Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Intermission: Boron (World's Most Boring Man) Reflects

I just swallowed a painkiller I got earlier this year. Mild headache.

Yeah, so earlier this year, I called a doctor friend cause I was having headaches. He told me, "Get your ass to the hospital NOW."

I was on three types of blood-thinners - Warfarin (an anti-coagulant), Aspirin (anti-platelets) and Plavix (some sort of vein softener) - and the risk with any headache is a fucking brain hemorrhage. While on those three blood-thinners, dengue would have been a death sentence.

So I went and got my head CT-Scanned. Fortunately, no hemorrhaging.

I was on three types of blood-thinners because after the heart attack, the MRI discovered a blood clot floating in my heart. If it travelled to my brain, I would have had a a stroke and died, or worse.

I am no longer on Warfarin or Plavix. Warfarin is of course the more serious shit drug.

Today I also swam 600m, which is 100m more than my usual 500m. I feel good, but I am constantly reminded of my weakened heart because it doesn't feel normal anymore. This is the new normal - this constant straining in my chest and a soreness that would never ever go away.

What I had was a major heart attack. I was lucky to survive it and doing all I can to improve my quality of life. It's a continuous thing that I will have to choose to do all my life.

I'm pretty good at the gym. I could do my one-hour cardio and 200 crunches no problem.

What I'm still training is my temper. I have never noticed how much I get angry at people and how much I bottle that up inside. You see, people lie. I take each and every lie as an insult to my intelligence.

They constantly try to manipulate others, myself included. Motivation for their actions include laziness, greed or just a sadistic desire to feel superior. It's usually that last one.

I have learned, in the course of one year, to not comment or reveal that I know what they're doing. It is so fucking hard because I have one dangerous vice - monologuing.

I like to expose people's little schemes and scams. I like people to know that I know. That I have always known. This is my ego, of course. So the training for this year of 2015 was to shut up about it.

I would give myself a 90% score.

Korang Semua Bodoh, Aku Sorang Pandai

Aku diberikan sedikit kerja sampingan dalam Bahasa Malaysia, jadi aku nak berlatih kejap kemahiran Bahasa Malaysia aku dengan menulis artikel yang bosan.

Aku agak kecewa dengan kegagalan dan kesunyian Pembangkang dalam hal menangani sokongan pengundi luar bandar kepada Barisan Nasional (BN). Walaupun undi popular (53.47%) sudah berpaut pada pembangkang, mereka gagal menawan Dewan Rakyat pada Pilihanraya Umum (PRU) lepas (2013).

Kalau aku Pembangkang, aku akan teruskan apa-apa usaha aku di bandar dan kemudian cuba menawan ketumbukan BN yang sebenar - kawasan luar bandar.

Aku asalnya mahu memberikan analisis objektif perihal strategi pilihanraya tetapi setelah meneliti nombor dan fakta, aku dapati kepercayaan dan telahan aku pun selama ini salah. Jadi aku berikan analisis kualitatif yang subjektif yang sebenarnya samalah seperti melancap di tepi jalan sambil menjerit-jerit.

Kalau diikutkan Twitter, memang Pembangkang dah menang lama dah. Tetapi, Twitter dan semua media sosial bukan penanda yang tepat, malah mengelirukan dan berat sebelah dalam mengambilkira sentimen keseluruhan negara ini.

Kalau hal atau isu berkaitan KL atau pusat-pusat bandar, sememangnya media sosial boleh dipercayai sebab kebanyakan pengguna Internet ada di bandar. Kalau dilihat orang luar bandar, walaupun ramai memliki telefon pintar, tetapi tidak semua memiliki data plan. Kalau ada pun data plan atau kemampuan capain Internet, berapa ramai yang secara aktif menyertai perbincangan kacau-bilau di media sosial?

Jadi penumpuan sumber dan masa Pembangkang pada keulungan mereka di media sosial bagi aku agak dangkal sebab mereka menang di media sosial sejak PRU ke-12 dan ke-13 tetapi nyata kemenangan di media sosial dan kebodohan BN sendiri di medan ini tidak akan menjamin kemenangan di PRU.

Kita balik ke isu akar - kenapa pengundi luar bandar mahu mengundi Pembangkang? Pembangkang tidak pernah memberikan apa-apa sebab yang kukuh untuk pengundi luar bandar mengundi mereka, kecuali Parti Agama Islam Se-Malaysia (PAIS-M) yang menjanjikan syurga.

DAP menerusi Lim Kit Siang menjanjikan penyokong mereka bahawa sekiranya mereka berkuasa, maka kakitangan awam akan 'diselaraskan'. Ini membawa ancaman kehilangan pekerjaan untuk ramai orang, terutamanya mereka yang berasal dari luar bandar atau orang luar bandar yang bergantung pada ahli keluarga yang menjadi penjawat awam.

Apakah janji PKR kepada pengundi luar bandar? Bahawa Anwar akan dibebaskan? Pengundi luar bandar pedulittaik pasal Anwar, kebanyakannya.

Isu-isu luar bandar lebih 'humble' dan realistik daripada idealisme melancap yang laku di bandar-bandar.

Persoalan orang luar bandar, sejak dahulu lagi - bolehkah mereka makan hari ini? Kalau ada ahli politik datang, apa yang mereka dapat?

Bukan semua orang kampung bodoh, sepertimana tak semua orang bandar pandai atau stylish. Ramai je orang bandar bodoh lepas tu pakai mekap untuk pergi parti mabuk tengah malam buta pada waktu tengahari terik, pastu cair macam pondan menangis sebab kalah Ratu Jambo.

Orang luar bandar juga tahu pasal delayed gratification - bersabar untuk kepentingan masa depan. tetapi, apa janji Pembangkang pada mereka? Yang ada hanya acah-acah cool dan ancaman neraka atau hilang kerja.

Kalau Pembangkang ni ikhlas dan bukan dianggotai mereka yang poyo, diorang boleh je sampaikan mesej kepada pengundi luar bandar.

Aku rasa semua ahli Pembangkang yang meroyan kononnya mereka tiada saluran atau disekat daripada berjumpa pengundi luar bandar hanya pukimak pemalas yang bodoh dan tak berguna. Baik ko pergi merangkak balik masuk dalam rahim mak kau sebab kau tak wajar dilahirkan.

Kau ada saluran yang paling hebat - mengumpat atau dalam istilah orang kampungnya, 'word of mouth'.

Katakan Pembangkang memutuskan bersetuju dengan beberapa janji manis untuk pengundi luar bandar dan kemudian muatnaik ke satu website. Website ini bukan untuk majoriti pengundi luar bandar, tetapi untuk penyokong mereka di bandar. Kemudian, rayu dan pujuk pengundi bandar yang menyokong mereka untuk membawa mesej-mesej ini kepada pengundi luar bandar.

Kebanjiran orang bandar yang menjadi boneka propaganda ini akan mewujudkan fenomena 'gerakan akar-umbi' yang melanda seperti tsunami pendakwah Mormon. Bayangkan jutaan insan bangang yang dipergunakan untuk membawa dogma dan iklan Pembangkang kepada kawasan-kawasan luar bandar.

Dengan 5-6 juta pengundi baru, taktik mudah ini sahaja sudah mampu, ikut tekaan aku, memenangi 3 juta undi ekstra, lantas memenangi Dewan Rakyat dan mengalahkan BN.

Namun, tak ada nampak pun Pembangkang buat. Pasal apa? Pasal diorang lebih teruk dari bodoh - diorang pemalas. Seteruk-teruk Najib pun, dia rajin. Tak kisahlah kau nak cakap dia rajin menipu ke 1Rajin ke, whatever ke, tapi BN memang tak pernah mengalah cuba dapatkan sokongan orang.

Selagi Pembangkang pemalas dan bodoh, selagi tu takkan ada peluang untuk mereka mengalahkan BN.

Kalau BN kalah PRU ke-14 ini, ia bukan kemenangan Pembangkang, tetapi kekalahan BN sendiri yang tertembak kote masa simpan senapang patah. Oh dan pasal pengundi baru tetiba je nak undi Pembangkang.

Dalam erti kata lain, korang semua bodoh dan aku sorang pandai. Hidup aku! Hidup aku! Hidup aku!

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Star Wars, Max Landis and the Thought-Police

So I took my sister and brother-in-law to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night. They didn't like it as much as I do. My sister said it was "good, not great. Why are the reviews so awesome?" and my brother-in-law was shaking throughout the movie because he was halfway to a fever and the air-conditioning was turned up to Hoth.

So I went home and killed myself.

I took a shotgun and put to my brain and pulled the trigger. I'm writing right now, covered in blood, brain matter and tears because some people didn't agree with my thoughts on a movie.

Which brings us to Max Landis. Landis went to see Star Wars: TFA and then wrote some snarky comments about the movie, saying the lead character Rey is a Mary Sue because she is good at everything. I suspect he hoped this would condemn TFA to be dismissed as a fanfic, and because of his views, no one would do reboots or remakes or dare to work on any franchise whatsoever from here until the end of time, preferring instead to work on original movies like his failed (at the box-office) American Ultra movie. This is a solid and laudable intention, if not sneaky - if true.

I'm sure it's not true and I'm just blowing smoke up my own ass.

First of all,  from what I gather, a Mary Sue is a character inserted by an author/creator into an existing world that represents the author/creator and beats everyone at everything.

An example would be Wesley Crusher in Star Trek, though he is more of a Gary Stu due to him having a dick, probably. Wesley Crusher is good at everything, smarter than everyone and is an insufferable annoyance. 'Wesley' is series creator's Gene Roddenberry's middle name and he out-thought, out-scienced yet sadly did not outlast the other characters because fans caught on to it and booed him mercilessly or something.

Wesley Crusher grew up to become Wil Wheaton and God help us all. God help us all.

Is JJ Abram's middle name Rey? If Daisy Ridley's character was named Jacob, then maybe yeah. Does Rey have a dick we didn't see in TFA? Does Abrams secretly have a fetish to go into junkyards and scavenge for spare parts he would take to Simon Pegg who would then give him food? Is this some kind of sex thing Abrams does? Then maybe Rey IS a Mary Sue!

I agree with her beating everyone at everything, but so did Luke Skywalker. In fact, Rey is Luke, without the dick.

