sucks. Well, the concert was worth every single cent, and we all know it. Nobody can walk out of the concert thinking that it was just another normal concert with people dancing and singing on stage. It was something different entirely, and I don't expect a concert to top that experience anytime soon. Kevin probably shares my sentiments as well, as you can see from the videos that Justin took of him during the concert. He looked like he was trying to whip the people in the row before him as he swung his head back and forth during the songs. That is not to mention how he got so high after the concert without a single drop of alcohol.

The days that followed were days of assignments, assignments, and assignments. There is a reason why the word "assignment" begins with the word "ass". It is a word within a word, because one word describe the whole. Yes, assignments are pains in the butt, like sitting on a chair sprinkled with thumb tags. A major conspiracy between the lecturers is evident, considering how everything came together on a single week, everything converged in such an uncanny way, that you cannot help but imagine all the lecturers sitting around a table, discussing the best way to burden the students even more than we are already burdened. I think we should pile this assignment on top of this speech, I think that would create the greatest amount of stress amongst the student cohort, says one. I agree, says the other. I shall also set this date over here to coincide with yours, the final draft of my paper should also be due on this day, not to mention the quiz on the day after. They probably on that arrangement and unleashed the beast upon us all at one go. I must say that their plan worked, because no one dares to say that they got through this past week unscathed. Everybody has a bruise here and a cut there, and no one has been spared at all. It has been a tiring week, and it will probably be the case until the end of it all. Oh dear.

Still, I am looking forward to the coming week because I have turned into a sort of workaholic. I think it is because of my Macs, and I am not even exaggerating here. I think the applications in my Macs really make me want to work, because they are just so nice and easy to use. Create a presentation? Sure. It takes a while to get it right, but the result is always so rewarding to me. I'm serious when I say that applications like Pages and Keynote makes me want to work, work, and work some more. I suppose it is a good thing, and I do hope that it has yet to cause a dent in my social relationships, whatsoever. Just give me a Mac and an assignment, I'd get the work done. There is a certain sense of accomplishment as you go through the presentation slides made on a Keynote. The way that the words dissolves into the background, the way the graphs comes into focus afterwards, and the way the graphic shifts and moves around the slides - it's awesome. That is not to mention the fact that I have tested it out with my Remote Keynote application on my iPod Touch - everything is working seamlessly. OK, I am bordering on geekdom now, in which I shall return back to normal form. As much as work has been a trouble and pain in the ass, I must say that I am enjoying it quite a bit.

Anyway, yesterday was supposed to be the worldwide event with everybody turning off the lights in their house for an hour. The Earth Hour, or something like that, and I am a sucker for events like that. However, I started to think about the inconveniences involved in sacrificing light for an hour and started to have seconds thoughts about participating in it. I had work to do on my Macbook, and the whole Earth Hour concept did not include turning off computers or television sets. Just lights, which I thought was fair, until I realized that my house would be in complete darkness if I did attempt to go through with it. So I figured I'd twist the concept around a bit. Instead of turning all my lights off for an hour, I'd just use a table lamp for two hours straight. But anyway, it's not like I have lights turned on in my room anyway. I have a love/hate relationship with the main light on my ceiling, and I have a thing against white light. Which is why my room is usually lid only with the lamp on my table and the one behind my bed. The rest of the house, though, I had to turn everything off myself, and that was exactly what I did. The whole house was darkened by the time it was 8.30, and everybody in the house (My mother, sister and I) were working only with lamps. Yet, I felt a little disappointed that my entire neighborhood was still brightly lid by the time it was 9. I mean, I even tried to look for a darkened house with activities inside, and I couldn't find one. Nobody seemed enthusiastic about the idea though, contrary to what the newspaper said this morning.

In truth, I think if the government really wants to reinforce this, they should just shut off power plants or something like that. Turn off lights in certain districts, shutting them off and letting everything rest for an hour. You don't expect common citizens to want to participate in something like that, because most people are not going to be persuaded. The main reason is because by turning off the lights for an hour, it is really a symbolic thing and it doesn't have any short term resolutions. You don't see a sudden change in our environment just by turning off the lights off for an hour, and people love to see results. If doing so will have a visible difference in our night sky, then we'd probably all end up doing it without a problem. The problem is that we can't see the difference we can make instantaneously, and as a result we don't see the need to do what they are wanting us to do. Or rather, we don't see a motivation to do so, which is probably why so many people couldn't be bothered about it. I think they should just turn everything off in the country for an hour every year. You know, shut everything that can be shut down in the country for that amount of time and see what happens. Of course, airports should be kept running and security should still be in place. But everything else like street lamps in secluded places, turn them all off. Plunge the country into a state of complete darkness for an hour, and see what happens. It'd be interesting, and the fun is only a switch away.

I have to dedicate a part of this entry on the newly opened italian restaurant downstairs of my estate called Buono. I have seen many shops and restaurants there before, including the very first convenience store and then the restaurants afterwards. There was that modest Thai restaurant that had a short lifespan, and then now we have this italian restaurant, which is really the branch of another restaurant down the street in Serangoon Gardens. I had my dinner there this Friday, the second time that I have dined there. Third, if you want to count that other time when they made a home delivery to my home (Yes they do that without extra charges). I must say that the food is pretty awesome, though a little pricey. Yet, the serving is pretty generous, and you get a pretty filling dinner with about twenty dollars each. The pizza is huge, and much cheaper than what Pizza Hut has to offer - and better. Thin crust pizzas for the win, ladies and gentlemen, and this restaurant only makes thin crusted pizzas. This place is filled with Caucasians day in and day out that you start to feel like you are not in Singapore after about five minutes sitting in there. It is so popular that people would come and ask what time would be more suitable for them to come back, because the place has been fully booked. Yeah, it is pretty awesome.

So yes, the semester is about to end, and I hope that this blogging thing won't stop anytime soon. In the mean time, I have to go back to doing some work I suppose, lightening the load next week somehow. I am just glad that I am somehow ahead of the curve, and I intend to keep things that way for the most part. Here's to the end at the far side of the road, and let's power through till the end together.

First and foremost, I apologize for the severe lack of updates on this blog. It isn't because of the lack of events happening in my life, but rather the overwhelming assignments that have been clogging up my system. That has been the case for everybody at school, facing eminent deadlines and hills of papers to turn in. Assignments, projects, speeches, presentations, these are just some of the things that are piling into my veins on a daily basis, which is why the daily activity of blogging was forced to play second fiddle in view of these events. Still, it's just great that I have finally found time to do a bit of updating on this glorious looking Saturday, to tell you about the greatest concert that I've ever been to - the Coldplay Viva la Vida Tour in Singapore. Of course, this is going to be the first of many more updates to come, so to speak, and I apologize once again for the lack of updates. I'm just glad that my tagboard has yet to be flooded with robots trying to advertise for a bigger penis or stuff like that, at least that was the case for my older blog, which is completely dysfunctional right now. I will take this rare opportunity to blog before I dive straight back to work all over again. What can we do about it anyway, the semester is drawing to a close, that's how it is. 

