Head thumping, heart pounding, neck splitting pure indulgence, the path and sure end of men. blotched decadence lights our torch as we leave beliefs and stiches of morality, dumping into a river a tiny rubber end.

hurray? oh no?

A boy, in bamiyan he lives, stomach tripe for supper, a pain without much future, poppy and poverty all ever he know, for them talibs have done their horror show.

For that is the world we live today.
An Unreal reality much of the day.

How far will we go?
A spectator on tvland, how much can he know?

pain

What is it?

The dictionary defines it as:

noun, 1: An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder.

Yet it has no bearing of what ultimately lies beneath the word. The meaning of the word is lost, due to the inability to communicate its degree. My feelings of pain and I've had quite a few recently can not transcend words, cannot be effectively conveyed. You will never know my pain. Like I will never know yours. How does a mother explain to a man the pain of childbirth? she can't. For that matter how does a castrated man paint the pain he went through? How does a depressed person begin to explain the emotional disorder that the person goes through? The words people use will always lack precision. Intangible. Why bother explaining in the first place?

A primal scream, a whimper, a soft lonely sob should sufficiently replace all the need to confide. Because for the reasons that I have explained, confiding in someone is a sure way to loose much of the meaning of your thoughts and emotion, that other person will definately not know the full impact and be blissfully unaware of the gravity of what your dealing with. And besides, do they really want you to whine??????

Whimper, scream and sob, deal with it your own way. It is afterall wholly your problem. Why confide?

Inside joke that malaysians understand.

Someone posted this on a forum, I think it highlights the spirit of Malaysia Boleh!

" Of course according to some minister, our toll is cheaper than Japan. Also our cars are cheaper than Singapore, our salary are better than Bangladesh.... I call it S.V. logic "

Muahahahah.. Our longkangs are better than Indonesia's!! Malaysia Boleh!

Why sponsor some guy to swim the length of English Channel, or sail around the world when atleast hundreds or perhaps thousands before him have already done the same? Answer: because the Somalians or the Loatians haven't done it yet. Kiasuism at its best!

Its 12:10AM 1/1/2005 (the blog set in E. Australian time +9hrs), I have a 360 view of the fireworks exploding around the city from my balcony. It almosts seems like every street corner is lighting up fireworks into the air. Its a shame my camera ran out of battery!! No posting pictures of the kaleidoscope of colors that paints the adjacent buildings and the night so low in the sky!!!

NEW!! BARU!! NOVI!! NEU!! NOEVEAU!!!

FOTOPAGES

WOOHOOOO!!

Tsunami...  We all read, saw, heard about it on the news. CNN, BBC, EURONEWS bombards the tv screens with close to nothing else and rightly so since it is a catastrophic disaster.

My old boarding school in Penang called "uplands" is pretty much on the beach! a couple of metres away from the coastline/sea. I wonder what state it is in now. What a shame though, I had fond memories of it and I still have some penangite school friends there... I wonder how they are.

On another note, my friend Marie-Claire Bark, experienced the tsunami first hand on her holiday. She wrote me this email detailing what happened to her off the Langkawi Island, Malaysia:


On sunday morning we were woken up by tremors in our hotel room in langkawi, malaysia. And my parents figured out that it was probably an earthquake in indo. However malaysia has never felt tremors that long and that strong before. But still we went about our day, tried to see if there was anything on the news about an earthquake but there was nothing being reported so we just decided to leave and escape to another lovely beach a bit north of the island. My parents and brother went golfing and me and my sister decided to soak up some rays. We were just lying down on this great white sandy beach with blue waters, when we asw the water pull back, we both thought that was weird but not being a major in geography we thought nothing really of it, just thought it was strange. THen suddenly we were gazing at this massive wave coming towards us, now being a fan of the sea we both thought damn that is massive. THen suddenly it was really close to us, and we realised that this was a dangerous tidal wave. We grabbed what we could and ran as fast as we could not wanting to die just yet. We managed to ecape holding all of our stuff. And ran to gaze from a bridge. There weren't any people injured as far as we could see, but beachchairs, cushions, towels, sarongs, sunglasses etc were all being washed away by these currents. Pretty scary, almost saw one ignorant french guy (who had just arrivede to see hwat the chaos was about) almost get swept under the current.

We then ran to safety cause the water was slowly coming up to the bridge. and went to go tell our parents, we didn't think about the magnitude that this tidal wave would have to the other regions in asia and on the island. We stayed ont he golf course and at about 6 (4 hours later) we returned to our washed out hotel. Apparently nobody was injured or dead at our hotel, but everything around this beautiful hotel was destroyed. apparently the water came into the lobby (which is quite far from the sea). THe hotel was arranging for guests to stay at a local school because electricity was out. THey were also scared that another tidal wave was going to come (aftershocks). So we left the hotel (were only only got to enjoy one night) and went to a local hotel in the town (far away from the sea). Thank god another one didn't come cause the damage to the seaside villages was horrible. These people already have nothing and now their houses and belongings were all washed away. We were still pretty much in the dark, not having electricity or not even near a tv. But on monday morning we were able to read that many regions were struck.

