A few weeks ago my body just decided to shut down and I came out with one of those crazy fevers that puts your whole life on hold. Even after two weeks, two types of antibiotics and half a litre of cough syrup later, I lost my voice. Which was quite cool. In that I can sing AND sound like Louis Armstrong way.

The best part of the whole ordeal was that I was left alone at home for an entire weekend. My cousin had a wedding up in the north, and my parents and brother had to attend. I would’ve gone myself if I wasn’t a walking incubus of crap. But I was, and my mum was oh so kind in leaving me her car in order for me to drive out and eat.

Okay. Driving is not a big deal. Most people I know had gotten their license before SPM, or a month after they finish school. But for some bullshit of being the youngest or something, it took me countless of arguments, 8 months to get my license, and over a year after the license, before I was even allowed to touch any of OUR cars. And early this January, we had five. In a house of three drivers.

But that’s a rant for some other day.

So this was a pleasant surprise. A real pleasant surprise.

My family left at noon on Saturday and Sha was supposed to come sleep over to keep me company. She had something on during the day though, so I was pretty much free during the afternoon. Hanis wanted to have lunch, and I came over and picked her up.

Sending her home, I found myself at the wheel with this oddest feeling. I had cash in my bag, petrol in the tank, a free afternoon, and no one expecting anything from me. There was a P sticker on the car, I had my license, and there was nothing the law could find fault with me about. I was, there at 3.15pm, somewhere in the USJ area, with the car in neutral, taking stock, that I was a legal, independent adult.

It’s like this strangest fear took control of me, and no one was there to tell me what to do. I could go wherever, do whatever.

This was meant to be one of those defining moments in my life. A Catcher In The Rye scene where Holden Caufield just decides to run off somewhere where the sun never sets. Somewhere. Anywhere. Absolutely anywhere but here.

Yet I took the right turn onto the road to Taipan, bought more cough syrup and a single helium red balloon. Then went home.

_____________________

The next day Sha had gone home and I had the car and the house to myself for the rest of the evening.

Earlier on, we made a move for tapas in Bangsar, and she was sweating throughout the whole drive on the New Pantai Expressway. It can only be pure exhilaration, this heightened response and control as your foot slides smoothly from the accelerator to the brakes at a bend on the highway, tapping only gently, before going back to the former. I love it. I truly do.

So yeah. We ordered and we talked. About school. About our future. About love and loss. Where she’s finding herself in her life, and how I have learnt to settle.

If I could bottle that one moment, in between the chicken liver pate and the grilled sardines, with the rain beating down and absolutely nothing to do with life, nothing about the future, nothing about tomorrow, then I would be able to capture one moment where I could say I put everything behind.

So I did not get into Cambridge. The only thing I’ve ever wanted so hard as long as I can remember.

So, the interview STILL plays in my head at night, and the content of my essay flashes through my mind as I stare at the ceiling. So I cried for a week afterward. So I cut my hair and bought new clothes and became socially distant for a while. So I get all sorts of coos from friends and family who think it’s no big a deal. It was a big deal. I planned my whole life to lead to this. But it didn’t. And I felt so fucking lost. Don’t give me sympathy on my facebook wall, because you will never ever understand.

But so what? It’s ok.

It’s ok because at that moment I was content.

Leaning back against my handbag with the cough syrup, I could’ve even said I was happy.

And nothing could take that away from me.

Driving later that night with Azlan at my side, on the NPE through to Jalan Tun Razak all the way to Taman Tun Razak, getting lost somewhere between pudu and the Kampung Pandan roundabout; seeing KL in all her glory on an empty Sunday night. Cruising down the AKLEH with that magnificent turn with the Twin Towers on the side, sparking up memories of a dusty book and a hopeful letter of a young naive child so full of awe of Le Corbusier; to watching people queue up to catch the last bus home from the hub around Pasar Seni.

Nothing can take that away from me.

__________________________

The Playlist:

Marina & The Diamonds – Hollywood (Acoustic)
John Mayer – Wheel
Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine
Beirut – Rhineland (Heartland)
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Beatles – Drive My Car
Beatles – Michelle

and

Sufjan Stevens – Chicago.

x

Earlier this evening I went out with Sha and Azlan for some dinner and coffee, and managed to get myself the first season of Mad Men. The press are always raving about the whip smart, fresh whatever whatever insert exciting one-liner comment here about it, yet sometime last year The Guardian was raving on about the whole chauvinism around it.

Ok, after two episodes, I have to say I’m hooked. But I couldn’t agree with Hadley Freeman more.