Anyway, 23rd of March 2009 will be remembered by a lot of people out there - or at least ten thousand people who were there at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. This is the third time that Coldplay is coming to Singapore, and I'm just glad to have gotten tickets for it way ahead of everybody else. Of course, the drama that happened on the day that the tickets went on sale was one thing, I'm just glad to be going at all, seeing how so many people missed the opportunity because of whatever reasons. Anyway, so the bunch of us from school gathered after our last classes and decided to make our way down to Indoor Stadium together. At five in the evening, the traffic was already picking up in its weight, and it was Justin, Kevin and I in the cab trying to get the concert venue as early as possible. I know how it was like the last time I went there, and that was just an hour before the show started. People swarmed into the concert venue in droves, and you really don't want to be caught in a crowd full of crazy Coldplay fans - or any bands, for that matter. So, we decided to go there three hours before the time the band was slated to start playing, and also because we wanted to grab some merchandizes. 

There were already trickles of people at the box office as well as the merchandize booth outside of the East Entrance, and it kinda sucked that the best t-shirt they had was only available in female cutting - what's up with that? So I bought myself a tour book of sorts inside, the same book I bought the last time I went to their concert. There was still a bit of time before the concert started, and the lot of us wanted to have dinner - and meet Kayla, thought Kevin was a little reluctant to do so. We made our way to the Leisure Park, which has change dramatically since the last time I visited that place may I add, and I met up with Neptina and her parents. Oh, and her close family friends who were going along to the concert with us as well. We had dinner at a random food court, and the crowd around us began to build up. We knew what they were there for, because you could tell by the kind of people in the crowd. More than half of them were probably going to the concert like us, because you just don't make your way down to Leisure Park for a simple dinner - you just don't. So, eight o'clock drew near and I urged the family to get moving as they rambled on about Chinese horoscopes and superstitions. The skies were already growing darker by the time we reached the East Entrance, and we got inside the stadium after the routine bag check. Our seats were pretty easy to spot, since it was the first row, and that was when the drama started even before the concert did. 

So, here's the thing. We bought the most expensive tickets in the house, and the first row of that column at that. There was supposed to be another section of seats for us, but it was being kept up and pushed underneath the column where we were standing on. So, row 1 and 2 of that column were gone, leaving row 3 now being the row 1 of that column, if you are following. Having bought the tickets for the first row on the day itself, we made our way to the empty third row and sat down - until the people who were supposed to be on the third row came along. Apparently, the system on Sistic screwed up, and they sold two extra rows which weren't even available at the venue itself. That caused quite a bit of disagreements, and voices were raised as the crowd continued to pile in. Ushers were being alerted of the problem, and everybody started yelling at the ushers. There was this woman with two of her Caucasian friends, shouting something about how she bought premium tickets, and she'd not be expecting anything less of a premium experience - true, I wasn't going to take that either. The ushers' solution? Refund us the tickets and then put us all the way at the top of the audience - NO FUCKING WAY. We stayed put, and so did the row three people, and people started to climb over railings and stuff like that. There was also a fist fight that broke out towards the front of the stadium, and everything was pretty damn chaotic. 

That also led to me not being able to enjoy the opening act, Mercury Rev. For the most part, I was trying to adjust my camera to the right settings. For some reason, the camera refused to take good decent quality pictures of the band, and I gave up after more than fifty test shots on that junk of a camera. So much for it being a high end camera, I guess. At the same time, I had to fend off fans crawling up from the back of the column, trying to get a closer view of the band. The girls (Neptina and Krystle) were at the restroom, and I had to defend three seats all by myself. This fat Caucasian man climbed over the back seats and onto mine, and I had to tell him to move away because that seat was mine and my friends. He crawled over the front railing and jumped off to the floor seats and disappeared - very smart. Anyway, the opening act was actually pretty good, and I would have enjoyed it more if not for the seating issues and my camera giving me the attitude. Krystle's father was right though, because once the concert started, nobody gave a damn about seating arrangements. He was proven right when the orchestra music ended and the lights went off. The crowd screamed at the top of their voices, and the sea of fans went wild - and so it began. 

Four sparklers appeared on stage and behind a giant veil, twisting and turning in the air and then falling into their rightful place on stage. The sound of Life in Technicolor rang through the halls, and the crowd went crazy - I mean it, the crowd went crazy. The drums came up, followed by the bass and the guitars, and we could only see shadows of the band as they played their instruments at the beginning. As soon as the song finished though, the giant veil was unhooked and it fell to the front of the stage as the first word of Violet Hill was sang. "It was a cold and dark December..." I personally love Violet Hill despite what others might say, and I head banged to the bit in the song with just the blaring drums and the guitar, and I screamed at the top of my voice when Chris Martin went "If you love me, won't you let me know?" Already, the concert seemed a whole lot better than the last concert when they came over. The visuals were amazing, with the album cover proudly displayed behind the band, projectors projecting the images of the band onto screens around the indoor stadium, and not to mention the lasers in the next song just seemed a whole lot better than when I remembered it. 

Clocks, oh Clocks - we all love Clocks. Just like the last time, the crowd went crazy when the familiar piano riffs came up, and that energy carried on to In My Place when the entire stadium joined in the chorus of the song, when we all punched our fists into the air and went "YEAH!" Yeah, it was pretty high by this point of the night. And, for the next song, you can say anything you want about having yellow balloons. They've done it before in their last tour, but you don't have to fix something that isn't broken. The giant yellow balls worked in the last tour during Yellow, and it certainly worked again this time. Once again, the giant yellow balls fell and the crowd started pushing and balls around from one part of the stadium to another. Chris tried to do that balloon piercing thing again this time and managed to burst it with his guitar. Chris Martin seemed a lot more enthusiastic and cheerful this time around in Singapore, though that is not to say he wasn't back in the Twisted Logic World Tour. He just felt a lot more enthusiastic, or excited to be playing for us -  a plus. Glass of Water wasn't a song that a lot of people knew, but I head banged my way through that song anyway. It was a good song, and probably one of the better written songs in the Coldplay discography. Anyway, Cemeteries of London was injected with new life in a live concert situation. I'm usually lukewarm when it comes to that song on the album. But man, did they change my perspectives that night when it happened. 

Oh, when the first chord of Fix You came along, I swear I already had tears in my eyes. If any of you has Justin or Kevin's Facebook account, head over there to check out the video of Kevin losing his mind during this song. I was there as well, it's just that I wasn't caught on tape for the most part. You don't know the feeling until you feel it for yourself. The kind of feeling you get when when all the bones in your body are vibrating, not because of the music, but because of the whole stadium of people singing the same words as yourself. The feeling really lifts you up, and no other moments in the concert could match up to that of Fix You, when the second chorus faded away into the rousing guitar and the drums, when the lights shot out from the stage and drowned the audience and turned us into a sea of blue. Afterwards, the band gathered on the left extension stage and played God Put A Smile Upon Your Face and Talk in a stripped down and remixed version. It wasn't exactly my favorite renditions of the songs, but I thought it was pretty cool anyway. I liked the twist they gave to the songs, but I'm always the kind of guy who prefers the real thing - I'm old school like that. 

