taipei

spent the whole of yesterday morning and afternoon on a plane from Singapore to Taipei, and then spent the evening getting caught in a downtown traffic jam. at night, had a great bowl of beef noodles, and then was told by the hotel receptionist that my plan comes with a free cocktail each night… my first instinct is to remark how this arrangement suits me way better than the usual complimentary breakfast, which I think shows how far gone I am. I really need to get my act together.

all that said, today i’ll be linking up with the gang, and tomorrow is Edward’s wedding. eight days here. good breather, figuratively and literally – hope the haze in Singapore isn’t getting any worse – but I hear that the heat in Taiwan may cause a typhoon to form off its coasts. i’m not looking forward to that possibility, but well, that’s life, and so it goes. will write again when I don’t have people in queue for the hotel public computer.

i was the kid with the drum

went out for dinner with the harvard kennedy school new admits yesterday.  dinner was at fika, which would be that swedish restaurant at arab street, and after dinner i found myself alone at blue jazz bar, nursing first a long island iced tea and then a double shot drambuie and then another… at first the jazz band wasn’t swinging and i was reading herman hesse by lamplight, but then they kicked in and it was eyes closed everything off and just the music, as if i wasn’t nowhere except where instinct and whim were the twin sovereigns and scourges and no one gave a shit about you, or anything.

truth be told the only jazz song i know by heart (what does it mean to know a jazz song by heart, anyway?) is abbey lincoln’s ‘buddy, can you spare a dime?’… one of those great recession songs that ooze desperation and loneliness and make you think twice about our world of beggars and mercenaries.  i think i know patsy cline (for the song ‘crazy’, orig. willie nelson; not fully jazz, arguably) when i hear her, certainly ellington or fitzgerald, but there hasn’t been a song since that’s made me pace the floor the way abbey lincoln does.  it’s history in five minutes, both up-down narrative and left-right sentiment, boiling up and over.  the courage to stick out your hand and the tenacity to laugh, whether you get your dime or not (what’s a dime after all?  too important when you’re down and out, nothing when you’ve a coat on your back and two good shoes).  the sagacity to duck and the energy to defend.  and there are times when i tell myself they don’t make music like that anymore, that we need someone to encapsulate all this shittiness and silliness that is the start of our blood strewn smoke scattered maniac ridden very seductively own century – and then i catch myself for the affected twat i am and go listen to carly rae jepsen.

so back to blue jazz.  dude comes over asking whether i really don’t want my drambuie on the rocks, and over the next half an hour i’m sipping liquid honey on fire and sweating my arse off.  wednesday night it might be, but there’s no wind and a second long island would have been much smarter.  faces and names, faces of people who are clearly regulars and therefore, or but for some reason, look too worse for wear; names of people they call out, bands members that come and go, some too young but inspired, some experienced, their knowing auras not sad but just discerning.  sex on frats, eyes closed, the lead guitarist clearly a green hand (at least in this club) and twiddling with the amps, the bass too far gone and the drummer with both eyes and mouth wide open, a leer, a laugh?  in the direction of the bartender, who just smiles and turns away.  four drinks, two spirits and two beers, a waiter sidling towards the front tables, drinks ignored because their recipients are too busy bobbing their heads, eyes closed and ears for all purposes deaf, we this gang of coincidences privy to each other’s detachment, this orgy of notes approximating melodies, the chatter of the guitar and the heavy breathing of the bass.  guy and girl sit behind me, order a red wine and a beer, girl pulls her chair out far too fast and clanks against my shoulder, i turn around and we smile.  it doesn’t matter, does it?  never does, never should.  takes music and alcohol to make us civil people.

eleven pm i get the bill and walk to the bus station, an hour back home, the bus winding through what is patently not the shortest route.  i drop my handphone, pick it up, reassemble it, drop it again, reassemble it again, much to the laughter of the dudes beside me (‘sia lah, xia suay siah!’, etc. etc.).  but that’s alright.  from inside the bus i watch shenton way, cantonment, havelock, alexandra, redhill, the whole journey right up to holland drive, and it seems that i could be at peace with all this, if only i learned to stop worrying and start mindlessly loving.