A farmboy suddenly becoming the best pilot in the Rebel Alliance with absolutely no training whatsoever? I see your farmboy with a scavanger, and raise you a sword-fighting Jedi.

I totally disagree with the Mary Sue insult thrown by Landis. Most of his other points about TFA sucking is okay and I agree with a lot of the flaws. Except for Amri Rohayat's understanding of Starkiller Base.

Amri wrote that if Starkiller sucked a star, then the whole solar system is dead. SO why shoot at planets? Well, the sun they sucked is in another solar system and they wanted to shoot at another solar system. Across the galaxy or some shit.

Starkiller Base as a concept is great if not for the previous existence of the Death Stars. I mean, Starkiller is a sort of (not really) Dyson Sphere, created by a Type II Civilisation. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you're not nerdy enough so fuck you.

There are tons of cheesy moments in TFA. Tons of things that don't make sense, either scientifically or plot-wise. But Star Wars was built on vague green muppets with dubious grammar and laser swords and space fighters with wings shaped like it was drawn by a 4-year-old.

TFA is not a perfect film, but Abrams only needed to do one thing - not fuck up. And he didn't. If you loved any of the Original Trilogy films, you'd probably love this one. If you want a cerebral character study, or a scathing indictment of how society has oppressed the voices of minorities to further their corporate greed, watch something else. In fact, Mad Max is a far better action movie than TFA. So go see that.

Anyway, so Max Landis, perhaps not content with the few rogue trolls here and there on Twitter, decided to make a series of videos on YouTube lambasting TFA.

So he began to get what he presumably wanted most - attention.

Guillermo Del Toro said that the whole Mary Sue thing is aid by killjoys. Landis jumped at that but GDT moved on to a million other things.

For a while, Landis was happy, it seems, from his tweets.

Unfortunately, what began as a triumph for him soon descended into something uglier. He picked fights, and then trolls started to attack him, and egged him and others to fight each other.

Landis was branded a sexist and anti-feminist because Rey is being lauded as a bad-ass female action hero.

Then Lexi Alexander started insinuating some stuff about someone, probably Landis, and then blocked him on Twitter. Landis tried to contact her but to no avail.

So, in response, Landis unwisely took it further. He made a video asking to talk to Alexander and asked people to forward the video to her.

Landis has about 50K Twitter followers, so Alexander probably get a few hundred people forwarding the link to her. Alexander flipped and started going full on feminist.

She said something like, "No one is entitled to a relationship with anyone else" and blablabla and harassment this and no means no and this is bullying and stuff.

Landis was caught in an unenviable position. He is an American, a Millennial, being called out for being a sexist asshole or something. American Millennials currently don't know how to respond to that effectively.

I'm an Asian who never set foot outside of Southeast Asia. If anyone were to call me a sexist asshole, I could always say, "You're not respecting the nuances of my archaic culture, brooo!". Even if that's total bullshit, accusers of non-liberal thinking often are scared of being branded as bigots themselves.

I don't think Landis is sexist, though he might be an asshole. I think he was unwise in pursuing Alexander's or anyone's approval. He also attacked Rey from TFA as a Mary Sue.

What I do know is, his lead character in American Ultra is a Mary Sue.

The lead character Mike Howell is a stoner. Max Landis, who wrote the movie (if I didn't state this already somewhere up there) likes to talk about doing drugs, sometimes.

Mike Howell is the best at everything. He has the best girlfriend, he is the best sleeper agent who defeated everyone, and he is also the most morally innocent. Howell is just a guy whom you can't blame for all the shitty decisions and mess he's made because he's just an innocent - he meant to do the right thing.

I find Howell to be the ultimate Mary Sue in recent times.

Am I right? Does anyone agree with me? I don't give a fuck. I'm better than everyone else.

So I wanted to talk about how the Thought-Police has come out of the woodwork in recent years as something other. They are dressed in different garb or uniforms, but their function remains the same: policing your thoughts.

If you like or hate a certain piece of art or pop culture, or think of things in a different way, and you honestly do, people like Landis or Alexander or me or any of the feminists, trolls, SJWs, dipshits and any of the fuckheads have no power over you to think otherwise.

They can brand you with anything - sexist, racist, whatever - but you alone know the truth and if you are in line with the truth, fuck everything else. You and everyone else can't change the truth anyway.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Wankoholic

People love Iron Man now, the way he's depicted in the current MCU. Talking about the movies, man. But the man I knew as a kid, is now a vastly overpowered superhero who cannot lose. He's basically a more colourful Batman. The fun Batman. Nothing wrong with that, except for one thing - Iron Man and Batman today represents a lot of people's belief that they could do anything and be great if they had the right tools. If they have enough money.

And they are losers because they don't. No point in improving yourself or your skills. Just make more money and buy your success.

The comics and cartoons went a long way and took a lot of trouble telling stories about the person behind the powers, abilities and the money. Professional photographers like Ken Rockwell bought a five dollar camera (fixed focus, no zoom) and took a photo that replaced one of Ansell Adams' pictures in the Smithsonian to prove a point. That it's the skills behind the tools that matter.

What we have nowadays is potentially gearheads' wet dreams and the power fantasy of capitalists. With enough money, anyone can win. Tony Stark? Bruce Wayne? Najib Razak?

One of my favourite episodes of the '90s Spider-Man animated series was about Mysterio causing absolute havoc with just his lame superpower of looking like other people. He worked his way up from the airport security to Nick Fucking Fury himself and almost succeeded except for one stupid mistake.

That's the kind of stories I like - anyone, hero or villain using whatever small ability or advantage they have and using the shit out of it.

For example, Hawkeye is pretty lame. He's got super accuracy or some shit. In one Ultimates comic book, he was captured and tortured. So he used the only weapon he had available - his fucking fingernails. Killed a few people and got free. Spoilers, bitch.

We don't have Stark's or Wayne's money. Not even Najib's access to cash. But even with what little we have, and I'm not talking about cash, we should get creative on what we can do and ultimately achieve.

This is the credo I have followed all my life. I have limited abilities. I'm primarily a pattern-recogniser, so I used that to copy writing and thinking styles. This ability was used by Neil Gaiman and members of the Uchiha clan.

The more intelligent people I encounter, the more I can understand new ways of thinking. Whether they are useful or not remains to be seen. This is why idiots waste my time.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Updates on Boron - World's Most Boring Man

I got home from a DnD session (yep. that's Dungeons and Dragons, bitches) tonight, I took a two hour nap and now finding it difficult to go to sleep again. So, a quick update.

As we wind down 2015, I am still reeling from the effects of the heart attack I got in 2014. I lost a lot after the heart attack, and not just my weight. I had some prospects on some projects I had to let go. It meant a massive setback in my projected earnings. I was not going to earn the money I thought I would.

I believed, naively, before the heart attack, that I could do some stuff for a few years and then  retire. I lost that with my illness as I couldn't work like that anymore. I used to be able to grit my teeth and work till 5am, then wake up at 7am, ready for the next day of hard work.

That's probably one of the main reasons my heart gave out. That, and the smoking and the stress.

Nowadays, I find myself losing energy quickly. I feel tired after just a few hours of work and despite my exercise routines, I think I'm getting more lethargic.

Some people STILL try to parasite off me, which is a clear indication that they would simply laugh it off in smoky rooms as I died doing stuff for them, if they could get away with it.

Oh well. Fuck them.

I was lucky to have some people watching out for me and sent me real help and offered me real opportunities. The things I do today and in the future will be enough to satiate my needs. Though my days of Great Expectations are over, I am confident I can make ends meet and pay off my own debts as long as others don't screw me over.

I started doing things I want to do. I started a comics publishing company called Maple Comics. It is sustainable yet not profitable (we're not making money but we're not losing money either) and I'll continue doing it as long as it's fun. My day job at a newspaper is okay, for now.

I started playing DnD with some nerds and it has become the highlight of certain weeks. Doesn't require a lot of money and I am happy to be a Level 5 Bard who doesn't sing so much these days.

There is far less music in my life nowadays, but I don't mind the silence nor the peace that comes with it.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Burn Baby Burn

I'm going off on leave next week.

I've done a superhuman amount of things the past few months, juggling many things. Work, life, play, family, business.

As soon as I sent in the leave form, I finally realised how tired I am. It is a nice feeling as soon as I get home, but it was not very pleasant when I was waiting for a cab, in the rain, in the middle of rush hour at a busy side of town.

I've whined and whined to my close friends until I feel so guilty seeing them and their own stressed out life. I am very lucky to have such people around me, and to have so many offering a helping hand and favours as well as opening doors for no reason.

If I have to ask why some people seem like they always want to screw me over, I also have to ask why some have always tried to help me even though I don't like people.

Seriously, I find people tedious. I am sure they find me nothing less undesireable. My only wish is to be able to die peacefully, retired somewhere nice and reminiscing the old days before even my memories start to fade.

I have been preparing for death since I was 17, not for life. And all my preparations are for naught, because none of this matters, in the end.

I just want to get away for a while. Right now, I need sleep.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Wank Wank!

So what happens when a chronic approval-seeker awakens? What would he do to the people who have taken advantage of his mental disability all these years?

You always have a choice and part of awakening to what is, to the presence, is to know and realise what those choices are. You also realise what drives people and why they do things the way they do and how all that is irrelevant. It is unimportant to your being. It might be vital to actions and results, but to the being, to the nothingness that matters, all this are totally ineffectual.

And so.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Wank Wank! Talking About New Age

The problem with me talking to people about how to handle daily problems is that I could easily identify with this 'persona' that is dealing with it.

This 'persona' is of course, the ego and I often find myself dressing this ego up for other people's judgment to get things such as adulation or to get praise or whatever.

So.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Wank Wank: More New Age Stuff WubbadubbDubb!

Eckhart Tolle often speaks that a huge pain-body presents with it bigger opportunities for awakening. That negative energy and negativity is ripe with the potential for more understanding.

It is well and good to avoid negativity and negative people because why would you want to waste your life, your time, on them? But if you were to ever find yourself facing negative situations or people, it is also an opportunity to practice being and awareness.

Recently, someone called me up and tried to intimidate me with shadowy fears and I immediately felt heart palpitations. I have a heart condition and might die soon, so this was alarming for me, this intense hatred and negative energy.

At the same time, I also noticed myself becoming aware of my own irrational fears.

