The Unbearable Lightness of Being Shitty

“Blah blah blah university has campuses everywhere! Enroll now and you might get a chance to win one of the 20 laptops to be given away!…” That was how I understood the radio ad’s message. Goodness me, how can they promote education like grilled chicken wings in Jalan Alor? “Buy two sticks, get one free!” The way these kinds of ads from colleges/universities proliferate in mass media is one of the telltale signs of a vital flaw in Malaysia’s educational system. I thought that the Philippines is a haven for diploma mills (not counting the one-stop diploma shops along Recto Avenue), but I guess I am wrong!  The Philippines may have its share of diploma mills, but at least the schools advertise about great facilities, reputable faculty and competitive curricula, and not freebies.

I can’t help comparing the educational system of Malaysia with the Philippines. I’ve had discussions about this with my Malaysian friends and they really didn’t take my comments positively. It’s understandable for them to react negatively because of a sense of blind patriotism or bruised egos. Maybe they’re thinking how can a poor nation which is infamous for exporting domestic helpers and prostitutes have a better educational system than a country flourishing to become a first-world nation in the near future?

It is quite disappointing to read the terrible grammar of correspondences from directors or senior managers of big companies. It’s quite disheartening to hear them bastardize the basics of subject-verb agreement. It is quite appalling to see a resume from a 10-year Senior Director written in a slum-book format. Having a decent command of written and spoken English may not be everyone’s key to success, but it is a potent tool to chisel your way through a globally competitive environment. The hard-core advocates of the Malay language are using patriotism as a defense for maintaining Bahasa Melayu (BM) as the language for teaching. I have nothing against BM since my mother tongue, Tagalog, is rooted in this language, but how can you ever use BM to communicate with your foreign investors? BM and Tagalog are beautiful languages but these won’t ever become universal languages.

Do you ever wonder why even the middle-class families in Malaysia send their children to Australia or the UK for education? Do you ever wonder why Filipinos, despite being educated totally in the Philippines, are being dragged by employers from the USA, Australia, Canada, the UK and the Middle East nations?

I’m not generalizing that education in the Philippines is a lot better, but there are some areas in which the Malaysian government should definitely start to improve. Malaysia has enough surplus money to allocate for education; unlike in the Philippines wherein the education budget is slashed every year for higher Pork Barrels for the politicians. Malaysia has all the means, so why can’t they bring home the bacon in education? (The bacon is Halal Chicken, by the way.)

Lastly, "Sorry We’re Late" vouchers.

No, these aren’t the vouchers I give to the HR Department.  These are free pizza coupons which pizza establishments give once they fail to deliver within 30 minutes. 

Who says that the mental anguish and gastritis which we experience due to the late pizza deliveries can be compensated by a stupid voucher?  They aggravated their crime by fooling people into thinking that they will get a free regular pizza.   How can the pizza be free if the free pizza is only valid with another pizza purchase?   The condition is written in microscopic print at the back of the card.  And how can "free" have terms and conditions?  My gosh, the special promotion coupons I get in the guard house are even better than these stupid vouchers—I get a second large pizza at more than half the price. 

It’s so true that nothing in this world is free; we always have to read the fine print.

fuck ‘em–those greedy capitalists, hehehhe

Next are viruses.

I wouldn’t rant about the HIV, Ebola or the H5N1.  Although these deadly viruses also make the world a shitty place, there are viruses which may be more fatal –computer viruses.  These viruses have caused craziness, hypertension, baldness, vandalism, arson, suicide and even murder.  Not to mention the billions of dollars which go down the drain just because of this man-made mayhem. 

I almost massacred my old PC because of a godamm virus.  Why do some people find satisfaction in causing wide-scale misery?  Can’t they just create a virus which exponentially boosts up my RAM or increases the speed of my Heroes episode downloads, hehehe.   

Some things just make this world a shitty place.

First are chain mails.  During the Jurassic days, I remember receiving a chain mail containing a novena to the Virgin Mary.  I asked my Ma what should I do with it.  She said I have to send it to 11 people or else something unfortunate would happen to me or my loved ones.  Afraid of the consequences, I photocopied 11 copies, but ended up sending it to less than five people.  The most tragic thing that happened to me was the appearance of three big pimples on my face.  I could imagine the letter envelopes, papers, ink, stamps and saliva which were wasted during those times.  I have the a theory that this chain mail was a scheme by an association of paper companies to sell more of their products.

What the hell is the matter with the authors of these chain mails?  If they were certified voodoo priests or witches, then we should give a damn.  But these freaks are mere egocentric, graphomanic and attention-malnourished beings who infuse false hopes and irrational fears on moronic people like me!  Yes, I’m one of the victims of undue threats on my social, religious and sex life.

For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love Jesus if I don’t send the mail to at least 10 persons.  Jesus wouldn’t want His teachings to be spread thru fear and compulsion. This I know by heart, despite not being a devout catholic.  The forsaken f*ckers who make the pseudo-religious chain mails, aaaahhh they don’t understand the essence of their faith.  I pray for their salvation.      

And my sex life would be doomed if I fail to forward to 7 people?  I won’t get laid by sending spam to another 7 idiots; neither will I increase my chances of dirtying my sheets if I send to 3,000 people! Goodness me, you don’t simply push a woman’s right buttons by the click of a mouse.  You pathetic nerd!

