What I Have Been Up To This Whole Week

"Lemonade. Ice Cold."

Afro Samurai

Or 'Afuro Samurai', in Nipponese.

I can't stand anime in general. It seems to me that the bulk of the genre consists entirely of harem romance stories, improbably boobed Asian women and bloody irritating theme music - none of which, with the exception of improbably boobed Asian women, interest me much. So far, I have followed only two animes with any degree of loyalty. They are Ranma 1/2 (back when it was showing on AXN) and Samurai Champloo, which I got from my ex-roommate, Inn Shan (along with Romeo X Juliet which I have found to be quite unwatchable). Samurai Champloo was quite an agreeable viewing pleasure for me, mainly because of its anachronism stew nature and multi-genre pop-culture references (ranging from baseball and graffiti to zombies and capoiera). The series even opened with a title card which says; "This work of fiction is not an accurate historical portrayal... LIKE WE GIVE A F@%#! Now shut up and enjoy the show!". Anything that marries samurai and hiphop cultures is always worth my time.

This, as you probably can guess, is Afro Samurai.

Afro Samurai is something very much like that, only amped up to the nth level with a heaping dose of Samuel L. "Motherfuckin" Jackson injected right into its arteries. Jules Winfield of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Mace Windu from the Star Wars prequel trilo (he accepted the part on the condition that his character would carry a distinctive purple to set him apart from the rest of the Jedi council of forgettables and that he would not be killed off "like some punk"). Also, he's the inspiration behind the Ultimate Nick Fury, leader of the Avengers of the Marvel comic universe (you'd remember his cameo playing that character after the credits in the Iron Man flick last year).

I will kill yo' ass till you die.

That's right, the last name in utter Bad-Assery voices the titular Afro Samurai. If that does not get you pumpin', here's more; Ron Perlman voices Afro Samurai's nemesis. Ron Perlman, as you may or may not already know, played Hellboy in the Hellboy movies. Oh, and did I mention Kelly Hu's somewhere in there too? Also, Samuel L. Jackson also voices NinjaNinja, a wacky ninja (what else) who follows Afro around saying things the typically silent and sullen Afro wouldn't say.

The basic premise of the series is this; There are two headbands - one has number 1 written on it and the other has number 2. The guy wearing the number 1 headband is the strongest, most badass warrior in the entire world and he can only be challenged by the guy wearing the number 2 headband, which is the Afro Samurai. The catch is, anyone can challenge the number 2 guy for the number 2 headband. Hilarity insues, that is, if you consider bloody, gratuituous violence and freaky dismemberments to be hilarious. The amount of gory fights in this anime is ridiculous (I'm lovin' it!) and the anti-hero, Afro, is quite frankly sociopathic and villainous. The show was adapted by the Japanese animation studio, Gonzo, from a doujinshi (i.e. Japanese term for "self-published works") manga series created by Takashi Okazaki - not one of those crappy American-made anime knockoffs we kept seeing these days. Season two of the anime is going to be released pretty soon and from what I heard, Lucy Liu is voicing the new season's antagonist. Mark Hamill got on board as well. You know, the guy who is the voice of the Joker in the Batman cartoons and played Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars flicks? Man, I'm such a fanboy.

Of course, they never explained what a black guy is doing in feudal Japan(?) being a samurai. Now that I've mentioned it, the list of things they never explained is, in fact, bloody long. What are ridiculously life-like combat androids, cellphones with cutesy ring-tones, memory cards, cybernetic binoculars and friggin' bazookas doing in this show? Why do they serve lemonade in bars? Where did that monk get those hip circumaural headphones from? And why hasn't Afro Samurai died from lung cancer from all those unfiltered hand-rolled cigarettes he kept puffing on throughout the series? Nothing makes sense. You just got to love a show that don't give a fat fuck.

And did I mention that the soundtrack in this anime kicks ass? The RZA (from the Wu-Tang Clan) produced it. Check out the song in the Afro Samurai: Resurrection (sequel) trailer on YouTube. Pretty good shit, in all.

***

The other thing which kept me occupied this entire week is The Settlers of Catan,

And this is how it looks like.

It's created by Klaus Teuber, a famous German designer of board games.

Unfortunately, I don't actually own a set - and I doubt that I find get it in any toy store in Malaysia. Even if it's available, I don't think I can get three other persons to be interested in it enough to play with me for hours on end.