This flash of insight soon gave way to irrational fears and worries. I began contacting friends for counsel, and I was distraught. I was also aware of being distraught.

The only change I felt from other experiences of dealing with stressful situations is a small, lingering awareness at the back of my mind about all of this and how it doesn't really mean anything. If before, these things would last for days, weeks, months or years.

After writing Merong, I was worried and fearful for three years and developed insomnia. It possibly contributed to bad cholesterol buildup that caused my heart problems. The fear is always shadowy and most of the time is never realised or will never happen. But the body did not know that and reacted accordingly.

To say that I am better or that I am 'more' than I was before, that I have improved myself and my reactions, are all egotistical and false. I reacted the way I always reacted. The only difference is that I was aware of things and what I was doing as things happened. And that is not more or less. It is just is.

I thank the Awareness for the good days and the bad days.

Wank Wank: Random Super Duper New Age Shit

I've gone through many of these trendy personal training or New Age stuff. Been through Asiaworks, The Secret and eventually, the ultimate truth - A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

Of all these, Eckhart Tolle's teachings is the only one I find useful.

I mean, I tested The Secret by visualising getting a bag of stolen drug money in Thailand and after three days of extremely enjoyable holidaying, no bag of stolen drug money.

Asiaworks is great but the problem is how everything devolves into zealotry. Eckhart Tolle is the only one that is constantly useful, especially when facing extremely stressful situations. Especially when I encounter people who try to disprove these personal training or New Age stuff.

It's always there. People who go and try to prove that anything you care about, be it your religion, beliefs, superstitions, favourite music, films or anything in particular.

Tolle said it's like the situation when somebody says, "My car is big. I have a big car."

Another person might say, "My uncle's car is bigger." It doesn't matter if it's his uncle's or his teacher's or his sister's. The point is, by making someone less, then they believe they become bigger. This, is the ego. Trying to be bigger, as always.

The feeling to push others, even at least mentally, to be smaller, to show the faults and flaws in someone's beliefs or arguments or whatever, can either be totally emotionless and egoless (admittedly quite rare) or more commonly, driven by emotion and a sense of being more.

And at the end of it all, at the core of everything, there is no more or less when it comes to the self.


Friday, September 11, 2015

MyMovie

Of all the movies I've written, my favourite is MySpy. It set out to do just one thing and managed to do it despite all the odds against it.

MySpy was my love letter to the '80s films of Sam Hui, Chow Sing Chi and others as well as Shin Chan. Growing up, I really, really loved Tricky Master, Aces Go Places, Forbidden City Cop, Hail the Judge, etc.

I didn't want to do anything dramatic or epic or artsy fartsy. I wanted to do something I'd like to watch on a Saturday afternoon, possibly on TV2 or whatever.

Because the movies that I remember are not Oscar winners or Titanic (I've never seen Titanic). It's those dumb movies RTM keeps showing because they're cheap. Also, some of those cheap movies are some of the best.

The story was that I got a call from KRU who asked me to do a buddy cop movie like Bad Boys. Probably Lethal Weapon or something. Another Odd Couple thing.

I thought the best was Sam Hui and his sidekicks Karl Maka, Eric Tsang (who also directed Aces Go Places) and others. It's the pairing of Stephen Chow and Ng Man Tat or Elvis Tsui, more recently with Lam Chi Chung.

These pairings were not necessarily traditional Odd Couple, but they worked because they set up each other so well for stupid gags.

So in the beginning, that's what I had - setups for gags. One of the things is a reference to Shin Chan with the eggplant painting that's worth a lot of money. Another is a nod to Yakitate! Japan! There's a bunch of other references to Benny Hill, Mr Bean and yes, a lot of Sam Hui and Chow Sing Chi.

In one of the lowest-rated Aces Go Places movies, King Kong (Sam Hui) had these little robots that helped him fight an even bigger robot. So most of the stupid gadgets were inspired by that film. Budget constraints meant they couldn't do much with the ideas, but it looked okay in the end.

Actually, the gadgets were supposed to look even dumber and would have to seem as if it was cobbled together from stuff they had lying around. Unfortunately, this was difficult for props people to do. Practical effects are extremely harder than computer-generated ones, I believe, but they did a decent job.

After the film was released, the reviews were horrible. My friends called and told me they watched it and it was horrible and I should be ashamed of myself. I called one of the actresses in the movie for an interview about something and she mentioned that the script in MySpy was horrendous.

I even read interviews from the director - Afdlin Shauki - almost apologising for MySpy. And gave me more credit for the movie than I deserve, which I should really thank him for as I later discovered.

A week after MySpy was released, my sister called me up and said, "Fuck you. You did this thing, so you face up to it. You own it."

And I was like, "But I don't wanna. I only got paid this much and it's the director and whaaa whaaa."

She dragged me to Midvalley Megamall and we watched MySpy together. I was originally cringing in my seat but as the movie went on and I realised since nobody gave a shit about this movie and everyone thought the script was really bad, they left most of it as is.

So I began to enjoy this movie. This dumb thing I wrote that was filled with my childhood films and favourite manga, and I absolutely loved it. Mostly.

The stupid gags were all there, and the cast even added their own lines in some parts, making the scene better than when I wrote it.

I'm always in love with my own work, with my own ideas. I think if everyone did what I told them to, how I told them to, the world would be a much better place. Sadly, no one ever listens, so I went away to do my own thing.

Right now, I will only do things I can have a lot of creative control over. Or if I play the role of publisher, I make sure the creators get as much creative freedom as possible. There is value in owning your own work, to be able to exercise your creativity. And for people to take ownership and be accountable for what they did and didn't do, creatively.

Lots of people hated MySpy - including those who did the movie. But I loved it, and I think it's one of the best films Malaysia ever made.


Sunday, September 6, 2015

Pitches, Bitches

So I've been waiting for the Malaysian film industry to die a natural death in the hopes that I could contribute to its rebuilding cycle.

Now, though, I'm not sure I should. All the movies I've been involved in have won multiple awards and some didn't do too badly at the box office, especially in retrospect. However, without financial security or creative control over stuff I write for the film industry, I doubt that I could do much of a difference.

Here are some of my ideas I'm going to try pitch anyway to develop on my own. I'm just putting them out here for fun.

1. Nuklear

Nuklear is about a guy who believes that if he's happy for five minutes, he'd be sad for five minutes. Since he could remember, every time he's happy, a man in a white suit appears and would wait until he's sad to balance the scales.

One day, he falls in love.

And then he believes that him being happy will cause a nuclear war that would destroy all human life.

2. Nadim

In this universe, Hang Nadim was not killed after he saved Singapore. Instead, he was raised in the palace and became good friends with the Sultan who is his age. It's like Forbidden City Cop and Detective Dee.

One day, the job of Laksamana opens up and he is in the running with five other guys. The other guys all have supernatural powers like invincibility, parang terbang, one is a were-tiger and another is an all around bad-ass. Meanwhile, Hang Nadim has this power - forensic science.

So a Portuguese envoy and his posse arrives at the palace and after spending one night, gets murdered. His posse said, "You give us the murderer in three days or we'll kick your ass and raze your kingdom to the ground."

It's up to Hang Nadim and his always-misunderstood forensic science to solve the murder mystery before the deadline is up.

3. Kampung Batu Sawar

It's 1941. The Japanese land in Malaya and conquers everything, except for one tiny village. This village is protected by seven bomohs. It's like Asterix and Obelix and Kung Fu Hustle.

4. Piramid

In an alternate reality, the Malaysian economy relies almost totally on multi-level marketing (MLMs) and pyramid schemes. At the center of this story is a guy - the greatest salesman ever. He designs MLMs and releases them for his company.

At the verge of doing the biggest MLM scheme in history, he gets a message saying his father just died. He goes home and discovers his village is destroyed by MLMs. The Tok Imam was fielding calls to his downline while reading the tahlil and nobody works - they just try to sell shit to each other.

The guy has a hot neighbour who maintains the only grocery shop left in the village. Together, they try to deprogram the country from the evils of MLM.

5. The Lions

A guy is a loser. He talks to his friends - who are all losers - and they believe their loserness comes from losing a rugby match 20 years ago in high school. The team that beat them became the most successful people in Malaysia.

Now 37 years old, they hear that there is a 20-year anniversary rematch being staged between the schools. The guy believes this is their one chance to reclaim some of their past glory and rectify their loser status by finally winning this game.

But the other team has been practicing for 20 years, keeping their network and talent alive.

It's a normal underdog story with an artsy-fartsy ending.

6. Che Mat Rimau

This is like Pootie Tang - a commercial and critical failure.

Che Mat Rimau is an almost-mythical figure like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill or John Henry Irons or some shit. He's like all the heroes played by Vijayakanth, like Narasimha. Larger than life, a true Malay hero.

When he does teh tarik, it's got some foam art on top and he could out-produce an automated factory with his bare hands.

This is an attempt at creating a modern Malay folk hero but, like in Tamil movies.

So yeah, these are the stories I've kept with me all this while. These are fun as ideas, but each one is a bitch to write or produce.

I was just in a funk just now and needed to write something.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Kiamat?

Sambil aku bertempuiaran lari cari makan kat KL ni, aku terbaca le pulak artikel memember share: Benda Ni Dah Tak Lawak Dah

Aku dah lama menunggu khabar berita atau deklarasi scholars pasal kemusnahan industri filem Malaysia. Aku nak interview orang pasal benda ni untuk suratkhabar aku pun, diorang malas dan letih dah nak cakap apa.

Bagi aku, kita boleh cakap kitaran kemusnahan filem Malaysia terjadi bila kita ada lima hingga 25 filem sahaja setahun. Dulu, 1985, aku rasa ada lima je filem yang dibuat. Sekarang, 20 30 tahun lepas tu, kasi can letak 25 la.

Dulu aku ingat, kalau dah musnah, masa untuk rebuild. Aku akan masuk balik dan buat apa yang patut. Tapi last year aku sakit dan aku fikir, aku nak buat apa yang aku suka aje.

Apa yang aku suka ialah terbitkan komik, tulis komik, design permainan kad, main kad, jual kad dan ajar orang main kad. Kat mana aku nak sumbatkan filem? Aku ni penting atau berkesan sangat ke nak menyumbang kepada kitaran lahir semula industri filem?