narita

a lot of pointless grappling with the silly wordpress interface (although it’s more than likely that all this trouble is because i’m shit with computerse – for some reason my previous entry has disappeared, and then become a draft, and is probably now scheduled for release at some yonder date, although it’s already been published once before). i’m waiting for my plane, which will be in thirty minutes, at narita airport, and i was thinking of writing a pretty long essay, but this terminal requires 100 yen per ten minutes, and i just spent the better part of an hour drinking beer, eating sausages, and dying from a justin bieber remix that an otherwise english-pub-looking restaurant decided would be good to blast over the stereo. so i’ll leave the serious stuff to when i get back to singapore (need the time to organise my thoughts, anyway), and meanwhile suggest anyone interested to watch mitchell and web on youtube. looking forward to singapore in less than 7 hours, but already missing japan in this departure lounge.

silver linings playbook

this one will be short, because i’ve just arrived in japan and have a dinner in thirty minutes.  watched silver linings playbook on the plane (and got quite drunk; but that’s nothing new).  before actually watching the movie, i was wondering how in blue hell jennifer lawrence could have been picked over emanuelle riva for the oscars.  now that i’ve watched the movie, i’m wondering how anyone other than lawrence could possibly have had any chance.  she’s sublime.  and bradley cooper isn’t half bad either… he’s crazy good when he goes ‘loony’ (in quotation marks because the movie makes you wonder whether the joke’s on you rather than them), and all in all it makes you wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your life (that said, if you’ve a face like a potato, chances are you aren’t gonna make it to hollywood).

so a link to youtube, and i’m off:

 

attacking the bookshelf

this is what happens when you do what the japanese call ‘tsundoku’, i.e. buy a ton of books, stack them up, and fail to read them – you end up reading non-fiction that is slightly out of date.  in this case the offending paperback is professors stiglitz and bilmes’ ‘the three trillion dollar war’, current as of 2008.  some of the projections have proved less than accurate (not due to any fault of the authors; rather, because conservative estimates have rendered even the moderate-realistic scenario hypothesized in the book quite horrifyingly rosy), and i don’t agree with the inclusion of some costs (all costs are equal, but some are more equal than others).  nonetheless the admonitions remain timely.  this is from the preface (annotations, footnotes and references not included – read the book for those):

‘the issue is not whether america can afford three trillion dollars.  we can.  with a typical american household income in 2006 just short of $70,000, we have far more than we need to get by.  even if we threw 10 percent of that away, we would still be no worse off than we were in 1995 – when we were a prosperous and well-off country.  there is no risk that a trillion dollars or two or three will bankrupt the country.  the relevant question is a rather different one: what could we have done with a trillion dollars or two or three?  what have we had to sacrifice?  what is, to use the economist’s jargon, the opportunity cost?’

‘… for sums less than the direct expenditures on the war, we could have fulfilled our commitment to provide 0.7 percent of our gross domestic product to help developing countries – money that could have made an enormous difference to the well-being of billions today living in poverty.  the united states gives some $5 billion a year to africa, the poorest continent in the world: that amounts to less than ten days’ fighting.  two trillion dollars would enable us to meet our commitments to the poorest countries for the next third of a century.’

