The Psychonaut

On the Field of Mars

2012-02-14T00:20:00.000-08:00

The Armenian was a long way from home. The dead heat of the Azerbaijani deserts had given way to the foothills of the Taurus, which had in turn taken him to the very gates of the ancient heartland of the Greeks. In another universe, the Seleucids never survived the repeated incursions of the Romans and the Parthians, but in this, they ruled supreme over a contiguous stretch of land from Alexandria in Egypt to Apollonia on the Illyrian coast. They were allied with the Sauromatae, preserved an uneasy truce with the Thracians and were at perpetual war with the Romans: a relatively new foe in light of the destructive wars fought with the rival claimants of Alexander's empire.

That was ancient history now. The Parthians were but a footnote in history; the Pontics completely erased off the face of the known world; the Ptolemaics humbled before the the splendour of their ancient cities; to say nothing of the Antigonids nor the collective rabble of Grecian leagues that had posed the greatest challenge in their unstoppable conquest across Asia and Greece.

And here they were now, facing down the imminent threat from the nascent power across the Mediterranean. Rome was a relatively new power; by all accounts, their own empire included the wild western frontiers populated entirely by Celts and other uncultured barbarians. There was no loot nor riches to be found in such desolate, uncultivated territory, and so they had looked east to the cradle of the ancient world.

Diplomacy had not deterred the aggressors, and it had similarly failed to define the fluid borders where the two empires met. Several cities and towns had been wrested from the Romans, but not after bloody fighting in the narrow streets and confines had thinned out the hordes that had made the arduous crossing from Syria. A greater part of the Seleucid armies were comprised of mercenaries that they had acquired in their conquests; they counted Bedouin cavalrymen, Illyrian skirmishers and Greek mercenaries amongst their numbers.

It was one such army that the Armenian led out onto the field against the Romans. They held both the high ground and the numbers; his scouts reported the enemy to be at least three times his number. Reinforcements were half a day away for either side. The garrison at Apollonia and the campaigning army in the area were on their way, and so was another Roman army that had splashed ashore unopposed in the surf some distance to the west.

His small force was comprised entirely of mercenaries. Greek sellswords who had escaped the destruction of the last Antigonid stronghold at Thessalonica; Illyrian tribesmen who sought plunder and riches in the perpetual fighting that plagued the area; Bedouin bandits that had been roped in to see off the last of the Ptolemaic armies in the sands before the very pyramids themselves. Such a mix was not unique: it had been one such army that defeated the Roman garrisons in the area and stormed the port at Athens just the summer before. They were tough, experienced men, but they suffered from serious communication problems both on and off the field. None of them spoke the same language; even the Greeks were unable to understand the Macedonian dialect heavily diluted by decades of contact with the Persians and the Arabs.

But none of that really mattered just then. The Armenian drew up his small force on a hillock in the valley, setting the hoplites in front with the archers in the rear. The cavalry were positioned on the left flank; he preferred to concentrate his cavalry where it could do the most damage in flanking actions to the rear of the Romans. He knew their tactics and their preferred style of fighting; they were most unlike the Persians in that they relied heavily on infantry and whatever cavalry they possessed was often next to worthless on the field, even against his lightly armoured Bedouins.

The Romans began the approach down the valley slopes. He counted several militia units and even more of the heavy principes that had fought the redoubtable Thracians to a standstill at Thessalonica. Those were truly feared, to be sure; they had a cold, unwavering discipline in battle that even the best hoplites could not hope to match. And there were many of them: this was the first time he had seen that many principes fielded by a Roman army.

The archers marked their distances and opened fire. Their arrowheads were wrapped in cloths and dipped in tar, and now they lit the fearsome missiles before taking aim at the oncoming Romans. Several volleys of flaming death started small fires amidst the marching Romans, who showed no apparent reaction to the terrifying spectacle before them. The Armenian knew what it felt like to be marching into the storm of death: the Persians were the undisputed masters of the bow and arrow, and many of his men had lost an eye or two in the earlier conquests of the east.

The Roman cavalry had broken off from the main body and now threatened to outflank his phalanxes on either side. He was not unduly worried, and trusted them to hold their own against the equites who served purely to distract and worry inexperienced commanders. The Roman archers, however, were coming within range and threatening to break up his formations with their bows and he led the cavalry out onto the field to disperse them. They retreated into the principes who hardly broke a stride in the thunderous approach of the Greek horses, and the Armenian withdrew before they could surround and isolate him from the rest of his army.

Meanwhile, the foolhardy equites had attempted to charge his phalanxes and were routed. The band on the right flank had run into the spears of his hoplites and were similarly routed after a one-sided contest for absolutely no casualties on his forces' part; however, the bulk of the Roman army had arrived and with a slight pause to rearrange their lines, charged straight for his mercenaries' spears. His skirmishers were kept busy fending off more cavalry charges from the rear while his archers were firing point blank at the Roman infantry where possible. It seemed that they were about to be overwhelmed; the sheer weight of numbers forced more Romans onto and past the hoplites' spears, whereupon they drew their short swords and engaged them in hand-to-hand combat.

They could not hope to win against the Romans in that manner. The Romans had perfected the art of infantry fighting in the Gallic forests and Punic plains; they merely closed ranks, locked shields and lashed out with their short swords. As long as the tight formation held, fighting against them was like water dashing against a rock: they were literally invulnerable. The Armenian gathered his cavalry and rode round the back in attempt to attack the occupied Romans from the rear.

It was then that the Roman commander rode straight into the melee; the shock of the heavy cavalry charge through his own troops dashed them aside and onto the spear points of the hoplites who had not broken formation yet. The powerful charge took him right through them and into the ranks of the bowmen, who did not miss the opportunity to unhorse the commander's bodyguard at close range. Surrounded on all sides by hostile enemies, the Roman commander retreated right back through the same path he had carved into the Greeks and rode off the field.

The Roman forces were at a complete loss by the sudden turn of events and the lighter infantry began to rout in turn, having been unable to get past the dogged phalanxes. Some of the Greek peltasts had quietly began to retreat themselves after the principes had outflanked the hoplites and assaulted them from behind; they rallied a short distance from the fray and returned to harry the Romans' flanks. The Armenian himself had forced the principes into retreat several times by charging, withdrawing a short distance and charging again. The impact of the charge was not suited for the lighter Greek cavalry and eventually the Bedouins broke and fled, having been unable to withstand the heavy armour and shields of the Romans. But the battle was going in their favour, and he gave the order for a general advance when he adjudged the Romans to be wavering. The hoplites tossed aside their long spears, drew their swords and pitched right into combat against the principes, who could not withstand the assault and fled.

But as they drove the Romans before them, the Greeks spotted a disconcerting sight in the valley beneath: the appearance of the other Roman army. The other army was larger and possessed more cavalry, and the Armenian halted the advance in order for them to regroup and face this new threat. The other army had been beaten, and the survivors streamed back up the valley slopes. They did not retreat off the field entirely, however, and he was dismayed to find that they had formed up in the battle formation again. His small force had been whittled down to almost nothing. Most of his men lay dead or dying in the small copse of trees atop the hillock; while there were more Roman bodies than Greek, it was small comfort knowing that they would probably not survive any longer than their dead comrades. The vultures had already begun to land and pick at them, and in light of the fresh enemy reinforcements it was all they could do to stand and not run.

The Armenian cast about desperately for his own reinforcements. To the north, he could vaguely make out the banners of the campaigning army in the area; to the south, the Apollonia garrison was within reach, but not before the Romans could and by which time it would be too late for them. Most of his men had followed him across the Hellespont after the fall of Halicarnassus; they acknowledged his leadership and command skills, but they were still mercenaries nonetheless and they owed him no loyalty other than the coin he paid them. He was inwardly surprised that they had not already fled in the face of overwhelming death and defeat.

It was over within minutes. The despised Roman cavalry overwhelmed them, and scattered them like leaves before the wind; they rode down the survivors and chased the Armenian some distance off the field. He alone had survived; his command had evaporated under the Roman assault.

That the Seleucids eventually defeated two numerically superior Roman armies consecutively on the same field was recorded as a great feat in later years by historians and scholars; the reinforcements arrived and virtually none of the Romans survived to bring news of the terrible defeat to Rome. The Armenian received a commendation and a princely reward for his role in the battle, but he could never bring himself to command another army in the field again for many years after. His name was Aristobulos, and he would lead the triumphant Seleucids through the streets of Rome as both emperor and conqueror of a great Mediterranean empire.

***

Fiction aside, I really did have the fight of my life on my hands after I cornered two Roman legions outside Apollonia this afternoon. I didn't expect any miracles with the mercenary armies and in fact had my fingers crossed that the Greek regulars would arrive (even then, they would still outnumber me 2:1). The mercenaries put up a better show than expected and were singlehandedly responsible for the defeat of the first Roman legion, while the second also fell before the Apollonia garrison which was also comprised entirely of mercenaries. It left them severely depleted, however, and the Romans returned to lay siege to Apollonia later on. By the by, the commander really was Aristobulos the Armenian, and he alone survived the destruction of his army.

Antiquity

2012-02-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

While The Great Arab Conquests might not prove nowhere near as insightful or as voluminous as ever-reliable Wikipedia, it is still a useful read to bring along on afternoon sushi quests.

One thing struck me in particular as I finished off the sashimi: the Israelites were also a ragtag band of peasants and tribesmen who, unified in their religious zealotry, also went on to lay waste to the established civilisations in the Levant. Unlike the Arabs, however, they did not make peace with the inhabitants (the peaceful option was a choice between accepting Islam or buying them off with regular tributes) and totally slaughtered every last man, woman and child in the cities that lay in their path. Most of the time, at least; there are one or two occasions in the Bible where it is recorded that they did not, and were accordingly punished as a result.

Islam came nearly 600 years after Christ and in the wake of a devastating war between the two regional heavyweights at the time: the Byzantines and the Sassanid Persians. In contrast, the Canaanites were probably peacefully herpderping around at the time the Israelites came out of nowhere to bring the wrath of the Lord against them. There was an established ruling authority in the region, unlike the devastated and depopulated Roman provinces that were only too happy to welcome an alternative to the iron fist of Constantinople. They weren't divided along sectarian lines either. The early Coptic Christians and the Council of Chalcedon didn't get along too well, and with the latter being the official version approved by the emperor it could most certainly be said that the Copts were not completely averse to providing the Arab armies with assistance.

Historical parallels aside, the book doesn't really touch on how the wild men of the Arabian peninsula managed to inflict consecutive defeats on the imperial armies of the respective empires. They were fighting against professional soldiers: fighting men with superior equipment, training and discipline that somehow managed to fall to pieces in the face of inspired religious fervour. That said, the Arabs employed some pretty ingenious battlefield tactics and put their cavalry to good use; all told, there probably also really wasn't much of a technological disparity in a time before guns, tanks and planes.

I haven't finished the book, and I probably won't seeing as how I've still got some Ruby to catch up on. Most of it draws on ancient Islamic narratives that have been embellished - beautifully, I might add - and which have to be taken with a pinch of salt: the imperial armies probably never chained their soldiers together to prevent them from retreating, and they probably never did scatter caltrops behind their cavalry to prevent the same either. Drawing the line between metaphor and actual reportage can be a little sketchy at times, and it makes it all the more difficult when there aren't any sources from the same time period to assist in further corroboration.

Weekend Reading
NASA invents a capsule for astronauts that could also possibly save the world; the future is almost upon us. I still don't like anything to do with needles, though.

The RIAA head honcho gets pissed (at the wrong people, too) that his SOPA got shot down; the original New York Times leader required a login, so here's a commentary.

A romanticised tale of Sisyphus; I vaguely remember the dude who had to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity as a sort of punishment in Hell. I'm not sure if this adds to the tale or further refines it, though.

Explaining a famous Japanese phrase: so desu ne; what a wonderful phrase. The -u suffix is supposed to be silent - one of the many wonderfully random things that one learns in the army.

A follow-up of sorts to the excellent New York Times article on Apple and job creation; I might have been serious when I told the doctor I wanted to write for the New York Times. Okay, so maybe half-serious.

Vice.com checks out North Korean labour camps; all I've got to say is, cool story bro. And I mean it.

Weekend Watching
Dateline Pyongyang; the famous North Korean newsreader Lee Chun Hee is calling it a day on a career that has seen her cover the deaths of both Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.

It's not rocket science; I'll give you a dollar if you didn't laugh at this.

What Skyrim could have been; damned if they make it a DLC, damned again because I could probably do it on my own with the official mod kit - if I had a PC.

I had no idea a song with Nicki Minaj in it could be this good; obviously the original MV (if it had one) probably didn't come anywhere close to being this awesome. It's the same guy, only different beard.

WARNING: not suitable if you're prone to photosensitive seizures; apparently this guy makes pretty good movies too.

Weekend Visiting
canv.as; from the guy who brought us 4chan and /b/.

F.A.T; a directory of D.I.Y indie.

iPhoneography; this is officially my new favourite hangout.

illicitwords; finally, a tumblr that I like and can actually relate to.

For Science

2012-02-10T04:16:00.000-08:00

It's probably not very accurate, but I've spent the last three weeks in the psychological equivalent of solitary confinement. I haven't talked to or met anyone - shit, I haven't left the house to do anything except feed myself and occasionally drive around some industrial park in the afternoon when I'm not looking.

Then one day I had to go back down to the village for a spot of work (some succession issues) and next thing I knew, boom - interviews, birthday celebration, etc. etc.

I'm not stressed, and I'm not (well, technically speaking) incapacitated anymore. Going out and doing things with other people doesn't come to me naturally - not like it does to some people who apparently can't do anything without several hundred fellow participants and a thousand more in witnesses both on the scene and on Facebook. I like doing things alone. I don't know why. Maybe it's some Freudian in-built psychological defense mechanism, maybe it's because I was dropped on my head at birth, maybe it's because no one can actually understand me when I speak up, maybe it's because I'm selfish and really like keeping good things to myself.

The point being is that I haven't really seen a point in doing things with other people so far. Not for a lack of trying, though; after all, Skyrim doesn't have multiplayer anyway.

Manifest Destiny

2012-02-09T17:21:00.000-08:00

That feel when you finally finish a game and don't know how to answer the appropriate corollary: What next? so I finally decided to get some employment, sell the damn machine and finish all those books that I'd marked for sale before they collect too much silverfish. I might have felt slightly more guilty about it all had it not been for appendicitis; in retrospect, it really was probably the best thing to have possibly happened to me in these uncertain times.

But I'm just kidding. There are always things to be done, at any rate: every day that you wake up and wonder what happened to the last is a finely honed Apollonian response to the spontaneity that freedom offers, and not something that can be unlearned after nigh on a decade of being in thrall to it. Good morning, Seoul. I'm on my way.

The Professionals

2012-01-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

"That's just your body juices," he remarked cheerfully. "Absolutely nothing to worry about." I'd never heard of body juice before and only managed to prevent myself from asking a very stupid question by answering that yes, I hoped to write for the New York Times some day and no, I was still unemployed. For now.

People are obsessed with time. Doing lots of things now so that you don't have to do lots of things later is probably more of a psychological crutch than expedient course of action. That's the real unemployment paradox, right there: free time is highly overrated. All the same, it probably depends on who you ask. I haven't really given much thought to it and I don't think I ever will.

"Yeah, they write really well," he continued. He filled a small metal canteen with a purple liquid and dipped some gauze in it. "Don't join the local papers. They're absolute rubbish." I grunted - always a reliably neutral response - and sucked in my gut as he dabbed away at the stitches. "That kind of goes with being a politico, eh? Not that you get to write a lot about it anyway." I said nothing again and he wiped up with an adroit motion that belied the years spent on the job. You really had to wonder how much shit he'd seen.

To be honest, I didn't give two craps about being a journalist - not then, and not now. And probably not ever. I never know what to tell people who pop the golden question. I'm too old to be an astronaut, too young to be president, too stupid to be a doctor and too smart to be a rock star.

I don't know. Maybe I never will. And I don't think it actually matters, at any rate: you're not defined by what you do. Just like how the mere act of going to church doesn't make you any more religious than the next Joe. But right now, I'm just content to sit, write and wipe the odd trickle of body juice off my tummy.

Plans

2012-01-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

It was brief, but appropriately intense: I'm technically bed-ridden, but I'm making plans to go out and do stuff like I'm not. Most of the personal shiznit has gotten overturned in favour of groupthink - two or more are often better than one when it comes to things like these - but I'm not complaining and we'll see how it works out.

I don't like working on projects with people I already know. If past experience is anything to go by, it usually doesn't work out well. Money is the new 4.0: yet another collective aim to live by and die for. I hate it. It allows you to look into what makes other people tick with a depth and clarity that is thoroughly revolting in its own right: a lot of things that go into making relationships work (on all levels) are, unsurprisingly, the abilities to tacitly hide your own flaws and politely disregard that of others.

That's the sad truth. And with friends, you already know too much about them to do so.

Here's a couple of nice videos to lighten the mood. I'm off the painkillers tonight, so T-ara will have to fill in.

'We Were in Love' is a collaboration between CCM labelmates T-ara and Davichi. Vaguely remember hearing it somewhere in the background of that epic 20-min. 'Lovey Dovey' MV when it wasn't playing some other strange club sample on loop.
I've heard a lot about the infamous dance routine ever since it first premiered at last year's MAMA, but never really took the time to check it out. HyunA just keeps going from strength to strength: say what you will about her unconscionably provocative moves, but they were designed to entertain after all and I have to admit that I was very entertained.