Entah. Tapi korang tengok le industri filem ni - masa-masa yang amat menarik untuk dikupas. Aku pedulittaik, tapi lebih ramai orang yang lebih terpelajar dijamin akan membuat analisa dan masanya akan tiba untuk membaca fikiran mereka, kemudian tepuk ramai-ramai.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Georgetown Fest dan Ma-Play Card Game

Beberapa bulan lepas, aku terserempak Joan Lau kat tempat letak kereta luar pejabat The Malay Mail dan The Malay Mail Online (TMMO). Aku pergi sana sebab nak interview orang. Joan terus terjah kat aku dan cakap dia nak invite Maple Comics pergi Georgetown Fest, pasal TMMO ada terlibat penuhkan beberapa booth kat sana.

Semalam, aku, Roy Ablah dan Mimi Mashud naik kapalterbang ke Pulau Pinang, sambil Adifitri (Bohrtaag) drive ke sana dengan wife dia sehari sebelum tu.

Sampai sana, kitorang makan nasi padang pastu check in, manid/berak dan terus ke Soo Hong Lane.

Julian (Lefty) ambik kitorang dan jadi tour guide. Tak sempat jumpa Baba Chuah tapi sempat makan roti canai Jalan Transfer (roti canai dengan ayam), mi sotong dekat Esplanade dan makan kat Restoran Sup Hameed,

Oh, dan Georgetown Fest memang best. Georgetown dah jadi macam pekan/bandar yang pentingkan seni. Orang yang datang beli/belek komik kat Maple Comics booth pun best-best. Ada yang siap borong lagi. Thanks, Joan!

Sambil tu, aku bawak keluar prototype Ma-Play Card Game. Permainan kad yang walaupun namanya omputih, semua teks dalam Bahasa Melayu.

Ma-Play ni aku design dengan Adib Zaini. Asalnya sebab semua buku Maple Comics tak sama saiz tahun ni (mungkin tahun depan baru standardkan), so aku nak sesuatu yang memang sampai bila-bila sama saiz.

Juga, sebab aku dah lebih 12 tahun main Yu-Gi-Oh dan Adib dulu gila Magic The Gathering. Tapi aku main style orang miskin la - aku main PC game dia sebab kalau beli kad dia mau abis beribu ringgit.

Ma-Play Card Game direka untuk permainan yang cepat. Satu perlawanan mungkin dalam masa beberapa minit je. Setiap deck direka berdasarkan setiap judul yang diterbitkan Maple Comics. Selagi kami menerbitkan komik, selagi itu ada kebarangkalian untuk menambah lebih banyak deck dan lebih banyak kad untuk Ma-Play.

Ada tiga cara untuk menang: capai tahap Markah yang khusus untuk setiap deck, habiskan Nyawa pemain lawan sampai kosong (kadar Nyawa berbeza mengikut deck masing-masing) atau bila pihak lawan dah tak boleh nak Ambil kad daripada deck dia pasa permulaan pusingannya.

Ada banyak lagi rules lain macam peraturan masa berlawan, dan percampuran kad. Ya! Semua kad deck berlainan sebenarnya boleh dicampur untuk menghasilkan deck sendiri yang paling hebat.

Ada satu lagi benda yang juga menjadikan Ma-Play Card Game lain daripada Yu-Gi-Oh dan Magic. Tapi itu tunggu dulu.

Apapun, aku berjaya test main Ma-Play dengan beberapa orang dan aku dapati syak wasangka aku yang manusia di luar sana lebih pandai daripada yang dijangka pembuat filem Malaysia memang tepat.

Aku boleh biarkan banyak benda Ma-Play ini ditentukan sendiri oleh pemain-pemainnya kelak.

Aku juga sudah memutuskan untuk membuat mini tournaments sekitar KL selepas Ma-Play Card Game dilancarkan dalam masa beberapa bulan lagi. Tournament miskin, dengan hadiah biasa-biasa je.

Impian aku ialah untuk membuat tournament besar setiap tahun, tapi itu bergantung pada sambutan orang. Kalau takde sapa peduli pun benda ni, aku takkan buat. Tapi kalau cukup ramai yang dapatkan deck-deck ni dan main merata-rata, aku akan try buat aktiviti, pertandingan dan macam-macam lagi.

Anyway, Georgetown Fest memang best dan kalau boleh aku nak join lagi tahun depan. Kalau ada rezeki la. Terima kasih kepada semua yang datang, kepada yang menjemput dan tolong kitorang.

Aku penat ni.

Nak pi tido.

Friday, August 28, 2015

The Man Who Knows Fear

In about 45 minutes, I'll be celebrating my one year anniversary of surviving a heart attack. It was last year, Aug 29, that I felt like crap, vomited from the pain and went to the hospital to discover that 1/3 of my heart is dead. My time is probably limited, but now, having lost 21kg, I am way sexier than before. All vaginas open before me and I ask that only those that smell, look weird, are diseased, framed by an ugly human or connected to an ugly soul to move bitch, get out the way.

I am still here, by the grace of God and by the kindness of strangers. Not just the guy who drove me to the emergency room that day or the doctors who administered adequate treatment, but also those who have helped me every step of the way. The ones who gave me a job or jobs, opened amazing doors of opportunity for me to do anything I could ever dream of.

There are those who demand a terrible price of slavery, a fee of my soul, for the favours I have received in my life, and I have cut them off. The less said about them, the better.

Nowadays, there are people - some of them leaders - who also try to spin gratitude into servitude. Their wonky, self-aggrandizing spin machinery telling everyone else to be grateful to them for whatever we rightfully worked for. What we fought for ourselves.

That all our successes are theirs and all our failures - and their own crimes and shortcomings - are our fault. They are the angels of plenty who brought us our food, our clothes, our industry. And all the poison, disease, pollution that come with it are our fault.

And crimes, when done by the select, special few, are not crimes, but charming, Machiavellian quirks. But they are neither Tony Starks nor Robert Downey Jrs. And to the best of official human knowledge, neither Stark nor Downey stole or killed or threatened or abused or lied to any of us.

There were times - not just when I was recovering this past year - but all throughout my short life, that I felt fear. My fears always share two characteristics: they never last very long and they are founded on an irrational, skewed view of the future.

The future is not set in stone. We are, right now, crafting it. All of us. Nobody knows what's going to happen. If we accept it in whatever form it may come, there can be no fear.

The future is the truth. If you are in line with the truth, you will not fear it and you will not be afraid of anything.

I accept the future I am crafting as I live right now, in the present.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Ma-Play Card Game: Genesis

Tadi lepas abis kerja, aku cepat-cepat balik rumah, tunggu Adib datang bawak deck dia.

Aku dengan Adib dah develop benda alah Ma-Play Card Game ni daripada awal tahun. Sampai bila aku main kad ni dengan dia dah macam dua minit je. Dah laju.

kebanyakan benda aku tulis ni nanti tak bawa makna untuk orang yang tak tau Magic The Gathering atau Yu-Gi-Oh. Jadi yang semua boleh paham ialah: setiap judul akan ada deck dengan tema sendiri. Deck boleh digunakan untuk satu-lawan-satu atau boleh main lawan ramai-ramai.

Projek ni aku commit untuk tiga tahun, lengkap dengan beberapa bahagiannya yang akan diumumkan kemudian. Aku memang suka main Yu-Gi-Oh tapi sebab keluarga aku miskin, aku hanya mampu main kat PC. Adib gila Magic dulu.

Niat aku asalnya nak buat permainan kad yang tak mahal sangat dan semua orang boleh beli. Kalau nak main card game sedia ada, kalau takde beratus toksah cakap la. Yang ni murah je. Dan dalam BM.

Tadi kitorang habiskan dalam sejam dua tweak deck Taubat Si Tanggang. Ubah apa yang patut sikit-sikit. Juga buat mirror fights - kalau dua deck sama lawan, contohnya deck Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days lawan deck Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days.

Basically, untuk yang reti main Magic, Invasi ialah aggro deck. Macam mono-red gitu. Kuala Terengganu in 7 Days punya deck ialah satu versi blue. Taubat Si Tanggang selepas di-overhaul is a true blue deck.

Banyak benda lain yang nak masukkan, tapi untuk sistem ni, kitorang nak make sure gameplay dia simple dulu. Ma-Play Card Game ialah satu card game yang sentiasa akan berkembang dengan setiap judul yang Maple Comics terbitkan. Juga, kitorang mungkin akan keluarkan expansion untuk deck-deck yang popular. Booster packs la kiranya.

Banyak lagi benda nak jelaskan, tapi buat masa ni, aku cuma umumkan kitorang tengah buat Ma-Play Card Game dan rasanya akan terbit hujung tahun ini.


Sunday, August 23, 2015

FLCL

I went to Visual Arts Expo (VAX) today and immediately saw a Macross booth, a Magic booth and a Gainax booth.

I went to the Gainax booth and immediately yelled "Furi Kuri! Furi Kuri!" at a girl wearing a colourful wig.

She didn't seem to know what this meant, and probably suspected this was some form of nerd sexual assault. The booth was littered with posters of Tenggen Toppa Gurenn Lagaan and Neon genesis Evangelion and some other shit that don't matter.

But no FLCL. No Furi Kuri. No Kare Kano either or Panty and Stocking or Re: Cutey Honey. But most importantly, NO FLCL!

In my list of top 5 anime of all time, FLCL is number 2. It is perhaps the best Gainax anime I have ever seen and something that is as important as Stephen King's The Body (Stand By Me) and Shawshank Redemption and ET and Star Wars and Teen Wolf all rolled into one.

FLCL is THE best coming of age story of all time. ALL TIME! Bar none, not in anime, not in movies, not in books, comics, songs, whatever, not in or on any medium is a coming of age story that is better than FLCL.

It is simply THE PERFECT COMING OF AGE STORY that I have on occasion tried to emulate. I tried to capture the spirit of FLCL but have always failed miserably. But enough about me.

FLCL is about Naota Nandaba. This is a kid, like, 11 or 12 years old or something. His brother has gone to the States to play pro baseball. The brother is more of a father figure to him and Naota is living in his shadow. He is an ideal that Naota can't realistically achieve. The brother is the yardstick by which Naota believes the world measures him. The other adult characters are idiots.

The most obvious thing is the brother's girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/stalker whom he left when he went to the States. The girl keeps creeping on Naota, because he looks like his brother. Naota likes the girl, but feels that she only likes him because of his brother.