The rest of the band goes to take a break for the next part of the concert as Chris Martin takes the center stage and did a solo piano set. I admit that I was never a fan of the song The Hardest Part, and partially because of the strange music video. However, nobody ever let me listen to the solo piano version that Chris did that night - just absolutely brilliant from the beginning to the end. They say that you can measure the greatness of a song by the silence that it entails. The silence after the last note of that song was just breath-taking, the way the whole stadium just kinda stood there in silence for a while. Chris went straight into Postcards from Far Away from there, a medley of sorts I suppose, another piano instrumental piece. Without any hesitation in between that song and the next though, the lights came out abruptly and the mood completely changed. The band exploded back onto the stage with Viva la Vida, the lights and the sounds! The booming of the drums, the tolling of the bell! The entire stadium went into a frenzy all over again, as the whole crowd rose into a crescendo. They sang together to the songs, punched their fists into the air, cameras flashed and Chris Martin collapsed onto the ground and asked for the crowd to keep going after he was done - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. 

With a venue as big as the Indoor Stadium, you shouldn't expect a lot of close encounters for the most part. Yet, I thought it was really cool that the band took some time off and played a mini-set amidst the audience. Yes, Coldplay got off the stage and got to the back of the stadium to play an acoustic set in the middle of the fans. Chris probably took another route there, but the rest of the band came within inches of me, and I got to touch all of them at that point in time - awesome! Armed with a toy piano and guitars, the band covered songs by Neil Diamond and an acoustic version Speed of Sound. Will Champion also contributed vocals to a beautiful song called Death Will Never Conquer - he has quite voice, I must say. The end of the acoustic set was marked by the "Cold Wave", or the Mexican Wave done with cellphones. Everybody took out their cellphones and started making light waves from one side of the stadium to another, round and round and round while a remixed version of Viva la Vida played in the background. The band went to the backstage to change while that happened, and they were back in no time. 

Politik marked the beginning of this first encore, with the blaring drums hammered down mercilessly during the chorus, I had a hard time keeping my balance after all the head banging. The screen behind the band lighted up once again with images from Japan, sakura trees and Japanese children. Lovers in Japan was up next, and a storm of paper butterflies rained down from above with every chorus. It was beautiful, and the lot of us started to grab paper butterflies from the air, and I managed to bring a whole bunch of them home in my pocket, including the balloons and the paper confetti that came along with it. Death and All His Friends came up next, and I imagined Kevin going crazy all over again, because that is his favorite Coldplay song. I love how the song slowly builds up towards the end, and the melodies swelled to the highest point before plunging back down to serenity. That marked the end of the first encore, and the crowded wanted more. However, instead of going "We want more!" or "Encore!" like a normal concert would, the crowd just started singing Viva la Vida all over again on their own accord, and then they started stamping on the grounds. That, was the single coolest moment of the concert ever. Then, a streak of light came down from above, focusing on Chris Martin as he appeared alone as he walked towards the piano. 

I knew, from the first chord, that what he was going to play. I can't believe I actually forgot about that song altogether, but I'm glad the band didn't. Neptina and I screamed when the song was recognized by her - The Scientist. Everybody sang to that song, word after word, and it was just a beautiful sight to behold. Then Chris Martin was joined by the band, and the lights went down all over again, save for four lamps on stage left turned on. The music of Life in Technicolor came up again, and the band took the stage with their instruments. This time, the lyrics of the song was added, and the band ended off the whole concert with an outro of The Escapist played over the speakers. By the end of it all, I was too tired and exhausted to comment on the concert, it was just too freakin' awesome. I'm sorry Broken Social Scene, I thought no concert would top you guys anytime soon, but apparently it did. Coldplay, the best concert that I have ever been to in my life. Just completely, utterly, thoroughly, life changing. Besides, I managed to steal a towel that Chris Martin used, what's cooler than that? 

Click on the links below to watch concert footage!

(I've only included recordings of decent lengths)

6. Glass Of Water

10. Strawberry Swing

15. Viva la Vida 

26. The Escapist (Outro)

I remember myself first starting out as a new student in my current college, fresh out of doing absolutely nothing, ready to do absolutely everything. That was me at the beginning of my college school days, when everything was shrouded in questions and I didn't really understand everything. School was enjoyable at that point in time, though that is not to say that it isn't now. I suppose everybody enjoys the first semester, and that was the time when social politics never really existed, and everybody liked each other - whatever happened to that? I suppose things change all the time, or that people change all the time. First semester was great because the people were new, the school was new, the subjects were new. One of the first modules that I took on was COM101, the very basic of the degree that I am taking right now. One of the classes delved briefly into interpersonal communication, an aspect in which I went in-depth a few semesters later. At any rate, I remember a particular name of a scholar particularly well for some reason, and his name is Knapp. Knapp, because he has an interesting last name, and I remember asking a friend of if the K or the N should be silenced (It's the N by the way). 

Anyway, Knapp's Model divided human relationships, especially that of a romantic relationship, into a bunch of stages. I don't remember every single stage of the relationship now, but I know one of them is called "Integration", where the partners become integrated into each others' lives in terms of the social circles as well as the families. Knapp's Model has come under a lot of criticisms over the years, particularly because his model also includes the decline in a relationship, which eventually leads to the last stage called "Termination". Yet, as we all know, not all relationships end up in that stage, and not everybody would end up terminating their relations. It might stagnant, like one of the stage describes, but not necessarily termination. Still, the rest of that model still seems pretty relevant, and "Integration" is the stage that seems particularly so right now. The reason being is that I was talked into meeting the family of the significant other. Not just the parents, but the family - everybody else. It was a thought that she had the night before, about how it'd be nice for me to meet her family and stuff. I suppose she wanted to get it over and done with, and I guess in a way I wanted that too. So after much persuasion, I convinced even myself that it'd be a good idea. 

I've never done this sort of thing before, meeting more than the parents. It was, to be quite honest, terrifying at first. It was a thought as we raced through the corridors of the airport, a thought that lingered in my head through lunch, and a thought even as I fell slowly asleep in her bed with her soft toy beneath my head. It's just that I haven't considered myself to be very good with parents or relatives. Having been away from Taiwan for the most part of my life, relationships with relatives have been limited to just casual gatherings and dinners. There are pros and cons about that I guess, and I've grown to get used to such things over the years. Meeting the parents is one thing I suppose, but meeting relatives just seems to be a whole new hill to climb somehow. It seems a lot higher, considering the sheer number of people I'd have to meet at one time. It's like, you could probably take on one or two eighty year old man with daggers, trying to stab you. But when they are coming in trucks, you are going to have a major problem at hand. I'm not saying that her relatives are old, or that they were all out to kill me or anything. But it's just that collectively, no matter how harmless, people can be a dangerous thing. 