‘we could have had a marshall plan for the middle east, or the developing countries, that might actually have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the people there.  even more modest ambitions could have been achieved for a fraction of what has already been spent on iraq.  the world has committed itself to eradicating illiteracy by 2015.  fully funding that campaign would cost some $8 billion a year – roughly two weeks of fighting the war.  we have even bungled our efforts to help iraqis with reconstruction.  in 2003, congress approved $18.4 billion in reconstruction aid for the country – a sum that is three times per iraqi what we spent for each european during the marshall plan.  but instead of spending the money immediately to help fix the electricity, oil refineries, and schools of iraq, the united states tied up most of the funds in endless bureaucratic squabbling between the pentagon procurement office and congress.  a full year later, the security situation in iraq had deteriorated and we had lost the hearts and minds of the people.  much of the money was refunneled into military activities or not spent at all.’

it goes on – the possibility of a tax cut for middle-income families, funding healthcare reform and its execution, etc., and also addresses among other things the deplorable state of veteran healthcare.  i might instinctively disagree with some things, but 1) i am no authority on this issue, and 2) all in all, it was a very compelling read.  we as humans will never foresee (nor, sadly, acknowledge) all consequences of war, and we need books like this to constantly remind ourselves of our folly.  the last paragraph of this book sums it up all too well:

‘going to war is not to be undertaken lightly.  it is an act that should be undertaken with greater sobriety, greater solemnity, greater care, and greater reserve than any other.  stripped of the relentless media and government fanfare, the nationalist flag-waving, the reckless bravado, war is about men and women brutally killing and maiming other men and women.  the costs live on long after the last shot has been fired.’

‘humour and knowledge are the two great hopes of civilization’

the last time i read this book i was seventeen, in kolkata, and with bronchitis. now that i’m healthy and eight years older, two rather long passages from the last chapter stick. given all the recent news, international and domestic, i sincerely think they’re worth reproducing. (any formatting is entirely my own.)

here goes the first:

‘The most important function of sport lies in furnishing a healthy safety valve for that most indispensable and, at the same time, most dangerous form of aggression that I have described in the preceding chapter as collective militant enthusiasm. The Olympic Games are virtually the only occasion when the anthem of one nation can be played without arousing any hostility against another. This is so because the sportsman’s dedication to the international social norms of his sport, to the ideals of chivalry and fair play, are equal to any national enthusiasm. The team spirit inherent in all international sport gives scope to a number of truly valuable patterns of social behavior which are essentially motivated by aggression and which, in all probability, have evolved under the selection pressure of tribal warfare at the very dawn of culture. The noble warrior’s typical virtues, such as his readiness to sacrifice himself in the service of a common cause, disciplined submission to the rank order of the group, mutual aid in the face of deadly danger, and above all, a superlatively strong bond of friendship between men, were obviously indispensable if a small tribe of the type we have to assume for early man was to survive in competition with others. All these virtues are still desirable in modern man and still command our instinctive respect (…)

‘Sporting contests between nations are beneficial not only because they provide an outlet for the collective militant enthusiasm of nations, but also because they have two other effects that counter the danger of war: they promote personal acquaintance between people of different nations or parties and they unite, in enthusiasm for a common cause, people who otherwise would have little in common. We must now discuss how these two measures against aggression work, and by what means they can be exploited to serve our purpose.

‘I have already said that we can learn much from demagogues who pursue the opposite purpose, namely to make peoples fight. They know very well that personal acquaintance, indeed every kind of brotherly feeling for the people to be attacked, constitutes a strong obstacle to aggression. Every militant ideology in history has propagated the belief that the members of the other party are not quite human and every strategist is intent on preventing any ‘fraternization’ between the soldiers in confronting trenches. Anonymity of the person to be attacked greatly facilitates the releasing of aggressive behaviour. It is an observation familiar to anybody who has traveled in trains that well-bred people behave atrociously towards strangers in the territorial defence of their compartment. When they discover that the intruder is an acquaintance, however casual, there is an amazing and ridiculous switch in their behaviour from extreme rudeness to exaggerated and shamefaced politeness. Similarly, a naive person can feel quite genuine hatred for an anonymous group, against ‘the’ Germans, ‘the’ Catholic foreigners, etc., etc., and may rail against them in public, but he will never dream of being so much as impolite when he comes face to face with an individual member. On closer acquaintance with one or more members of the abhorred group such a person will rarely revise his judgement on it as a whole, but will explain his sympathy for individuals by the assumption that they are exceptions to the rule.