And THEN. A weird alien/magic creature/criminal called Haruhara Haruko enters Naota's life and smacks him on the head with a guitar that she wields like a chainsaw-bat. As a result, things start to grow out of Naota's head - usually some form of giant robot or whatever.

There's a lot of weird stuff in FLCL, including a police detective who uses dried seaweed as eyebrows, a robot with a TV as his head, a factory in the shape of a clothing iron and a bunch of other stuff.

But the most intriguing thing is Naota's growth and the development of the people around him who are not caricatures. Everything revolves around the very essence of coming of age stories - lessons in letting go.

Naota has a choice of three girls - the adult Haruhara Haruko, his brother's girlfriend/stalker/thing who is older than him and a girl his own age whom he accidentally kissed one time. He had to, at the end, say goodbye to each and every one of these girls even though he considered being with them forever like a dumbass simplistic child.

His ideal of making his brother's ex-GF his or going with Haruko on a galaxy quest are all childish notions that he needed to understand as being unrealistic and ultimately dumb.

Haruko is in fact searching for the greatest criminal in the galaxy - she is in love with an impossible man. She, as an adult, has made her choice and whatever, man.

The elder brother GF, she also needs to learn to let go of her obsession with Naota's brother. She in the end discovers the same shit Naota does and they both move on from his shadow.

I find that the final image that the ex-GF took with her camera to be extremely poignant and captures the series' intentions beautifully.

It's a boy from the back, holding a guitar that's a bit too big for him, looking at the sky.




In sepia, of course. It's so beautiful, breathtaking and heartbreaking and hopeful and so much of life and memories and love and loss in just one image.

It's from the back because this is all the past - we are watching the past. It's everyone's past. We all went through this, or for younger people, this will be forgotten one day. At his feet are ruins of something because in order for change to happen, things must be destroyed. He is standing on the ruins necessary for growth and development.

The guitar is also Naota's brother - it represents expectations and responsibility on Naota's shoulders. It is also life and all its expectations. Naota is facing the future and his upward gaze is one of hope.

This still image, after all the craziness of Haruhara Haruko - which on second thought could be symbolic of puberty - captures the essence of growing up in one moment. The heaviness and awkward nature of expectations, the hopes and dreams of anyone as they grow up.

FLCL is a work of art. It is pathos and nostalgia and sci-fi and sex and wanking and just wonderful.

So there was no FLCL at the Gainax booth. Boo fucking hoo. It lives on inside me.

FLCL Forever!

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Wanking: Stand Alone Complex

Apparently, anyone who comments on 1MDB or wormholes gets replaced, fired, forced to resign or transferred to the PM's Office.

Fuck that shit, so I won't talk about Najib, 1MDB and the 2.6 billion. Let's just all accept the fact that Najib won and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

I mean, Najib hasn't even played his final cards yet and right now no one can stand up to him. The AG has been replaced, the MACC guys could only pray to God, hoping God would come in and do... what exactly?

Anyway, I just want to put up, for the record, ways to change the Government, if Najib does not play his other cards like declaring a state of emergency or I dunno, use 5.2 billion or something.

As it is, BN won 133 seats out of a possible 222 parliamentary areas in the last GE. They need just 112 for a simple majority win.

If you have any expectations that the Opposition will win against BN, you're dreaming because:

1. The Opposition fuckers are just as bad as BN fuckers.

- They're equally stupid, potentially equally corrupt and just as racist or religionist or whatever.

2. The Opposition has failed and is failing miserably at making any headway into the BN stronghold - rural areas

- Opp fuckers are lazy and stupid. They are easily distracted by social media in order to gain popularity, even though social media is NOT where everyone is. Dumbass motherfuckers.

- I told them this and STILL they do jack shit.

3. The Opposition believes Gen Y is on their side. This is a fallacy.

- As seen with Parlimen Belia, the pretentious, fake, shallow fucks from Gen Y will lick the assholes that will give them the reward of feeling important without doing anything significant. This asshole can be attached to either Lim Kit Singa's ass or simple the UMNO hicom.

So, the only way to win the election is to prevent anyone from winning. Now, the fabled, mythical 'Third Force' doesn't and will not work because:

1. Zaid Ibrahim is NOT a third force.

- Fuck that shit, man. Zaid was linked with UMNO money before this, to the tune of hundreds of millions. I dunno whether it's true or not but no one from existing parties can convincingly set up a 'Third Force' because they're just bringing the same shit repackaged as something new.

2. There is no fucking way any 'Third Force' can stake a claim to any platform.

- Civil Society? Nurul Izzah and her crony of fake shallow pretenders. Malay Rights? UMNO. Malay Rights EXTREME? Perkasa. Equality (but secretly favouring Chinese)? DAP. Stairway to Heaven? PAS. Stairway to Heaven Light? PASMA. Oops, I mean Date-Rape Drug. I mean, GHB.

3. There is no 'one size fits all' solution for Malaysia, just as there's no one-size fits all platform for a political party.

- THEREFORE, the only way to create a 'Third Force' is to do so using the concept first proposed in Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex

Here's the Urban Dictionary definition of a Stand Alone Complex:

A phenomenon when a collection of similar, but unrelated, behavior by unconnected individuals creates a seemingly concerted effort.

- Source

We have seen this happen when the Red Bean Army created - accidentally - instances of copycat behaviour and virality of their messaging during key election whatever. But that's online. It's time to take this concept into the real world.

Realising that each of the 222 parliamentary areas has different needs and concerns, and that no single blanket party can satisfactorily win all these diverse groups over, we should start a movement where each constituency gets their own solution or voice in the form of independent candidates.

The goal is not to form a Government, but to prevent anyone from forming one.

BN won 133 seats. Opp won 89. It is the role of these independents to win at the very least 21-22 seats, preferably from BN. How do you do this? Well, we'd need to put 50 independent candidates in places where the majority was slight. Like, below 1K.

50 Independent candidates with no partisan baggage and no masters - Israeli or middle-eastern or Chinese or whatever - will be free to fully campaign on the local interest issues, whatever they may be.

Success rate of 50% is fucking fantastic, but since this is a wanking piece, bear with me. Or rather, bare with me. Muahahaha.

What is the incentive for these 50 idiots to contest as independents in 50 areas, risking 10K of their deposit cash? Well.

Should 21-22 of these Indies win, and everyone else retaining their seats, we will have a Well-Hung Parliament. According to Westminster Politics, a Well-Hung Parliament is when all parliamentary reps are well-endowed or in other words, have big dicks.

When this happens, the ones with money (BN) will have to buy over the Indies - either with cash, 'units', women or positions of power.

My advice? Hold out for at least RM100 million each. Cash. Upfront.

In the end, this method will change nothing and Najib may still be in power after all is said and done. But it will be fun to prevent the formation of a Government and just to prove my theory right.

So use the Stand Alone Complex to create the Individual Eleven!


Sunday, July 5, 2015

Circle-Jerking

I'm a big fan of anime and one of the tropes or cliches of many of these animated series that target teens and young adults is this spirit of togetherness.

A lot of cute anime characters often say, teary-eyed with appreciation, "Minna..." which means "Everyone..." as they build a community and carve out a place for themselves in this group of people. These are concerns of a juvenile nature, of teenagers and younger people.

It is also the basis of political parties and the key to corporate and business achievements. This finding a place for yourself amid a crowd of people you call your own.

I see all this, and all I can think about is this: weakness.

You see, having a group of people around you and depending on them could also result in extremely bad things. The group, in an interest of survival, could rabidly defend its members, regardless of what they are defending. The individual ego is fortified by the group ego and individual common sense is often forfeited just for the strengthening of the image of the group.

I do not believe in families or groups. I recognise the benefits of separate entities pooling resources together to achieve a greater goal, but I do not subscribe to tribalism or circle-jerking. You know what a circle-jerk is? It's when all members of a group defends the actions of each other with no self-reflection or fairness. It is when false praise is heaped on each other just because one is in the same group.

Not to say I favour betrayals, which is to me the number one crime that can be committed by any human, but I believe that self-reflection and discarding the ego as well as image - both individual and as a group - to be vital in self-improvement.

In order to attain peace, one must embrace the truth. There is no truth in shallow circle-jerking groups.

I am not denying its power - whole nations are founded on circle-jerking as do profitable companies. It is simply something I personally do not prefer, as with all lies, it carries with it its own seed of destruction.

With lies, there can never be true happiness, which is a situation without want; an absence of want. Circle-jerking is founded on very strong desires - the desire to belong.

There can never be true happiness in circle-jerking each other.


Saturday, June 27, 2015

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

I took a five day vacation, around three days off in total. Made sure I did enough work to fill up my own self-imposed quota while I was gone.

I needed the vacation. I developed anxiety issues in recent months and that manifested in several ways. The most damaging of which I began smoking again. I stole a few cigarettes here and there until I was smoking maybe four sticks a day.

A far cry from four packs a day, but I was frustrated that I got back to my old stressed out days.

See, just before my heart attack last year, I was in a state of bliss. I was running a consultancy business that could be my endgame. I needed to make around RM2 to 4 million and then retire before I was 40.

Things start to go wrong, but like any gambler, you double down, hoping to make good on some losses. It got so bad that I had my cardiac event. I had four risk factors through the roof - smoking four packs a day, eating whatever, whenever, and a high-stress job. The fourth is genetics - both sides of my family suffer from critical illnesses though one or several heart attacks and/or strokes never took any of us out. My family members are extremely hard to kill.

Anyway, I was bothered by the fact that I lost that bliss I enjoyed before the heart attack. My calmness was shattered. I began to allow myself to be affected by idiots again, by liars and pretenders. Motherfuckers all of them. Not worth a single hair on my ass.

Back home, my parents' situations continue to worsen. There is nothing more I can do for them in order to improve their being and their experience of the world, and I hated accepting that.

So I went to the Source of All Power. I went to Thailand, where I originally found my peace. I wanted to retrace my steps and to remember what it was all about.

And so I went.

Five days there, and no less than four different people on four separate occasions told me the same thing, "Slowly."

Apparently, even while sitting down quietly and waiting, my energy was one of anxious anticipation. See, I like being smarter than everyone else, and to me, being smarter meant I could anticipate any and all moves, all the time, every time.