It was a little over six in the afternoon when I woke up in her bed with her next to me. I was just so tired throughout the afternoon for some reason that I just crashed when I got to her place. Besides, the air conditioning was awesome, the rain was coming down right outside the window, her bed has sedation drugs sprinkled all over (no, not really), and the room was dark as night. Anyway, by the time I woke up, it was about time to leave for her grandmother's place anyway, so I crawled out of her bed and got ready. In my head, I was just trying to not think about the meeting, which only served to make me think even harder about it. But I guess, whatever that I had in mind, it probably wasn't going to be as bad as how it'd turn out - and it didn't. It was raining while we were at the back of her father's car, speeding down the highway into a familiar neighborhood. We pulled into the parking lot of a rather old looking HDB estate, and made our way across the road and into a lift lobby. By that time, I had the mental picture in mind of how it usually is like during my own family gathering. You know, adults sitting around and talking while everybody else would be staring into deep space. The children would be screaming, taking forever to eat anything, and some of them would end up crying. 

We arrived at grandma's house with just her and the maid. She was cooking in the kitchen while the maid helped out. It was good for me, because that'd mean that the relatives would only come one by one, and I'd only need to greet them one at a time - awesome. And that was the sequence of events, with them coming in one by one, and me telling them my name and stuff like that. I was referred to as "the friend" for the most part, though I suppose the adults weren't so stupid that they took it on face value. Jokes were made about my name, and that was the end for the most part. They left me alone with the significant other, and was probably glad to have me entertain their children for the rest of the evening. The children were Chloe, Roy, Nicholas and Melvin. They were all pretty young, with Nicholas being the oldest, and all those young cousins of the significant other took more interest in my iPod Touch and Macbook more than I ever did when I first got it. The children took over my iPod Touch to play Rolando, and then later my Macbook to take pictures on Photobooth. I know the fascination with your faces being altered in Photobooth, but those children too excitement to a whole new level. I haven't seen anybody so excited with their faces being twisted into a swirl before, but they were. They started fighting over my Macbook, and I finally found a bunch of people more of an addict than I am. 

Then one of her aunts came over and asked if she could use my Macbook to play a CD she burned. Of course I had to say yes even when the batteries were running low, because you really want to have a good impression with, not just the parents, but the relatives as well. So I had to play nice, answer every question thrown at me, laugh at everything that they said about my name. Somebody said that I share the same name as Will Smith and was fascinated by that, though it really is just a name I came up with at the counter of a random Coffee Bean a long time ago. And as for the Macbook, thankfully it worked with the CD and everything went on well. It was a video about Roy's recent birthday party at McDonald's or something like that, and it was just nice to have everybody gathered around my Macbook to see it. I felt like I contributed somehow, more than the fact that I managed to fix a toy together for the kids from a Kinder Surprise. By the way, whatever happened to those eggs? Now they are ugly plastic eggs with two lumps of chocolates inside that look more like a collection of lizard shit. Whatever happened to the brown eggs with white chocolate lined inside, and the awesome foil that wrapped around it! Oh, my childhood, completely ruined by companies that feel that changing the packaging is the best way to innovate. IT ISN'T.

The children saved my life, it really did. If not for them, I'd have such a hard time fitting into the family. Or rather, integrating. I know it was done to get it out of the way, to get things over and done with so to speak. But I thought that I might as well try to enjoy it, and I did enjoy the company of the children. Though, there were times when I really wanted to kick Melvin for being impolite to me when he wanted to use the Macbook, they were still kids after all, and I was more than happy to be the cool new member of the family, so to speak. I can imagine how it'd be like without the children now, just the significant other and I, and the rest of the adults. There were rules inside grandma's house apparently, she wasn't allowed to put her arms around me. I suppose she is just a very traditional old lady, and such physical contacts were supposedly too close for comfort. But the other adults had no problems with that, and certainly not Chloe when she asked her if we kissed and are going to have babies. At any rate, I thought Operation Brownie was a roaring success. I call it Operation Brownie, because I was there to earn brownie points initially, but ended up hanging out with the kids and having a great time. 

I am glad that we did it, though I think it was a little too soon. Got it over and done with, I guess that is the best way to describe it. Yet, for some reason, I do look forward to future opportunities with them, I guess it's just fun to be the big brother of sorts. Again, the children saved my life, but it really was Neptina that saved the day. The way she held my hand throughout the video screening on my Macbook, and the way she tried to make the meeting with the relatives as bearable as possible. She introduced them to me and I to them, and saved me the trouble to make an elaborate introduction. I suppose she walked me through everything, and I am just thankful that she was there every step of the way. Anyway, so integration is completed, and I do hope that Knapp was wrong about everything else that follows suit. You cannot predict the pattern of every relationship by calling your claim a "model". Yet, I suppose, knowing what could happen in the future allows you to prevent it from happening, you know? I suppose it shall be my turn to integrate her into my life soon, and I guess it is only fair. So, watch out Neptina. Just you wait. 

It rarely happens, but it does. Chamber explosion is kinda like what a layman would call a "backfire", in the sense that the ammunition explodes within the chamber of a gun, causing the firer to be injured as a result instead of the target. It happens when the bullet is defective, or when it is not positioned properly inside the chamber itself. It usually is, but shit happens as what the guys from the army would say. When it isn't positioned probably, the bullet isn't able to travel through the barrel and out of the gun. When the bolt snaps forward, the firing pin hits the back of the bullet and causes and ignition inside where the gunpowder is located. However, because the bullet isn't positioned properly, the bullet will explode within the chamber, causing the body of the gun to explode outwards as well. We have seen pictures of guns with a giant hole in its side, though never the victim of the explosion. It happens every once in a while, and it happened to one of the bigger machine guns during a live firing exercise once. Luckily, no one was hurt in that incident, but we were given another lecture on how dangerous it can be. Every once in a while, a gun backfires on the firer, and one of these unfortunate soldiers get sent to the hospital. I've never seen the injuries inflicted, but you can imagine how it is like. Try imagining the gun exploding centimeters away from your face, and the metal parts embedding deep into your flesh. Yeah, I know. 

It's funny how life sometimes works the same way as well. You know, when your plan doesn't go your way, they sometimes fizzle out and die away with time. Then there are times when it explodes and backfires on you, and you end up being the butt of the joke at the end of the day. It's just interesting to observe how certain things in life come in full circle at times, when what went around is coming around all over again. It is somewhat comforting in a demented way, but the feeling that I am getting cannot possibly be a lie. I do feel comforted by the recent events, and even more so as I play the role of a spectator rather than a player on the field. It seems to be rough out there, or at least it is going to be some kind of tension out in the field. I was there, though, I was in the midst of the action and really pushing my way through everything. It turned out ugly in the end, with my body bruised up and scratched. It is not fun to be out there, and it is much more comfortable here in the spectator stand. With my cup of soft drink and hotdog, the drama on the field almost feels like entertainment somehow, and the action will carry on in the locker room after the game is all over. Then somebody would quit, that somebody would storm out of the locker room and join the spectators in the next game. Because he cannot be bothered with the sport anymore, because he knows that it is better here than there - the grass here is greener. 