‘If mere acquaintance has this remarkable and altogether desirable effect, it is not surprising that real friendship between individuals of different nationality or ideology are even more beneficial. No one is able to hate, wholeheartedly, a nation amongst whose numbers he has several friends. Being friends with a few ‘samples’ of another people is enough to awaken a healthy mistrust of all those generalizations which brand ‘the’ Russians, English, Germans, etc., etc., with typical and usually hateful national characteristics. (…) What is needed is the arousal of enthusiasm for causes which are commonly recognized as values of the highest order by all human beings, irrespective of their national, cultural or political allegiances (…)

‘I agree with Dr. [J.] Marmor’s assertion that modern war has become an institution and I share his optimism in believing that, being an institution, war can be abolished. However, I think we must face the fact that militant enthusiasm has evolved from the hackle-raising and chin-protruding communal defence instinct of our pre-human ancestors and that the key stimulus situations which release it still bear all the earmarks of this origin. Among them, the existence of an enemy, against whom to defend cultural values, is still one of the most effective (…) In human beings, too, the feeling of togetherness which is so essential to the serving of a common cause is greatly enhanced by the presence of a definite, threatening enemy whom it is possible to hate. Also, it is much easier to make people identify with a simple and concrete common cause than with an abstract idea. For all these reasons, the teachers of militant ideologies have an enviably easy job in converting young people (…)

‘In all these respects the defender of peace is at a decided disadvantage. Everything he lives and works for, all the high goals at which he aims are, or should be, determined by moral responsibility which presupposes quite a lot of knowledge and real insight. (…) If I have just said that considerable erudition is necessary for anyone to grasp the real values of humanity which are worthy of being served and defended, I certainly did not mean that it was a hopeless task to raise the education of average humanity to that level, I only wanted to emphasize that it was necessary to do so. Indeed, in our age of enlightenment, human beings of average intelligence are not so very far from appreciating real cultural and ethical values.’

and the second, a few pages later:

‘In its highest forms, [humour] appears to be specially evolved to give us the power of sifting the true from the false. (…) If, in ridiculing insincere ideals, humour is a powerful ally of rational morality, it is even more so in self-ridicule. Nowadays we are all radically intolerant of pompous or sanctimonious people, because we expect a certain amount of self-ridicule in every intelligent human being. Indeed we feel that a man who takes himself absolutely seriously is not quite human, and this feeling has a sound foundation. That which, in colloquial German, is so aptly termed tierischer Ernst, that is ‘animal seriousness’, is an ever-present symptom of megalomania, in fact I suspect that it is one of its causes. The best definition of man is that he is the one creature capable of reflection, of seeing himself in the frame of reference of the surrounding universe. Pride is one of the chief obstacles to seeing ourselves as we really are, and self-deceit is the obliging servant of pride. It is my firm belief that a man sufficiently gifted with humour is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did. I believe that a really subtle and acute perception of the humorous aspects of ourselves is the strongest inducement in the world to make us honest with ourselves, thus fulfilling one of the first postulates of reasoning morality. An amazing parallel between humour and the categorical question is that both balk at logical inconsistencies and incongruities. Acting against reason is not only immoral but, funnily enough, it is very often extremely funny! ‘Though shalt not cheat myself’ ought to be the first of all commandments. The ability to obey it is in direct proportion to the ability of being honest with others.