I run countless continuous simulations inside my head on how things will unfold. This is extremely useful at work, but I had begun incorporating it into my personal being and this easily becomes toxic.

Whenever you anticipate the outcomes of any situation, you will flag all the bad ones as well. In fact, you will focus more on the bad possibilities and come up with plans and contingencies for each separate bad possibility.

I have always been extremely lucky, but I am also never wrong whenever I anticipate the evil in humanity. I understand the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. And women. And things.

So anyway, I was in Thailand and away from everyone. I couldn't find my copy of A New Earth so I brought Eckhart Tolle's other book - The Power of Now. This happens to be exactly the book I needed to read. In fact, if I could sum up my trip, it would be that I got exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. I felt spoiled because I got everything I asked for. Everything.

From the time I arrived, I met exactly the right people telling me the exact information I needed at the time. For example, I needed to get on a bus to Pattaya. A tour lady hailed me to the side and asked me whether I was going to Pattaya on a bus and if I wanted a taxi to go to the bus station. As a tour lady, I thought she was going to sell me one of her tour packages, but she just gave me good advice and good direction. "There are two bus stations - Morchit and Ekkamai. Morchit is closer to Don Mueang. Don't take airport taxi. Take meter taxi."

Every step of the way, I was given valid intel and useful information. This was a refreshing change from Malaysia where I constantly have to navigate one pile of bullshit after another. People lie a lot here, but during my vacation, there was no need for any of them to lie and even when some do, I was not affected by the lies at all.

The difference is energy. There is a desperation here, in Malaysia, and there is a quiet calm in Thailand. I don't know why.

In offices, people build forts out of cubicles and then they either hold a siege or believe themselves to be under siege. Alliances are made, and broken. The backstabbing, back-biting and blood-letting is silly because none of them are fighting for RM42 billion or even a RM42,000/month salary. It's pathetic and insulting. A lot of Malaysians do not live in gratitude. Tak sedar dek untung, cakap orang Melayu.

Meanwhile, in some of the seedier underbellies of global prostitution, there are people whose jobs it is to suck dicks every day. Their daily drama is 'can I suck enough dicks today to put food on the table?' and they're still very calm and happy.

We have it good. We have food, relatively fast internet (though Thailand's broadband is cheaper and more or less the same as ours, from one consumer's perspective), cheap clothes and adequate shelter.

This does not mean we should be thankful to politicians, who remain the one blight on humanity. Politicians are parasites and should be dealt with accordingly. Why would anyone want to honour people whose job it is to lie to you everyday? Politicians are liars and we should move beyond them by not giving them any focus whatsoever. If we listen to politicians, I assure you we will start killing each other in whatever name is trendy at the time.

Thailand and other countries such as Indonesia do not give a fuck about politicians in the sense that no matter who is in power, it's mostly business as usual. Indonesia does not have a Finas and their movie industry is arguably churning out better films. Thailand's tourism industry is still running strong despite massive changes in Government. In fact, numbers have only grown over the past 12 years despite political instability.

We Malaysians cannot give so much power to politicians and political parties to decide and do everything for us that when they fall - AND THEY WILL ALL FUCKING FALL - all our industries will also shatter and the nation would crumble to the ground.

We should be independent of politicians and politics. Fuck them. Fuck them to hell.

Anyway, I managed to exhale and reset everything. As I began to see things from the perspective of the now and not the past or the future, I began to relax again.

One of the things that affected me with my anxiety was an outbreak of pompholyx on my hand. Pompholyx is a type of eczema that only affects the extremities such as fingers and toes. It got better and tonight, my hand is completely healed.

Evil people will continue to be evil and petty. I don't have to deal with their bullshit in any way shape or form. Fuck them and their entire family.

Shifting my focus from the future to the present solves my anxiety issues. The future does not happen except as the present, and rather than a million different possibilities, there is only one reality, one outcome, and it is always now.

Doesn't mean I have stopped planning or anticipating things, but I have separated my thinking self and my real self. I have the Greatest Mind of the 21st Century, but I am not my mind. This separation is vital in order to stay sane.

There are other things, of course, but I am taking care of myself first and ensuring my mental and emotional health are as good as my physical health. I've stopped smoking again and I hope this time it sticks.


Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Fumes

It's been 10 months since I had a break. Then the whole heart attack thing happened and I've been on a mission of recovery ever since. My father took a turn for the worse and is now very, very angry. My mother is not doing so well either.

I am physically, mentally and emotionally drained. Been running on fumes for the past year. I remember all the high hopes and broken promises and despair that led to my severe health crisis.

I'm not really angry at having a heart attack at 34. First of all, I have dropped 21kg and am now very thin and sexy. I can fuck half of KL if I wanted to, but I'm way too busy.

I could have done a half-assed job at work, but I just couldn't. I had to drive myself to the brink and the past few weeks, I've been stepping on the gas a bit too much. I'm doing it all alone, not like I have a bunch of slaves or anything. But this is a better way of doing it. Other people can't be trusted. Best to go at it alone for as much as you can.

And yet last weekend I felt re-energised with the comics thing. Maple Comics - the company I started with Roy - has published three titles in six months and is on track to release six to seven titles this year.

If I could choose to do just one thing, I'd love to do Maple Comics full time. We have total control over things and if there are fuck ups, it's ours. We own it, good and bad. We do not have to answer for other people's shit.

Last weekend, I was on the panel at Comics Arts Fest KL. I will be on the panel again for Cooler Lumpur this weekend.

After that, I'm going for a break. Taking some days off. I'll be back later. Hopefully rejuvenated and resurrected.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Negativitity and Sucking Dicks

Just saw Another Country - a play showcasing Malaysian and Singaporean works and performers. Review coming out in The Malaysian Reserve early next week. Won't say much but it is a sign of a great play that it gets me thinking.

For some reason, the past few months, I have been meeting Malaysians who have spent some time in the States. Their observations and message are consistent. Why are Malaysians so negative?

I immediately felt responsible, partly because everything is about me but largely due to the fact that I am such a great person who feels responsible all the time. I also felt guilty because I single-handedly made being cynical cool.

I mean, who can deny the large social impact I have had on Malaysia? Hordes of Malaysians suck my dick every day. I am the iconoclastic icon, the thought-leader, the forerunner, the Greatest Mind of the 21st Century.

For over 12 years, I made being cynical cool, when all this country ever needed was to appreciate what we already have and enjoy. And we all know, before I arrived 12 years ago, all Malaysians were very positive people cooing about our stupid buildings and stable economy. After me, everybody was like, "Meh" to everything.

I fear I have done all of you a great wrong.Things are not so bad here.

In my travels, I have met people whose job is to literally suck dicks every day. Fat dicks, thin dicks, long dicks, short dicks. Sweet dicks, sour dicks, sweet and sour dicks, salty dicks, spicy dicks, dicks with too much umami and cheese or whatever. Dicks dicks dicks. When you talk to these people, and you usually only hear "Mrrf Mrrf Glug glug glug" cause they're sucking dicks most of the time, you get the sense that it's not so bad here, in Malaysia, where you can make even better money sucking dicks. You only even have to suck only one dick a day instead of like, 300.

Things SEEM bad because we are a molly-coddled nation whose people are so used to having politicians do everything for us. We asked these politicians to take away anything and everything offensive from us, to uphold our laws and keep us safe, to tell us what is right and what is wrong. In return, we allow them to take our money. Most of our money.

And yet, even with all this, I sincerely do not believe that we can attribute all our successes or blame all our failures on politicians. This is lazy. This is avoiding responsibility. This is giving away too much power to politicians.

Politicians are the worst of us. They rise from a pool of the most desperate, deformed, mentally-handicapped and morally-bankrupt. And yet we expect them to do anything?

I believe that all of our successes and failures are our own. Datuk Nicol David became a dominant force in world squash not because of politicians, but in spite of them. Datuk Lat became an institution not because he had to kowtow to politicians - it was the other way around. He became such an institution that no one dared to mess with him. Name one single politician who can fight Malaysia's most talented people.

Blaming others simply give up power over ourselves to idiots. We all have more control over ourselves and our environment than we dare to admit. Because admitting it is accepting responsibility and our greatest sin is refusing to be accountable.

And what is so dangerous to own up to everything you've done - both good and bad?

So that others would not hate us? So that others would love us? Weak. Pathetic.

And so I find myself agreeing with these Malaysians who see more than I have. I have not set foot outside of South East Asia nor do I desire to do so. I'm okay with Malaysia and the occasional trip to Thailand to rejuvenate my flagging spirits.

I think they have a point. We are being too negative. Not to say that we should start being delusional or let our guard down, especially with politicians. I'm just saying, enough with the negativity. I'm tired. Just relax.

Otherwise, there is only one way this will play out. Come 2018, we might have blood on the streets, instigated by politicians who fight for the power to decide everything for us. I hope I'm wrong, but you see, I'm always right.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Odds and Ends

Woke up early today as I have a doctor's appointment in the morning. Noticed I had passed the million visitors mark for this blog, after deleting it the third or maybe fourth time. Which means, realistically, this could be the second or third million hits.

Over, I dunno, 11 years? 12?

Those journalists who once told me that this Internet thing is a fad and that yes, they've seen similar fads come and go (like Smell-O-Vision, perhaps?), that it will soon die off in 2004 and people would go back to buying newspapers are now plying their trade at Internet portals.

If there is a literal interpretation of eating one's words, I guess that would be it.

In any case, things keep on changing. Internet media is a nebulous, ephemeral thing. People keep on repeating nomadic patterns. The numbers shift from one thing to another. Now, that is a fad behaviour.

Myspace and Facebook are interesting examples. Myspace died quite properly some hundreds of cyber years ago. Facebook didn't. Or haven't. Facebook is no longer sexy, of course, but the late adapters number more than the attention-deficit Xs and Ys.

While the cool and hip leftist-leaning urbanites moved their overpriced coffee pictures to Twitter and now Instagram, the majority who just discovered broadband Internet access also stumbled upon Facebook.

The bulk of the BN audience is on Facebook, which remains their most effective platform. Twitter was won over by seemingly endless bots, as demonstrated by the ill-fated and easily-discovered bot-fuelled 3 million tweets campaign one Merdeka Day.