I did the next logical thing and downloaded an 8-megabyte PC version of the board game (with pre-packaged A.I. opponents), after teaching myself how to play it through a 5-minute interactive guide on a Settlers of Catan fansite. That's the beauty of it. It's very easy to pick up because of its simple mechanics, but its dynamics are surprisingly complicated. The first night I tried it I was hooked good. I played till the next morning, skipping sleep entirely.

I personally categorise board games according to a luck versus skills spectrum. At one end of that scale is Snakes and Ladders, which relies completely on the players' luck. Chess sits on the other end, where luck does not factor in at all - only raw skills matter. Both does not appeal to me. I find games like Snakes and Ladders to be quite repetitive and pointless. Chess, if I may critique, depends quite heavily on a player's memorisation of the different ways a game can go. Theoretically, if a person is able to memorise every possible variation, he'd be unbeatable.

The Settlers of Catan lies somewhere in between the two. It uses a couple of dice, true, but the spirit of the game is planning, risk assessment, diplomacy and management. The board is assembled randomly from its little resource hexes every time a new game starts (including the numbers assigned to each hex), so it's a different playing field each time. Players will be placing their pieces at the start according to what they feel is the best spots after assessing the board. To get ahead, it's almost imperative for the players to be able to negotiate and barter with each other. If you sit quietly in your corner just rolling your dice, everyone else will be making trades which benefit them while leaving you behind. Then there's the robber piece which any player can move after rolling a seven - to block the resource flow from any one hex and to steal a card from the hand of a player who owns a town on city adjacent to it. There are more than one way by which you can win the game, so the ability to keep a low profile, to deceive and mislead, and to hide your true intentions as long as possible is pretty darn useful too. The dice, I feel, actually enhances the experience. It adds a flavour of uncertainty to the game without dictating its proceedings completely.

Anyway, Settlers of Catan is just the core game. There are actually expansions to the base game like Seafarers of Catan, Cities and Knights, and Traders and Barbarians, along with a whole medley of spinoffs (like a card game) and historical scenario packs (Alexander the Great's empire expansion, the building of the Great Wall of China etc). Here's an impressive list in Wikipedia. And someone even wrote a damn novel about it.

Microsoft also released a sweet looking adaptation for the Xbox Live Arcade with tweak-able house rules and A.I. so good that even Klaus Teuber himself find hard to beat,

Darn, I want to play this!

I am wishing really hard that Microsoft would release a version for us PC gamers with all the expansions and variations of the game included soon. I'll even get the original version, if only to be able to play online with other players.

I am also wondering if I should buy a set, or any of its expansions (I'll probably have to get someone living in the UK, US or Germany to get it for me). I mean, is there anyone else who is interested in playing this? I can't see any of my I-got-to-study-very-very-hard-got-not-time-for-kiddie-games medical school colleagues sitting through even one game with me.

Sigh and sigh.



Has way too many hobbies,
k0k s3n w4i

I Can Has Cat Plz?

"You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals."

George Mikes

I should be studying for that nasty Surgery exam due in a few hours time, but all I have succeeded in doing is grow an inexplicable impulse to adopt a cat NOW.

I even managed to run through some lists of breeds and decided on which I want - and I decided that I want a Pixie-Bob,

Or two, please.

And it has a dog-like personality too!

Fetch AND walkies!

I'm thinking of Ocicats as well but they are suppose to be hard to get. In fact, I actually prefer how an Ocicat looks like compared to a Pixie-Bob,

Actually, I'm mostly thinking "shorthair equals less moult". But dig the wild threads!


See a pattern in the sort of cats I'm interested in?

Anyway, I can happily make do with a common domestic shorthair too. I'm not to picky about breeds, really. Anyone has kittens from a good-tempered momma cat up for adoptions? Also, anyone has a kitten with mismatched eyes but thinks that it's ugly?

My grandmother won't be too happy about it, I expect. Why do Chinese people hate cats so much? I back during my Tioman trip, I discovered that each and everyone of my classmate who went with me has that reflexive revulsion towards cats (and Tioman, by the way, is one cat-infested island). I was quite shocked actually to find that out because I used to think that only the old extra-Chinese folks have that prejudice. Even back here on terra Malacca, when a cat walks up expectantly to our tables to, uhm, sympathy-stare some scraps from us, someone would shoo it off like it brought the plague - in spite of the fact that it's just standing there (standing most politely too, I must add). And our zodiac animals, we rather have a rat in it instead of a cute widdle kitty! What the heck's up with that anyway?!