Thank you MC for sharing your experiences.

fistingsnogs

I've decided... woohoo!!

Ok I have a problem.... I can't choose...

I have had a couple of invitations to go see people since now I'm in the region.
Here is a description:

1) I've been invited to go up to an island off Norway to spend a week or so with my friend up there. I'm tempted because the pictures she showed me of that part of Norway look AMAZING!! She's a good friend. Great person to talk to, she's been there for me.

2) Some of my Uplands boarding school friends well a whole bunch of them are in the UK. Which is friggin wonderful. Because I really want to catch up with them.... Martin a mate from Uplands lives with a couple of other uplanders..... Thing is England is pricey. Damn pound!!

3) An ex from Denmark wants me to visit her in Copenhagen, we are close. The big question here is that she has exams around these times.... I don't want to bother her studying.

4) Not even an ex.... more of an old flame from Graz, Austria now lives in Paris, wants me to visit her there.... Catch up....

5) My German buddy from school, who's on holidays right now wants to meet up and catch up... He currently in Vienna over the holidays.  

6) A wonderful Italian/Croatian American, a very good close friend who once upon a time I had a thing for now lives in Dubrovnik, which is off the Croatian Coast. By far the closest to Sarajevo. I really want to meet up with her.....

7) Old friends in Zagreb, Croatia. Great friends back in the day when I used to go to school there. We did everything together....

The problem and question is an economic one. It has to do with contraints of time and resources which in my case is money. Basically not enough time and money to visit them all. So how do I choose? How can I pick between my friends? I hate the implications since these guys are especially close to me.  How can I go to one place grins and smiles, whilst parts of me would want to these same grins and smiles to be at some place else, knowing I chose them over someone else.

To not go see others would be like a betrayal to them, since these guys are one of my closest set of friends. Each from a unique and special period of my life. Economics would say I would have to find the optimal solution, the one that best suits me, the one with the highest utility.  A little hard to do with stuff like this. What if there is no best solution.


Help me choose!!  How do I choose?

N.B: Most if not all of my friends are offering their place for me to crash .

Near 700 channels to watch, over 30 different music channels, from MTV base, MTV2, MTV Hitz. To Movie channels with re-runs of old blockbusters. But to me there's just nothing worth watching, nothing thats off any value and substance to me anyways. TV truly suxs. It truly is the idiot box.

On another note went to watch the Sarajevo Philharmonics the other day. They had classical renditions of Deep Purple, the Beetles and Queen apart from the usual performances Morzart, Chopin... Old pop music such as the beetles actually does sound good done and remade into a classical orchestral version. Queen and Deep Blue I'm not so sure. I don't think rock eventhough oldies rock can be converted the same way. On a related note, I've noticed that I'm fond of sopranos then tenors, I didn't know that before.

Gosh Its cold here...... Always bloody cold. Always a negative on the mercury! I believe right now it is 
-4. Maybe tis the affect of the cold but one note to point out is that one can with ease conceptualize and analyse when looking at this country from the outside. Like from the comfort of my warm room. But that is it. I did this before with my previous post, giving my analysis of the current situation here. But what must be highlighted is that it is all practice to these people. It transcends analysis of the geo-political and socio-economic situation. The ordinary folk does not think of these, he/she thinks about how to survive the cold, how to live when there is no work. Segregationist zealous feelings are set aside.

vidimose i dovidenija iz Sarajevo.



 

Shakespeare once wrote "what is in a name"? To Bosnia it is everything. this land of beauty and contrasts, a name could mean feelings of brotherhood or hatred. Bosniak Muslim, Croat Catholic and Serb Orthodox. One thing I've learnt staying here is that this is still a very unstable place. In the superficial guise of a functioning nation, it is far from it. The seperation of the state between 2 entities fractures this country. The state level is still fairly powerless in the entity and cantonal level. Within the Cantons there are divisions according to faith.

It is a shame, since this land under ottoman and Hapsburg rule practised tolarance. Still today you see Mosques and Churches close to each other. Mosque and Churches next to a Synagogue. This sanctuary of interfaith tolarance had long withered away. The remains of it are no more, what now is in its place is hatred.  In the full sense of the word.

So what is in a name after all? It is everything. It is discrimination, in communal life, in living space, in business. Afterall, a name seperates something that is not so clear.  One can not distinguish the difference of a Bosnian (Bosniak, Serb or Croat) by facial attributes and dialects. Sadly it is the name that is the distinguishing feature. But what is in a name?