I sent a message to one of the bots, that were tweeting the same message even though sporting the Twitter equivalent of Osman, Muthusamy and Lai Kok Seng multi-ethnic Twitter handles. I told them, "We come in peace and look forward to serving our machine overlords."

While numerous Opposition agents try to convince me - someone they marked as Government-friendly, though I'm nothing of the sort - that Twitter is no longer cool, I understand it still has a role to play in the coming election. The big one. The one BN is supposed to lose due to their own stupidity.

And yes, BN as a political party has played the cyberwars quite stupidly. Their tactics are easily uncovered and the stance or direction - when they have one - has always been arrogant and standoffish.

There are people and brands who succeeded by being arrogant and brusque online, myself included. There is a reason why and how it is done that way. Mostly due to the pursuit of vaginas. It is not one would expect from people begging for your votes to stay in power and does not inspire any confidence or endearment whatsoever.

When the giant BN cyber machineries fall and fail, and they will fall hard and fail catastrophically, I hope somebody notes the numbers. Would be fun, dissecting just how much they royally fucked up.

So where does that leave blogs? I wrote in 2008, after the GE that blogs are done and dusted. That bloggers are now inconsequential. Those who believe otherwise are delusional.

Sure, there is still a role for blogs to play as a platform. But lose the tired idea that personalities drive blogs. Nobody cares anymore. Post-lonelygirl15, nobody really believes in the interesting personality online. And Lonelygirl15 was a thing - a scandal - before even the big Malaysian blog boom.

Blogs are sites. Sites are sources of information. Sites are tools. Blogs, sites, FB pages have all blended under the generic 'Internet Tools' banner.

Nobody cares who you are, unless you are DrM. The rest care about WHAT they get from this... tool. Naked pictures? Weather forecasts?

The age of the thought-leaders are over around seven years ago. You have mob-leaders now and at the post-peak point of the Information Age, we will have hordes of the most mis-informed crowds going at it with each other. All shouting, non-listening, hordes of idiots flaming online. This is the future? This is today.

The future exists in tangible things. I have gone back to working at a newspaper and updating this blog. Why? Because despite everything, I have never done this for money (except the newspaper, TV and movies part) or attention or fame. I do it because I want to. I rather enjoy it.

Few things give me greater pleasure than reading my own writing and admiring how great and intelligent I am.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Malaysia Airlines Website - The Hell is This?

Planning a trip, so I checked the prices of airfare and decided even though Malaysia Airlines' tickets cost around a hundred ringgit more or more than a hundred ringgit than Air Asia, I wanted to buy one.

The reason is logistics. I'm going to Bangkok sometime in the near future, so I wanted to go to Suvarnabhumi airport as it is closer to where I want to go. A taxi ride from Suvarnabhumi is around RM110 or I can take a bus for RM15. A taxi ride from Don Mueang Airport - basically the KLIA 2 of Bangkok - would be RM160. Or I can take a shuttle to Suvarnabhumi from Don Mueang or take a taxi to a bus station before I take a bus to where I want to go.

Malaysia Airlines land in Suvarnabhumi while Air Asia lands in Don Mueang. So to keep things simple and clean, I thought I'd take Malaysia Airlines and make up for the difference in fares with land transportation by taking the bus.

So I went and filled in whatever info on their website - a website I had problems with in the past for refusing to take my money - and it went crazy. Again.

Here's a screencap:



I tried the website again and again for maybe a total of an hour, over a few hours. Same error message.

I tried reloading, restarting the whole thing, and nada. Nope. Zilch.

So anyway, I decided to take things to the real world. I went and took a cab, paying RM15 to KL Sentral and plonked my ass down in front of the Malaysia Airlines counter to buy the goddamned ticket. Manually.

I haven't bought a plane ticket this way since... ever. I have never done this.

So keeping my rant and whining to a minimum, I told the nice counter person I wanted tickets to such and such destination, at such and such dates and time. The price quoted to me on the website was RM577 and I wanted the same price or slightly higher.

Upon a cursory check, the price she could give me was RM700++. Later, there was an improved offer of RM600++.

No can do, man. I decided to just fuck it, went home (after paying RM15 for another cab ride) and bought an Air Asia ticket. Air Asia website booked my flight, took my money in 5 minutes, from start to end.

See, the problems with Malaysia Airlines are many and varied. I have no interest whatsoever in their corporate tussle, the share swap fiasco, whatever, man. I don't give a flying fuck.

But this is basic elementary stuff here. I have a website selling comic books to people and if we find an error, that shit gets fixed within a few days - hours if we had nothing to do or not at our jobs.

For a massive company to fuck up their website on three separate occasions when a customer is practically trying to throw money at them is just plain stupid. This is user experience. This is website functionality. This is fucking bullshit.

The fact that I couldn't use the website is one thing - a major thing. Not having the same price for the ticket at the counter is also insane. It's not like Malaysia Airlines is the only game in town. Hell, there's KLM and Jetstar with their shit on offer as well as Air Asia.

The previous problems I had was when I tried to pay Malaysia Airlines using their website and the damned thing wouldn't take my money. It just wouldn't. Straight up wouldn't take my hard earned cash I wanted to throw at them like a hooker in a strip club.

This latest shit is the third time something stupid happened to me while using the Malaysia Airlines website.

I don't know how many other people faced the same problem or how much money is lost simply because the website sucks balls.

I don't know who's in charge up there at Malaysia Airlines, and I don't give a fuck. White guy, yellow guy, brown guy. Whatever. You fix the website, dude.

Just for fucks, I will go to the website again several months from now or maybe next year to book another flight. It better be ready to take my money.

I mean, come on!

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Dogs of War

"I am his Highness' dog at Kew. Pray tell me, sir - whose dog are you?" - Alexander Pope, on the collar of a dog.

People always want something from you. Sometimes, it is something innocent, like a smile, or some company. Most of the time, though, it is darker things. Money, power, control, a means to feed their ego.

I am constantly attuned to the darkness in human hearts. I have gazed on their evil and the blackness void that is their soul for far too long that I don't shy away from it anymore.

Some... wiser men have advised me that I was being paranoid, that people are not that evil. These wise men kept on getting screwed over and sabotaged by the evil people they dared to trust.

And yet, the biggest mistake would be to allow yourself to be consumed by the darkness. These evil things wish to make a dog of you, so you make a dog of them.

Lay traps. And then lie in wait. Of course, there are no traps. I simply say that to mess with the evil people. I am not that capable. My connections don't run that deep or go that high.

Nope. The only recourse is to stop playing.

The world dances to whatever tune you tell it to. Our minds hold such power in freedom. I had strings but now I'm free. There are no strings on me.

The Madness of Crowds


Caption: PICTURE IS UNRELATED

I need a vacation. Been a hectic week and it doesn't seem to clear at all next week.

For some reason, I unwisely filled up my schedule last week with lots of assignments. I wanted to do more for the company where I currently ply my trade.

Meanwhile, I just had the urge to start something new. So I started a crowd-funding website for poor people undergoing treatment - currently at proposal stage, touched base with many international comics publishers (one, two, many), hoping to grab some titles and publish it here, started selling the third title under Maple Comics - Taubat Si Tanggang, initiated some comics projects, said yes to a book project and started consulting for something.

I used to be able to do more than this. At one point, I had 10 projects running at the same time. My current health means this is my limit. I have reached a stage in my life when I would need a team to do everything.

I didn't feel the energy drain until I faced so many people at the KL International Book Fair today. I don't like being around many people. My communication is personalised, targeted, focused. I don't do so well when it comes to so many faces. I feel like I have to morph and shift every time I talk to a different person.

I understand that different people communicate in different ways and so they would need different forms of communication. Every time I talk to people, I automatically gauge their disposition, level of knowledge, exposure, and the really crazy social dynamics.

When you talk to a person in a crowd, how they respond to any given information or stimulus depends on their own personality and how they relate to the others around them. As I do my own assessment, so would they. What they say and how they react depends very much on how they anticipate others would react if they say this or that.

I do a short-hand for this with simulations. I imagine myself to be in their shoes, and then try to feel and think how they would.

For example, when you approach someone within a crowd of, say, four. You ask him or her, "Where is the toilet?". Now, he/she would be mindful of the other three. How he/she responds depends very much on what kind of outcome he/she desires from the group. There is also his/her own level of knowledge - whether or not he/she knows where the toilet is.

Social dynamics is by far the most maddening and complex and ultimately determinant component. If he/she were to simply be helpful, it could mean that he/she wishes for the group or the audience to think of her in a certain way. Same goes with mocking the person asking for the info. If her/his group he/she belongs to wishes to share in a tribal/herd bonding by nominating a common enemy or target of scorn, there are several ways this could go down.

I simulate all of this in my head like how people divide the bill at restaurants. It is extremely taxing and exhausting to do more than five simulations at the same time. Imagine this, times a few hundred or a few thousand. Because when I see a sea of faces, I don't see a sea of faces. I see many different individuals.

In a crowd, I create stories for each one. I imagine each person going home, sitting alone on the toilet or in their bedroom, and when all the doors and windows are closed, what do they think about? How would they think?

So when facing lots of people, I get lost in simulations.

Over the years, I have developed coping mechanisms. I realise that I do this mainly because of insecurities about my intelligence. I feel the compulsion to do it because it makes me feel smart, which I don't need. Another reason is paranoia and the desire to control variables in my environment. People are the biggest variables. Without people, a stadium is just a building. Filled with people, it is a bowl filled with emotion, it is an event.

Still - it can be very unhealthy and this weekend, I already feel the strain.

However, these are extremely useful tools when analysing group dynamics, relationships and correlations.

The trick is - balance and automation. Nowadays, I run on autopilot with simulations and I pick and choose which analysis I need to do. Otherwise, I'd be a schizophrenic within months.

For the rest, I would just have to accept and let go. I'd have to accept that humans will be humans, with their silly little games and silly politics even among themselves. And let go, which is still the most difficult thing to learn.

Anyway, knowing is half the battle. Coooobraaaa!

Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Initiative

Today was a busy day. I went to three places all over town. I even fell asleep in the cab.I used to be able to go to six places and then still have energy to party. It is clear to me that my powers have waned.

And so, as I sat down and listened to a spoken book review at a launch, something clicked inside me and I decided to resurrect yet another save the world project.

Months ago, I conceived an idea to do a Kickstartr-like website to crowd-fund medical treatment for poor people who can't afford it.