I expect that I can only adopt one when I start working elsewhere and have a place of my own. In the meantime, anyone who owns a cat can let me know exactly how much care a cat needs? I'm reading up on it, but a bit of firsthand advice from actual cat-owners would really help - specifically the sort of problems I would encounter when I own a cat.

Now, I shall return to Surgery. Reluctantly. And cat-less.



P.S. It's Caturday, by the way.



Desperately seeking cat,
k0k s3n w4i

The Tower of Babble

I wanted to write a post about a Christmas dinner I went to, or maybe about the New Year's Eve I had but that two will have to wait. I am once again swamped tonight by an assignment I shouldn't be doing - or rather, an assignment I shouldn't be doing again. The story's like this; I actually finished the darn thing yesterday night but I have lost it somehow. The "somehow" involves my leaving the stupid papers at a patient's bed - I put them down for a minute when my Medicine Professor told me to find out if that patient has visible jugulo-venous pulsations (whatever that means to you) and BAM! I forgot to pick them up afters. Alright, I made that up. There's no BAM! sound effect every time I forget something (in a perfect universe, there should be, so I'd stop forgetting), but everything else I said is true. I walked out of the hospital to my car but there was still no BAM! I went to lunch, I finished lunch, BAM! not forthcoming. I went home for a minute to pick up some stuff for the afternoon lectures - no BAM! there either.

I took blood from a patient's vein today. The first successful time, this is. The first time I tried taking blood though, was yesterday - but I don't want to talk about that. I just want to brag about today. This is one of those milestones in med school, y'know. This separates me from the rest who have never drew blood before, and puts me firmly in the fraternity of hypodermic vampires those who have. And more to the point, this is the first thing I did since I joined this college three years ago that actually benefits a patient.

An iced latte in a Starbucks tall cup and an empty Starbucks mug stood side by side in front of me while I was scratching feverishly on a piece of foolscap paper - one of many I will be writing on that night. I was making surprisingly good progress though if nothing else. I kept glancing at my watch, and time seems to have slowed down noticeably. That's what caffeine does to me, and if you've watched the finale of the 2006 computer animated flick, Over The Hedge, the one which has Avril Lavigne voicing an opposum (or the climax of the lesser known 2005 animated movie, Hoodwinked!, a Rashomon treatment of the tale of the Red Riding Hood) you'd have an inkling of what I was going through. Wait, does this mean Over The Hedge plagiarised Hoodwinked!? Cripes, I got to focus on this infernal assignment! Why the fuck do I have to keep forgetting stuff! And why the fuck do I keep remembering useless crap? Get out of my mind, movie trivia! Git!

It's when I'm right outside my college's back gate that total recall booby slapped me. I drove right back to the hospital for my errant papers and found that they weren't there. I looked everywhere; under the patient's bed, under the bed of the adjacent patients, in every wastepaper basket and every bio-hazard bin. I looked so hard that the nurses took pity on me and helped me look. One said she saw the papers at about one o'clock, but has not seen them since. The patient whose bed I left them at told me some student nurses were fiddling about his bed earlier and might have taken the papers. What do student nurses want with notes on vaginal discharge, lactation and contraception anyway? Hypothetical question, this. Don't answer, please.

A medical officer who has a name which sounds like Uma Thurman's asked me if I would like a chance to take blood from a patient today (just like yesterday too, but nope, I'm still not talking about it). Strangely, I said yes (again, like yesterday - but, gah), showing enthusiasm I never suspect I had. Well, I never suspect I had it yesterday in the first place. This narration is confusing me now but anyway, everyone in my college knows just how apathetic I am. I'm like a zombie in a white coat, never caring yet somehow making it this far. Today, however (or yesterday, whatever), it's all starting to make sense to me.

So I'm stuck with having to do the assignment all-fucking-over again. I'm surprisingly fine with it, considering how long I took to do it the first time. Phoebe called me while I was at a coffee shop waiting for a friend in the evening, and she told me that if she's in my place, she'd be "very sad". She didn't say she will cry though. She never said she will cry before actually, come to think of it. Anyway, as I was saying; I'm a realist. Practicality falls out of my pockets every time I dig for change. I don't give in easily to pointless emoting or dramatics or empty yakking. If there's a problem, I fix it. Very manly, I think. Quite Martian, in fact. John Gray told me that Venusians don't admire this trait of mine.