Post-haste

2012-01-25T04:20:00.000-08:00

I probably popped a stitch or two while coughing. Coughing's an annoying habit that I'm trying to pass off as a by-product of that nefarious seven-to-eleven, Monday-to-Saturday construction site across the street: I only ever cough when I'm at home and not least when I'm in my bedroom.

Post-recovery chores aside, Seoul won't be planning itself (after the semi-fiasco that was Kyoto - in my defense, I did look up a few things on Wikipedia) and that Skyrim build is probably going to be at least three months' work. Three months' pay, wherever it's coming from; I'm still on the unemployed rolls - for now - and once I can lie down without burping up lunch I'll probably check back on those classified listings.

Skin is getting itchy under the dressings. I changed them today, and I could've sworn that they sewed my belly-button right back on to me. My navel isn't the wrinkly, knobby stub of flesh that most people have. Mine's a veritable crater punched right in the middle of my tummy with its own microscopic canals and windblasted features set in the crater walls.

There you have it - I do a lot of navel-gazing in my spare time, but it's no bad thing really. I get a lot of thinking done on the side - what to eat for breakfast, where to look for lunch and so on. I've been considering suicide too. Not to myself per se, but as an objective activity on its own: the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is a thoroughly excellent manga that breaks from the traditional ninja/giant-robot/hentai/whatever story arc and presents death in a way that will grip your imagination.

Anyhow, better get back to catching up on my correspondence. Need to notify nearest and dearest that rumours of my incapacitation have been greatly exaggerated.

Appendicitis

2012-01-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

The funny, slightly familiar feeling in his tummy eventually gave way over several CSS tutorials and he found himself in the toilet attempting to pass nothing. I told you not to eat that crap, said Mom. You just never listen. But it wasn't any ordinary knife in the guts, and he writhed on the bed as she calmly ironed the day's laundry. The television eagerly announced the programming for the upcoming festivities, and he groaned something unintelligible.

There wasn't any bowel movement. No rumbling, no distending and certainly no hint of the pockets of gas that would have given it away as a textbook case of food poisoning or stomach flu. He knew them well; well enough to be able to pass the diagnosis himself when a Beijing doctor refused to. But this was something new, and altogether infinitely more painful than anything he'd ever experienced before. The localised stabs of pain had metamorphosed into what he thought seppuku would conceivably feel like; he grunted and staggered back into his room.

It was dark when he woke up. He'd slept through the pain - which had surprisingly vanished without a trace - and promptly sat up.

Big mistake.

Several dry heaves and some nauseated staggering later, the family physician pegged it as a case of acute appendicitis and sent him on his way to the hospital. Hospital meant surgery; meant needles; meant blood; meant lots of time wasted sitting and waiting for something to happen. That had been his previous experiences, at any rate: he remembered the time he'd almost received a double dosage of painkillers by accident at a public hospital and shuddered.

They'd have to do a blood test. Strictly unnecessary, but still necessary nonetheless in some inexplicably medical display of double-redundancy. He didn't like blood tests. He wasn't afraid of needles, just the pain that came with them as nurses tried to mine his arms with them in search of his veins. Good skin. It was a both a blessing and a curse - "You're just too damn fat," said Mom - and given the number of times he'd had his blood tested over the last few months he was beginning to think that it was most definitely a curse.

The nurse took a tourniquet out of her pocket and strapped it around his bicep. It wasn't very tight and as he flexed his fingers he wondered how long it was going to take and how far it was going to go - he didn't mind drawing from the slower vein in his left arm so long as they didn't take it from the back of the hand. Not to mention that he was already trembling hard from the pain in his abdomen; he thought of the time he'd nearly died in Taiwan at the hands of an inept medic and promptly sucked in several deep breaths.

It was a thin needle, and he felt no pain as it slid in and out of his skin. Again. And again. He stared as the cold steel shaft sank in three-quarters of the way into the crook of his arm, and felt the alien sensation of movement under his skin as the nurse searched for blood. She'd withdrawn the plunger several times already, and each time she'd drawn nothing but empty air.

"You worse than 82-year old woman," the nurse remarked. "Okay, we gonna try this instead. I put the plug in the back of your hand. They gonna need it if you surgery, but if not we just take it out. Okay?"

All he could think of to ask was, "How big is the needle gonna be?" He recalled the field equivalent of a 16cc to a Yakult straw and asked again, "How big?"

In retrospect, the size probably didn't matter so much as what she did with the needle. The skin on the back of his hand was a lot thinner, and probably had a lot more nerves - he hissed and hyperventilated as she dug. Hard. The slight promise of a single drop of blood was interpreted as a good omen, and they began a precarious balancing act as he tried not to move in spite of his pain while she tried to draw blood with one hand as the other kept the slim tip of the needle in the vein.

At the moment of truth the doctor walked in the door and she looked up, breaking the skin and spilling the blood on the floor. "Can't find the vein? It's alright, let me do a check and see," he said. The doctor took several well-aimed pokes and produced a final diagnosis that effectively negated the last one hour of blinding pain. "I'll call up the anaesthetist and see what we can do about an operation at, say, midnight," he said, glancing at his watch. "It'll be a quick and easy job and you should be home by tomorrow. Come to think of it, jolly good thing it's Friday and not any later or you'd have to miss all the fun."

As he was leaving, the doctor stopped and turned. "Oh, and one more thing. I'm giving you some morphine - that ought to take some of the edge of the pain, eh?" He winked. Morphine. The ultimate opioid. The painkiller without parallel. For some reason all he could think of was Hermann Göering and how he got addicted to it while convalescing at a hospital for a wound; how, why and when were presently beyond him and he was still turning it over in his mind when another nurse came in with two syringes and asked him, would you please turn over. The shots are going in your ass.

Strictly the bowdlerised version, but that was what he'd heard nonetheless. "Dude, you're kidding. I have appendicitis. It hurts," he gasped. But the nurse wouldn't have it any other way - something about the butt being fast-acting, whatever that meant - and he reflexively clenched his gluteals as the needle went in. The pain score instantly went from 1 to 11, and the nurse mumbled something along the lines of an apology as he hissed at the unexpected surprise from behind.

The nurse got one thing right, though. The morphine hit him quick and before he knew it he'd drifted off into the junkie's sleep: a calm, buoyant sensation that washed over him in warm waves and gently massaged him into a semi-conscious oblivion. The ambient conversation faded to a low, dull throb; the fluorescent lights overhead coalesced into a magnified, grey blur behind his eyelids; his body felt indescribably at ease in a way that defied anything he could ever think of that came close. Not that he was even thinking: the pain had blanched away to an inconstant, irregular stab in the side and the strained touch he'd built up in his gut from packing it in all day had loosened into the void.

But the morphine had been timed to last for the few short hours in which he waited whilst the operating theatre was being prepared. They needed him fully alert and conscious so they could knock him out again - this time with propofol - and he shivered from the cold as they wheeled him through and up several flights into the anaesthetist's hands. "That's a pretty big book you're carrying," he told the anaesthetist, who replied that it was already his ninth and he'd better get started on it or he'd never finish it. "I know, right? That's how it always is," he said to no one in particular. The after-effects of the morphine had left him a little slow and he still wasn't quite sure where he was until the nurse started slapping the back of his hand again. "His veins are hard to find," the doctor remarked. He'd appeared out of nowhere from behind and slapped his shoulder. "You'll be fine, young man." The anaesthetist took over, gave up after one try and stuck the IV plug in his hand anyway. That's the same stuff they gave Michael Jackson, said the anaesthetist. It helps when you wake up. Less nausea, less vomiting and all that jazz. You wouldn't want to be vomiting after an operation like this anyway.

"Did you know, he was in Australia with me," said the doctor to nobody in particular. "We had the same commanding officer." And that was the last thing he remembered before waking up back in a tiny, cramped ward that had nothing to it but an appropriately tiny television set and a tiny, disembodied voice choking and coughing up phlegm. The operation was done. He lifted up his hospital gown to find three tiny white gauze pads placed in a neat formation on his tummy; it hurt, to be sure, but only when he tried to cough or move.

That's it. He'd done it. Achievement Unlocked: Get Appendicitis. Like a sort of stupid square life goal that he'd tick off on a to-do list he refreshed every quarter or so. He snorted at the thought, and reflexively clutched at the sharp stab of pain. It would definitely take some getting used to.

It wasn't the first time he'd been hospitalised, though. Upon further reflection, it was eerily funny how shit like that happened almost once every five years. The last time he was in a hospital ward was for tearing out his toenails on the flagstones while attempting to execute a football tackle whilst barefoot; to be fair, he thoroughly deserved that and he never kicked a ball again after that. Not even with shoes on.

Not to mention the one before that either, which had been for a toe fracture. A toe. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the kind of injury you boasted about to your friends, but at the time it really did hurt like hell. He still remembered the swelling and the blue-black of a genuine bruise (getting pinched for not doing his homework probably came a close second) and the shock when they found out that it was a bone fracture. A really tiny bone in the joint that took three weeks in a splint and slippers to heal: school was a lot more exciting back then.

But that was it. He'd gotten appendicitis, went under the knife and he would be thoroughly damned if he wasn't going to get a proper night's sleep for the first time in nearly 36 hours. Morphine, he thought as he drifted off. Morphine is a hell of a drug.

#2

2012-01-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

I'm here because I'm not sure I like tumblr. There's too many pictures, too much pretense and too little emotion. Genuine emotion: not the sort you find hiding beneath horn-rimmed glasses, skinny jeans and blue ribbon Pabst. It's not even nice.

I've been doing a bit of freelance journalism after getting discharged. It's nothing much - a bit of urban photography here and there from my travels and around the neighbourhood, and some slightly more serious stuff on music. Music - a toss-up between indie and K-pop. Make that local indie music; anyone who can string three chords together on a guitar and has decent vocal chords always has to go ahead and ruin it by being out there. Experimental. You wouldn't understand.

Damn right I don't. But when I'm not busy with contributions or working towards that gold-plated M60E4, I'm can usually be found lurking on the K-pop and ancient Rome subreddits. Life is good, and I'm trying to keep it that way for as long as possible.

/edit: Looking into getting a serious job - need monies. While helping to craft history notes at a tuition centre isn't exactly in keeping with my philosophy these days, an empty wallet hurts a lot more than getting pwned 7500-150 in Drop Zone.

#1

2012-01-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

I can never get past the CAPTCHA on the first try. And I'm not even a robot.

The Old Republic

2012-01-09T00:03:00.000-08:00

I've lived too much of my life on the Internet. Sometimes the odd bit of memory floats by in a flash of association or the occasional lucky Google; places, faces and things that never really had a name save in whispered intimacy for two. More often than not, though, it doesn't really register: not a lot has happened for emotional digression - nor that for mental gymnastics - just the slow corruption of physical, solid-state memory. Stuff that grows beards and smells like old man ointment and cigarettes along with grainy pictures of absolutely nothing in particular. Je ne regrette rien, except that I probably wasn't stupid enough. Because you only get one chance at being a teenager, and no more: everything else is the unvarnished truth.

I did always wonder what it'd be like to come home to people I haven't seen or spoken to in years. Five years is a long time: cancer, divorce, move halfway round the world et al. with the occasional variation on the same theme. Would you remember me - the kid with the round glasses and the bad haircut, and of whom you had no idea what to make of - the rambles on anything and everything because he was too damn awkward to talk about anything else. To whom you poured out your heart and soul at 4am in the rain on the corner because no one came close to understanding the pain and humiliation of Prozac, rape and a strange love spawned a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: so I grew up some. I finished school and enlisted. I stopped writing and started taking pictures instead. Shit, even my hair grew out. I'm no one - I've haven't been anyone since - and I was never a soldier any more than the Jedi Knight I pretended to be. I don't know where you are anymore, or what's become of you. But I haven't forgotten you.

And I don't think I ever will.

Christmas Comfort

2011-12-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

Today we celebrated the gift of eternal life by summoning death in all its 1080i glory.

Before the End

2011-04-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

He didn't know what it was, but he liked to do it so he could call him Johnny-thrice-damned, Johnny-come-lately. Johnny-tell-all, even. It didn't make any sense, but then again it never had to – there was no sense to be had in trying to reason with him. His wife had learned the hard way when she finally decided to get up and leave him, frail and withered at all of eighty years in the wheelchair and wrapped in a bundle of his own filth. There were some people you disliked, even hated – but none came as close as the old man sitting alone in his tiny home on Third Street.

Oy, quipped The Jew. No news is good news. Maybe he went to heaven after all, he said.

You might go to hell for saying that, his friend retorted. He had all that money and what did he do with it? Being rich won't get you nothing, he declared emphatically. Nothing, he repeated for emphasis. The Jew hummed a little ditty and said nothing. Silence is the better part of valour, or was it something else? He knew it started with a 'D', as in 'dawg'. Whatever that meant. Dawg is the better part of valour. He was sure Big Daddy could tell him a thing or two about that.

***

“No, Chad,” he muttered under his breath. “I don't like surprises.” Chad said nothing and continued to look down the street. It was a quiet day on their corner of the boulevard, and he popped the kinks in his neck.

“That's disgusting,” said Chad. At the rate they were going, they might as well have stopped over and carjacked the old bastard instead. He'd cackled and given them the one-fingered salute (“No, no French. No!”) as he sped off down the interstate, and only then had they realised the gig was well and truly up.

“That's enlightening,” he remarked. “Now shut up.”

They'd left the second quarter the day before the riots started; smoke tinged with the sharp smell of cordite occasionally wafted over the small hillock that formed the arbitrary rural-urban border. Percussive material was extremely rare in this day and age, but judging from the thick quality of the smog that billowed over the rest of the zone, the lay public had had no qualms about breaking into the municipal museum and arming themselves. They'd heard rumours that there were a sizeable number of discharged troopers among the rioters: disenfranchised and disillusioned men who'd been abandoned at the first opportunity by a Republic eager to shed its warmongering image, and who were more than capable of re-creating the horrors they'd fought through.

He would know. He'd seen it all, and more besides; he'd led some of them through hell itself and back.

But that was then. He had no intention of being associated with any one of those murderers and thieves who'd plundered the tombs and desecrated the shrines in the tundra with plasma fire and blued steel, not at all. That was strictly in the past.

The wind changed and for a moment he could've sworn on the jewels of the nineteenth priesthood that he'd tasted the sickly-sweet tang of pomonas. He retched involuntarily; his gut subconsciously turning tricks at the ingrained nightmares of men clawing at their faces as their eyes melted into pools of liquid fire in their sockets. That had been the first and the last time they'd tried the chemical warfare of their great-grandfathers: the winds had abruptly changed direction, and blown the gas back into their own positions. The trenches at the drift were still full of bodies tagged with the CONTAMINATION: DANGER symbol, and were strictly off-limits to anyone without a level three suit.

“Holy shit,” he gasped. Chad burped and laid the M-60 on the asphalt. In the dying light from the conjoined suns it was still possible to have a clear line of sight all the way down to the beach, which reminded him a little of Redondo and the crazy old bastard who'd abandoned them in the middle of the desert. The palm trees moved with the sea breeze; he closed his eyes for a moment in silent memory of a home he'd left to rot all those years ago. “Did you smell that?”

“Smell what?” grunted Chad. He didn't open his eyes.

“Smell this,” he said, and started the engine. As if on cue, there was a roar of fury from over the radio set. “That's right, bitch,” Chad whooped exuberantly. They high-fived each other and yelled back in response, “No French!”

***

French wasn't a language, nor was it a quasi-religion practiced by a particular race of sybarites who, inexplicably, never suffered from the ailments that plagued other people when they tried the same destructive lifestyle: it was a person, wholly and utterly unrelated to their hipster cause, and who never really learned the finer nuances of conjugal verbs in the company of attractive women.

French was an astronaut. He wasn't just any astronaut, mind you; he was the best damned astronaut this side of the geosynchronous orbit of the PHALANX mission, and everyone else who thought otherwise could go tell it to Boyd whose body lay in state in the engine room. Boyd was a pretty decent chap – right up to the moment he died – and had never given French any cause for grief, either real or imagined. You never knew who might be listening to you out there. Sometimes he played The Calling over the radio and sang along as loud as he could, just for the hell of it. Boyd would always cut the tape after the first chorus, which he didn't really like anyway and therefore didn't mind, but it was still damnably annoying (not to mention incredibly rude) to turn it off like that in mid-song. Boyd always knew he would get hell from him when he re-entered the station but that didn't stop him from doing it all the time anyway.

French didn't like women. Once he'd slapped a bitch at IHOP because he got maple instead of honey (what the hell does maple taste like, anyway?) and she had the cheek (ha, ha) to scream. They'd given him ten-to-two for that, and they'd almost taken his wings – but! But.

But nobody takes French's wings, no. He'd laid the smackdown on Boyd when he tried to touch them, and once he'd curb-stomped some dirty bastard in the alley who tried to snatch them off his chest. He wore them everywhere, on just about anything imaginable: some might think it disrespectful to wear it with a grubby, stained singlet to the local whore's, but to French's mind it was disrespectful not to wear it at all. If at all: he'd stolen Boyd's wings and flushed them out into orbit the night before, and laughed to himself when the silly bastard wet himself trying to find them.