Konrad Lorenz, ‘On Aggression’ (1966) – I’d trade anything to be able to write like this.

failure to launch

wrote a muddled piece on the vandalism of the cenotaph, and then left it for dead. for posterity’s sake, i retain the first two lines of the second paragraph: ‘the cenotaph was built by the (then-) present to honour their past and instruct the future. it’s doubly stupid that this future, spray can in hand, should first ignore the intentions of those that came before, and then assume that whatever he had to say was more important than what his forefathers considered worthy to carve in stone.’

some alcoholic days the words flow out like diarrhea, some days it’s more like squeezing an unripe zit. writing’s hard. it’s about the style, the words governed first by instinct and then convention… and then you have the argument. you don’t say anything at all, your logic doesn’t connect, you don’t make sense. you hear the critics and you agree, you give the practice a once-over and then involuntarily glance at the theory, thinking all the time bloody hell, the execution’s shit. but that’s the deal, and you know it well; like anything else that’s worthy of effort, you don’t go in there with the guarantee of success. so some heady days you trust yourself, and you trudge on – you do the whole bad cop/good cop routine with the words. you see the road behind the tumbleweed frontier, the shit finally becomes soluble, after a ton of chicanery you’ve the looks to go with the substance. but other days, dog days and days not necessarily in hell but definitely not in heaven, your crystallization is dessication. you know not even you are under your skin, and it’s sweet to give up and move on.

—

as a half-apology, in parting, ‘i keep a close watch on this heart of mine / i keep my eyes wide open all the time’… johnny cash, i walk the line, 1956. and bob dylan, starry eyed when caught: ‘when i first heard ‘i walk the line’ so many years earlier, it sounded like a voice calling out, ‘what are you doing there, boy?’ i was trying to keep my eyes wide opened, too.’

a thursday entry done wednesday

death is in the air – iraq and afghanistan as usual, boston in a rare turn of events, serbia with a grim take on america. so i thought i’d share an episode from way back – mortality equally meaningless, except perpetuated by nature and not man.

in may 2011, i made one of my first trips to the disaster areas in tohoku. the volunteer leader told us that our job was to clear the tsunami sludge and debris from the destroyed areas for incineration. along the way, if we were to find anything that had nostalgic value (teddy bears, photo albums, the like), or anything personal (identity cards, passports, wallets, money), or anything that looked like human remains, we were to alert higher authorities. so we were paired off, equipped with shovels, sacks and wheelbarrows, and sent on our ways.

my buddy’s a university student at meiji gakuin, who’s been there and done that twice before – an old hand, expert with the shovel. we have two jobs – one opens a sack and ties it up after it’s filled; the other shovels the shit into the sack. so my friend says in passing – the shovel’s hard work, but with the sack, your face is that much closer to the sludge. clearly he’s a shovel person; i get his hint.

the first drain we come across – the cover is literally plastered to the drain edges. it’s the sludge, all organic waste and petrochemicals, and it’s caked everything up. i get the crowbar and prise the shit open, and in the gloom that is waist-high sludge in a very deep drain i see something clearly semispherical bobbing on the surface.

i’m the one to stutter first.

‘shit, dude, what is that?’

‘dunno.’ my friend stares, and then steps back – normal tsunami sludge has a foul stench, all gasoline and decomposed fish, but this one is particularly pungent. ‘it’s round, ainnit?’

‘yeah, duh.’ we look at each other. we have the same thoughts, but we’re not budging. ‘you going in?’

‘yeah. but you gotta go in too. i can’t possibly raise the shovel that high, won’t be able to reach your sack.’

‘bloody hell.’ i prise open the next drain cover, making space for both of us in that ditch; we both go in.

he’s looking at me. through the mask and under the helmet, i’m wondering whether i should breathe through my mouth or my nose. death by impurities, or death by stench? then i realise he’s got the first load of sludge stacked thirty centimeters high on his shovel. two months after the tsunami, and that shit’s multi-layered, like a ghastly kueh lapis.

i open my sack, he sticks it in, some shit gets dislodged, i get gunk on my goggles and face. at least my eyes are protected. in due course my face breaks out in rashes. no shower facilities in the disaster area, and so i spend the night smothered under talcum powder.

but back to the drain, our noses puckered, our words economical. ‘you’re not getting the round thing.’

‘yeah. was waiting for you to get ready.’ he waves his shovel. ‘it goes into the sack. like everything else. right?’

at that time (may), and in that area (ishinomaki), tsunami debris did not need to be separated into combustible and incombustible rubbish – i think.