I got to the coffee shop at about five to 5:30 pm today. I was suppose to meet a friend for dinner there but since I already ate, I was just there for dessert - and would you believe it? I forgot my book (gosh darn you, lousy memory!). I always bring a book wherever I go in case I arrive early and have to wait for people. It distracts me and keeps me from blowing a fuse, see. Anyway, the book I didn't bring with me was Richard Adam's Watership Down and it's about an epic fantasy novel about bunnies. Yeap, bunnies. Rabbits. Not anthropomorphised ones either mind you, yet somehow, it managed to be bloody damn mature. I mean, Adams actually managed to paint a pretty in-depth picture of a society of bunnies possessing a rich lore, culture and language system while managing to stay true to the zoological features of the species. There's a scene where a doe rabbit was supposedly asked to see an officer - a buck - for the purpose of mating. And apparently, that doe was "not ready to mate". Now, that's a mistake. I know for a fact that female rabbits can apparently experience a phenomenon called induced ovulation, which means that their ovaries will release eggs whenever they, pardon the expression, 'fuck like rabbits'. And that means, they are always ready. Don't ask me how I know that. I don't remember when or where I read that.

So, I found myself a kidney dish - the sort which doctors drop bullets extracted from gunshot victims into in TV or movies - and dropped a couple of needles, a syringe, some cotton swabs and a stand-in tourniquet in the form of a latex glove into it. Act professional, like I know what I'm doing. This is gonna be a walk, I'm telling you unlike yesterday. I strolled as nonchalantly as I could to the patient I'm suppose to be poking a needle into, wondering if I should whistle as I did (but my good sense disagreed). A few of my colleagues were following behind me, possibly hoping to watch my epic failure but I'll just assume they were following me to give me all the moral and technical support I needed. Lovely lot. Then, I saw the patient - and my heart dropped right into my left shoe, making mocking squishy noises as it fell.

The plan I formulated is this; Camp at Starbucks tonight, buy a latte, claim a free cup of java with one of those buy-one-free-one coupons I have lying around in my room, and try to finish as much as I am able. Then, I come home and finish whatever I couldn't while I'm still riding the caffeine high. Gosh, this is the first time I have to redo a very time-gobbling, very tedious, very mind-numbing task all over again from the start. And for the very first time, I think I'm finally grasping just how insanely cruel Sisyphus' punishment is.

Then, I received an SMS from the guy I was waiting for saying that he would be 15 minutes late. Normally, I expect this from everyone but that guy was someone who is usually punctual. In fact, he once told me himself how important punctuality is to him. Not that I mind a quarter of an hour that much but I didn't have a book with me. Also, I wasn't exactly having the best day of my life either, what with those stupid papers I forgot and have to work on again from scratch later that night. Phoebe called and I ranted to her a little, but calling from India ain't cheap, so we didn't keep at it long. At five to 5:45 pm, I finished eating what I went there to eat and my friend still have not show up. At about two minutes after 5:45, I just stood up and left.

The poor soul looked really ill. Like, really, really ill. He's gagging, presumably because there's still vomit in his throat. The rest of the vomit not in him was all over his gown. I feel sorry for him and sorrier still I felt because he'd have to suffer me and my un-honed, unproved needling skillz. Also, did I mention I was internally freaking the hell out, doing cartwheels and playing pinball with all the annoying lights and pings going off? You don't see all that emotions on my face though. And you still don't see them when I greet the patient with a big cheerful smile, while receiving absolutely no response from him at all OMG he's not smiling or saying hi back whatamIgonnadooo?!!! Alright, his wife did smile at me so that's something. NO PROCEDURES ON LEFT ARM, said a sigh hanging behind him from the bedpost. So, with that Stepford smile still on my face, I asked him to extend his right elbow (but again, no reaction from him). Alrighty sir, I'll help you with that then. His right elbow, I discovered, was as rigid as a lead pipe. I straightened it out as gently as I could. Tie tourniquet. Next, needle and syringe. Swab tentative puncture spot. Now, where's that vein? Where are yooouuu, Mr Vein? I couldn't see it! DON'T PANIC! Feel for it... feel for it... feelinnnggg... AHA! EN GARDE!!! *stab* Nooow, I just need to withdraw the plunger gently and shit! this is where I screwed it up yesterday nooooo... JEEZUS, I cannot tell you just how relieved I was when blood red flooded the syringe. The patient didn't seem to notice anything happened at all. 'He did it!' a colleague said behind me. Yes, I did it. Yes, I did.