French didn't really like being an astronaut. It was grinding work, to be honest, and French didn't like grinding work. Numbers and symbols were making less and less sense with every passing day out here. What did it mean to pass a day out here, anyway? The sun was always shining in your face, even when it read 23:59 on the damned electronic clock. The only darkness to be had around here was in the engine room where he'd kept Boyd. Boyd didn't like the sun either; he kept complaining about how it was so bloody annoying, and French didn't like people who complained. Not least when they complained in that uppity East Coast accent so thick it was damned near impossible to understand them; once, he'd urinated in the clam chowder just for fun and slapped Boyd when he tried to complain about it. That meant that they would have to go without food for the next three weeks, but what was life if you couldn't have a laugh at its expense every now and then? Seriously.

French was hungry. Boyd had eaten all the rations aboard, the greedy bastard. He didn't like clam chowder, but it didn't really taste like clam chowder when you closed your eyes and pretended it was something else, like beef stroganoff. Yeah. Beef stroganoff. He hadn't had beef stroganoff in a long while. It was hard enough imagining that he was living a normal life aboard the station, let alone eating beef stroganoff when he actually wasn't. He hated it when people told him no. You're not. It isn't. That's not how it is. Boyd was one of those annoying bastards who liked to tell him no.

So when mission control asked what in hell Boyd was doing, floating limp and lifeless and bouncing off the walls in the engine room, French told them no. I don't know.

And he smiled.

Push

2011-04-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

Left early for a haircut and a thunderstorm after; didn't want to hang around doing nothing for a second straight day. On the plus side, I figured out how to work Garageband. It's completely sweet - I did this after attempting (and failing) to create a mashup of 2NE1's You & I and Here Without You by 3 Doors Down. All I managed to get out of three hours' work was a pretty decent attempt at putting the chorus progression of C#maj - G#maj - Bbm - F#maj to the middle of the verse. Here Without You is slightly slower than than You & I, so the de-sync is a little obvious between phrases - but! it still sounds pretty awesome nonetheless.

I plucked Kevin Starr's book on California out of the library over the weekend - gangs, drugs, Hollywood and the surreal shallowness of it all aside, it really is the land of the toned, tanned, fit and ready.

Werk Werk

2011-04-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

office - busy; did a lot of write-ups for meetings that didn't really have anything to do with me amongst a whole lot of other miscellaneous stuff that will eventually secure the future of our country.

music - 2NE1 jjang. BIGBANG is pretty good too - they did an incredibly catchy song with 2NE1 that's made it to the Top 100 in my iPod. I didn't know that T.O.P was actually the angsty dude in 71-Into The Fire.

games - I have a copy of World in Conflict lying somewhere around the house. I can't find it, but when I do I will go back to kicking some serious ass. On another note, I'm trying to look for a copy of CoD4; apparently it's a lot better on the whole than MW2.

leave - probably Seoul sometime in the third week of the month, inshallah.

Silver Screen

2011-03-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
I don't expect much out of movies that attempt to incorporate a hipster vibe - think (500) Days of Summer, but that was way better - and this was (at best) a fun way to pass the evening with. The scripting was otherwise pretentious and the acting terribly staid.

When Trumpets Fade
A HBO movie I discovered on Wikipedia whilst looking for real-life examples of PTSD a lá Catch-22. Set designs are horrifically realistic, right down to the bloodstains in the mud and the props used - one particularly arresting scene was of the men lighting the flamethrowers with Zippos under heavy enemy fire.

Children of Men
Not your usual sci-fi action flick in that it doesn't subscribe to the same rules of capturing notable moments - the camera POV doesn't change, so it lacks that emphasised effect that Hollywood usually has when people die or something important happens. As it stands, it lends it that OMGWTFBBQDIDYOUSEETHAT effect usually seen only in found footage videos. Minor plot holes aside, a decent entertainer that doesn't have any of those preachy ethical or environmental overtones that people are so enamoured of these days.

Coffee and Cigarettes
I gave up after the Iggy Pop sketch - it was starting to become a laboured exercise in ostentatious attempts at reading between the lines - and to be honest, was nowhere as near as 'witty' or as 'humourous' as the reviewers claimed. In retrospect, it was probably one of those annoying films that attempt to poke fun at themselves.

Cinema Paradiso
This is easily the best movie I've seen in a long, long while - forget Inception, The Hurt Locker or anything else in recent years. They don't make movies like this anymore. The marathon 3-hour length aside, it is at once poignant, funny and touching in its portrayal of the protagonist's lifelong love of film and its impact on his life. This one gets six stars and three thumbs up. Highly recommended.

Funky Monks
A documentary on the making of what is, in my opinion, the greatest funk-rock album of all time: Blood Sugar Sex Magik. This ought to be on the list of albums You Must Listen To Before You Die, and I think it actually is - with extremely good reason. Keep an eye out for unbelievably quotable quotes from John Frusciante.

Good Friday

2011-03-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

I used to have a free bus ticket - courtesy of a rather excitable bus driver who handed them out as we boarded another (working) bus. Wary of this sudden throwback to another day and age in which the paper was worth more than the words printed on it, I made to scan my pass but was waved away by the new driver. Both men spoke in the thick, indecipherable argot of the hinterland, but it didn't take a scholar to conclude from the manic gesticulations that they were each presenting an exaggerated version of the incident.

I gave the complimentary ticket a cursory glance before tucking it away in a pocket. All I can remember is that it didn't look like any ordinary ticket they issued; the watermarks were different, and it had COMPLIMENTARY stamped across it in giant, bold letters. When I got home I promptly forgot about it and put it through the wash.

The bus hits the highway after the jump - a stop or two before it embarks on a round tour of the Bukit Panjang neighbourhood - and it was then that there was a noisy crashing from the rear that jolted the somnolent commuters out of their stupor. The driver shouted something incomprehensible - you knew it was addressed to us and probably meant "What's that? What's going on in the back?" by the frantic looks he was shooting us through the rear-view mirror - but he neither slowed nor stopped, and we thus assumed the best by going back to sleep.

I couldn't get a seat, so I was one of a select few who had to remain wide awake against their will as he coasted to a gentle stop along the road shoulder. He got out, went round the back and returned with the same deadpan expression that probably meant that there was nothing really very wrong after all. But we resumed with a 20km/h crawl along the highway, and when he started shouting very loudly at no one in particular - we later realised he was making a phone call - we all feared for the worst.

The bus limped into Bukit Panjang and stopped dead in front of a junction while we waited for another one to come along and pick us up. A few plucky commuters tried to press the driver for details, and he launched animatedly into another unintelligible spiel that left us none the wiser. Communication issues aside, I thought he handled it pretty well. I got a free ticket, nobody died and he was actually very calm and polite all throughout. He could have been speaking Greek or Swahili and I would have been none the wiser.

It was only later that I realised that the total fare amounted to a measly $0.67 in total - relative to the ungodly distance travelled, of course. So much for complimentary.

MC

2011-03-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

For man shall not live on bread alone, but also by milk and porridge when he has his wisdom teeth pulled: working on a copy of yesterday's events, but for now it's just some self-indulgent revelling in the post-operatic high.

I'll be putting Reach aside for a while now. It's starting to become more of a habit than actually playing for the sake of enjoying it; you know how you get into a certain rut when you start to do something too often? SWAT doesn't quite cut it for me anymore, not even after I started getting double-kills and even triple-kills in recent games.

In lieu of that, I figured that it was about time I started boning up on movies again: I dug up an old copy of Joint Security Area this afternoon and sat through a neat whodunnit by Park Chan Wook over Sour Sally yogurt (courtesy of mom via the all-amazing Groupon) and several bowls of fish porridge. I'm also halfway through the twenty-six episodes that are Cowboy Bebop; soundtrack aside, I'm not so sure what else is critically acclaimed about it. Rumour has it that Keanu Reeves is to play the live-action version of Spike Spiegel in an upcoming movie adaptation, but that was yonks ago now.

Sitting on my hard drive is Tokyo Godfathers. I only heard about it after sitting through the passable Paprika, whereupon my eagle-eyed sister pointed out a poster for the movie in the ending scene at a cinema. It's in .mkv format, so until I find a way to convert it to something viewable it'll have to stay unopened. I also finished the serialised (in five parts) Ultramarines: The Movie which was halfway decent considering the two-dimensional backstory to the whole franchise: in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. That said, it made for a pretty good RTS video game in the form of Dawn of War.

I spent the better part of Monday (yes, I was working) Googling around for the Japanese disaster that Dad survived over the weekend and a good source of information on the nuclear meltdown can be found here by a nuclear engineer in the States. He's been censured by his company over the weekend, so you'll have to scroll down for the juicy bits. Additionally, if you're into blink-182 - they announced their reunion at the 2009 Grammys, I vaguely remember reading about it in a copy of Guitarist or NME or some other such magazine then - bassist Mark Hoppus is auctioning off band memorabilia on eBay in order to raise funds for Red Cross relief.

I ought to get back to Anna Karenin (that's what they printed on the cover in lieu of Karenina) and Sylvia Plath - might have to go for a checkup on the old peepers soon and I don't think they're doing so hot after all the drugs and all-nighters pulled in the name of kicking ass halfway round the world.

Old Dog, Older Skills

2011-03-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

I took Naomi out for a spin today. She's all of three years old and just a wee bit dusty from the vagaries of service, but otherwise still a lovely little lady who gives as good as she gets. The calluses on my fingers are long gone now, having been replaced by those on the palms; I stroked her the way I used to, and she purred.

I'd left some of the packaging for the strings in the amp. Naomi's running Ernie Ball Super Slinkys, and before that it was D'Addarios from way back in '08. The Super Slinkys were still pretty fresh in spite of all the neglect - no mean feat considering the amount of time spent languishing in the bag.

The cables were corroded and coated in a layer of dust thick enough to have given Mary Poppins a heart attack. It took a gentle touch and some patience to insert the male end, which eventually resulted in faint, phlegmatic output. Naomi was trying to lay a guilt trip on me, and I was damned if it wasn't working: the cables had cost me upwards of thirty quid back in the day. The soldier in me kicked in and I instinctively fumbled around for some Break-Free Oil to remove the oxide layer, much to my subsequent disgust. There are things you remember and things you remember, and apparently playing the bass is still one of them.

We rocked the Chili Peppers, headbanged with Rage Against the Machine, grooved to the Isley Brothers and communed with Parliament/Funkadelic; there was a small square piece of sponge I'd cut out just for this purpose. It mutes the strings to produce the muted thump of the double bass, so when you dial in the bridge pickup it produces the burpy tone that is so quintessentially funk.

Good times, love. Those were good times indeed. I tried some walking but couldn't remember any of those whatchamacallit four-five-ones or some other such that they were always going on about; to be honest, I never wrapped my head around the theoretical part of it.

And then I tried something I never thought I'd do.

I haven't played anything by ear in the longest while, so all I could get out of several attempts were the D# - G# at the start and the subsequent transposition at the end by a semitone to E - A. I couldn't even remember if it was 7th or 9th at the "...키스에 기분이 좋아" part; for a decently paced song, the chord changes come fast and hard.

Other songs like Abracadabra and Tell Me Your Wish (Genie) were mindlessly easy. I think it's time to reconsider taking music seriously: there's grade six, seven and eight theory and a diploma yet. I've plumb forgotten nearly everything from harmony to even notation - I remember what an alto clef looks like, but I don't remember what it does.

But until then, there's more sugary sweetness to indulge in for now.

Conversations From the Ether

2011-03-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

"Nick, you wanna go for dinner?"

"Oh. I had it already."

"Boh jio!" It took me a moment to realise that it wasn't an expletive, and very much unlike the rest of the limited vocabulary I possessed then.

"I had it with a friend."

You could almost feel the disgust dripping off the flat vowels. "Uhh. Liddat one arh." I tried very hard not to laugh and snorted through stuffy nostrils.

"Sorry." I apologised for the distinctly un-officer snort.

"What was for dinner? Was it good?"

"Um. I had it over there." I pointed in an appropriate direction. "Where we had it this afternoon? How was it?"

"I had...Muslim."

"What was it like?"

At the risk of being pedantic, I tried to discourage further conversation because 1) It started to go nowhere and 2) It was purely for the sake of asking and it wasn't like he didn't actually know where to get dinner or what a Muslim meal tasted like.

"Hang on a sec, I have to go to the toilet."

***

I waved to him. He came over, all surprise and confusion at my introduction as a colleague and brother in arms - literally and figuratively speaking. It was like almost as though he'd expected to suffer in silence alone; infantry will always be infantry after all.

Oh, you're Nick. You're going off now? I thought it was nine to nine.

Yeah. Why'd you come so early?

He grinned and said, To replace you la.

And that was that.

Load & Ready

2011-03-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

Seaweed and chips at the range with the local signals boys: "Eh, sir. You are the lieutenant is it?"

I looked up and that was all the affirmation he needed to go ahead with a "Tomorrow you doing range for signals - I asked your boss already, he say can one," before I could even come up with a suitable rejoinder. And that was how I found myself licking barbeque flavoured fingers in the control room on a warm, blue Wednesday morning.

The control room was a squat and stodgy air-conditioned hut kitted out with legacy hardware that should have belonged in a museum instead. At one end of the table sat a Macintosh Quadra 950; a holdover from the days of beige housings, CRT monitors (it had two) and model M keyboards. Apparently it had been reconfigured to operate both firing chambers as the other Power Mac 7100/80av lay idle and unused in the opposite corner - honestly, if obsolete were a valid aesthetic appraisal these two old men would have easily been poster boys for it.

"Wahlau, that was a super bobo," the conducting officer remarked dryly. "Lane two, aim higher!" I said nothing and obnoxiously munched away on another fistful of tortillas. There was a rather painful silence as lane two conspicuously logged another miss with a gigantic plume of sawdust and grass. Reservists always got the short end of the stick - vehicles that broke down, weapons that refused to work and medics who were equally clueless et al. Judging by the hapless looks of the safety officers today, it appeared that headquarters had ripped them another good one with weapons that probably hadn't been fired since before the dinosaurs learned how to walk.

"They just finished learning how to use them yesterday." A safety officer - who happened to be a junior college teacher in Another Life - turned and scratched distractedly at a stubbly patch on a cheek. "Must remember to tell them that they can only fire from the right shoulder." I offered him my chips, which he politely declined and went on to ask no one in particular: "Why are the targets so big? Are we using the correct targets?"

There was another noisy fusillade from the firing point and the targets bowed with a signal precision - pun intended - as though they were marionettes attached by invisible strings to the triggers. We watched intently as they came back up with the same mechanical rigour to another ragged volley - only this time, lane five remained defiantly upright. "Eh, that one not going down ya." The safety-who-was-really-a-teacher sighed and grabbed his helmet to go outside as his counterpart at the lane made the same observation through the walkie-talkie clipped to his vest.

The conducting stalked back in through the door as he was leaving and tossed his webbing in a spidery corner. "Oh, man. I realised the bad thing about having fam and shoot together. Wear the helmet for too long," he groaned. The rest of the officers laughed, and that set the tone for the rest of what would prove to be a rather uneventful - if unbearably long - day.

At night the tracers burned in the darkness that had enveloped the range; an inky, liquid sort of black that reminded your inner circadian that it was time to sleep as soon as you stepped outside. In the cool night air the gunfire was noticeably louder than in the day, and you had to shout if you wanted to make yourself heard. From inside the control room the I don't think it's bulletproof leh windscreen rattled with each salvo; the glass lending the crisp barks a bass quality that kicked me between the ears each time I found myself nodding off. The solitary can of Red Bull earlier in the day notwithstanding, I'd managed a solid hour of shut-eye in the afternoon whilst they worked out technical issues like a target refusing to lie down and play dead because its mechanical arm had quit on it. "The bullet went through it ah?" the conducting had asked intelligently. The range warden gave him his best approximation of a dirty look and repeated for the umpteenth time, no, it was simply a mechanical failure. Old la sir. Use too many times. The conducting frowned and for a moment I feared that he would ask the same question again just as a safety officer burst in with lunch - curry! the horror! - and the distinctly unappetising prognosis of, "I think we might need to come back again tomorrow leh."

I eventually found myself trying to get some sleep in a disused room on the third floor of the office later that night. They'd ended late enough to make going home both impractical and expensive - no mean feat considering I'd paid upwards of fifteen bucks for a 6am ride in complete darkness to camp the day before. The boys were nice enough to fetch me a safari bed; one of those foldable affairs that are, surprisingly, stiff enough to give brand-name mattresses a run for their money. There were hushed voices outside, audible over the cheerful hum of the musty air-conditioning system. The door opened a tiny fraction of a crack - wide enough to let some light in from the corridor - and a disembodied voice whispered: "Hello? Who's inside?"

I didn't say anything, nor did I turn around; it went away, and took with it the last of an Ash Wednesday to remember.

Clenbuterol & the Water Glass

2011-03-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

"Where is Nicky?" A plaintive question, audibly tinged with baby fat. "No, not Nicole. Nick! Nicky!" he shouts, and for a moment I think - I believe - he really does not know where I am.

To say that the combination of affection and dread that is my cousin is cute is an extreme understatement, and the horror of it is that he knows it himself and milks it to the fullest whenever and wherever possible. Which is why he gets away with breaking things and screaming at the top of his tiny lungs at an age where I would have had the strap applied to me without hesitation: as with everything else in life, there is a relative median value that you must find. Most, if not all of his cousins are in their late tweens: it only remains to be said that he is still force-fed copious amounts of baby-sized love as a result - even though he is already long in the proverbial milk tooth at seven years and counting.