Social politics is a terrible, terrible thing. In fact, tagging the word "politics" to anything is probably going to turn that thing into a terrible, terrible thing. Like, food politics or something, whatever that means, almost makes the food sound as if it is extremely poisonous and inedible. Anyway, that is the same with social politics, the subtle rules that humans work with when interacting with one another in a social group. You cannot expect everything to be laid out under the sun, because there are things that happen in the shadows and under the table. Different people have different dynamics I suppose, and you cannot expect these dynamics to come together in a perfect way. Sometimes you get over those differences and work things out despite all the disagreements, and that really should be the way. Then there are times when these dynamics clash, and then you get a really ugly social politics going on. One could do less with such things in his or her life, but what can we do about it anyway. We try to remain neutral to a lot of things, compromising for the sake of friendship, for the sake of a person, but it never really works out in the black and white world of social politics. One can only tolerate for so far and so long, and there is bound to be a time when you realize that - hey, I am not going to take that shit anymore. 

Or at least that was the choice I made a little less than a year ago, leaving the troubles behind and the venturing out into the unknown. At that point in time, I have already invested myself deeply into a group of people, so much so that leaving it was extremely painful for me. Though, to be honest, it wasn't me who made the decision initially, but I guess I made the decision to not care about mending any wounds. I just picked up and left one day, and apparently I did not pack enough for the journey for a couple of months. I was starved for the most part, until a familiar van drove by and picked me up from the side of the road. All worked out well for me, and things have been great so far. Yet, I cannot help but look back at times and wonder what went wrong, if it really was me that deserved that kind of treatment. In the face of absolute logic, I found myself attributing the blame unto myself, for better or for worse. I thought the accusations were right, and that I was indeed a rotten person to begin with. Then, of course, I realized that it wasn't so much about me being rotten, but because of what the politics shaped me to become. The moment I got onto that kind van, everything faded away, and I am glad. It wasn't me, it was you. 

Recent events have presented a rather interesting perspective on things, the way a good friend is experiencing the exact same path that I took many months ago on my own. Only, this time, he has a stronger backing of people and a perfect reason. I didn't find my reason until months later when I couldn't be bothered any longer, but it is different for the good friend of mine. I suppose the reason to leave is a lot more valid here, and I cannot imagine such a thing being done to him at all. He has always been the respected guy, the guy with the common sense, the guy with the undisputed logic. Yet, when faced with such events, even he feels the need to pack up and leave. In the wake of things, we leave behind a stranded girl upon a sinking ship. The lifeboats are gone by now, all the lifejackets are used up, and it is up to the girl to jump ship before it is too late. The good friend has come clean with his feelings, telling the world what he has to say, and leaving it all behind. What took him so long to realize, I don't know. If we left together, it would have been good on my part, at least I'd have had some company back then. But it did take a while for him to be pushed over the edge. Him, one of the most accommodating person that I know. The point is, though, that he is on my side now, or on the right side of things. 

As much as we had to draw lines in relationships, that is the reality of things in general. It is always about your side and my side, it is always about this side and that side. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you are on a different side, you are always going to remain there. Yet, friendship works in strange ways, and it changes with a line draw in between. You can cross it at times, but you never stay too long on the other side. Perhaps the air breathes different, or that you miss the comfort of where you came from. No matter what it is, we almost always fall back to where we came from, and that is as far as things go for the most part. My relationship with some people, while it didn't turn sour, grew distant. It was reduced to corridor conversations, friendly greetings and small talks. That is the reality of things, and I suppose we all understand the dynamics of things. Aside from the clandestine online conversations that we have once in a while, I still felt incredibly distant from those people, with some of those being loved dearly by me. I had to let go, we all had to let go, because that is what happens when you draw lines in people's lives - you find it hard to cross it all over again. 

For a long time, like I said, I accused myself for a lot of wrongdoings. Whether or not it was true, it pained me to think that somebody would reason things out the way that they did. Yet, after some retrospective thought, I vowed to become a better person somehow. By staying away from the crowd, the limelight, and the radar altogether. I became secluded for the most part, reserved to only people I was comfortable with, and it has worked out pretty well for me. I suppose I was never meant to be the guy in the center of attention, because sometimes things get tangled up that way. I harbored a quiet belief that it was really me, that it was really my fault. What I didn't know was that they were also thoughts instilled into my head from months and months of negative influences. I got that out of my head, tried to bridge differences, I crossed the lines. The good friend seems to be going the same path now, and it just tells me this one thing - I am not alone in this. It's just the thought that when there are a dozen people feeling the same way as you, then you can't be wrong. I thought it was me, until he came along to tell me "hey, I feel the same way as you. In fact, a lot of people think the same way as  you". It comforted me, really, to know that I was merely physically alone in the past and never lonely.

As for the current situation right now, I suppose it is a stalemate right now. Stale, because I suppose it has left a bad taste in everybody's mouths. That taste after something has been chewed a dozen times over, and you can't help but spit it out. That is the situation now, but the good friend is always going to have the last laugh in things, the way that he does. In the long run, someone is going to end up all alone in life, and it certainly isn't going to be him. Oh yes, it isn't going to be him at all. It is lonely when you are high up in the clouds, when you are alone with yourself. Sometimes, maybe it isn't so much about how nobody understands you, but about how you don't understand anybody. It is yet another representation of how self-centeredness could backfire on you, when your grand master plan of creating this perfect kingdom could explode in your face. Like a giant social chamber explosion, it often leaves yourself and everybody around your permanently scarred. Some of us become hospitalized, some of us go home with a cut in the face. But we almost always heal, the people around you, we always make our way home somehow. You, on the other hand, the future is unclear. You may walk away unharmed in the end, but you may remain traumatized by such events. When all is said and done, you are always going to remain on your high horse in the middle of nowhere - alone. 

Every country has a justice system, every country has a set of laws set in place to tell its people what they can or cannot do. Like, in Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk. In Miami, it is illegal to skate in a police station. In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be jailed. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast is legally the property of the King; the tail, on the other hand, belongs to the Queen - in case she needs the bones for her corset. Those dumb rules are on top of the usual laws about stealing, killing, raping, and all that jazz. That law applies to everybody within that state, that country, depending on the system of the country itself. Even when you zoom in on a specific aspect of the society, like in school, we have rules to keep the little children in check. You know, like how my high school had a system whereby we had to ask for the "Toilet Card" from the teacher for us to pin on our breast pockets when we went to the restrooms. It was a stupid rule, but most of us abided to that rule because we didn't want to be canned. Yes, we were canned in high school with thick canes that looked like miniature broomsticks. We were terrorized by the power of the cane, but it's not like it stopped anybody from doing anything wrong or stupid. Students still gambled in school, surfed porn in school, smoked in school. Despite everything, it's not like human nature hasn't slipped through our justice system in every shape or form. 