From this moment, i wouldn’t be coerced into forwarding another chain mail unless it’s for society’s well being, or it’s for someone who terribly needs help, or it has Scarlet Johansson’s nude pics.  Niceeee…

"…the esoteric calculation of hostile anti-dumping inspectors…"  I wanted to say to Nick that this is the biggest understatement of the year.  But I instead plucked "hostile" and asked him whether we should use this word.  He gasped with a loud yes.  I was quite sure that he wanted to say in his geordie accent, "Yes, diplomacy is not our recourse anymore for those bloody buggers!"

I would have questioned him about his usage of "esoteric" but after a minute of pondering, I realized that it is the best adjective to describe the Turkish Ministry’s  computation.  It sounded good, it has truth to it and it has the sardonic ummmppphh!.  We requested more than three times for the answers to the mumbo jumbo super duper sudoku errr i mean explanation of their dumping calculation, but they snobbed us like we’re pork barbecue and bak kut teh.  Maybe revealing their esoteric computation would destroy their secret society.  And what the hell am I blabberring about?  Hahahaa, I don’t know!  It’s an esoteric plopping from the very depths of the crazy cult of my brain.

There are lots of mysterious things in the universe.  Some people waste their entire lives trying to find answers to things which would not really make too much of a difference to their lives and the world. 

Some things are best left untouched, unheard, unseen and flushed in the toilet!

Anti-dumping interim review appeal is a pain in the ass; but it’s worth the shit!

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

- "Rose Walker" in The Sandman #65

For days I have been staring at the blinking cursor and the white screen. I have been trying to compel myself to write something.  It’s like forcing your intestines to contract and push until you hear the "plop".  I had typed a few sentences but I found myself pressing the backspace button and watched the cursor devour characters one by one until all I saw was the blinking cursor and the white screen again .

As much as I want to shut up lest of saying something really stupid, I think it is worth my while to plop about my experience this morning.

I went to the high court today to represent my company for a civil case.    It would be my first time to appear in court so I was anxious.  I need to be there 9:00AM sharp according to the lawyer.  I tortured myself by waking up before 7:30AM. (I usually get off bed at 8:15AM).  I reached the high court at 8:50AM after much hysterical rushing.  The lawyer told me the hearing would only start at 9:40AM.  Bastards! I impatiently waited at the sala until past 11AM when the lawyer approached me and said that the hearing would be scheduled to an indefinite date.  Bastards!  I painstakingly prepared myself mentally, fast forwarded 16X my morning rituals and grew sequoia roots in the sala just for nothing.   

So what’s my point in narrating this?  Well, it may not be the best analogy I can offer but it speaks well of life.  I type a thousand words with five thousands keyboard clicks; but less than five clicks can make a travesty of my efforts and bring me back to the blinking cursor and the white screen…

Dead birds. Creepy. Hundreds of dead birds fell from the heavens in an area in Australia. Tests say it’s not caused by any virus or toxic chemicals.  This might be an isolated case but it still scares me.

I saw a dead bird in my balcony two Decembers ago.  It was a crow.  Head lying on a small pool of blood.  A few black feathers on the floor. I felt nauseous upon seeing it.  Had been dead for days.  It was rigid.  Blood had dried up. 

Some kind of a disease?  Someone shot it?  Dogfight with another bird?  Why did it choose to die in my balcony?

It haunted me.  Was it an omen?  I looked out for interpretations in the internet.

It took me 3 days to throw it away.  Its head was stuck to the dried-up blood.  I had to pull it like a bandage glued to a fresh wound.   Or did I use the dustpan to wedge it off the floor?  I could not remember. My head was spinning during the extraction.  My heart was pounding.  My stomach was cramping. 

I did not give it a proper burial.  I just stuffed it into a black bag and threw it in the refuse chamber.

A few days after, I noticed a smudge on the glass door leading to the balcony.  And there was a tiny feather on the smudge.  The crow crashed on the glass door.  The impact killed it.  That explained the head injury.  The tiny feather was the black box.

I believe in signs.  Dead birds, especially the black ones, signify something negative.  I treated the omen as a warning.  A few days after the seeing the dead crow, I experienced one of the darkest moments in my life.  I almost took a u-turn to the netherworld.  Everything turned out fine.   

Who knows the real cause of the dead birds in Australia?  Whatever it is, we should take it as warning—a big, big WARNING…

i connect the dots of the golden city lights, and i form loneliness.
how can these terrestrial stars outshine my usually sunny disposition?

the cars skidding happily in the clear roads cause the heavy traffic of an emotion which i’ve never traversed for years.

how can lightness bring unbearable weight?  i flew while dragging someone’s heart.  i wounded the woman who has loved me
unconditionally– and the only one i have easily learned to love.

at this height, at this hour, behind shut windows, in this dark room, the view is serene. i look at the starless sky. i fly– but into
the prison of a cage i myself made…

It was the jazz trio’s third set break. 

*Lick, lick, lick.*  “My lips are so dry!” Antje grabbed something from her sling bag.  She handed me a small round metal container. “Thanks!” 

I looked at it. 

A lip balm thank God! 

*Sniff, sniff, sniff.* Minty just like the others. 

Using my right index finger, l swabbed in a circular motion the rosy balm.  I applied it to my lips. 

Hmmm, yummy!

And then I looked at the label on the top lid.  “Perfumeria…” 

There’s an image of a long haired woman. 

I laughed. 

I asked Antje whether she uses it for other purposes.  The woman in the picture is happily clutching her left bosom.  Her left index finger is bending towards a strategic spot. 

A Nip Balm?  <===click with your right index finger