"HORSEY!!! Horsey!" he screams. "I want horsey now now now!" He leaps onto me and digs his heels into my side. "Go! Go! Go!" he shouts, and wipes his mouth on the back of my shirt.

We play some football in the living room.

"The score is now 4-1," he declares emphatically. Pushing sweaty bangs out of his eyes, he grabs the ball from me and says, "Because you have one goal, I must score another one." He runs off, places the ball on the ground and sends it straight into my aunt's false plaster ceiling. Weaving and dodging imaginary players, he guides the ball past the two wicker chairs serving as goal posts.

"Goal!" he screams. He doesn't talk - he either shouts, yells or screams. And apropos of nothing, he picks up the ball, throws it back between the posts and shouts again, "Goal!"

At one point he scoops the ball and it would've made a nasty end of a pretty picture hanging in the hall if it hadn't been for some quick reflexes on my part. He stops short and stares - unsure of what to make of the deft catch.

"Handball!" He snatches the ball out of my hands and puts it on the ground between us. "You move," he orders. "Free kick. Free kick!" And with that, he sends the ball into the false plaster ceiling again for the umpteenth time.

It is time to leave. I tell him that I have to go; he says nothing and puts another scorcher past me into the tribal mask hanging dejectedly in the hall. Then he screams something unintelligible, picks up the ball and runs off. I say my parting words to the rest and that is that.

Sometimes it is impossible to understand what they say or do - straight out of the mouths of babes, sure enough - but that really is besides the point, isn't it?

Prepare to Drop

2011-02-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

O the joys of multiplayer matchmaking. I tried Halo 3: ODST for the first time today and was surprised by its utter lack of resemblance to Reach: the UI, the graphics and even the style of play. They don't award medals for assists, for one, and it is also not possible to perform the extremely graphic assassinations previously seen in Reach. Latency is also rather terrible - it takes two to three seconds for a melee kill to register.

While I'm on the subject of latency, only Reach has the best MP performance thus far. AC: Brotherhood was poor, right up to the point where my assassin would suddenly collapse in the middle of the street without warning; MW2 was pure nausea (not to mention filled with a fair bit of snobbery from higher ranking players); RDR had noble intentions that came undone at the point of execution. The latter's third-person team deathmatch mode was extremely fun, though - gangsters versus lawmen in a rundown Western town replete with six-shooters and shotguns from the period - and with noticeably less lag than the free roam mode, it kept me off Reach for the better part of a day.

I can only guess that ODST is simply under-armoured and under-powered grunts sans sci-fi pumping transplanted into Halo 3 MP; the graphics themselves say as much. There is really nothing in it to keep me going back for more, other than the fact that kills are a lot easier to obtain - probably because of the lack of decent shielding and armour abilities, and quite definitely because the matchmaking system keeps pairing me with other newbies. The ranking system isn't the same as that in Reach: you start off with nothing, and only become a recruit after your first match.

I couldn't find my statistics on bungie.net - not under the ODST tab, at least. Apparently it only counts if you play co-op on XBL or Firefight, both of which require a hard drive that I do not have (and which retailers apparently do not possess either). Did I mention that I got conned into buying a legacy 256MB Arcade?

All told, Reach is still a lot more fun for now. I miss my jetpacks, Invasion playlists (a K/D of 6.00 with the grenade launcher!) and ability to thoroughly customize my armour: ODST only provides for the helmet, shoulders and chest. Time to get back to those daily challenges.

[edit]
It's only when you start winning matches fifty-to-nothing single handedly that you realize all the big boys have packed up and left for Reach. I think the lag had something to do with it - too many unsynced kills that had barely-legal kids from halfway around the world screaming, "Oh, you bastard!" into the mic.

Going Outfield (Again)

2011-02-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

"Have you had lunch yet, sir?" He grunted noncommittally in response and turned away, gingerly sucking away on a plastic bag of hot tea. He'd never had anything like it - the tea in a bag, that is - before and in spite of all the non-politically correct things he could think of to describe such an experience, he had to admit that there was a certain pleasure in being able to take one of mankind's greatest inventions around with him. That said, there were more than a few flaws in the inherently expedient design (whether through lack of resources or sheer laziness, he couldn't tell), chief of which was the fact that he couldn't set it down on a table like he would if it had been in a cup. The bag came with two neon-green strings on which (presumably) he could hang it from, except that he couldn't find anything else to hang it from other than an arm already laden with his gear and other such items as were necessary for outfield comfort. Bags, defibrillators, jerry cans et al; he thought, screw this, and looped the bag around a lock.

Going outfield had never been this exciting. He passed a few dogfaces staring at him from behind camouflage paint several days old and wondered if they would ever know what it would feel like to sit in a Land Rover chasing them instead. He'd had his fair share of doing what they were doing now; an officer's privilege, to be sure, but a direct contradiction nonetheless of the crude philosophy he'd hitherto espoused. Shag is better than sian. Somehow it was always a lot more fun in hindsight: the planning, the tramping around, the general air of weariness and frustration that temporarily evaporated when the shooting began. Obviously it wasn't apparent at the time, and not least when you had to do it for an evaluation that would eventually culminate in said perk: outfield would never be the same again.

At night the lights and sounds got turned down. Lightning flashed in flat circles on the horizon, prompting the boss to ask for a rain check. Surprisingly (or not), the pager beeped in the clear and it was to remain that way for the rest of a rather uneventful night spent sleeping in the rover and feeling sorry for himself. Most of the time he never really knew the details behind the events - he knew what was going on at any given moment, but he couldn't explain why it wasn't happening or why it was taking so long or both. The other lieutenant shrugged; a habit he'd acquired over the last two days from dealing with the chief. Welcome to the army. He sighed wearily. "What's for dinner?" It was a quintessentially rhetorical question, born out of the necessity (but none of the affection) for due procedure. Like asking "Have you had seven hours of uninterrupted rest?", nobody bothered to answer and they set themselves to eating the hot food in a respectful silence. Boss ambled over with a bag full of things he described as carabiners, and with the orders to count them later. He picked up another ration box and handed it to boss, who asked, "What's for dinner?"

Life is very, very different, he thought. He looked up the New Pornographers on his iPod, who also told him in no uncertain terms that The Laws Have Changed. They'd been told off earlier by a senior officer, who said, "Hush! Keep your voices down. All the men are looking at you." And sure enough, they were beset by a motley green-and-black mosaic of unhappy faces. Unhappy at having to carry heavy weapons and run around the jungle playing at being nineteen again when they were easily twice that with broken knees - unhappy at having to eat food loaded with so much preservatives that it was almost guaranteed your offspring were going to have three eyes - unhappy at having to get wet and muddy and grubby in the dark where you could only identify your buddy by starlight and the smell of his fart - unhappy at the sight of two officers young enough to be your grandchildren chase each other and catch fireflies in their caps. Unhappy, and how so.

He'd been asleep for two hours when the walkie-talkie squawked, summoning him deeper into the heart of darkness with its tinny bursts of static. The pregnant cramp in his legs reminded him of the last time he tried sleeping whilst sitting upright in a vehicle with less space than cattle class on a budget airline, and he stumbled out of the rover with a "Safety, roger" loud enough to draw a grunt from the driver sleeping next to him. Strictly speaking, a job like this was considered over-time but apparently not above and beyond the call of duty; the unfortunate doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful. Sic vita est. But the night air was cool and quiet, and gentle northwesterly stroked the tall grass over the humped and hillocked plain they'd parked in. Overhead, Orion challenged a tumescent moon for dominance and won with every passing minute. He yawned and stretched, feeling the kinks straighten themselves out with several ominous clicks. Someone coughed nearby, and with that he spotted several soldiers prostrate in an adjoining patch he could've sworn was completely deserted a moment before. One of them was even curled up underneath a sign that had a giant MERBAHAYA on it with a skull and crossbones for added effect.

And it was then, grubby, cramped and bleary with sleep, that he realized why he missed going outfield.

It was bright and hot when they finally called an end to the whole affair. Another rover drove past, its occupants leering at him expectantly out of the windows; he noted that it must be some sort of tradition in which to expect that you will recognize the people sitting in the other vehicle. He never waved back at anyone, anyway, and couldn't care less if they did. They were homeward bound, with the explicit instructions of "I don't want to see your face tomorrow" and gear thrown pell-mell into the back of the vehicles. There would be hell to pay - there almost always was - but that could wait for a teh-O and tomorrow.

Rollin'

2011-02-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

All you ever really need for outfield duties: an iPod liberally stocked with SNSD videos, Sharpe's Rifles (!) and the Discovery Channel's excellent Surviving the Cut, For Esmé in Love & Squalor, last month's copy of Foreign Affairs and a bit of pen and paper on which to do some work - and poetry.

Here's a little refrain I could use for starters:

the unfortunate doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful

Bull Run

2011-02-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

Increased earnings from the first quarter of the year easily translates into less of those awkward moments when I find myself out of pocket - accidentally on purpose, and not because I actually like the '...where'd my wallet go?' excuse. One of the small pleasures in life is standing at an ATM with a throbbing hangover at 11 in the morning and finding that you've got - wait for it - backpay, yes, backpay! to 1) Pay off your creditors and 2) Buy yourself a coffee and the papers. Small pleasures indeed.

I duly carted home an armful of the morning's skankiest tabloids and crisper global dailies after several fishburgers at the local McD's. When you gotta go, you gotta go; some of the dumber ("Posed while old men gawked and snapped pictures") headlines were a Godsend after the Egyptian debacle. Even their own people think it's annoying - being an ideologue is all fine and good, but it doesn't put food on the table. Sound familiar?

All that's left for the weekend is to polish off the rest of the DVDs I picked up from the rental store: Ip Man 2 and JCVD. Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was brash, vulgar (albeit a bit slow) fun, and 71-Into the Fire was nothing like Taegukgi which, IMHO, still remains the best Korean war movie ever made. I don't know why I've suddenly started surrounding myself with all things Korean - yesterday I had more kimchi with my congee than I've ever had in nineteen years, and fully more than three-quarters of the videos on my iPod involve some sort of leggy, nubile posse of girls my age dancing and singing in extremely bad Engrish.

The Best Laid Plans

2011-02-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

An extended cloudburst effectively put paid to a half-hearted attempt at getting out of the house. I was gonna go get a long list of movies highly recommended by the outgoing artillery lieutenant, who categorically stated that 'Watchmen is seriously awesome! I can't believe you haven't seen it yet!'

I've got the graphic novel, but if V for Vendetta was anything to go by, it is that the genre rarely survives the transition to the big screen. Natalie Portman was cool, but not particularly fantastic. (For fantastic, I've heard that Black Swan is a must-see.)

Disappointment aside, I've found this amazing document that deals with something I feel very strongly about. I've been a massive fan of the Halo series ever since I first picked up an XBox controller all those years back, and somehow I don't quite agree with all those off-shoots that suddenly started appearing on shelves in Borders and video shops. Something to mull over on a lazy afternoon with an affogato, eh.

On the Job

2011-01-31T23:05:00.000-08:00

One of the problems with walking beneath creeper vines and the like is that they're full of caterpillars - the 'commando' sort that dangle on a silk thread so thin as to be almost invisible. Why do they do that? I don't know. They can wriggle and execute a limited range of aerobatics whilst suspended, but that aside it's like they're waiting for someone to walk into them. I had that happen to me once in school; I tried to brush it off but ended up squishing it on my shirt instead.

Today I found one gingerly prodding away at my neck. There was a brief, adroit flick of the finger (the horror!) and the culprit was revealed to be a black-and-white little fellow inching along happily under the sunlight on the window ledge outside the toilets.

I returned later to find that the rain had failed to dampen its enthusiasm and it was attempting to curl over backwards to touch its backside. Sometimes I wish I could be a little more flexible myself; learn how to say no, as it were. I'm really too nice when I'm out of the house.

'Are you free now?' It wasn't so much a question as a statement of 'You're free, even if you're occupied with something - so...' which was duly followed up with the command '...I want you to go down to the canteen and get me a teh-C bing.'

***

So I was jogging alongside momma, and she said that Yes, my son is very different when he's out of the house. When he's around other people. My point exactly - I can only be a slob when I'm at home, so I have to milk it for all it's worth.

So I was jogging alongside momma, and we went one round without another word.

***

He was extremely taken with the two winged paper horses on my desk. They were of unknown provenance; I found them in a tiny corner underneath the phone on my very first day and saved them from the ignominious fate of the wastebin with another glance at what initially appeared to be very elaborately balled up scraps of paper.

It was less of the craftsmanship - otherwise known as 'a good origami book and an iota of patience' - and more of the amount of time and effort it hinted at. I was thinking more of the stupendous amount of free time it implied, but before I could fully appreciate the bounty I'd just stumbled upon he snatched at them and gaily set about deconstructing them, declaring that 'I shall open it and see.'

***

'Are you going home with us?' I demurred and set off down the road in the opposite direction. The light drizzle that portended the weekend washout to come was slowly building up in an annoying crescendo as I crossed at the flyover; it was in full swing by the time I reached the bus stop and for a brief, blessed minute I could've been forgiven for thinking that I was the only one for miles around. They really do know how to delineate the verboten from the kosher - believe me, this is as close as it comes to a veritable heart of darkness.

And I wondered if she, sitting there on a bench too high for those skinny, four-foot-nothing legs, was thinking about the same thing. The open bag next to her hinted at tuition classes - here, in the middle of nowhere? - and her teenage uniform of ponytail and too-tight shorts spelled secondary school jailbait. Kids these days...but I'll leave it to the powers that be to complete that. Everyone has to grow up someday, sure enough; sometimes you look at them and wonder in the tone that makes you realize retrospectively that subsidized bus fares were a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Literally.

She didn't give any indication that she'd heard my approach, and if she did, I'd probably already been dismissed as another one of those chubby, stubbly reservists stalking by in the downpour. I scraped my boot on the concrete. She turned; a reflexive, adroit motion of unconscious coquettishness born to teenage girls and subsequently lost with their first kiss. The round, smooth curve of her profile stood in a translucent silhouette against the rain; a passing car shed some light on a brief dalliance with adolescence that hinted at a body kissed once too often and too hard by the sun. She was pretty - a dispassionately empirical observation of passion in the twilight that had fallen silently around us, and an oddly amusing nota bene to play with on the ride home.

The bus came. I gestured with my cap; a gentlemanly play that was responded to in kind with a regal nod. I made room for a fat ex-soldier too, but he waved me aboard with a perfunctory grunt. There was a last, disdainful look - a cursory glance at the one bar upon my chest - and she turned that pretty head into the damp, heaving crowd to home and beyond.

***

Sometimes it comes upon an afternoon clear; of walks into the unknown with naught but the imagination for company. Memory is a particular scent: a distinct musk of juvenile love now best forgotten by both the lover and the loved. No one ever really takes things seriously when you're eighteen, and to be fair - no one really believes you're being serious either, even when you are.

Ennui

2011-01-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

Another day, another book: followed Paul Theroux into Malawi today in Dark Star Safari. I used to know a guy from Malawi in Beijing. We used to tease him, to hand him a few yuan and ask him to go back to Africa to buy us a Mercedes. That was below the belt, but I didn't come up with it - it is only something the French can do, apparently.

I Googled around a bit and found a short piece on Africa he wrote in 2005. I haven't been to Africa myself, and much of what I know is really gleaned from successive issues of The Economist. But you can't miss the underlying misanthropy - even in the book. He doesn't like aid workers, describing them at one point as 'bastards' (quite possibly the only candid adjective in the whole book) and generally as very self-possessed people who get the poor souls they are supposed to be helping to wash their nice, white Land Cruisers for them.

The book took the better part of the morning. I stopped by the cookhouse for a bit of tea: lately I've acquired a taste for the army's version of Lipton with a sugar sans milk. I think it's called a teh-O in the vernacular; black as sin and as sweet as a stolen kiss.

Brooklynese

2011-01-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

There is something fundamentally compelling about the raw, broken scenes that Hubert Selby Jr. paints in Last Exit to Brooklyn. A sort of animal desperation against life and all its travails, and yet in the same breath a forlorn resignation as exemplified in the recurring theme of voluntary unemployment.

I wish I could write the way he does.

Carnage Report

2011-01-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

Finished the week on medical leave because of the cough I bred on the parade square the weekend before; they were all pretty blasé about it and even had the nerve to tell me that I struck duty on a Sunday. Otherwise, I've done absolutely nothing. Not unless you count sitting and watching people go by as an activity proper: welcome to the working world, and don't forget your pass.

I got Assassins' Creed: Brotherhood at the strident behest of a friend. I wasn't too impressed with it when I first popped it in the tray; it installed a 195MB update on my 256MB memory and featured a Crichton-ish plot that intertwined Renaissance Italy with the twenty-first century. I warmed to it after a few glitchy attempts (my controller likes to power down just as things start to get really hairy) and eventually, the cloak-and-dagger element of the game across the rooftops of Rome became second nature.

Should really seriously consider getting a Live subscription - get more mileage out of my games that way. Especially seeing as how nearly almost everyone plays the Halo series of games, anyway; shouldn't have too much of a problem trying to find a game online. Brotherhood cost me quite a bit at $89 (I think even Mass Effect 2 with its double discs was only $70+) and the storyline is starting to feel a little like a Rockstar take on the Middle Ages - run around, don't kill too many people, avoid the cops and look for the relevant NPC whenever you feel like advancing the storyline.