It just got me thinking about it, how the laws of the country were set by a bunch of old men huddled together in a dark room, with quills and old parchments. That is the mental image that I have in my mind anyway, a bunch of old people writing lines after lines of what people can or cannot do, according to their own laws and their own likings. It may seem incredibly unfair most of the time, but that's just kinda how the society works - around rules written by a few people, by the winners. The winners almost always write the rules, they are the ones to tell you what is right and what is wrong. Somewhere down the line, Kim Jong Il and his predecessors probably thought it'd be a good idea to frame their own country as being the best country in the world, and everybody else outside of their borders to be the adversaries. They were wrong, and they still are very wrong. But history wasn't written by losers, always the winners. They win the battles and the war, and then they sit down somewhere to tell the future population of how great they were and how bad the losers were. That is how it works, and that is how it has been working throughout human history. Laws were passed from generations to generations, with changes made here and there. But the basic law of these laws is the same - always written by a few, to govern the many. 

It just got me thinking the other day when the media effects class mentioned something about the most horrific scene that we have seen on the news, or stuff like that. I think Bob mentioned the image of the planes smashing into the twin towers during 9/11, and he started talking about what he was doing when it happened. I agree that it was a horrific image, and it'd probably stir a few emotions even when you play it right now. It is an agreement that you do not have to show those videos again to convey the message that yes, it was a horrific act of terrorism, and yes it was an act that should never be allowed. Yet, to me, that image is probably not the most disturbing that I have ever experienced in my life. Though, at that point in time, it was probably the most shocking, the way I watched it live on television after my mother told me about it. I was reading the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy when she told me about it, and I was just surprised that such a thing happened, and thought it was an accident or something. The image of people jumping off those buildings probably comes close to being the most disturbing thing I have seen on the news though, but it doesn't come close to the video that came a few months afterwards. 

I remember seeing that video of four masked men and an American knelt in front of them. The masked men behind started saying something in a different language to the camera, all of them carrying machine guns in their hands and seemingly yelling out demands to whoever was supposed to see the video. It was a very long video, and they edited it for the news that evening when I was at home. The news reporter gave a summary of what the masked man demanded, and then he warned us about the footage we were about to see. The masked man kept the note he was holding, said something to the other three men behind, and one of those men grabbed the American by his hair. Everything was censored of course, but it was still gruesome enough for my imagination to run wild. I remember hearing the blood curling scream that came out from the man, and the way he begged for mercy as one of the masked men took out a knife from behind his back. The camera zoomed in onto the American's face, and you could see the knife coming into frame, followed by a swift motion across the American's throat. Then they stuck it into the wound, and they started to saw the man's head off behind the blurred part of the screen until his head came off. That was when his screams ended, just like that, abruptly over the speakers. The masked man held the severed head to the camera and mumbled something, and we were back to the news report. 

I was dumbfounded, I really was. I sat there in my seat, and I knew that I just witnessed the most disturbing image of my entire life, and nothing was going to top that - ever. Nothing has, actually, and I don't think anything is going to top that. I guess the reason why I brought it up is because of how lawless these people were, the way that they treated another human being like it was some animal in the market, or something. The man pleaded for his life, but it's not like it stopped the masked men from brutally murdering him on camera. They were not abiding to any morals, no laws in their minds, and they just did whatever they wanted to get what they wanted. You could tell, even though they were hidden behind a mask, that they were not following any fixed laws set down on pen and paper by anybody of a higher order. It was just them, doing what they were meant to do, what they wanted to do, and it involved killing an innocent man and then sending that video to the rest of the world. Law did not apply to these barbaric men - or did it? 

It just got me thinking how laws are not laws until you see them as laws. You could disregard the laws and then create your own laws, even if your own laws involve being lawless. They are still laws, and when you can create your own moral boundaries, then you don't have a moral boundary at all. What I mean is that if we create our own limits as to what we can do or cannot do, then there really isn't a limit as to what we can't do. We can be killing people, raping their corpses, raping their children, as long as it is within your "morals", which is non-existent. That is the reality of things though, that is how a lot of people in this world works. No matter what kind of laws you decide to set down in pen and paper, there are going to be people trying to set their own laws. You have a country or state's law, and then you have gangs creating their own laws in the neighborhoods. It is supposed to make them different, to distinguish themselves from the local law and order system. They want to be above the law, or to be in a different league completely. They don't want to be bound by these laws set by other people, laws that supposedly suppresses them, that oppresses them, that tells them what not to do. 

Laws were made to control people, and yes they limit the things you can or cannot do. That is law, and it is a social agreement by the majority of the people in this world. We do not argue, because a lot of laws make sense. Don't steal, don't kill, don't rape, and things like that. These are very basic laws that we all have to follow, and we follow it not because we have a gun pointed at our heads. It is because we are human beings, and we just don't do these stuff to one another. We have a conscience, and that is the moral law that we follow that does not require an authority to tell you. The recent case in regards to that father who imprisoned his own daughter in an underground dungeon as his sex slave for twenty-four years is just another testimony on how, when you set your own moral boundaries, you become bounded by nothing. Yet, these things happen, and it has been happening even since human beings existed. People have been raped, raped again, and such things happen all the time, with laws or without laws. It is like how you can never completely eradicate terrorism. You kill their boss, somebody takes over, and somebody takes over the person who is taking over, so on and so forth. It never, ever, ever ends. 

Humans are, by nature, rebellious. We need rules and regulations to control us, at least for the most part. Without them, our lives go haywire completely. I mean, think about the simple law of time, like how we have twenty-four hours in a day. What is time, if it isn't classified into numbers anyway. If we don't have the numbers, we are just in a constant state of NOW, if you know what I mean. So, we follow these natural laws about time as well, or else we'd never be able to organize anything. The same thing goes to basic human principles, how we do not kill each other, harm each other, because that is just not something that we do to each other. Justice shall be put upon those that intend to do harm to others, and our society shall never tolerate such crimes. Yet, the idea of justice is as equally a confusing term as the word "law". Justice, again, is flexible in most cases, and what is justice to one person may not be justice to another. You take justice into your own hands and you kill a child rapist - what does that make you? Does it make you look like you are above the law? It doesn't, and justice is ambiguous by itself like law, or any kind of laws in any country out there. 