Tomorrow morning, in exactly less that six hours; I will be sitting for a 3 hour test on industrial organizational psychology. We write long ardorous essays on human resource and ‘leadership’. We recite researchers names on this and on that, and we evaluate and argue fact against reason, like we do.

We learn that apparently  women are more likely to collaborate, ask for opinions, and are more people-oriented than task-oriented.

We analyse performance/situation graphs which plot : Good Leader-Member Relationship + High Cohesion + Strong Leader = Low Productivity.

And without fail we find ourselves integrating what we have learnt to what we do, as we do.

I’ve been thinking about my work in societies and club-work more and more now that we’ve started on this topic. What was my management style? What type of leader was I? Why couldn’t I find that cohesive force in the board that I was chair of?

For example; why did I let people delegated with a certain task off the hook more than I can remember? Is it called being weak? Was it because I wanted to be nice? Or was it because at the end of the day, we were all just students and I’m thinking ahead of myself.

In French class a few years ago, we had to discuss the role of women in organizations. We had to read opinions of various executives on what they feel about managerial styles and the implication it had on the women that exercised it.

The conclusion from our group discussion then, for which I still agree to now is this, really. We will never be given the same ground. Men can be decisive and egoistic and sure of themselves and we applaud them for having a stand. Women do the same and end up being called tyrannical and get nicknames such as Nuclear Wintour.

A few weeks ago, the Economist published an issue with a picture of Rosie the Riveter, applauding how women make up for more than half the workforce. As that was the theme of their issue, they also had interesting articles on new human resource research, on new statistical facts I can quote in my psychology essays, on how the oft seen ‘weak’ or ‘humanistic’ approach of women are now seen in better light, as actually being more effective than what was ever thought of.

My father has always given me the room to flex my own thoughts and actions, and has an opinion that I should make my way in the corporate world. I speak my mind, bulldoze my way through, and always felt that my gender roles will only ever be fully seen in the bedroom. There, I grew up telling myself, is only where we can correctly see the difference.

Women in Malaysia share equal pay rights as men, we make up more than 60% of the class in higher education, and our pocketbook is handled by a governor, who in any other muslim-majority nation would not even be given the respect to be a governess.  The glass ceiling, I thought, was giving in; and I was so sure that the cracks will come off clean ‘when I become big’.

But there was something about watching Mad Men that scared me. It may have been filmed in a completely different era, way before the Sexual Revolution, and in a different culture altogether. The world has progressed and we’re in some kind of post-post post Germaine Greer stage, but-

I recognize those looks.

The way the copywriters look at the new secretary, compliment her and show her around; what she mistook for kindness and limelight for her innate charms- are the kind, oh so interested conversation I get plied by during intermission and breaks at debate tournaments and conferences.

I always thought, oh it’s because I’m a breath of fresh air, because I speak my mind and I argue what I believe in. Because I have a sharp tongue and sarcasm that used to shut up the Malay boys back in school, because all that Economist and Monocle gave me opinion and taste. Because, in the end; the privilege of confidence had given me an air of authority amongst the boys club.

But no.

It was because I was eager to charm, ready to be friendly and interesting and make good conversation. A childhood of entertaining my parents’ friends and my doting relatives had given me the practice of knowing what to say to the right people; striking the right chord in the right string. And without knowing it, I had played right into their hands.

It feels disgusting. I feel now like I was just whoring my intellect to be fondled by eager and expectant young men. Just like they do in the 60’s.

Papa, I think I may need some help. The structural design of the ceiling is sturdier than we both thought.

2.  Do A Britney.
A-Saloon provides free computer and internet services as you get your hair done. Rates are as low as RM33 for Junior Stylist Cut and RM50 for highlights. Shiseido Fuente Professional hair products are used throughout the whole experience.
The salon is located at the Blue Atrium, First Floor. Ask for Jenny Yong. You can ask her for an ‘Ainaa’.

3.  Read Kerouac’s On The Road.
Appreciate an American classic road trip book as a means of escapism from your kiasu Asian life. Revel in the staccato prose of jazz, poetry and the phosphorescence of youth as Sal travels from the East Coast to the West and back again.
Restrain self from dropping out of A-Levels/University/Life to find that odd un-Asian notion of self-actualization.
Also, check out James Franco’s reading of a short excerpt of the book, here.
Big Bookstore Taipan has a selection of old stock Penguin Classics (Silver) Kerouac for RM16.90. The new 2008 print of silver Penguin Classics are stocked by reliable bookstores for RM 60.50.