Back to the reading, I guess.

Reading List

2011-01-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

Not Oprah's, but mine: a list that I have to complete before buying new books. They've been sitting on my shelf gathering dust since forever.

Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn
If you haven't read this, then you haven't read anything worth reading. Hubert Selby Jr is one of the rare few with the ability to accurately sketch the darker and grittier side of the American way of life. I tried his Requiem for a Dream, and never looked at contemporary literature the same way again.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Even my dad has read this. The Old English is a bit hard to get past, but otherwise mildly entertaining in the vein of Shakespearean gaffes and slip-ups.

Larry Niven's Ringworld
The Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved was supposed to have been inspired by this book. It's a bit slow-going, with enough sci-fi jargon thrown in to evoke the futurama it tries to imagine.

J.D Salinger's Franny & Zooey
It's hard to find anyone who hasn't heard of The Catcher in the Rye, much less read it. Franny is a world apart from the infamous adolescent angst, but the punchy, lively flow of writing remains the same.

Thomas Pynchon's V
Referenced in the popular graphic novel V for Vendetta, its monoalphabetic title caught my eye at Borders. I still don't know what it's all about, though.

Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari
I've been hooked on Africa ever since I picked up Ryszard Kapuszinski's (I actually managed to spell that on the first try without Googling it -_-) Shadow on the Sun. Nothing floaty or remotely air-fairy about this non-fiction travelogue, which is a light-hearted, easy-going twenty-first century journey into Conrad's Darkness.

Maxim Gorky's Mother
This is one of the many books I brought back from Kathmandu a few years back. The style is quintessentially Russian: the multitude of characters with patronymics, the descriptive, drawn-out emotions and distracted dialogue. Doctor Zhivago was painful to finish, and War and Peace was like trying to read the Russian version of the Bible. This, however, promises to be a lot easier.

Ian McEwan's Atonement
I saw a bit of the movie, then realized that everyone else was reading it/had already read it. It's smooth and snappy, although the plot unfolds at a cripplingly slow pace.

Carlos Fuentes' Happy Families
My sister got me this book after she found out that I liked Latin American literature - i.e Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda et al. This is a disparate collection of short stories that is, however, hard to put a coherent, unifying theme to (the general unhappiness and dissatisfaction with married life aside). I don't think I'll be finishing it anytime soon.

Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road
All I can say about this book is that I got it at a closing sale for $7. I'm not really into Austen-esque he-said, she-said stuff; while Phillip Roth did several credible takes on the contemporary American version of it, it's still pretty hard to absorb. I haven't seen the movie either.

love letter

2010-10-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

You didn't need a psychiatrist to tell her that she was delusional. That she was living a teenage dream with no one else but herself in it: a figment of an unhappy imagination to cling to in the hope that it would somehow cancel out that dreadful Peter Pan complex.

***

I guess this is growing up. I can't slap you in the face with the truth; that would probably have been the last step off the nineteenth floor. There was so much I wanted to say, to point out; it wouldn't have done any good, but then again the whole thing never did anyone any good anyway. In spite of everything we've said against the transactionary nature of modern relationships, there was no running away from the truth that it was what you really wanted it to be.

You only feared (us) loving the image of you because you wanted to be able to fully reveal the other side of you that no one could possibly handle. An infinitely more terrifying, shocking side; far from the Machiavellian, psychotic, manic depressive stereotypes that immediately come to mind, it is the fantastical, acid-tripping mentally retarded child trapped within that no one would ever envision.

These are plain, harsh words, and rightfully so because I believe that such a matter cannot be stepped round delicately anymore if its import is to be hammered in past that barricade against reality. That angst; that clingy, sad-puppy eyed nature completely incongruent with age; that undiagnosed autism that I eventually came round to. Because no normal human being behaves like that once you're old enough to kill.

To vote.

To smoke.

To drink.

To drive.

To screw with, over and under people, and not apologize for it.

To tell someone half your age right from wrong.

You can't possibly be dealing with an identity crisis at that age. That frequent referencing in every other text; like a constant need to reaffirm nonexistent principles and values that only exist in an idealist fantasy conceivable (and executable) by children high on sugar from after-dinner pudding.

I don't know. I might have been wrong - to all intents and purposes it was a relationship constructed on words (thank God) with all the associated pros and evils in doing so.

Even now, I still feel disgusted. I'm sorry, love. But that's how it is.

***

It wasn't possible to climb down without a fight. Even at the end of it she'd changed her tone, possibly hoping for a

ah screw this FORGET everything I've just said I still love you alright alright alright let's kiss and make up and forget this ever happened

But there was no way he was ever going to let that happen. Every now and then you need a WTF moment in your life to wake you up from the wonderful distractions you put yourself through in order to forget the grey, dismal reality that you open your eyes to every morning; this one had already expired 10 months ago and he'd forgotten to put it back in the can.

You'll regret this, she said. You'll regret ever turning your back on a perfectly good relationship .

As far as he was concerned, though, it took two perfectly good hands to clap.

with me now

2010-10-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

Do you remember that girl, I asked. He sighed. "You come here to kill things, bro. Not to look at girls." Yeah, I said. But that's besides the point.

***

262, 9.0 and 17 with a 31. The human body reduced to a series of numbers that clearly defines what it must, should, ought to be; trim a bit here, pin a fold back there and bob's your uncle. If only it were that simple, love. Every weekend I come home to you and the devil, who I must needs accommodate for pity's sake. Seriously.

They said they'd run out of 262s, so they'd send them over sometime next week. In spite of all the misgivings we've got about government, you really have to hand it to them when they say they will - because they do, by God. They really do. In stark contrast to a rather amusing late-night experience with Mickey D's: $247.10, and the deliverymen had to come in a cab with several boxes. That's the greensleeves' equivalent of five loaves and two fish, and I'm not kidding because they really did feed a hungry multitude caught between a decidedly stubborn rock and the deep, briny sea of another weekend spent harvesting weeds in camp. Numbers. They make the world go round.

***

And so it came to pass that I found myself tongue-tied before the very person I'd been hoping to meet for the last eight months. It always turns out that way: that moment of awkward silence in which you know that you've irreparably blown it. Not in the sticky terms of the affected ennui flavour of teenage heat, but of an unmentionable je ne sais quoi which, for my sake, she tacitly refused to acknowledge.

Thank you, I mumbled. Thank you? She smiled. For what? That velvet cadence; that perpetual hint of mischief in those brown eyes which betrayed the faintest trace of another shy, I'm glad you're one of the only normal human beings left in this world.

I wanted to tell her -

which buses can you take home? you live just down the road, right? rich kid. I can only take this bus, and that one, and that one too.

I missed you.

can you take a bus with me? you should have gone with her. See, you totally ruined his day . He likes her. That smile again .

190. I see it every other damn day, love. But it doesn't take me where I want to go.

Where I need to go, which doesn't happen to be anywhere near wherever it is you're going.

And she smiled, waved, and left. Just like that. Just because, and if only because.

***

The Good
Four wheels good, two legs bad. Pithy, but not without a good dose of hyperbole.

The Bad
Recently I've found the phrase

tear you/me a new asshole

to be wonderfully succinct and incredibly appropriate for the situations we frequently find ourselves in. Not all of which are good, obviously, and some of which include CAT 1 turnouts at 3am for the dual purpose of looking for people shirking from sentry duty. It did rain later in the morning, though. Just a wee bit, but it rained nonetheless.

The Ugly
Hi there, pass me your scissors?

Couldja come get it yourself? A bit tight here.

Throw it over here.

[ An undetermined number of @)#(*!&@#s later ]

Why didn't you catch it? You coulda spoiled it, you know.

***

Three weeks. It started with three, and it will end with three. God be with us all now.

the last goodbye

2010-09-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Before the end:

dot matrix wallet
Saw this in a bookstore and simply couldn't resist.

mw2
One of the most intense single-player campaigns ever .

halo: reach
The tagline says YOU KNOW HOW IT ENDS - but I can't find out how until I get my hands on a copy. Stores are all sold out, and having them close at 9pm doesn't help either.

sawdust
Not The Killers' album, but instead a dead useful collection of wood chips that I saw in action this week - soaking up a coolant leak in the vehicle shed. Worked like a charm, and it helps that the h2g2 gives 42 (ha ha ha) uses of the angel dust.

hale-bopp
Natural phenomena, c.1997. Beautiful, and absolutely wondrous. There was also this thing about a cult that believed an alien spaceship was following in the comet's wake, so they committed mass suicide in order to reach it.

beat lit
Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac and The Trashmen playing Surfin' Bird .

QWERTY

2010-09-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Somehow I Love You Too has a very different import when you mash it out on a full keyboard. Monday map test 200%; time to work the greys again on a lonely (but decidedly air-conditioned) Sunday. Veni, vidi, vici; could swear by both eyes that I am thoroughly sick of video games and movies. Especially in 3D.

bulls on parade

2010-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

All I remembered from that initiation ceremony was that I chugged, threw up, I GOT SPACE FOR SOME MORE, and made straight for another can. Nothing like good old tradition to provide some sticky-sweet, bubbly fun. We'll eventually have to pay a subscription for it, but nothing too exorbitant given that it's duty-free and they've all got FOR ARMED FORCES stamped on the lids.

I don't remember much else from that night too other than that they made the oldest (UNSW, Commerce class of '09) and the youngest (S92XXXXXX) the mess SMs in order to keep us in (an extremely drunken) line. Quote of the night:

"Eh, S-M. How come your men stand liddat one."

"Uh, we don't have any experience, sir."

"Never mind. Take one more can sure got experience."

I AM AN ARMOURED OFFICER

The kapitan was right when he said that even seemingly innocuous activities like getting drunk have learning points we can take away - albeit only on the morning after, when running a Godawful hangover under the tap. As an officer you will eventually have to do a lot of things you don't like. Hate, even. I can't imagine what that might amount to, given the number of cop-outs who went with several litres of water to every can we had. That's the armoured concept of punishment: if you prove that you're incapable, they'll make you do it again and again and again and again until you show that you're capable. And then they'll do it one more time just for kicks.

(TO BE)

That's not to say that it wasn't fun, judging by the number of swaying, please-don't-smile-or-laugh-to-yourself-it's-really-creepy people we had at the end of it.

And on the way back, we sang like it was the end of the world.

and one

2010-08-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

defeat is a distinct possibility
Run; it makes you feel better after a bad night spent alone with thoughts of the past, present and future. Things that can be changed, and things that cannot: there must needs be a balance between worrying and planning.

Because they are not mutually exclusive.

victory is certain; only a fool could lose this battle.
Paranoia: the who, the what and the when. I remember things better this way. It makes me feel good about myself. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling around them. It helps. It's all about the people, not about the place. The facilities. The things you do.

The things you do, and the things you don't.

"You're a populist, right?" The accusatory tone thick as treacle in the light drizzle. Arms numb from the morning brief. Legs screaming a thousand different pejoratives both ways. The lumbar raising hell. "You're doing it just so you can - "

He could've left it open-ended right there and then. Hanging on the issue and the fact that everyone thought he was talking about himself in a pretty self-deprecatory manner: we might be getting the short end of the stick, but that doesn't mean we're dumb.

fighting to the death
And it could've gone either way. Damned if you do, damned if you don't; that's a hell of a way to live.

Happily ever after.

helljumper

2010-08-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

So I went out and got a 360 last night. Stopped by the store on the way back, asked for an Arcade and the next thing I knew it was $600 out of pocket for another controller and ODST - I got ripped off, but at that point in time it was either that or haul ass halfway downtown in a jam to get value for money.

Except for a bit of a hiccup in connecting the wireless controllers, it's been working like a dream. I just completed the ODST campaign on Normal after lunch; short, sweet and a bit wanting but otherwise more relieved than happy to have done so. The film noir effect was lost on me after several frustrating moments in searching for routes and clues through the city, and the lighting compounded with the annoying effect of the VISR display really FUBAR-ed gameplay big time. That aside, it was a big change from the previous titles in the series...can't bum rush Covies the same way I used to with the gravity hammer.

The weapons mostly remained the same though, aside from a few noticeable changes in the sound - the AR doesn't sound the same way it did in CE and 3, and the mag size has been reduced to 32. The SMG and the pistol have both been given silencers and scopes, which did make for some very interesting exploration of the various Achievements available (15 headshots to make it to Dome Inspector, for one). One noteworthy effect as a result was the way I had to creep around to try and avoid confrontation instead of going in with gun (no dual-wielding as a mere mortal) blazing as they seriously eat through your loadout - extended firefights saw me picking up plasma pistols and other alien materiel to sustain the volume of fire.

Something particularly worthy of mention is the free game I got with the Arcade. It's not like there was a lot to choose from ("Oh, that's the PS3 section") amidst the smorgasbord of passé post-apocalyptic titles ("You like end-of-the-world games?" "Like L4D?")...so I ended up with Stormrise. The online reviews seem to confirm what my 15-minute trial-by-fire test of the game said it would be: a complete mess of an RTS game. I don't know how they put World in Conflict or Halo Wars on the 360 with a game like this, and I don't think I want to find out either way.

Next step: What am I going to do with the console? Another game is going to cost $70~80, and I might have been a little premature in 1) Helping people clear stocks and 2) Not waiting for the $300 360 S 4GB to come out at the end of the month.

empire

2010-08-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

england
Having one free settler per house is a pretty neat feature (not to mention the fact that they build crazy fast), but it's a huge drain on the population cap...one memorable moment was having to kill off this whole big bunch which I didn't know what to do with. A lot of campaigns went up in carnage because of a lack of proper coordination with the team, so I ended up providing cavalry support which ran around and terrorised the local villagers.

ottomans
These guys have only got one military unit: the janissary. As with everything else, left-click until you get a decent-sized amount (read: a minimum of 50) and send them off. There's a huge bonus in that it keeps producing settlers every now and then, so much so that I don't know what to do with them either.

spain
All I remember from this was mounting several naval expeditionary forces with lancers and rodoleros and God knows what else to far-flung islands. Good all-round stuff, with incredible gunpowder weaponry.

portugal
I don't remember much from this except for the fact that Jorgé used their organ guns to whup some major ass. That, and the huge-ass frigates (although everyone gets them in the end) to play pirates with.

russia
One word - strelets. Produced in blocks of 15, die in groups of 50. Cheap and fast, and not much good for anything else either.

china
The only grouse I've got is that these guys eat food like nobody's business - even the AI was constructing forts whilst I was trying to chop enough wood to plant padi fields. Once over that hurdle, though - their mass-production armies are unstoppable.

empire #2

2010-08-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

Wait on a street corner near a stoplight in green, and before you know it at least three people will ask you

What's the occasion?

Are the floats gonna pass by 'ere?

What time are they coming?

Are they coming this way?

Which direction are they coming from?

It's eight, I thought you said they were coming at eight.

to which you have no perfectly good reply other than a silent, impervious nod from the right hand of the state. Stand back, sir. The tank is a lot bigger than it looks.

The epic corollary to such unwarranted smugness is a gap in the formation: obviously by some other clueless nuckfut several junctions down the road, which results in the following equation

TANK TOYOTA TANK NISSAN TANK GAP GAP GAP GAP GAP GAP GAP

it is now safe to cross, sir

GAP GAP GAP GAP OMG WTF TANK

PLEASE STAND BACK

TANK TANK TANK TANK TANK TOYOTA TANK HONDA TANK

Ten bloody hours. Pick a random book out of this excellent list, and the isotonic drinks supplied in ample quantities should take care of the headaches that ensue.

queued

2010-08-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

I opened the door and she was standing there with a shy smile that had I'm sorry I need to go too written all over it and and and and and and and and and and

and she walked past and I went back and I'm a damn fool.

7-one-half

2010-08-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's wool, so you can't soak/wash/steam/shape or do anything that the series of tubes says you must do to it.

Edit: Don't pull it all the way down to your brows. You get quite a bit of material left over for the slope that way...and it suddenly looks a lot less douche when you do.

sixed

2010-08-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Summa cum laude - Effective and Decisive, if just a tad bit profane. Who the hell is - no names here, please - and the constant references to said stylistic appropriations and so on. That said, it does get the job done, and how.

***

Memorable moments are constructed by way of Doing, not Thinking. The inherent dichotomy is stark: one is looking at the ants crawl up and down your leg, and the other is going after them with the business end of a glowing ember.

***

Rain: wet, muddy, filthy, thoroughly disgusted. Volume: water, water, every-freakin'-where - but not a drop you or me or anyone else would want to ingest. Rate: Tick-tock on the clock but the party don't stop, no.

***

Arrogance is a requisite in leadership; a quasi-religious belief in the impossible matched by actions to the contrary. Anything you can do, I can do better...just don't catch me while I'm at it.

disappoint

2010-07-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

There are things that you cannot say to someone outright - that you can only intimate through the barest of gestures, and even then hope beyond hope that they will see, that they will notice. And that they will understand, even if they do not reciprocate. Success truly is nothing more than taking advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself...the desperation and the adrenaline must've been unmistakeable. I'm not a liar. I can't lie to save my own skin.

It was a good 120+ min. spent in the dark with a Red Bull and an awkward "...huh? Uh, okay." in response to (in hindsight) an equally idiotic statement; I blithely ignored her the whole afternoon as a result. We talked. We laughed. We agreed to disagree, and when we agreed we giggled like five-year olds that just found out how best to stomp on caterpillars.