I just think that while there isn't a perfect set of rules for a country, in any country, we try our best to follow what is the most fundamental aspect of us being humans, the fact that we are different from the other mammals. We have our morals and our values, and that should be the basis of everything that we do. No, we do not need religion to teach us to have morals, to have values. We, as human beings, should already know that. My point is that while the law and justice system in every country can always be so vague and ambiguous, I say we should strictly abide to these natural moral and value laws that we impose upon ourselves, simply by being human and being different from other animals out there. We should be our own judge, our own jury, and ourselves. We make our bed and we suffer our own consequences, and at the end of the day, such crimes are never going to be eradicated. But we make do, and we do our best. We try to follow a set of laws that we write for ourselves, and we keep in line. It is not an act of keeping people in control, like sheep in fences. It is merely an act to remind us - that we are, after all, human beings. 

That is the impression I get when you are talking about the band Battles. I remember the first time I picked up the album Mirrored by Battles because of the raving reviews it got on the internet. I didn't quite get the hype at first until I took some time off to watch some of their live performances - and oh my, did that change my perception of them once and for all. I remember thinking to myself, this isn't the kind of music I have heard before, and they certainly sound like something right out of a science fiction novel. Battles does not sound human by any standards, not exactly because of the synthesized voices in the songs but how they layer all the different instruments and guitar on top of one another to create this progressive rock anthem. It is the kind of music that I haven't heard before, which was why I was really excited when I heard that Battles was coming to town, despite the recent episode when I almost sold my ticket for the Rachael Yamagata concert. In the end, I succumbed to Kania's advice, and I am going for that other concert as well. That's four concerts in a month, which is going to be something to look forward to definitely. In the mean time, I suppose, I better give some rest time to my ears with all the ringing that is still going on in the ear drums. 

The concert was held at the concert hall this time around, not exactly my favorite venue but good enough (Theater Studio tops the list for now). Dave Konopka strolled onto the stage alone at the beginning of the set and started turning some knobs on the dashboard. Very soon, a strange and eerie analog rhythm rang through the halls that became almost deafening at some points. The light from above also casted a creepy shadow on top of him as he moved from knob to knob, adding layers after layers of rhythms to the one he created just before. Then he is joined by the rest of the band on stage, with Tyondai on the keys, vocals, guitars and circuitry, Ian on keys and guitar, and the famous John Stanier on drums. The band kicked off their set with the first song in their Mirrored album Race Out, and then it became really clear that the evening was going to be one that is different from all the other concerts that I have ever been to. You just don't expect the expected when you are at the concert of an experimental post-rock band like Battles, because they take something conventional and twist it in such ways that you have no idea where it'd end up. Like the tracks on their album, you don't really know where they are going for the most part, or where they are headed. You are in it for this strange and fascinating ride, and even more so with them live on stage. 

The entire concert is pretty much one big song. Or rather, it is a medley of a bunch of songs. It reminds me like the Alive 2007 album by Daft Punk, with all the songs stitched and compacted together into this one long musical extravaganza. The band weaved through the set with melodic grid of crunching guitar riffs, trippy keyboards, over-the-top vocals passed through heavy effects and distortions, and waves of glitches layered over everything else. What happens is that the guitarist would, for example, play a base riff on stage and loop it over and over. Then on top of that, he'd then play another riff to layer over that original loop. He'd loop that, and then layer another portion of guitar playing on top. The same is done over and over again, until all the sounds get piled on top of one another to create this crescendo of sounds at the very end of each song. Which is also why my favorite track is Tonto, which really has a strong build up and a fascinating slow fade out towards the end. The same goes for every song that they have, slowly building up and then almost always reaching this height in the middle of the song that takes you off the ground. 

One thing that is worth mentioning is probably John Stanier. His relentless beats and the odd time syncopation, you can tell why he is being hailed as one of the best in today's business. The intensity that he brings to every single song is breathtaking, and you could see how focused he is at every single song, just taking every beat down with all the energy he has in his hands. Like I mentioned, the entire concert felt like this one long song, and he didn't have programs to aid him in the playing. His beats were not looped, and he had to play on and on throughout the set, which could be seen from the perspiration on his forehead, with me being all the way at the back of the crowd. 

I mentioned this before about live performances by bands. It is one thing to play live, and another when you can recreate the sounds in your album on stage. Psapp did it last Saturday, and so did Battles. They took everything from the album and amped it up ten notches or so, and everything sounded as good or better live. That is the measure of a band, when you can do everything you did in a studio, on stage. The entire concert was pretty short, and I don't think it clocked in at one and a half hours at all. Yet, it's not like the tickets were too expensive anyway, with me paying just forty-three dollars for my seats on the floor, I thought it was pretty worth it. I did head bang to the music so hard that my right leg was numb and I was sweating my head off by the end of it all. But it was enjoyable, it really was, a very different kind of concert from all the rest that I have ever been to. To get a taste of what Battles is like, scroll down to the bottom of this entry to catch the video of the performance somebody recorded from last night.

P.S. By the way, Neptina is who you want to take to concerts, because unexpected things happen with her all the time. First I was at the front row of the concert and the autograph session for Psapp. Yesterday night, I was face to face with the band members as they came out from backstage. I also bumped in Skye at the Esplanade underpass on my way to Citylink Mall. Oh, the awesome things that happen when I am with Neptina. 

Damn, I got to try this.

Ten minutes to the time when Will was supposed to wake up. He stared at the second hand as it ticks each digit away on the clock face, moving the tiny gears inside the white plastic cube. Nine minutes now, and Will continued to stare at the second hand, pretending that the world was about to end in nine minutes, and we only have our last wishes - what last wishes? He continued this mundane boring activity until it was five seconds before the alarm was supposed to ring. He counted down from there, to four, to three to two, and that was when he slammed his palm down onto the snooze button to stop the doomsday clock. He saved the day, he felt good about himself, and he got out of bed a second before his imaginary world got blown into smithereens. Nine fifty in the morning, a brand new week to the same old school. Another week of work, bad news, more bad news, assignments, projects... he looked at himself in the mirror and squeezed his cheeks together, an effort to squeeze some life out of that dead pan face. He got ready for breakfast, then changed into a random t-shirt he picked out from the closet. 

Will's journey to school begins here, as he waved goodbye to his mother at the front door and waited for the elevator to arrive. The enclosed space within the elevator somehow made him feel secure, and he started to sing a tune at the top of his voice, despite knowing that the elevator could stop at any floor at any moment. He'd stop singing when the elevator hits the third floor, just to allow the echo of his voice to settle down for a while. He exits the elevator, down the staircases to the left of the lobby, and through the parking lot and the back gate. The construction of the MRT station was still moving forward, and he notices something different on a daily basis. A new tree planted, a new post erected, a new sign revealed, a new entrance opened. A horde of morning commuters were already at the bus stop, just waiting for the bus to arrive - hopefully on time. Will sat next to a middle aged caucasian man and his two sons, he's seen them there every morning for the past few weeks now. Will tapped his right foot to the beat of the song in his ears, his cellphone tucked deep into his left pocket because he knew that nobody would bother texting him at that time in the morning. The bus came, he hopped on, and his brain automatically shut down from here on out. 