‘yeah. into the sack.’ my legs plod into a dynamic, defensive position; my hands with the opened sack thrust as far as possible in front of me, my head reared way back. ‘scoop it.’

he goes for the kill. that instant i have gruesome thoughts of a decapitated head; nothing else could have been so round. it seemed as if the universe had lined up a joke for us, that we should have opened our drain cover precisely where that unverifiable object should have been, while there were kilometers upon kilometers of uncleared drains waiting for us. and that head, recalcitrant, would have escaped all the conscientious efforts of the self-defence force but not a pair of unfortunate twenty-somethings. but it wasn’t a head. why would there have been a head and nothing else? some locals told me afterwards that the bodies of victims (god rest their souls), if they were not immolated by subsequent gas explosions, were somewhat recognisable neck-up – the first instinct of man is to keep the head above water. not to say that their expressions weren’t ghastly. i gave a lift to a kamaishi resident to morioka on a day of a large aftershock, and his exact words were ‘minna no kao ga oni datta‘ (everyone’s faces looked like ogres) – but, if you talk not of expression but of injury, the undercurrent mostly destroyed everything torso down. so you hear locals recognizing their deceased relatives by virtue of the shirt collars that remained (the collar being the strongest part of the garment).

but back to the topic – no, not a head. the object turns out to be too big for a shovel to handle, and my friend can’t help but flip it. turns out it’s a pot of left-over rice from march 11th, and it’s positively brimming with maggots, worms and whatever else decomposes stuff. as with the time i helped clear out the bento shop at kamaishi, two months later and in the heat of summer, with the sludge still there as it was from four months back, (red flags in the shop beside indicating a body had been found in the wreckage there; the locals saying ‘the lady was more than eighty years old, she couldn’t run’), the smell is unforgettable. you start thinking to yourself, shit, this is the smell of whatever happens when we meet our end, if it’s communal and violent, and you start retching because you can’t help it – you can be inured to the fact but not its gradations, the way it instructs not only what but how and on top of that how many, and the way it sticks to your waterproof gear and boots, inciting you to a decision three days later in the sanctity of civilization between destroying the shit or destroying your washing machine in the act of reckless salvation; and then before you know it, hand on the sack and eye on the gunk, you’re like, hey, no appetite. but fuck appetite. more time to get this gunk out of the way.

and so it goes, and so it bloody goes. humans devise ugly ways to kill, but you can’t beat nature’s playbook; she’s got the ugly ways to die, and she’s got it since we found ourselves in this rut. and one day in a disaster area and you ask yourself for what raise your hand against man, our world is a gordian knot of loose ends, but you come back to that concerted sterility that is the nearest civilisation and you’re as dumb as those stone monuments from eighty years back, along the same sanriku tohoku coast devastated two years before, with inscriptions like don’t build your houses past this point, the tsunami of 1933 destroyed everything. and here we are, those that have seen neither killing nor death, but wanting to spread the gospel of humanity, simply because we’ve unearthed a pot of rice, or a photo album (of families visiting the merlion), or a rather whole winnie the pooh plushie. nature will take us; why take each other? we’re better than this. we have to be better than this.

a pair of drunkards from two years ago

i spend the afternoon at akihabara, and then i take the train to yoyogi.  there’s some distance between the station and jingu stadium.  my eye is trained on the sky.  at akihabara it was blue.  at yoyogi, the colour of lead.  shortly, the moans and groans, and then heaven’s bottom falls out.

at the gate i meet my friend.  he wears a poncho, and under that a tigers toritani jersey.  he is morose.  ‘look at the weather.  look at the staff.  they’re herding us away from the seats.  it’s gonna be a bloody rain delay.’  he stares at me.  ‘look at you.  what are you dressed for, a day at the fish market?’

i am in a pair of berms, a tennis shirt, and sandals.

‘don’t you have a yakult swallows jersey?’