The way she smiles shyly at me. The way she tiptoes and leans in close to catch my words. The way she discreetly removes herself to the other side of the escalator when I get too close for comfort. The way she drifts at my side. The way she stares so intently at me when our conversations go to ground. The way she knows in some way that I don't already do, and that I can't hide.

It was a good movie.

dragooned

2010-07-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

Call it mounted infantry, foot cavalry, motorized infantry, carabinieri, mechanized infantry, armoured cavalry, whatever - none of them detract from the fact that I'm up to my ears in cogs, gears and more heavy weaponry than a normal human will ever see in seven lifetimes. Pride, baby; time to put the roll back in Rock 'n Roll. This also being the last decent weekend I'll get in a long while, here's a list of things to do when you've got too much time on your hands:

Corona beer
Good shit. There was also a Kronenburg that tasted like peach tea; not really my kind of thing, but yeah.

Alien Swarm

Free games, baby. The Vindicator is a handy little bastard when they get too close. (Edit: I didn't know they had a wiki for the game up until just now.)

Saints Row 2
You don't know ugly until you've played the game - I didn't know it was actually possible to resculpt a face down to such intricate detail. Seriously, Hooker Eyeshadow?

Shutter Island
Not the kind of movie you want to watch alone at night with the lights turned low.

KTV
One hoarse, alcohol-lubricated rendition of a Killers' tune and we split - so much for trying to start a band.

Sungei Gedong
We took the long way - by long, I mean $41 and a stopover in AMK for a Jay Chou concert.

Birthday
Grandma's - good food and good company. I ought to bring a camera out with me more often.

Chimichangas
With more Corona on tap, and lots of beef, onions and jalapenos. Muy bien.

addiction

2010-07-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

2nd: 93mins

West Ham 2 : Man City 4

West Ham 4 : Man City 5

K. Dyer (10)

Bojinov (25)

de Jong (26)

de Jong (30)

Bellamy (33)

K. Dyer (45)

Rodallega (47)

Rodallega (71)

de Jong (79)

Only in Championship Manager. And yes, I bought a rather sullen Rodallega who absolutely insists on leaving.

2010-07-04T13:16:00.001-07:00

Nothing quite like a shower to feel better after a long weekend spent in the shadows; Major Lazer is over-rated, a grand total of two people have contacted me about class reunions on an old number and the idea of being a combat controller sounds very appealing. I'm not sure if they have such a vocation here in the army though - it's not like we need to radio in air and artillery strikes on a regular basis on the battlefield, and I do suppose they have people from the arty branch doing that for a living already.

Time to read some books and catch up on stuff that I ought to be doing before I go back into camp. It's going to be outfield all the way, after which service term is technically over...technically. Not too shabby, not too shabby.

chronological order

2010-07-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of this is pretty self-defeating in the sense that I can't quite put it into words, and that it would be pretty futile to: some things just don't work out that way, see. Either that or I really am starting to get good at being a gentleman, as they say in there. May the Force be with you.

one-way street

2010-07-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

Some she-malady, some unhealthy wanton, Fires thee verily.

She walks like thirty, but talks like five.

She is flippant.

She knows what she wants. Sometimes.

She cries a lot.

She emotes a lot in the cyberworld.

She is a paragon of self-control.

She does a lot of things that she doesn't like.

She dreams a lot.

She believes a great deal.

She can be both cynical and gullible at once.

She has bipolar.

And she is supposed to be the significant other.

last rites

2010-06-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Something's gone wrong server-side, so some pictures from the Far East will have to wait...up to seven days, by which time I won't be able to see them and they'll have already been fodder for the series of tubes. I did a lot of stuff I wasn't supposed to do today. It takes a toll on the body, it does; as it is, I don't think the life-time guarantee on it is going to hold up for long. Painkillers are lifesavers, I swear.

Right now it's just sitting out the 9.0 between my ears and the mad howl of the afternoon grey at home. I ought to come home more often, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside that I haven't felt since...well, in a long while. The thing about service is that it takes the mickey out of a lot of things - pretty much right down to the nuts and bolts of everything, actually.

Even breathing.

That said, it's been a decently informative journey thus far. I can say I know and I understand with a little more confidence than I did in twelve years of formal schooling; the fact that issues such as life and death put a premium (make that a compulsory premium) on such higher-order thinking aside, it serves a useful - albeit selfish, s.v.p - purpose in self-discovery. A lot of people talk about taking a gap year and hoofing it to far-flung places like Bumville or someplace where they don't speak the language and intentionally put themselves at risk of getting raped/robbed/murdered/all of the above in the name of finding out more about themselves. It doesn't have to be that way: you get all the mental and physical stress you could ever possibly want in one nice, green package called the armed forces right here on your doorstep. Your mileage may vary (Leopard company, anyone?), but the general idea is still the same. On the plus side, they've got your ass covered with a minimum of $200,000 on death - disfigurement and dismemberment et al. command a little less, unfortunately - and free medical treatment at any public hospital or clinic.

It's a good deal, if a bit rawboned, and one that has worked wonders for me. There is but one simple question to answer:

What would I be doing otherwise?

And the best part is, you get to say that it's all in the name of defending your country. I haven't found a pen-pusher or a coffee-boy that gets to say that chest-thumper of a mission statement, though one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time comes a close second.

Reading about sinkholes and waiting by the phone for a call that, in all likelihood, will never come. Afternoons like this would have been so awesome a year ago.

air

2010-06-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

An old song in an unfamiliar place: you start to dream, and you begin to remember . Golden afternoons with green leaves and blue skies, and when things didn't quite matter the way they did now. An Australian sunset painted on a canvas of beige stucco, overlaid with a Japanese tinge of nostalgia in the sweat, chlorine and clamour of children at play: that was then. Halcyon memories encapsulated in a single, solitary phrase that reaches out - touches- strikes off a resulting series of chords that echo down into the who

the what

the where

the how

the why

and what was .

The roar of the waves. The glimmer of light on dust. The grey age of the houses, the rooms. The tears, the fears, the anger and the expectations. The people. The things we did, are doing, and will eventually do. There is nothing quite like the steps in between the accompanying octaves and driving, unrelenting Baroque pacing of the piece that feeds on that lust, that hunger for bygone days. Days of wine and roses; days that made you what you were. Are. Will be: some day these will fade, and be forgotten. Dust to dust to dust to dust to dust.

Art, mon Dieu. Pure art.

ravenna

2010-05-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

One hundred thirty-two weeks ago this day love fought, bled and died on the battlefield of time; there are people from halfway across the world who only know me through my words, and love me for what they believe they see. Or is it that they see true - that the art in itself is by no means a simulacrum, but the original itself? a bond unique in its platonic foundation and desperate in its faint traces of romantic stylings: their provenance and pedigree has hitherto been lost on me.

Stray kittens; suffer the little ones who love, and were loved. And how so.

rolling

2010-05-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday I was the enemy. I sat in the woods and waited while the occasional breeze dropped all manner of materiel and fruit on my muddied helmet; every now and then the trees would rustle and the twigs would crack with an unnatural rhythm, and all I had to do was point my steaming rifle in the general direction and pull the trigger twice.

"Kevin!" I motioned to his left. He'd been watching the track for the last half-hour even though the blues weren't due that way; according to a not-so-secret source, they'd been lost for over two hours somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We'd been screwing over the same bunch of guys for two turns now, and somehow they never seemed to figure out where we were. Three men; three rifles; three trees; three tired, sweaty, itchy souls dying one second at a time under the baleful eye of the midday sun.

The termites writhed and melted in a pool of their own slush. The repellent had just about repelled anything and everything except its primary target: mosquitoes. One of them buzzed so close that I could hear the Doppler scream of its minute wings; the reflex action from muscle memory had become almost as automatic as reloading. Twist, slap and scratch; a combat scratch. They'd appended 'combat' to almost anything that wasn't doctrine: combat loading (reloading without going through the proper drills), combat sling (putting it sideways and front), combat dump (doing it without taking off your boots), combat jack (whatever comes to hand), and so on.

Kevin nodded and continued to stare at the track. They weren't about to come: not then, not now, and probably not until after lunch. Fresh, hot rations straight from the cookhouse, mon Dieu. Lunch. You had to wonder at the resourcefulness that went into such detail.

The trees swayed and sighed with a sudden urgency, and I popped a few hasty shots in their direction. You didn't need to aim: at that distance, it took a lot of skill to miss . Wash, rinse and repeat ad infinitum; we train to standards, not to timings.

And that was how we spent a warm, blue day in May: on a lush piece of green surrounded by God and all the angels singing to high heaven in our ringing ears.

entertainment

2010-04-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

appleseed ex machina
Good animation, bad script and terrible dubbing.

taegukgi
Suitably violent with a decent plot. I know, I've lost it.

zombieland
I went to play several rounds of L4D2 immediately after and concluded that it was 1) bad and 2) retarded.

band of brothers
By far a whole lot better than The Pacific .

on the road
Clichéd and pretentious.

dawn of war: soulstorm
This only just goes to prove how terrible I am at RTS games.

world in conflict
I couldn't log in to the servers, but the campaign is just as fun - just the way I remembered it.

playlist

2010-04-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

The songs I picked up on in camp (no, not the ones that kept me alive...that is quite something else altogether):

#1 Bo peep Bo Peep

#2 Mister (you have to watch this in HD)

#3 Lupin

#4 Genie

block party

2010-04-11T13:12:00.000-07:00

IBM Model M
A real keyboard.

Like a Stone
#3 on tomorrow's setlist. I need a new cable, sling, amplifier and a reminder to drop-tune to D.

I shall not want
I think dumpster diving is prohibited by law over here.

Generation Kill
Maybe I'm just getting a little long in the tooth, but I don't have the patience to follow stuff on the telly anymore. Case in point: made sure to stay up just to watch episode 3 of The Pacific last night and gave up in disgust. I tried watching this last year before the As, though, and thought it was marginally very interesting.

New hobby
Playing with light is infinitely safer compared to playing with fire, even if the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

epilogue

2010-04-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Driving through the rain and listening to the old man sing When You Were Young; he grapples with a headache, abrasions and incredibly foul body odour. High and dry: none of the relief or happiness that traditionally characterizes such a denouement. Tired - the knowledge that it is far from the end - a quiet satisfaction at having completed four months' worth - a private narcissism at the thought that he, we, they are all by far the better soldiers for having done so - and maybe all of the above and then some.

A Beatles' song strikes up its melancholy tune on the radio; he closes his eyes, and he dreams.

***
4
They found their way by starlight; once about and around, and into the field for good measure. The pinpricks that dotted the lush velvet stared back at them, and they watched, spellbound, as the lights snaked an enchanting trail into the darkness. Green for the cows, yellow for the horsemen and blue for everyone else. It was cool, they were fresh and all raring to go; the way his pack was digging into his shoulders, he wondered for the umpteenth time if he should've thrown away his shoes and shampoo like everyone else.

And they'd only just begun. He set the oversize bag on the morning dew and craned a stiff neck skyward; the unearthly glow from all that they'd left behind burned bright and angry far off over the dense jungle canopy. People talked about where to go, what to do, what to eat after it was all over; he couldn't even bring himself to see that far. Far. It really did seem so far away, even at the decent pace of four an hour.

Far. The Dipper winked at him, and with a faint tinge of regret he hoisted his nineteen years on his back and turned it all on the memories of another time and place.

***

They partied all into the night, throwing things, toys, themselves and coins at anything and everything that so much as moved. Third floor out, second floor occupied by raucous laughter and adroit whiskey tango foxtrots: ran out, realized that we were half-naked - he was in his boxers - and quickly ran back upstairs again.

In the morning we still had two cans left over and massive headaches all round; tired, worn and grubby, but very much happy to be alive.

***
8
Under certain circumstances, familiarity breeds a special comfort that we all cling to when faced with impending death and/or destruction. We've walked this road before: every last inch of the blacktop we tread to the sound of angels on high. Where were you, where were we; the lightening sky illuminates the silent tread of the boots that bring us ever closer to our happy conclusion. Distance is measured by the hour; we march for one hour, not four kilometres. An exactitude hitherto unknown to us, not when we wait, and keel over from the pain in our shoulders.

He hugged the rifle to his sodden chest and kept walking. His helmet strap dangled from underneath his chin; he had made extra sure to loosen it before setting off. He felt just fine. If it wasn't for the weight on his back, he could probably continue to put one foot in front of the other for as long as they wanted him to.

They sang; he trudged on in a sweat-soaked silence.

***

The smell, mon Dieu. He was vaguely aware of the sharp tang of sweat, jungle and mud that he'd brought in the door, but wasn't fully aware of its overwhelming potency: they all smelled the same, anyway. The pack looked like a gigantic phallus.

He tossed his cap on the couch, and started unpacking.

***
12
He blinked, and stared. It was lost: he couldn't see as to whether it was on the dark side of his eyeball or fluttering somewhere on his eyelashes. The sweat stung, and he resisted a second urge to give it a good, hard rub. The first had taken one eye; there was no telling what the next one might do.

He asked around for a mirror. Everyone seemed more shocked than surprised at the fact that he wore contacts: it was the last day, damn it. You couldn't actually expect people to walk around blind - but then again, they all did.

***

They walked out to the unanimous roar of approval from the crowd. Stand next to a jet engine on a rainy day and cup your ears, and it doesn't even begin to come close: the adrenaline rush and heightened sense of awareness from the Red Bull put a bounce in their step and a discipline in their stride that had hitherto been missing for the last four months. Eyes straight, arms locked, feet in line; they marched as though they would never march again. All the abrasions, blisters, pain and thoughts of giving up - quitting - just rolling over and dying - evaporated with every whistle, camera flash and scream. They were here. They'd done it. They'd made it.

They'd finished.

***
16
Up the hill, down the slope. Down the slope, up the hill. Except that there was no down: it was up, up and away, away into the dense foliage that is the infantryman's rock, shelter and refuge. Rock: they stepped lively, avoiding ankle-busting stones and knee-breaking pebbles. Shelter: the leaves provided scant comfort from the late morning sun, which began to set steam to the boil. Refuge: none but the silent, selfish joy in noting that they all suffered.

Too. It was an infinity that they could all partake in; a psychological hurdle presented without any milestones or waypoints to check on their progress. Heat, blisters, abrasions and the weight on the back mean nothing when you know where you are going: they come back with a vengeance when you do not, and how so.

***

Do you remember your first - he began, but the sergeant walked by and he canned it sharpish. Once more, with feeling: their lockers were as empty as the day they stepped in. He had his marked out for him: amidst the chaos and clutter, there was an empty space in the middle, standing high and mighty above the rest. All those days ago; they seemed so, so long and so far away now. What had happened since then? Where had they gone since then? How?

And he stood there in the bright silence as they napped on their feet.

***
20
He marched; they sang. And they were free men.

***

Time. You. Me. Them. Everyone. Here. Now. Then. Later. He hugged himself, and wondered what it all meant. If it mattered. If it had all changed something, somewhere; in some way irrevocably so beyond the point of recognition. Yes.

Yes.

***
24
The sign read, CCP2. They'd been this way more times than they cared to remember; it was only fitting that they ended where they'd begun. They had started life on a four-klick routine that turned here; now they were hardened, cynical veterans who'd hoofed it on more and beyond to make it this far. The irony was not lost in the campy symbolism: all those days had finally caught up with them in order for them to even drag themselves here.

Two more, he said. They cheered, and they ran.

2010-04-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

The chubby kid took one look at me and promptly ran away to open the gate. I don't know if I have thateffect on people, but it can't hurt to give the old one-two every now and then just to see if it does. Not that a lot of people would recognize that: just too damn generic to even warrant a second glance.

***

I saw her and immediately remembered her from my days in white: I had promised to call her, but obviously never gotten round to doing so. She looked at me and asked, 'Hello, are you twenty-one?' My God.

No, I said. I'm nineteen. 'Uh, well, you look so much older - ' She giggled; some people have a very idiopathic approach towards amusement that is often funnier than the joke itself. Must be the way I dress: a beanie, a rumpled and very much beloved shirt, a pair of it's-white-under-this-light berms and a pair of my dad's old shoes. 'Um, okay, so this is about the Singapore Cancer - '

I've done this before. I wanted to say, Don't you remember me? too but I don't think she would have, anyway. She looked rather harried. 'Oh, that's okay then.' Okay. O-kay. They print the donations in the weirdest sums. $1.63 is most certainly tax-deductible - I wouldn't put it past them, but hey. Daffodils are a symbol of hope for people afflicted with cancer, I read. The battered clipboard had a picture of a rather happy child on its back, and I looked back at her.

Curiouser and curiouser: it had scarce been upwards of half a year on, and while I do suppose you have to meet many varied names and faces on a daily basis in that line of work, none of them can hold your attention for a full fifteen minutes on anything but cancer or donations. I was fresh and storied from a full weekend of surprises, and at this last straw I turned at the customary Have a nice day and made for the downtown bus pulling into the bay.

***

What do Borderlands, Call of Duty, Dawn of War and Enemy Territory all have in common? Simply the bored hobbies of two teenagers looking for some rough and ready entertainment on the cheap, and which we most certainly had in excess on a grey day such as this. We kill, laugh, swear and rage; a signal camaraderie unique to the primal slaking of a fictional bloodlust.