Will is on his way home from school right now, the events of the day passed like a song with two notes, with every higher note coupled with the lower one, over and over and over again. Lecturers came in and gave talks, then followed by another lecturer coming in to give talks. In between those mundane routines, he hung out with friends and avoided people he didn't want to encounter on corridors. There were laughs, but they were soon forgotten amidst the noise of the crowd and his own random thoughts of the day. Distractions, like the sound of some irresponsible passenger on the bus blasting music through his cellphone. Will leaned his head to the bus window, and he felt the vibration of the bus engine gently against his skull. His eyes stared at the hammer above his head for a while, the one with the sign below that read "In emergency, use hammer to break window". He thought to himself how nobody would know that that is the hammer when the bus overturns or something, because it looked nothing like a hammer. He's seen it on Mythbusters before, he remember Adam breaking a car window with something that looked like that. He thought about stealing that hammer and then bringing it home as a trophy, like how he used to steal bus number plates from the back of double-decker buses. 

It was his stop after half an hour of day dreaming, with the bus trapped amidst the peak hour traffic, the air-conditioning failed to do what it was designed to do halfway through the trip. He tapped the shoulder of the man seated next to him who was falling asleep with his chin touching his chest. He shifted himself pass the sleeping man and down onto the crowded aisle, with the music in his ears still blasting away. He pressed for the bell, and the red light at the front of the bus lighted up, and everybody started pushing their ways through other passengers who wanted to remain in the bus for a little while longer. The afternoon rain left the expressway moist and glittery, as the sunlight was reflected off the puddles by the side of the world and created white spots in Will's eyes. The glare was uncomfortable, and he turned his head away from the road as he tried to connect to the internet via the EDGE network on his phone. He wanted to check how long it would be before his bus arrived, and the connection seemed particularly slow that day. He typed in the bus stop number that he has memorized, and then the bus number in the box right below. Seven minutes, he thought to myself. Just enough time for one more song. 

Four bus rides a day is what it takes for Will to go to school and come home. In the mean time, Will does nothing more than to listen to the music on his iPod, come up with possible topics for his blog, and the occasional studying he does on the bus when there is an exam coming up. He does the latter rather seldom though, because reading anything on a moving vehicle is nauseating to him. Will made his way down the last bus of the day and found new trees planted along the road. Like most of the other bus trips, he'd purposely pick a song that has a nice introduction, like Teardrop by Massive Attack, before the bus pulls into the bay, just so that he'd have a good song to walk home with for the rest of the way. Little excitements to him, he thought, went a long way. He peered over the fence at the school he used to attend, the grassy knoll now pulled down to make way for the new MRT station, and a giant advertisement stood in its place, a banner from URA that is advertising to sell the land. More houses, he thought. More constructions around his house, and he thought to himself once again about leaving this country altogether. He seemed easy, he thought, since he had nothing to hold on to, no reason to remain here - not at that time. 

He fished the key to the back gate out of his bag, and he wondered if the lady behind him was going to the same estate as well. She was always five steps behind him, and he imagined her to be some kind of spy, hired by somebody out there to make himself feel more important, bigger than he really is. He imagined meeting his friend at the back gate, and he made a small conversation with this invisible friend under his breath. That is what he does from time to time, conversations with himself when nobody is looking, just to kill time and to create more random thoughts that he shares with no one but himself. The lady was going to the same place as he, and he held open the metal door for her. He expected a thanks, but the lady merely walked pass him and went through the parking lot without saying a word. Will cursed under his breath and made a hand gesture at the lady as she walked away. He continue talking with his invisible friend until he reached the elevator, and that was when he started his mini karaoke session all over again. He started singing on top of his voice, usually the same song everyday, until the elevator reached the seventeenth floor where he'd stop, and all would go back to normal - normal - all over again. 

Will is back home now, taking off his socks in front of his computer. The screen is lit and the browser already turned on. Will is waiting for a page to load right now, and he was changing out into more comfortable clothes. The dinner was being prepared in the kitchen, and his mother was asking him about how the school was. He went through the same websites that he'd visit everyday, from his blog to his friends' blog, from Digg to Cracked, from Mac Rumors to Apple Insider, from ComingSoon to RottenTomatoes, from torrent sites to torrent sites. Another celebrity caught drinking while driving, another boy being shot somewhere in the world. Scientists discover new link between cigarette smoking and sex, a snake is born in a country in Africa with three heads - with pictures! A lousy movie tops the box office in North America again, and someone is cursing at somebody else on an online forum. A fake picture surfaces on Mac Rumors about the new iMac, somebody is having troubles downloading a document from the web for his new Macbook. Top ten list of the biggest douchebags in Hollywood, new and interesting ways to make your desktop look awesome. 

The rest of the night carries on like this, surfing from one website to another. No instant messages, no text messages, no e-mails. The only sound from the instant messaging client comes from the occasional question in regards to a school, and the virus that sends random messages around through your contact list. He studies a little bit at night, hears the sound of news coming from the living room, and he reads the exact same line for the fourth time. He realized it, but he couldn't help it. He needed to get some work done by the time he goes to sleep later on at midnight, since there isn't a point for him to stay up longer than that. Will grew tired quickly of the books, and thought that a warm shower would wake him up a little. Yet, it did nothing to cheer him up, but the time spent staring at the white tiles in the bathroom made him think of more things, more random thoughts, more empty thoughts that he'd share with no one but himself. He thought about the time when he used to have someone to text to when he needed somebody, when he could wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and call somebody. He remembered those little dates he'd be going for after school, all of those being non-existent now. 

Hey you, I remember that other time on the phone when I told you about this. I told you that it was very hard for me to recall how my life was like in the past when you never existed in my life. Or rather, to me, you never existed at all before that fateful day in August. I don't remember how it was like to wake up to an empty cellphone screen, or how it was like to stay up late into the night just to have a phone conversation. I don't remember how it was like to connect with somebody other than myself, or the feeling of not sharing strange and random thoughts even when they sound ridiculous and mean nothing at all. It was just me going through the motions, from one day to another, over and over again. Then, you came along, and it just seems like you have taken over everything in my life right now. Whether or not it is a long bus trip, my time spent on the internet, I have something - or someone - to look to now. You are more than that, of course, you are more than the spices that add taste to my life. You are more than that. It's just that, I feel, you have penetrated even the most trivial aspects of my life, and everything swirls around you now. 

I am just thankful to have you around, you know, and glad that I do not remember how it was like before all this - and I don't want to. I want to focus on the present, on the now, and how to make every passing day somehow better than the last. We haven't known each other for very long, much less been together. But hey, these past couple of months has been some of the most memorable times of my life, even more so than the months and years before we met that I have lived at times. So thank you for being you, and let's hope that this endless conversation that we've been having since day one, literally, will last for a long long time. I love you my beautiful stranger, and I bet you already know that.