‘no.’  i pause.  ‘even if i did, considering you’re gonna make me sit with the hanshin tigers fan contingent, do you really think i’d wear it?’

he snorts.  ‘if you’re a true fan, you’d do it.’

‘i’m an international student.  my loyalties are pliable.’

he’s not listening.

‘look, they’re barricading the entries.’

from our vantage point halfway up the stairs to the third floor galleries we see the crew scrambling like ants.  and then, a lady with a loudspeaker, shouting above the fray.

a collective sigh from the rabble.

‘cancelled?’

my friend is beside himself with rage.

‘they should have bloody told us two hours ago!’

‘well, it wasn’t raining two hours ago.’

‘then what’s the bloody weather forecast bloody for?’

‘oh shut up.’  i suddenly realise i don’t have to spend two hours in a downpour with ill-tempered hanshin fans.  i am amicable beyond reason.  ‘we’ll get a drink.’

i tug him fuming into the downpour, and then out of it, into Hub the pub.  in one fluid motion his poncho is off and into the dustbin.  the waitress sidles towards us.

‘a jumbo long island iced tea.’

‘two jumbo long island iced teas,’ i correct him.  the bar fills up with irate hanshin and resigned yakult fans.  ‘and a small bowl of nuts, please.’

the television shows seibu lions against rakuten eagles live from miyagi stadium.  we watch in silence.  it is the third inning, and nakajima has just scored a hit against tanaka.

‘it ain’t raining in sendai… the lucky bastards.’

the iced teas come.

‘cheers.’  i take a sip.  he drains his glass. the waitress advances.

‘a cocktail tower, please.’

at the top of the fifth inning it comes, a one-litre measuring cylinder brimming with pale yellow liquid.

‘what’s inside?’

‘this?’  he shrugs.  ‘last i heard, vodka, tequila, whisky, gin and rum, washed down with three cans of red bull.’

i chuckle.

‘if you’re wondering, no one’s asking you to help me with it.’

‘and i certainly won’t offer to.’  i watch his hands, trembling, the iced tea already doing him a good once-over.

‘good luck.’

‘just shut up and pass me the nuts.’

tanaka dispatches ginjiro.  my friend hydrates himself over five seconds.

we sit there in silence.

‘plans for tomorrow?’  i venture.

‘none.  sunday is a day of rest.’  a shrug; and then pensively, ‘come to think of it, though, the human security essay is due next week.  might get down to it.’  he looks up.  ‘you’ve done it already?’

‘yeah.’  unlike all the japanese law modules, that essay was to be done in english.

‘ah, screw you.’  a long gulp of the devil’s brew, and then a stare more baleful than sullen.  ‘i wish i could write a good english essay.’

‘when you’re done, send it to me.  i’ll take a look.’

‘thanks.’  he prods my empty glass, then looks in the direction of the bartender.

‘another jumbo long island iced tea.’

‘i wanted a cassis.’

‘wimp.  you’re taking the long island.  it’s on me,’  a belch.  ‘on the condition you really do take a look at my essay.’

‘you don’t have to.’

‘consider it advance payment for the time i next need to bribe you, then.’

the long island comes.  he raises his cylinder.  an unsteady toast.

‘after you graduate,’ he slurs, ‘you’re going back to singapore, right?’

my mind is on the long list of international students who’ve failed to graduate from the faculty of law in the usual four years.

‘yeah,’ i am melancholy. ‘as and when i graduate.’

he snorts.

‘you’re one to worry.  you’ve got a job waiting for you, your life is set, you just need to bore a hole through your law texts and you’re home free.  when i do start looking for a job i won’t have anything else to do over the weekends except fill up entry sheets and attend job seminars.’  another snort, this time pure derision.  ‘you lucky bastard.’

‘we are all lucky in ways we don’t readily see.’