Or, as she would've declaimed with such clarity: men. For four hours at $2 an hour, we most certainly were.

***

Day turned to dusk in her arms, and at the stroke of midnight I said, I have to go. No glass slippers, no angry husband, nothing but the quiet longing of a soft no that drew out more than it intimated: every breath was a silver spell that blinded me and bound me to a mad desire held within a single, little finger of hers.

I love you. She smiled; I got lost on the way out.

more cowbell

2010-04-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the fact that I went in with both eyes open; maybe it was the fact that I'd told myself it was (hopefully) all for the best; maybe it was all of the above, and then some. The point is, basic actually turned out to be pretty manageable - in retrospect. I say this from a personal point of view; if you want a comparative reference, then I thank God every night that I never ended up in Viper just across the hardcourt - or Ninja, or Kestrel, or wherever it is that discipline and regimentation are enforced with a rigorous study of the ground on all fours in push-up position and a suitable amount of profanity.

Not that we were ever lacking, of course. Equipping us with 'basic soldiering skills' requires some attention in that respect, and while I won't say that we didn't have any, it wasn't that strict per se. For whatever reason: I guess we acquired a rather deservedly reputation as a slack company. I never quite thought of myself as a soldier during the four months I spent running, jumping, marching and digging holes in the jungle at night: maybe a little more like junior college orientation in uniform and without the girls. I suppose there is a mindset that has to be acquired - or in some special cases, drilled or even beaten into us - in order to stand on the parade square next Friday and call ourselves '…the trained soldier!' with some measure of pride.

I can't quite say that I have that mindset, and it's not because of the commanders - if anything, it's more to do with the people that I've lived, ate, slept and shat with in the course of the last four months. Maybe it's because we're the first to undergo the four-month PTP BMT; four months is a long time in which to adjust and acclimatize yourself to new and unfamiliar surroundings, and to gel with the people that you're going to be spending it with. Gel - well, I do suppose most certainly have. My bunkmates are one of a kind: it's not every day that you get to meet people from far-flung lands who enjoy simulated sex games with implements as varied as their creativity. I've learned a lot in addition to marching in time, shooting a rifle, scaling walls, ropes and all manner of obstacles tall, short, thick and thin; knowing how to say I want to sleep with your mother in three different languages is simply de rigeur with these guys.

Obviously, hanging out with that lot doesn't exactly put a lot of emphasis on discipline - not when these guys take every opportunity they get to study the back of their eyelids when they're supposed to be cleaning something. That's not to say that we didn't fulfill almost nearly every other criteria required to complete BMT to a tee; I don't think a lot of sections can say they've got three IPPT golds, four silvers and two passes out of fifteen, for one. They said the company had a reputation for physical training; as to whether it was intense or slack, we only ever had to watch Viper warming up after dinner to come to a very relieved conclusion. That intensity is definitely made up for in other areas, however. None of us will ever forget our PC's tongue-in-cheek soundbite: 'There is no such thing as 'route marches' in Taurus company; only fast marches.'

I don't suppose I will ever find out why we put one foot in front of the other at a half-jogging, half-running pace (why we do it with several kilos of stuff on our backs and the camouflaged equivalent of a straitjacket is another), not least when we actually do manage to complete the entire route in the end. Just not at the commanders' pace: the stragglers get hustled to open up their strides, look up, sing, drink up and a lot more besides that actually take out a lot more of us than the actual walking. I eventually realized that it was more for the morale than the energy, if anything. One really important thing about route marches and basic training in general is that a positive, optimistic, I'm-going-to-finish-this-even-if-it-means-claiming-on-the-Aviva attitude is a prerequisite: even more so than physical or combat fitness. Because if you decide to call it quits right there and then, then nothing in the world is going to get you off your ass and on the road again. Which is why I supposed the sergeants never really minded if we walked a bit slower than the rest of the horde, so long as we didn't fall out; they really did push us to our limits - and little more besides.

That mindset describes BMT in a nutshell: in order to become a soldier proper, you have to acquire that can-do attitude before anything else can fall into place. It's not a laissez-faire, sit-back-and-watch-it-happen approach, but more of taking it as it comes and making the best of it. Which I reckon most of us did, with a few exceptions. I know I most certainly did. A lot of the guys take it for granted that I'm a part of the few and proud who adapted easily to soldiering; the real truth is that I decided to be all I could be way back at the pre-enlistment check-up. To all intents and purposes, I'm not supposed to be hoofing it on the ground with them. I'm severely flat-footed, so much so that I don't even have an arch to speak of. The MO at CMPB took one look at me and popped a simple question: Do you want to be hardcore and go PES A, or PES C?

I told him I wanted to be an officer, and I've never looked back. Not when I've got shin splints so bad I can hardly walk after IPPT; not when my knees start to buckle after sprinting up and down hilly roads organizing resupply runs; not when my feet start to go numb after hours upon hours of drill practice. At the end of it, I figured it's not all about going to command school: all I did was simply prove to myself that yes, I could do it. That the only thing that's preventing me from getting a silver for IPPT in spite of the pain is myself, that it's only me who's saying no to everything I try to do.

And that is the most important thing BMT has taught me - a basic soldiering skill that I personally believe is far more important than breaking, shooting or blowing up stuff. Everything else will come naturally once you've got that: the discipline and regimentation et al., the mental image of yourself as a soldier and not a civilian anymore. How else would I even begin to describe BMT as manageable?

lights out

2010-03-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

It's not like there's anything to actually do on weekends: looks like I've got to be constructive in order to be relaxed. Mooching around is what I do best when there isn't anything else to do - me being tired of sleeping and all, and what with my old man's back still keeping me infirm. Did a half-assed job with my share this afternoon and took to wandering the streets in acid-soaked silence; there really isn't anything to do these days other than to just sit, chill and think about life. Books. Food. Cigarettes. Movies. More food. The army.

You.

Lights off; guerilla radio. The little one insists on turning off the fans too, so we're stewing in a humid four-by-four to the distant roar of the boulevard below. Guess I should've stayed out.

playing with fire

2010-03-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

Heat, food and rest; at the end of the week it's just another tall survivor story. Toenails, a back sprain and a fever: all in a day's work. Two more weeks to go!

you give me fever

2010-03-26T13:07:00.001-07:00

Make that massively exhausted, actually. The paracetamol is a real downer: can't go anywhere or do anything in this fuzzy, stoned-out-of-my-mind state. I'm not even sure if I'm making sense when I talk.

designer issues

2010-03-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

What I should have asked for on my birthday: Adobe Myriad Pro. Been exploring Frutiger-inspired fonts - i.e the Humanists - and wondering if I should try and give typography a shot. Tried looking for the Vista font pack that I used to have; can't remember where it's all gone but that was some pretty good typography, yes. The font families used on this page are all sans-serif: Lucida Grande, Tahoma, Verdana et al. I don't like Verdana, though. It's spaced too far apart and the letters are too wide.

like a stone

2010-03-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Walk in, find a seat and close your eyes. Wake up on Sunday morning a new sinner, ready to dispense with next week's formalities and begin the cycle anew: he secretly thought of it as compulsive behaviour behind their backs.

in

Music to watch girls go by. He walked the ten minutes down to the mall and back, unsure of the mission parameters in the absence of a proper chain of command. That was the trouble with freedom. You never knew what to do with it once you got it.

your house

He cranked up the volume on his iPod and opened up his strides. The toilets smelled expensive, and the clothes were decently gauche. Books! He read a lot these days, more than he'd ever done before. Some good, some bad and all entertainment in an otherwise staid environment not particularly conducive towards mental exercise.

I long

He stared at the shelves, pumping the old greys for the man's name. It struck him then how much he was into counter-culture: he had a distinctly unhealthy appreciation for a lower class of person. He wondered what Rorshach would have made of that.

to be

The phone was ringing off the hook, and unconsciously he made a note to transfer out all the texts from the old one. Memories: he made them out of paper. Lists upon lists upon lists of things to see, hear, do and buy; he made lists of the lists, and kept them folded somewhere safe in his pockets.

He never cleared the lists. That was the problem. When they got too long he went through them again and struck off the irrelevant and outdated items, and added fresh ones as they occurred to him like nightmares on a rainy afternoon. The thunder growled a deep basso over the glass and steel, and he hurried to the counter with his card and a Hubert Selby Jr. in hand.

room

The government was paying for it, anyway. That was the twisted logic behind the way he spent his weekends. They took care of the quotidian stuff; he took care of himself. A quid pro quo he could live with for the next two years without much fuss.

by room

People wondered where he was, what he was up to. He mostly told them he was sleeping, which wasn't too far from the truth - if he could have it his way. A moment is all you can ask of perfection; a quiet three hours spent watching girls and cars go by on a grey Saturday in the company of life, love and light. University. Emigration. Army. Marking. You. Me. Them. Your tomatoes.

patiently

And every evening he went back wondering if he could have done better. On his own: a quiet desperation born of an inertia that saw everything, but did nothing about that. Just because, and if only because. There was nothing to prove.

by sunset

2010-03-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

At the end of the day, he walked in the door and put the shopping bag on the bed. There were three new books in there; fresh material for the weeks ahead to come. He wasn't all that much into non-fiction, not after the two weeks spent in there with Adam Smith - airport thrillers were the future, baby. Not that he'd actually bought any: being more preoccupied with the possibility of studying linguistics some two years later he'd gotten a David Crystal tome from the bottom of the bargain bin at the Borders down the road. It didn't promise much, but he'd come to expect that from pretty much everything else he read these days.

He gave his new phone a once-over. The keypad had incredible tactile feedback, right up to the point where the long exchanges between him and the missus sounded like the world was about to come to an end. The software response left much to be desired, however; he reckoned it was a worthy trade-off in exchange for a larger screen and inbox capacity. The same problem of texts resurrecting themselves from eons ago reared its ugly head again once more, however, and he set to transcribing the ancient missives with a dogged diligence.

Not before he'd settled the issue of the supporting documents for his university applications first, though. Supporting documents: they didn't do anything much in the way of supporting him, to be honest. Still, six years in there wasn't exactly fruitless - after a fashion. You had to make do with the bed you made for yourself. He scanned and copied feverishly, and had them all sealed them all up in brown manila envelopes after dinner. He didn't give two hoots about going to university, actually. That'd be business in two years to come: right now he was more preoccupied with trying to survive in the service of his country.

Duty, honour, country. You had to be a twat - make that an incredibly stupid twat - to buy into that romanticized bullshit. All the same, it was on their pay. The least decent thing they could've done - at the risk of coming across as an ungrateful bastard. That was how everyone felt about it, anyway. Whatever.

third-generation warrior

2010-03-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

Technology, integration, networking et al. are the buzzwords for today. Gonna pop out and find myself a new Nokia later after sorting out the supporting documents for universities and reading through the thousand and one unread messages in the Mail. 6656 messages downloaded, out of which 266 are as yet unread. Sounds a bit too much like the good old days to be true.

echo after me

2010-03-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Two weeks.

Two weeks to stand, squat and kneel by; to watch with bated breath as the red light ignites the dormant child in our wearied pupils; to grope by starlight in grass as the vagaries of perception change with each passing step - 'tis a calibrated goose-step to the numbers in white that scream 300M, 200M and 100M in the interminable dark; to sit, and to understand that the next two years of your life is a carefully orchestrated exercise in patience - and, to a lesser extent, latent aggression.

Two weeks.

Two weeks to pass by in a sugared haze; to watch to the unholy chorus of Stratocasters and Marshalls; just so to say to each other, damn, but that was fast; to wait, wait and wait as the days go by with a pace that defies human comprehension. Time on that island has no meaning; it exists in a spatial zone far beyond the acute range of our awareness, and justifiably so. Only if because we do things when they tell us to, and if only just because.

Just because.

Two weeks to spend on the road, feeling the sun crawl up your double-layered socks, slip past your garters and up into your pants where it's wetter than the swimming pool on a rainy day. Rare as that sounds, it's not an altogether unfamiliar feeling: the ungodly weight on your back fit to drag you down through the nine hells; the medicine ball slung around your neck, then your arm, then your side, then completely unslung in a temporary fit of pique, then back around your neck; the straitjacket, locking you into a walking, singing, shouting inferno that burns with neither light nor smoke; the helmet, screwing your mind into an incandescent oblivion with every jaunty bounce that ricochets off the top of your bruised head. You wear the helmet without the netting so that it sits lower on your head; you remove the neckpiece because it looks stupid and because it gets in the way of your rifle sling; you hold the rifle in both hands because the pack is eating into your shoulders; you give up and hoist the pack with both hands because it is the greater of the two evils. Walk, walk, walk and walk; deep into the dark to the hoarse chants of doomed youth. The way is lit by ghostly green lights, floating upon the anthems that we sing to none but ourselves. The blind lead the blind, who in turn shout at them to close up, catch up, don't straggle behind; the implicit command is that no one gets left behind.

Or forgotten.

Two weeks to spend with Tarzan, playing at knots and lashings; the old men have come back to re-live their glory days vicariously through us. We are surrounded by green: we eat green, we wear green and we smell green; a distinct, primal scent that pervades the stifling, humid air. That is the scent of adolescence: the smell of fear and loathing - a breaking point beyond which the survivors go on to become fully fledged members of the body politic - and the smell of greenhorns that don't know any better. Will we, won't we, shall we; it does not matter only because we say we do. Not when it actually does: even between the novices, there lies a silent compact to ask no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.

The truth is only what you believe it to be.

Two weeks to pass in a suppressed angst; to sit in a mute frustration at the slow passing of the second hand; to curl up on the cold, hard floor and watch the rain streak through wet concrete; to learn, listen, and wait, and to understand that the next two years of your life is a carefully orchestrated exercise in patience. Aggression has been postponed to the week after next.

Two weeks.

The little runabout rides the swells on the gusto of its occupants; he sleeps, and he dreams of worlds beyond this one where things like jungles, boots, field packs and guns are but a beautiful, glorious fiction. Echo after me: same old shit again.

for your entertainment

2010-03-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Best Short Films in the World
Found it when I was trying to stuff my new iPod for camp; doesn't come as close to the National Film Board of Canada though.

The Ultimate New York Playlist
Block leave is officially reserved for Naomi now.

How to Get a Live Response
Don't think we've got this problem over here, but a pretty amusing site to poke around nonetheless.

Q-codes
For ham radio operators. Maybe when I've got the time and the inclination someday; sounds like a pretty interesting hobby.

Pastebin
Copying and pasting text has never been so much fun.

to-day

2010-03-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

There was a little something I'd lost up there in the previous code, but no matter now. Can't figure out how to do it all over again with the new system. Haven't had time to play with it, those being halcyon days long past - and still past, damn - and now resurrecting in bits and pieces all over again in the hope of dredging up something useful from way back.

Applications can really take the piss out of life; I don't know whether to be shocked, upset or even happy, if that even qualifies as a proper emotion given the current setting of papers upon papers stacked in unhappy mounds around me now. Not to mention the sudden revelation at midnight that I'd royally destroyed one of them: the personal statement (yes, the personal statement) was a short one-liner I'd given no thought to.

There are days, and there are moments within those days, I suppose.

world without end

2010-03-06T12:55:00.001-08:00

Joy: an emotion unique in its unsurpassed capacity for being human. To be able to love, laugh and live, as it were; the sangria went a long way towards that end.

sunshine

2010-03-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

And they dream: of quiet strength in the worn lines and creases of service; a fundamentally flawed notion that they both can laugh and pass off as just that - a signal idealism long diluted by the practiced cynicism that comes with growing up. Growing up, oui: he will go places and meet faces, but never too far from the one and only that matters most.

Because it shall be as you say; you hold more power in those slender fingers of yours than you will ever know.

field kampf

2010-03-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

There was a nice little ditty I'd written the weekend before for the company - well, it was nice and little enough to have been read out to the whole company - but it's not something I'm particularly proud of. The way I see it, it didn't even qualify as art per se - not even really bad reportage, to be honest.

But when you go for something like that, I don't think words can even begin to frame the stream of adrenaline-fuelled conscious that was essentially the five days in there. Sleep; moonlight; artillery; recruit; sprint; kill; a garbled mess of the things that matter, and the things that matter.

59 men, and there was no other. None fit to qualify, apparently, but based on that inherently hyperbolic statement alone lies the grain of truth that comes with necessity: because there really was no other, simply by the numbers involved. One man, one rifle, one scratch in the earth shared with all manner of foul beasts that belie the hyperactive imagination ramped up by sleep deprivation and filthy conditions, but that was the quid pro quo we all bought into when we put our names and asses on the line. Willing, or not: it did not matter.

Not in the least.

Yellow light, in the jungle; that is where I want to be.

moonrise

2010-02-20T12:51:00.000-08:00

As they waited in the rain, there was only a single, solitary thought to keep them company: nothing ever makes sense. The lush foliage at the edge of the village stared back into them, and amidst the snap and crackle of the rifle fire they fidgeted and scratched restlessly at imaginary rashes. Six pairs of eyes stared expectantly out of the green-and-black livery that marked them as men; men to listen, men to do as they were told, men to expect not to survive in the face of certain death and men to die. Death. It haunts us all, even as we pretend to sacrifice to it. We see it every day in every way in every thing we do; a signal presence elevated by our mere status as combatants into a higher being that governs our every action. It is a viral prevalence that demands a quid pro quo: speak of it not, but think of it always.