I received a miss call from him a little while later from that friend of mine, presumably because he had arrived and found that I wasn't there. 'I finished eating, so I left' was what I said when I text him back. I really didn't feel like staying and watching other people eat.

Soon, I drained the iced latte as well. The caffeine jitters were hitting me pretty hard and I could hardly hold my pen steady. I don't think I have ever had so much coffee in me before. On my left arm was a whole crop of wheals, courtesy of my right hand which couldn't stop fidgeting and scratching. I suffer (sorta) from a condition known as dermatographic urticaria, and if I haven't told you about it, remind me to do so someday. It's really quite cool and Phoebs thinks so too (and if you already know what dermatographic urticaria is, you can probably guess why). Along with all that - I might be imagining this though, I can't be sure - I think I'm actually hearing better. Or maybe it's just that barrista cranking up his volume. Good lordy, his fake accent just jars at my soul like... like... a bajillion rusty wheelchairs squeaking all at once!

There! I finish the two thirds I aimed for, and right at 10:00 pm too. Now, I can go piss. Two hours plus two big cups of coffee makes for a lot of tinkle, I can tell you. Hey, that's pretty amazing, actually - I managed to finish in two hours what I originally used three and a half hours to accomplish! I sure am glad I keep myself caffeine sensitive. Never know when you might need the emergency boost.

"You did it", said Uma Thurman and gave me a little clap after I passed her two vials half-full of my crimson prize. I thanked her for letting me try again considering what happened yesterday but she thanked me back instead, saying that I actually saved her a bit of trouble by doing so. Damn, you should have seen that so-bloody-full-of-myself grin on me. Biggest one of the new year, I should think. By the way, I learnt three very important pointers today regarding venipuncture that I think everyone should go in knowing. And I don't think they are available in any textbook or manual (at least, not in the way I'm going to word them) which is a shame because I wish I knew them the first time round. They are;

• No, tie that tourniquet tighter.
• Don't look for it, dammit - FEEL for it!
• It's deeper than you think it is.

Now that I have done it, I can tell everyone that it is NOTHING like doing it on a mannequin in the practical skills lab back in Manipal. If you haven't done it, you'll be finding that out soon, fellow medicos. I, on the other hand, have passed my rite of passage.

However, all that caffeine is affecting me in a bad way. My piss smells like coffee. And I think I need to poop.

Anyway this post is some pretty fucked up shit. I wouldn't have read this if I were you.

It's not like I have nothing better to do.

I don't think coffee is good for me.

Now, I think I'll go finish that piece on vaginal discharge before the caffeine buzz fizzles out.

Fin.

An Eulogy

"I never thought I'd die alone
Another six months I'll be unknown
Give all my things to all my friends
You'll never set foot in my room again"

Adam's Song (1999) by Blink-182

Have you ever thought of killing yourself? Like seriously consider it, get torn up inside about it and weigh it against your life on a scale of depressive bias? I believe that everyone has, at some point of their lives. I have. I was staring at a pit of pitch black nothing so vast, so deep it doesn't even echo. That's a figure of speech. What I really stared at was this hook in the ceiling of my room in Manipal that's just there for some reason. Something heavy used to hang from it, I think - possibly a ceiling fan. I know it was sturdy enough for all intents and most purposes. It's cold, unfeeling and metallic. It's dependable, and won't give way at the very last beat. I know because I tested it. I looped my belt from it and lifted myself up with my arms, holding as long as I could. It gave no chance of turning back, no chance of reprieve.

The first thing I'll have you know about standing at the edge of that pit is that it is frightening beyond all reason. Have you stood there? Have you stood there, stared as far down as you could, and told yourself that that's where you are going? If you have, you'd know just how scary it was. It's scarier if you don't believe in an afterlife - if you don't buy into the whole heaven and hell deal - because what you're staring at is utter oblivion. You know you can't come back from there. You know that you're never ever going to feel anything anymore. Curtains. The End. But that's why you want to go there in the first place, isn't it? To not feel anything anymore. It's only when you think that life is at its nadir, when living comes in only one bitter flavour, that you'd even think of walking out of it. It might be your a last desperate claw at dignity. It might be you want to lash out at everyone who backed you into that corner, to crush them with the weight of the guilt they have yet to realise - a big fuck you to the world before you take the plunge.

