Gesamtkunstwerk

yesterday, i read the nst from the day before, sunday.

this was due to my sunday having started from 5am after just 10 mins of sleep, and continuing round the clock. when i reached home, i showered, promptly collapsed, and missed dinner. i had joined bro on a petronas event at titiwangsa, hung around helping with setup (already started on saturday), and when the event really commenced... helped out in games. it was a huge-ass a&p and we were manning just one booth - the games/gift redemption booth. players show a receipt, spin a wheel of fortune and win either a notebook or lanyard or mousepad, or a chance to play cabaran rebutan or penalti. these games yield more attractive prizes - cash vouchers for primax3!

u can see it's the kids who're the ones interested in both games and the adults who're interested in just the football challenge... and u can see those who dunno what a mousepad is (or a mouse, for that matter), who're really uninterested, but their eyes take on a shrewd gleam when i tell them the stakes are petrol money. to some it's not a gift, it's a godsent saving off your weekly petrol dues. u learn something everyday, huh?

and yesterday, on page 11 of sunday's nst, i learnt...



diu! no wonder traffic jam lah! pokkaicibaishit diuniamagecaulanhai perodua! jam up our roads with this ugly myvi in so many gaudy shades, and they announce it in fullpage colour on a sunday! read: from march there's been 15 Thousand. More. of these kelisa mongrels on our highways. fuck! stupid fuck!

i believe there is more demand for higher lrt frequency instead. or an upgrade for putra trains. literal OverWhelming demand. don't buy a myvi. it'll earn u disfavour from the gods. oh btw, note small pic #3: "spacious boot area" and its revolutionary concept - a 2-seater car with a 3-door boot! seriously? i'm sick of seeing them. don't buy a myvi.

the great oak said, "i am strong."
the lalang conceded, "we are weak."
the great oak bragged, "i am better."

whereupon the storm rose and said, "judge not lest ye be judged", uprooted the oak, and smote him down. the lalang bent to the storm's violence, and he allowed them their puny, pitiful lives.

...but if u be strong And yet flexible, even by heaven's design u will reshape the earth.

lakes entrance.

as is pretty self-explanatory, this is where the sea meets the lakes of gippsland, which are actually lagoons cordoned off by ninety mile beach (that's no grammar mistake, that's the name of the place - Ninety Mile Beach. maybe i should use caps like normal people do). a picturesque south-eastern corner of australia, lakes entrance is, to the tourist eye, good for nothing more than holidays. and fishing.

even at the height of summer, coastal wind is always cold. that day it was cold, strong, and blew from 360 directions - evidence below. there was a little lane in a little gully where we took temporary shelter, which sloped up and dropped sharply, so that one moment u saw only sky, and next, the whole panorama of the beach.

that's what i noticed about aussie beaches (or maybe just those by the ocean), they're always two horizontal bars of brown and blue. not beautiful-pretty, but beautiful-wild. an awe-inspiring wild, with Truly Strong breakers clashing in blue wilderness, the vast expanse of water stretching, stretching out ahead, until u suddenly realize it also stretched Down, down as deep as it was far, that u discounted the ocean's volume for its area, but anyway if u head slightly east after a while it will be the great pacific, with the americas on the other side, nothing but water and cold and the desolate depths for a distance of maybe a third of the globe -

"ehhhhh take a picture takeapicturequick!"

snap.



nah. of course it didn't happen like that. of course i saw it first. wl never opens her eyes. i was already reaching for the camera when she so excitedly said "take a picture take a picture!" yeah, women. in case it's not clear, that's a single blade of grass bent near the bottom, the tip having inscribed its locus after being blown at all day. so pictures are more than a moment's capture. they go so far as to remind us that the wind that day was so strong and fickle that we suffered sand in our mouths. anyway, i just looked at the date and boy... 19th december... that's Hey, 6 months ago!

time flies. and time does funny things, even to pictures. 6 months ago when i saw that interesting phenomenon, all i thought about was the oak-and-grass parable, and my own smartarse epilogue-moral of the story. now... what i see is a clock-hand of nature, spinning furiously, wiping away the weeks and fleeting memories.

yesterday a blogpost appeared here, with a one-word title and an entry equally short (if not much shorter). let's not count the words (2), becoz i am good and patient and inherently positive, let's count the letters instead (11), and if u wanna add punctuation? fine, thirteen (13) characters.

it disappeared within minutes.

this event takes blogstasis to a revolutionary skyscraping height, or shall we say, low, becoz there's a limit even to my twisted positivity. lift a manhole and descend that tunnel, past the foetid methane and peaty sewage and keep going further down, till u reach hell and burrow even deeper; there u'll be about near this grade of low - not quite there yet. this event has engaged the static and put it in motion - backwards! what fucking audacity.

here i am, to in the wake of such negative, malignant practice and extreme stigma. i've been assigned to write 'easy reading' about a blade of grass, but i am now slightly worked up again and so will be back later.