‘oh screw you.’  his hand has been in the bowl for the past thirty seconds, attempting to extricate the last splinter of walnut.  ‘and your philosophy.  truth is that you’re so much bloody luckier than others.  you’ve a tuition fee waiver, you’ve a living allowance, you’ve a job.  count your bloody blessings, won’t you?’

‘i try my best.’  i don’t know where all this sudden heat comes from.  ‘i’ll try harder.  what job are you looking for?’

‘don’t know.  whatever comes my way.’

‘no preference?’

‘you know _____?’  he mentions the name of a senior.  ‘he submitted applications to thirty companies, from trading to electronics to banks, and he was gonna take any of their offers, but none came.  at least he passed the government exam, so he’s considering his options at the ministries, but think about it.  he’s not the worst case scenario.  if you’re not from todai, you can submit to fifty, seventy, even a hundred companies.  and you still mightn’t get a job.’  a swig, and then he continues, ‘i think you once called this kind of thing ‘carpet bombing’?  or was it ‘throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks?’ ‘

i remember that conversation – monday morning, 0830 hrs, right before the criminal law lecture, my friend and i both sleepy and foul-mouthed.

‘yeah, i did.’

‘it’s called a sense of urgency,’ each syllable more spat than spoken, ‘and then, for the unfortunate, it becomes desperation.  ambition only becomes reality for those who are as lucky as they are brilliant.  why hedge your bets on something as important as a future?‘

‘dude, cool it.’  he drains his drink.  his face is flushed.  ‘let’s go for dinner.’

‘nahh.’  he slams the cylinder on the counter.  ‘it’s been a shit day. i’m going home.’

i help him off the bar stool.  he insists on walking without assistance.  i have no fear of him merlioning on the streets of tokyo – his pride won’t allow him to, and he instinctively fears dirtying his toritani jersey.  but he is starting to meander, through the crowd and into the rain.  i settle the bill and lurch out of the door, my umbrella and his bag in hand. by then he’s gone.

judging by the hole in the satellite picture

i know i am a luddite, but i’m sure the hatred goes both ways. technology despises me. my ipod has a self-destruct button (namely, the big round one in the middle). my experia responds to the fabric of my jeans pocket but not my fingers. my laptop tells me, ‘ah, screw you. oh wait. you know what? your bloody essay too’.

the other day my parents bought themselves cameras. i was all sniffly about it. ‘what’s the point of a good camera? you’ve got eyes, you’ve got memory, and you’ve got nostalgia to photoshop whatever you choose to remember.’ but needless to say i was simply being crabby. me buying a camera would be a waste of money; that argument extends no further.

so, back in singapore and scowling at my ipod, i try my hand at cpr. the blackout with the apple logo in the center is as hopeless as the windows blue screen of death. i swallow the urge to hurl the offending turd at my wall, but with each failure i sense primal rage taking over. no, i must assert myself. technology has done me no justice. but, if i’m gonna eventually give in and pay for repairs, i mustn’t break the bloody thing. so i toss the ipod on my bed and sit very vehemently on it. neither evil nor good transpires. i am futility embodied.

so i acquiesce. a month ago, when my ipod first started getting cranky, i used my voice recorder. that was like calling a pager a handphone – and my ultra-chic friends in tokyo never forgave me for that – but i owe my graduation to that scrap of metal. after all, it had recordings of some important civil law lectures i attended, recordings i listened to on various sleepless nights. today, in ditching the ipod and adopting the voice recorder as my first choice, i gleefully delete all lectures, and suddenly realise i only have 15 songs available. so i start itunes, try to load more music. no luck. my laptop says there is something wrong with the usb connection.

too tired to hurl the damn thing against the wall, i head for lunch. not a long journey. my very short playlist does not have to repeat itself, and out comes the ecstasy that is the red hot chili peppers, smash mouth, oasis, slash, eric clapton, guns and roses… before long i catch myself singing along. the bus is a mobile babel, all myriad ethnicities and intimate distance. the sun is out. were i to complain, i’d just be less than grateful.

– kats on thursday