Or maybe, you just want everyone to know that they love you after all. Throw that last question to the wind,

"Will you cry if I'm gone?"

And leave without knowing the answer.

The first thing I'll have you know about standing at the edge of that pit is that it is frightening beyond all reason. I remember standing at the edge with finality screaming in my ears, staring at that pit of pitch black nothing - and it stared me down. My nerve died in a heartbeat. My resolve crumbled like a flimsy sandcastle back into the sand as if it had never existed at all. My knees went weak and I dropped onto the floor, and I scrambled frantically from the edge back into the sunlight, blubbering like a pansy. It's only in the face of death that you find out what you're made of. I realised that I didn't want to die, that there is so many things I want to live for. There is so many books I still want to read, so many places I still want to see. I've never eaten foie gras or fugu, or Thai bamboo worms, for that matter. I want my house in the countryside and a beautiful library with a sofa set, a chaise lounge and a bean bag in its middle. And I want to write that novel I always wanted to. I want life. I want all of it - the happiness, the possibilities, and even the frustration, the anger, the pain of sorrow in life. I want them all more than I want that pit I can never come back from.

I chose and I think everyone can agree that I chose right, but that doesn't change that one simple truth; I was afraid of dying. I was a coward. They always say that Death is easy and that Life is hard. They say it to comfort themselves when they chickened out from dying. They say it to convince other people from doing themselves in. Death is easy. Life is hard. Suicide is the easy way out. Bullshit aphorisms.

Dying is hard. It's ineffable, irreversible, and stretches endlessly in all directions. I remember when my sister was much younger, a kindergartener still sleeping with my parents on their bed. She suddenly woke up from sleep one night, sobbing uncontrollably and repeating "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" over and over again. That's what death is. It's an eldritch horror. It's. Fucking. Scary.

And I don't want to die before I'm ready.

"I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend"

Jumper (1997) by Third Eye Blind

An old friend of mine killed himself last week, and unlike everyone else, I can't say I'm surprised. It's not like I expected it but, for some reason, I felt that I ought to know. The last time I talked to him was two years ago, before I went to India. It was difficult to get him to come out and have lunch with me, but I managed eventually. I can't really recall what we talked about that afternoon now, but what I do remember is that I kept asking him, "Why are you acting so strange? Why are you acting so different?"

And I was not asking about why he became reclusive after the fifth form, after the SPM. I was not asking why he never tried to meet up with the rest of us old High School boys, or bothered to keep in contact either. I was merely wondering at his behaviour, the way he talked, the way he moved, the way he smiled. Know a guy for five years in secondary school and you'd know a lot about that person. But he laughed it off, assuring me that nothing's changed, that I was imagining things. It really struck me how hollow, how joyless, how fake his laugh was then.

I sat beside him in class in the Second and Third Form, and in that two old years, he was my best friend - and I was his, for what it's worth. I realise now that he never really shared his mind with me. I found out that he went on a date with a girl I knew years after it happened, and I had to learn it from a friend of that girl he dated. He hoarded every thought, every feeling to himself - and behind that joking, laughing goofball front he put up for me, for everyone else, there's probably a lot of hidden things we never suspected or bothered to ask about.

The last time I saw my friend was a few days before the Incident, and that probably made me the last person from the old crowd to see him alive. I saw him exiting his house and getting into his father's car as I drove by. In fact, I pass his house, which is about a minute's walk from mine, everyday on my way to college. Everytime I did, I found myself wondering if I should call him out for lunch again someday. I could have done that last weekend, in fact. I would have too, since I was having a bit of a holiday from school for Christmas. Heck, why did I have to wait till then? I could have done it anytime since early September when I've came back from India for good. Maybe if I did, the last time I talked to him wouldn't be two fucking gone years ago.

I learnt about it on Sunday morning, from my next door neighbour, who didn't knew my friend that well either - but knew him from an English tuition class and from living in the same neighbourhood. I have since talked to many more old friends about this. There's a few half-assed conjectures being thrown around, theories pieced together from odds and ends of rumours and fish-talk. I will not repeat them here because I don't want to mar the memory of his passing by misconstrueing his purpose for passing. But that's what everyone wants to know. The Why - and not, it gladdens me to say, the How. When someone off himself, there's that macabre interest everyone shows in knowing every grotesque detail of his method, like it fucking matters. Say one thing; say it takes a true friend to want to know your reasons above everything else.

