Memory and Fiction

 

It’s like one of those nights. I’d go for a beer after work and head home for my dinner, then go right off to sleep. You know, it could be one of those days when you probably are just feeling tired and you hope that all things will be okay when you wake up to a new day. Okay, old script. Oh, but I am not thinking of a mystical kind of grace that dawns in the morning sun which takes away the heaviness. Not like that. But perhaps a kind of unattainable grace, unforeseeable, beyond deconstruction. I called my friend and put off our appointment. What do you do when you feel that the world has continously walked out on you anyway?

Sometimes you want to tell the world that you intend to walk out on it. It feels good, for a while.

I stripped and stepped into the showers. The water was cold. A sensation I don’t really enjoy. But the change of temperature was helpful. I’ve ordered pizza and left it on the table. Outside, the TV was on, with the local news beaming.

I sat down on my couch. Gotham city is frantically seeking out a savior. The decadence of the city has reached its peak. Even law enforcers has become a B aN e to its people. The hero fell. Law and morality was indeed upheld by a lie. The white knight has re-emerged. But is this a knight the city needs or one which it deserves?

I don’t even remember how many times I dozed off on the couch. I got up. And found myself a new script. I need to help save Gotham City.

Filed under: polaroids

Danke Bandsmen!

I realize that a “speaker”’s work can be as didactic in its way as a sermon from a church’s pulpit. And I never believed that truth is learnt through instructive teaching or moralizing. It was certainly a challenge to slip into the same shoes again, as I did previously, and to facilitate a team leadership training for a group of 60 bandsmen. 10 years on and I’m thankful that I was able to reconnect with my base in the school band in which I was once very active. Of course, the team has come a long way and doing band now, as it turn out is far more trying than it was before.

The weather was a reminiscent of autumn in Osaka, minus the rain which poured adamantly throughout the whole weekend. I was glad that the team did more talking than I did, which to me was a good thing. And I was enormously taken in by the provocative opinions and the gracious acceptance demonstrated both by those from past and present. The formal salutations were, however pretty intimidating. Hopefully conversations like these will continue.

On a personal note, having gone through a really tiring month, I was really glad I made the trip. Found time and opportunity to:

1. Read David Sedaris’ When You are Engulfed in Flames which Sue lent me
2. Try a sip of Bear Beer which Joash recommended (how can anyone drink something like that?)
3. Have lunch at Smokehouse for the first time - cream of asparagus for startes and Rainbow Trout for main. Paid RM100 – the chinese would say ‘got into the pirates’ ship
4. Listen to Laura Fygi as I fall asleep
5. Learn to enjoy Sauerkraut at a German restaurant – eat them with lots of mustard sauce – would taste even better with a bottle of Riesling.

Filed under: community