And you cannot help but to think of it always.

Failure is founded on the fear of death. To scale walls; to climb ropes; to fire, fire, fire deep into the black night; to run unceasingly without breath; to boldly go where you would never take your own shadow with you. To simply do, and to be: that in itself alone requires a courage that is not mustered overnight. A trust, if you will; a faith that must go beyond the physical confines of the world we share with our blood, sweat and tears.

Gravity. Throw a drill grenade high enough, and it will come down. Heat. Primal aggression under the noonday sun; a force that reaches deep into the vitals and pulls out a bestial roar. Friction. Step on a man's toes often enough, and something will start to slip somewhere. Attraction. There are leaders, and there are leaders. Cue the spirit of Nuremburg.

To succeed, you cannot fear death.

The bullet as it grinds a slow and bloody storm into your guts, irreparably tearing tissue and arteries beyond recognition. The bayonet, carving red meat from white bone. The stampede, pushing your brains into the slimy flagstones. The fall that twists a sharp point of a broken rib into your stomach, spilling the beans and broccoli you had for lunch. The recoil that gouges an eyeball with devastating force, crunching bone into powder.

Sit, think and remember how you were - what you once was - what now cannot be brought back, ever again - and know, deep inside, that basic has made you the man you thought you would never be. Physically. You put the possible in impossible. Mentally. Mind over matter: your mind tells you it doesn't matter. It has deconstructed you, and made you anew: the old has been burned away, and the dross thrown out. You are a soldier.

A soldier.

The rain taps a slow tattoo on the dusty helmets, and they continue to wait. Against the faded white of the haci's walls they stick out like sore thumbs; the deep green holding a staid, muted contrast against the graffiti that adorns the cracks and holes. Tactics; fire and control; movement; discipline; it all comes back in an adrenaline rush that sets the hair on end and the teeth on edge. The first man watches the corner with trepidation; he does not know what to expect.

And it is all a beautiful fiction. Prearranged, programmed, predestined, preordained; there are two enemies in the room - bang! Bang! down they go. Room clear! If only life was as wonderfully clear as training.

Because it does not answer this: where, then, do we go from here? There is no how, there is no why; they have been amply provided for in a manner he does not wish to recollect (nor re-enact, God forbid.)

Quietly, and softly, there is only this at the day's tired close to come home to:

I love you.

And in the dark that is black as sin, that is as sweet as a stolen kiss, he continues to wait.

the veteran

2010-02-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

And we stood there, and watched him as he sat,

Turning his sockets where they went away,

Until it came to one of us to ask

'And you're - how old?'

'Nineteen, seventeenth of Feb.'

adapted from Margaret Postgate Cole

on the fly

2010-02-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'll see you there, love. Be there or be square: implicit in the terse exchanges that belied the emotions running hot between them. He, she, I, we, loved, and were loved, and now we prone in Tekong clay waiting for something to happen.

One thousand -

CONTACT

Two thousand -

by love's last light

Three thousand -

and we bring the full might of our empty guns to bear on an equally fictional enemy. OPFOR, tango, enemy, him; the myriad forms and guises in the which they come cannot hide the fact that there will always be more.

Always.

***
cher cousin:

He eagerly shows me things I have seen and will never see: no more boy, but neither yet a man. He is wondrous to behold; of tall stature and great cheer, and an even temperament as I have never known him to possess. Equanimity: give him power to accept the things he cannot change, and the will unto death to pursue the things as yet within his grasp. He is changing, growing before my infrequent visits; 'tis life, ma chere, and for all its travails, it is a beautiful thing to watch.

***

It cannot be declaimed as shyness, for there is no such thing - the tentative touch, the sensual gasp, the longing stare - between the two that give them away. They watch curiously from the other end, lenses at the ready; touch me not and hold me close for I cannot and will not let go of the fire that burns white and cool to calloused palms. There is a faint, crystal tinkling on the clear afternoon air that should not go unaccompanied, and she said a great many things that sketched patterns that did not yet exist, not until she gave life to them by the faint taste of apple and lemon on her hallowed breath. Is it - will it - shall it - ? but do not answer them yet, not because there are no answers, but because we have all the time in the world to reach our own understand of what will transpire if we sit back and watch the fireworks bloom. Letters; words and meanings that reach out and touch without ever seeing the other: therein lie the gifts that have no name.

You cannot buy love. But you can sell your soul for it.

***
mon ami:

A real, live, walking and talking 5"5 action figure with movable parts and accessories. Comes with helmet, combat vest and field pack - batteries sold separately. While stocks last.

We could conclude the deal of a lifetime, no pun intended. Him in front, me bringing up the rear and the both of us re-enacting scenes out of Top Gun sans the cheesiness and Hollywood bravado; they don't pay you good money to play at being soldiers with million-dollar instruments.

Brothers in arms: to whatever sweaty, muddy or sticky end. God be with us all.

here we go again

2010-02-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

One day it will all stack up, fall over and crush him to death under its collective (albeit imaginary at best) weight; not through neglect alone but because of his sheer reluctance to stop adding to the damn pile. He does not doubt that it will all come full circle; he does not doubt that he will forget; he does not doubt that he will inevitably lose a part of himself in the struggle to keep a silent vigil on anything and everything that crosses before him - but he also does not doubt that all in all, he will only ever remember it if it is worth remembering in the first place.

And that is all that matters.

pokédex

2010-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

bird of paradise, black. 0810hrs.

lizard, green. 1100hrs.

unidentified sound, murmur/moan. 1145hrs.

hummingbird, black, red-breasted. 1650hrs.

monkeys. 1708hrs.

seagull/eagle? grey/white. 1715hrs.

spider, yellow/black. Big. Very big. 1730hrs.

more monkeys. 1753hrs.

life lessons

2010-01-24T12:48:00.000-08:00

1. For five million bastards, most of whom you will never meet or see.

2. Power corrupts, believe me.

3. You have to go through hell in order to bring it to others.

4. Making it look good.

5. If you can't fight for the five million bastards, then at least for the hombres you eat, sleep, shit and live with on a semi-regular basis.

6. My personal favourite: Don't get caught.

7. "Hello, hello. Are you dying?"

letters

2010-01-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

This guy's been a regular on the to-do lists I create week after week, but I can never seem to get down to doing it. Maybe it's the tedium of finally setting pen to paper after an extended hiatus (and with good reason). Maybe it's the inanity in searching for diseconomies of prose given the prevailing technological advances of our time. Maybe it's the discomfiture suffered at the sudden revelation that the feelings aren't quite what they are when given the space and time to actually sit and think about them.

And all this before even trying to look for a pen. How do you tell someone you love them in not too many words - without coming across as a pedant, or worse still, a douchebag.

On War

2010-01-17T20:46:00.000-08:00

War has a an allure all its own; it is best captured in the pixelized imagery that has become the de facto conduit for a generation that has seen it all, and how. It goes on in universes far away, far beyond our own reckoning, and takes place according to the parameters laid down by others with an additional iota of I-could've-come-up-with-that-too creativity.

And it is fun.

$26 both ways, and well worth it for the 6 hours we spent getting our asses handed to us most of the time. The one battle that did stand out was a 81-minute marathon in which I messed up the team positions at the start - the Orks then went on to cream the hapless Eldar and subsequently rush the breach in incessant waves that, at the high-water mark, had us throwing Chimeras straight from the factories into the fray.

Most of my guardsmen were wiped out early on, and subsequently my artillery as the Meks and Mad Doks pushed farther in beyond the beachhead they'd established with a supermassive rush of Sluggas. The LP closest to the breach got creamed, and my Infantry Command got it big time from the Meks too. Later on they had the Squiggoth, to which we were firing our Basilisks point-blank at (the Earthshaker rounds come in dead useful here) and which had my Ogryns flying all over the map. I had to build the Baneblade quite a few times in response too, it being the bullet magnet that it is. But we saved the day with the mother of all tanks and a few Leman Russes, and Jorge brought up the rear with his hordes of guardsmen.

A little bit of post-teenage escapism never did any harm, and not least to a serviceman who now pays for his own entertainment. This is the stuff on which weekends are built around, hombres; 48 hours to forget about the cares and aches that are the weekdays. Lather, rinse and repeat as necessary.

c'est soi

2010-01-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

What do you do with your first paycheck? You

1. Sponsor an orphan

2. Sign up for Caller-ID

3. Buy your sister a birthday present

4. Get a good book

5. Sit on it and make a list about the things you wished you had, but didn't - because you don't have the time to actually go out and find them all.

welcome to the real world

2010-01-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

Waiting, watching and wishing on the stars that go by in the night; he stands and stares heavenward, and spins a little prayer on a rose that should not be there. But it is, and so he mumbles in the phlegmatic early morning basso that endears him so to the one who also waits, watches and wishes on the same moon from across the water.

It is near, but not so near as to be able to send the love he folds in letters she will never read. It is far, but not so far as not to be able to tell her yes, I do, and no, I think not. He fumbles, and smiles; a lopsided grin in the darkness that no one can see. It is a cold night out, and as night slowly turns into day he touches the rose one more time and harks back into memories that are just that - shadows of old moving pictures that can only tell what happened, and not much more beyond.

He fidgets invisibly in the file. There are things to be done, always things that need doing; the list is endless. He knows not where they come from, nor from which hell-mother they spawn with such feckless fecundity, but that he must hunt them down with a single-minded purpose and cross them off.

She is not on the list. She cannot possibly be on the list; an itemised object, tool, thing that must be completed. How can you turn back? How can you say no? How can you possibly -

and it comes slow and silent on the morning cool; that in the restlessness that dogs his stride and nips at his heels, it is the peace that he seeks and wishes so fervently upon her that he needs too. She paints with the words he gives her; the colour palette is entirely hers to choose from, and he never says no.

Never. Because there are things that he leaves unsaid, that he must do so; she knows, and she smiles. That is the only way to keep warm in the morning, ma chere. I know of no other.

by dawn's early light

2010-01-01T23:44:00.000-08:00

t'was the comfort twixt blue cotton that he loved, and remembered thus; to kin, friends and lovers alike he wished them the best that he could only imagine, and hope for.

feet first into hell

2009-12-31T07:43:00.000-08:00

Walking;
on the cusp of a new dawn that hangs its laundry out to dry on cool, tropicana evenings where the wind blows on a southeasterly and the drink of choice on such a circumspect occasion is water. Blessed, fresh and cool water, straight from the tap; it gives you mumps, rubella and measles in any order of preference and leaves no scars save that of long nights between the sheets long after the lights have gone out.

Running;
towards a moon that sets on the horizon amidst feathered clouds pasted on dark velvet; it winks conspiratorially in the muggy evening heat as the luminous numbers on the clock face imperceptibly count down to a sweaty denouement. Give me one moment to tie two shoelaces for three men four times, and it all begins to stack up. One day it all makes sense - don't know how, when, or why, but then again that is besides the point. There's no rhyme, there's no reason and there's no rationalizing to the method in the madness that plagues us all. We just know that it works, and we are content. Mein kompanie über alles!

Marching;
a steady tattoo of hooves on weathered tar that lends itself to the descant of oohs and aahs of the souls in imagined purgatory; the refrain that the pain lets you know you're alive has never been disproven in such Germanic style. Regimentation and discipline to whatever end, gentlemen; keep your files, hold your rows and straighten your lines, and we shall crush all who dare stand before our size 9 boots.

Swimming;
the routine that carries into habit, and the habit that carries into the quotidian. Where time is not of the essence, and speed a thing for lesser mortals to contend with, doing nothing is by far better than actually having to something at all. If, and only if: the Dreckfressers never had it this good. Upstairs, downstairs and everything in between that entails a disposition of constant attention to detail on the fly; it is progressive only in name.

(Or bad, depending on who you ask.)

Sailing;
to think is not to do; the two are as far removed from each other as apples and oranges. Waiting, watching and thinking as the waves crash into the concrete heads is cathartic; a steady rocking motion that soothes the soul and calms frayed nerves. Speed me now and speed me quick, and make no provision for those less fortunate: that is how the world turns, mon ami, and how. We parted at the square, and intimated our goodbyes. They hugged; we waved.

And with a dari kiri cepat jalan we turned on our heels, leaving them to play with their thousand-yard stares in the glare of the noonday sun.

***

Two years is a long time; a very, very long time. Very.

friends

2009-12-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

Jorge:
So we were thinking of going night cycling, y'know.

Commie:
Look at the size of this thing!

Jorge:
When do you book out?

Commie:
One-man show. No contest.

Jorge:
How's about we hold it on a Sunday night?

Commie:
The Baneblade is officially my new best friend.

Jorge:
Night cycling - just you, me and well, maybe you too.

Commie:
Second only to the standard combination of artillery and guardsmen, of course. I love guardsmen. Is there anything they can't do?

Jorge:
Well, see you soon, army boy. Don't forget - we're having it on Sunday night. Ha ha!

Commie:
Opportunity cost is measured in requisition points, mon ami. Hell yeah.

give him two lips like roses in clover

2009-12-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the green darkness and twirling in the seats to the accompaniment of guns, germs and steel in the background; their objective was to find 13 Christmas cards and send it to God knows where. A huge, bearded Hells Angel sits in front of a terminal blasting away - there are moments, I suppose, and thereare moments.

He comes in and beckons to us, and we haul ass. There's a Mickey D's which we want to stop at for food. It's on the ground floor with idiot-proof access via the main square; instead, he takes us outside to a filthy canal where the McD's has, oddly, a door that opens on to it.

'It's a shortcut,' he says. I look at her quizzically and she shrugs. He puts on a pair of goggles and steps in; the smell that pervades the air is an amalgamation of childhood memories and the floating market from the day before. He swims across slowly, but surely; and returns the same way with a few burgers.

And it stops there.

all polar bears are left-handed

2009-12-03T23:25:00.000-08:00

On the night - love's last lasts longest best in quiet moments under a cool sky streaked with the palettes of seventeen successive sunsets. The padre has a massive Messianic complex going; he gets up and lights a cigarette with trembling hands.

He needs to think. She sits under the tree and watches him; he paces up, down, left, right and looks in every which way except at her. Things that need to be rationalized, things that need to be put in order, things that need to be set apart. She would never have guessed that of him, not in a million years - but the last few days have proven him to be a high contradictory creature of late. She guesses, and guesses again; strike one, two, three and no ball but the bubble he left in her hands.

Bear? she asks. Come sit with me. He stubs out the cigarette under metal-shod heels and plops down beside her.

None of us can say no, not even to each other, he thinks. What in God's name am I doing?

But she leans over and puts two of the best on sunburnt cheeks, and any other thoughts are thereafter banished from his confused mind.

elfin fire

2009-12-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

And there it was, laid edgewise in stately repose on the bier that sailed down the seven seas; it burned long, slow and deep into the night with a white flame atop its crest. Whither it went, no one knows - and no one will know. Ever and anon it returns, upon the tide of dreams forged in secret; it bears nobody, will have nobody and cares not a whit for the world it traverses in a golden silence - save a lady elf, who wears the thirteenth rose of the Order of the Bubble, and her bear, who walks with her in dreams so intimate as to be real. And he does not tell her, but she knows that they are, too. Oddly and deliciously, and with not a smidgeon of hope under the stars that guide his tiny path.

***

She held me and kissed me, and told me she missed me; twenty lines of Neruda's best could never hope to redeem the conflagration of emotions that burned within. Read me now and tell me true: what was, what is, and what is to be have all been blown out of the water in the name of life, love and liberty.

Amen.

welcome to the jungle

2009-12-01T07:19:00.000-08:00

Jorge:
Goddammit, Orchard Boy. Slow down and wait up. Cut the Kampung Kid some slack.

Ursa Minor:
Places like Bukit Panjang are so friggin' far away, they're like what, one time zone behind? They actually have sunrise at 8 in the morning. How cool is that?

Jorge:
(looks at a bus stop curiously) What in the hell is this?

Ursa:
Not to mention you need to bring your passport too. They give visas on arrival, I think.

Jorge:
(stamps on a pavement) This is tough stuff. What do you call it?

Ursa:
Whole station's a safe house. You know, like how they have the posters with WARNING: RESTRICTED AREA and PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED around. Wild boars, my God. I think they give out guns or something.

Jorge:
They don't have pavements in Boon Keng, you know that?

Ursa:
Where is Boon Keng, by the by?

Jorge:
Boon Keng's like the poorest freakin' place around. Everyone round here's a farmer, for Pete's sake.

Ursa:
We're going to miss our bus.

Jorge:
Not me, though. My dad's the village chief. Beat that, bitch!

Ursa:
Do you have, like bullock carts or something over there?

Jorge:
We don't have any of these fancy pavement thingamajigs. Only dirt paths, if you can find them.

Ursa:
Hustle up! I'll pay for you.

Jorge:
Don't cut through the paddy fields, they have mines in them. Every other person in the goddamn village's missing a leg or two.

Ursa:
Welcome to Boon Keng. How's that for a snappy documentary title?

Jorge:
We have wild boars too. Don't laugh.

Ursa:
Christmas round here's pretty bloody disgusting. All these lights give me fits.

Jorge:
What in the hell are lights?

Ursa:
I think have a videocam somewhere at home.

Jorge:
You ever heard of candles? Paraffin wax, like.

Ursa:
And here we are.

Jorge:
Goddamn Orchard Boy. One day I must take you around Boon Keng and show you what it's like.