Yesterday, I went alone to the Buddhist temple where my friend's ashes was put to rest. It was strange seeing his urn with his picture (smiling there) and name on it on a shelf stuck behind a pane of glass, surrounded by dusty old people. There were several pairs of crescent shaped pieces of wood lying about - you know, the ones which are flat on one side and convex on the other. You ask the dead a question and drop a pair. If they land the same way up - both concave or flat - it means "No". If one is concave side up and the other's flat, it means "Yes". Or at least, that's what my great grandmother taught me.

"Hey, don't you wish we could have gone out one last time?" I asked his urn and dropped the bits.

Yes.

I don't believe we can talk to the dead. I don't believe there's an afterlife they can talk to us from. But it felt good anyway.

I wish I know what his last thoughts are, in that room where he did himself in. I want to know if he was afraid like I did - and why he didn't step back from that damn pit. Maybe he just couldn't see the reasons I saw for living anymore. Maybe he's simply not a coward. Perhaps, if I have seen him in his last days or in his last hours, I could have asked him out that one last time. We could go for lunch and a drink in this cafe by the river I have heard good things about and always wanted to check out, but couldn't find anyone to go with. After that, we could take in a movie, throw stones at the sea or go crash visit one of our old classmates. Along the day, we can even make plans for a proper reunion with the old crowd - we hadn't have one in ages. Then maybe, just maybe, it needn't be the last time I asked him out after all.

I am not conceited enough to think that I could have made much of a difference, though I'd like a chance to try anyway. At least he would have went knowing that, yes, I cared, and everyone cared. Sometimes, that might just be reason enough to live, reason enough to be afraid of dying.

The first thing I'll have you know is that standing at the edge of that pit is frightening beyond all reason.

The last thing I'll have you know is, my friend was the bravest person I ever knew.

"Everyone's got to face down the demons
Maybe today,
You could put the past away"

Jumper (1997) by Third Eye Blind

Sorry,
k0k s3n w4i

On Being Right

I was fourteen at the time, a weedy nobody second-former in a secondary school with a student population 2000 strong, and I was in the Red Crescent Society, an Islamised version of the Red Cross. I remember sitting in a classroom during one society meeting - it was a Friday - and was listening to a lecture given by the society's President on AIDS. He's a bespectacled, goofy, nerdy type who was doing accounts, economy or something similarly money-oriented in the sixth form. My point being; he's not a science student. But hey, any old idiot can give a lecture to a bunch of impressionable barely-teens from a book of instructions. Our country's education system thrive on this belief.

Then he got about asking us to tell him how the human immunodeficiency virus is transmitted, to check on what we already know. 'Unprotected sex', some one said. Alright. What else? Sharing needles, you say? Good, good...

It wasn't hard. Our government is pretty anal about health education, and those AIDS ads on the telly certainly helped. Those are stuff everyone knows.

"Breastfeeding. A baby can get AIDS from breastfeeding," I volunteered and the President looked right at me, a little taken back. Then he grinned, seemingly pleased that someone has gotten something wrong at last.

"Breastfeeding arh?" he said, making a big show of humouring me, "Maybe if the baby bite too hard and the nipple bleed."

He laughed at his own stupid little joke. Everyone laughed at his stupid little joke. I didn't, of course, but that's because I was busy feeling incensed and embarrassed at the time. But I know I was right. I read that from a directory of medical conditions which for whatever bizarre reason unknown, was sitting in the same cupboard as my encyclopedias and storybooks. It just appeared there one day. I got to ask my dad about it someday. But fact being, I was ridiculed for being right, by a classful of idiots led by an authority figure who refuse to entertain the possibility that, by Jove, some 14-year-old might know a little more about fucking AIDS than he does! He did not ask me where I came by that bit of information. He did not even had the decency to admit that he didn't know for sure, and that he would look it up.

A few weeks after that incident, I found myself in an English class. My English teacher was this tall Chinese guy who enjoys spending entire periods telling stories from his supposedly vast store of general knowledge, and only setting us a bit of homework in the last five minutes. So, you can imagine that he's quite popular amongst the students. That day, everyone was listening in rapt attention as he was telling us the origin story of Coca-Cola - citing a certain Dr. Pembrooke as its inventor. I know differently, of course. I once read in a trivia book I found lying around that it was a John Pemberton who did the inventing. Besides that, I also realised that he got a whole other sundry of details wrong, leading me to suspect that he fabricated a lot of the stuff he couldn't remember.

This time, however, I knew better than to speak out.