Two things happened to make me see this is a need in today's world. First, when I was warded last August, there was a guy who needed an angioplasty. The cost is around RM10,000. He  received RM5,000 from the Welfare Department and was expected to fork out the rest.

He had no insurance, no visible means of income, no sukuk or whatever the fuck. If he didn't have the money, he might have to just walk it off.

Meanwhile, I see a lot of people sharing Facebook postings and Twitter posters on this or that patient requiring financial aid. I always doubt these things and I always wonder whether they are cons. Is there any way of knowing, for sure?

SO.

I decided that the best way is to institutionalise these calls for aid. All funds MUST be channeled through the hospital or a foundation. The cases must be reviewed by the hospital and the Welfare Department for fears of paying for some rich guy pretending to be poor's health bills. Everything must be legit and transparent.

I'm putting together a proposal to get the hospital on board - so far I have people inside who can send it through the proper channels. What I need right now is costing - I need to find out how much the website will cost.

After the platform details are sorted, we need to look at continuous implementation. The hospital should take ownership of this. There has to be synergy between the hospital, the Welfare Department and volunteers.

This initiative cannot work without volunteers. We'd need people to take pictures, write the cases on the websites and then publish them on the website.

I already have the online spread thing figured out, more or less.

But now, of utmost importance, is I need to know how much the platform is going to cost. I need to speak to coders and web designers keen to do a charity project. Who wants to listen to my pitch?


Rapid Psychosis

"Chicks really dig people with a lot of mental problems," said a friend. "You're a mess. That's very hot."

I was like, really? I mean, I'm not a mess, psychologically. My awareness of my mental state and other people's mental conditions means it is very difficult for me to feel extreme sadness or be very happy with people.

I understand that ultimately, all that I feel are caused by my own self. This dulls any emotion, except anger and frustration.

My father has only two emotions - angry and angrier. I am fast becoming like him, and I fear if I live long enough, I would know extreme frustration.

But seriously - chicks dig psychosis? I do not tolerate lying, but maybe highlighting some insecurities and potential problems would position me as a more attractive prospect. Of course, the moody and brooding Vincent Valentine, Kyo the Samurai and Gray Fullbuster all have mental problems and they are chick magnets.

For example, I am extremely insecure about my intelligence. A quick assessment at my childhood, growing up as the fat kid made me struggle with the stereotype of the stupid fat kid. Meanwhile, in my household, the attribute that is most coveted is intelligence, outstripping wisdom, strength, defence, magic power, agility, or any other attribute.

Would my insecurities be much more alluring than my strengths and happiness? Because as it is right now, I am quite happy. I don't go skipping around or prancing about in tights or anything, but I am quite sated. Even my heart disease means I will not live for very long - and I loathe living a long life.

I want to die when I should. Around 40-50 or so.

Anyway, long story short, I shared my insecurities and my inability to see anything other than shallowness in human interaction. Because only I see the real truth, and that is a burden rather than a gift.

And so I highlighted my insecurities. These are real - I don't believe in lying. I just omitted the fact that I am fully aware of myself and my insecurities.

"What the fuck?" said the girl.

"Well, you're supposed to fix me."

"I won't fix people," she said.

And so it ends. My insecurities are worthless. Probably because I am not that insecure since I have accepted them long ago.

Perhaps I should be sadder. But I am not. It's really difficult to brood when all my current day-to-day problems are not that dire and all the drama I face are more mellow and inconsequential than any of the stuff I faced before.

I think I'll just enjoy being happy.


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Hell and Back

So I went back to my hometown. Had to do some family stuff.

One of them is to see my father. His condition is deteriorating, though he remains an obstinate old man. I wonder, though, how would I turn out when I'm older?

I hope I have the strength to let go of stuff when the time comes.


Monday, April 6, 2015

The Long Intermission

So much has happened in the past few weeks.

I was recommended for another angioplasty, where they put balloons in my heart and then reinforce the damn thing with wires but I got a second opinion from a Wind Elemental Doctor and he told me I shouldn't get it.

Angioplasties have risks - you could die during one due to ruptured arteries or have visible boners that would scare off hot nurses - and there is no clear benefit for me to spend around 22K on the procedure. I have insurance, of course, but I'm saving that in case I come down with something worse.

So, I decided not to. I'm sure the doctors who advised me to get another angioplasty believed that I could benefit from it, but I will go with the recommendation of the second doctor.

I am off Warfarin - the fucking rat poison - so I can now eat green leafy vegetables again, as well as cranberries and soy products. I'm taking my supplements and I find I have more energy at times. Sometimes I do feel fatigued - I often fall asleep in car rides.

I have maintained my weight loss but I need to step it up to lose a further 10kg. I was considering hard drugs but I guess a high fibre diet will do.

Work is progressing and I hope to move forward with some things in April.

Meanwhile, Maple Comics is growing from strength to strength. I spent some time with nerds and found them to be filled with either neutral or good energy. Wait till you get into the corporate world, kids - it will crush your soul!

I am now planning a card game to go with the comics we're publishing. I hope it will be popular and I can focus on selling comics and cards. It will take a year or two to design the mechanics and print the cards and organise tournaments.

Back home in Kuantan, my father's condition is deteriorating. I hope he doesn't suffer, but the old man is tough and he will always decide whether he suffers or not, on his own. He defied science for over 30 years and he continues to beat the odds. Doctors told him he had a few years to live around 34 years ago and he's still alive.

He had four strokes and he's still kicking. The men in my family are extremely hard to kill.

I've also been asked to read the doa for a family event back home. Leaving for that middle of this week. Yeah, I'm THAT old now. I get to do old men stuff, like lead prayers or some shit.

More girls would be sucking my dick if I turned religious, but I will die as I lived - real to the end. I'm not religious at all and I find all religions to be fascinating bunch of stories and tales.

Some people tried to dangle stuff in front of me. Pussy, money, power, position. I find no desire in having any of the things offered. I said no so many times these past few weeks.

What I want, I already have. Freedom. Time. A bunch of real friends.

I don't need much. Just want to pay my bills and live a quiet life, waiting for death. I don't need to prove myself to anyone or anything because what needs to be proven already has.

I am what I am. Perfect. Flawed. Whatever. I no longer feel the need to convince anyone of anything. You are all stupid anyway. In my short life, I have only ever met two guys who are smarter than me. One of them is myself and the other is not you.

So fucking busy these days. My illness is currently manageable and I hope to slowly push forward and get to the level I was before. I need to be able to do 400%, and then relax. Because the point of going 400% capacity is so I would no longer have to.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Comics N Toys Geek Fest 2015

So last weekend, I was at the Comics and Toys Geek Fest 2015 at Jaya Shopping Center.

Had a blast. Maple Comics sold a bunch of comics (we now have enough to print bags and receipts by June), but we were really there for two other things:

1. Awareness

- Need to get the brand name out, man! This is to get more submissions from Malaysian artists and to engage the public in what we do. The more our comics get noticed, the better it will be.

2. Connecting with artists

- We ALWAYS, ALWAYS need more artists working on projects. Keeps the fire burning and ensures a steady supply line. Right now, we have between 10-20 projects in progress. We don't know which ones will get finished first, if any, and we'd love to initiate more.

What I didn't count on was the fact that there are so many awesome hoomans at the thing. I live in a very serious and whiny corporate world of intrigue and espionage, with murder around every corner. So it was nice to be surrounded by young people who had my enthusiasm 16 years ago.

Now I'm the old man, talking about shit I had to go through. "Back in my day, CF was at Dewan MCA, man! And it was just a few tables with thin tablecloths. People come, buy shit and then leave. PATHETIC! And look at it now - a large marketing behemoth with whatever."

Nobody gave a shit about politics or whatever. They just made lewd, not-so-funny jokes and puns about lightsabers being an analogy for dicks. It was dumb and spectacular at the same time.

Also met some cute cosplayers and volunteers. I'd probably take maybe two of them out for dinner.

Anyway, it was a refreshing change from corporate whatever and hospitals I've been to the past several months.
Thanks to all the organisers, Andrew Tan, Batcave, Lil' Monsters, Kalleon (Kaleon?) Rahan, Heng Kok, all the volunteers, etc, etc and whoever I forgot to mention.


Monday, March 23, 2015

Second Opinions and CTGF 2015

I spent the weekend at the Comics N Toys Geek Fest 2015, Jaya Shopping Center. It was a blast as I relaxed and sold some comics. Made some friends and generally experienced the robust geek culture. A refreshing change to the corporate world and the multi-layered bleeding edge of communications consultancy.

Previously, in last week's whatever, I saw the cardiologist who handles my follow-up checks. He recommended I get another angioplasty, scheduled tomorrow (Tuesday).

Since then, I have consulted three other doctors and today have made the decision not to go for angio. The procedure will clear the vessel to a part of my heart that is already dead - the part that cares for any human. An angioplasty would carry its own risks and since the benefits are iffy at best, I was advised not to take it, for fear of complications or risks that could lead to my death or whatever.

The good news is that my cardiologist told me I could stop taking Warfarin. Yes! This means I can eat vegetables again. Green leafy vegetables, soy products, cranberries, and all sorts of berries... as soon as the meds clear out of my system, which is probably a week or two from now.

I also met some very smart people who suggested that the limitations I have been experiencing with my body after the heart attack could have been psychological. The opinion is unqualified, of course, but merits some digging into. I will see a psychologist this week for a rudimentary, informal, unofficial diagnosis.

I found that after the heart attack, I have less energy. Where in the past, I could work till 4am, sleep for two hours then wake up, do a proposal and present by 9am, nowadays I get tired at 6pm. I was once lightheaded at 4pm, feeling almost faint.

It could be a combination of my new diet - limited in high-calorie foodstuff, my intense exercise regime and my heart's reduced capacity. I also feel cold nowadays. Previously, it takes a lot to do that as I was always warm - perfect for baking bread.

What it means is I was operating at half-capacity all this while. In the past, I could go to 400% but now, a mere 50%, which is pathetic. Still better than everyone else, but if you want to commit to several different projects at the same time, you'd need to step into high gear now and again.

I need more info on that, so no use thinking about it now.

Anyway, will do a proper post on CTGF later. Right now, I have to inform my bosses that I won't be going for the procedure and will be in the office tomorrow.