4. Watch a selection of inspirational and soul crushing foreign films.
A good place to start would be Louis Malle’s Le Feu Follet (1963) where we follow our protagonist, Alain Leroy, a fellow suicidal depressive (yes, just like you) through his last day in Paris, visiting friends and old haunts, lighting cigarettes in well cut suits, looking to find a reason to keep living. Enjoy the cinematography, the philosophy, and the oh so terribly beautiful ennui of being suffocated by youth and privilege. Because just so you know, he doesn’t find that reason in the end.

Le conseguenze dell’amore (2004) will amaze you with its unique storytelling chronology. Set in Lugano, Switzerland; the story starts you off with a million and one questions and fills in the gaps slowly through the arduous Antonioni pauses. Need to be mentioned cinematography includes watching a slow motion 360 overhead camera spin, cool as fuck driving in a BMW 7-Series from hotel to Credit Nationale in less than 5 minutes, and watching an Italian man light cigarettes in really well cut suits.
It’s much deeper than that. But you’re depressed so we don’t need to get there do we?

Das Leben Der Anderen (2006)
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (2008)
Le scaphandre et le papillon (2007)
And finish your depressive cinematic romp with yet another beautiful screening of
Reprise (2006)

5. Create two playlists to get through periods of Self-Loathing and to kick start The New View.

Self Loathing Recommended Tracks:
The Veils – Lions After Slumber
Cat Power – Hate
Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day

The New View:
John Mayer – Vultures
Florence + The Machine – Blinding

“No more dreaming like a girl so in love so in love / no more dreaming like a girl / so in love with the / wrong world.”

6. Maintain Good Karma.

Reply back dated emails, return long due phone calls, and send simple text messages to people you should really be speaking to on a more regular basis. Renew ties you have long forgotten, and maintain the bonds that you should keep. Fulfill promises you made years ago, and eat humble pie in instances that you know you did wrong. Return others’ books and things, buy birthday cards and candy canes, and remember to call your grandmother.

Be thankful for what you have, count your blessings knowing that you’re only ever accounting for the tip of the iceberg. Enjoy the simpler things in life. Realize the amazing blessing of seeing the sunrise every morning.

And out of your darkness, when you do find moments when you can feel something that may be the faintest hint of happiness, embrace it.

So when others breach on areas that may overlap or hit you hard with issues surrounding your breakdown: answer graciously, and truthfully. Then move on.

7. Drown yourself in frozen yoghurt.

Recommended selection includes quarter large red tub of Original Tart flavour, quarter Death By Chocolate, and a variation of either Taro, Pomegranate and Strawberries. Load up on the oreo dust and kiwi fruit and finish off with a drizzle of muesli.
Tutti Frutti Frozen Yoghurt stores are available around the Klang Valley.

8. Pray.

That you’ll make it through this. And you will.

That time of the year around the Gregorian-calendar-using world, where we all can’t help but get a little retrospective. Where we find ourselves in airport waiting rooms, our near-empty schools or offices, where we can actually cruise at 40km/h on the main road, or where we find ourselves stuck in one massive traffic jam of one exodus or another; looking back on the year we had. Or perhaps, even the decade.

Various newspapers have been publishing lists of the best and the worst of what has been christened the Noughties since late October, but I’ve only started thinking about this a few days ago. It then hit me completely when I was sitting on the loo a few minutes ago nursing the latest Monocle, reading Tyler Brule’s closing letter at the back.

While this year has been rather quiet on this blog front, it was rather eventful for me.

I actually started the year on the wrong foot. I couldn’t get into two boarding schools which I thought would hold the keys to The University and The Bright Future I had always envisioned. To add on to the disgrace, I had only a few days earlier, made one of the biggest brouhahas in my teenage life by having some friends at my house while my parents were out, and while it started with chicken and peas, it ended with the entire group scrubbing out pieces of vomit from my parent’s persian rug. The ‘rents arrived home the next day and I was grounded for the next 3 months.

So with my tail between my legs, I redeemed the bursary I won at Sunway two years ago in a quiz. The same scholarship which I had overlooked because I thought my future was to be pinstriped shirts and grey blazers, vast halls and prep and not the more laid back humble atmosphere of frappes, sandals and 5 minute walk to a mall. I wasn’t appalled, I was crying my eyes out.

But things happen for a reason and the reasons soon came to make sense. I met a whole new set of people who are chilled out and going through the same cross-roads as I am. I spent my time doing Model UN and doing work for two student councils. I took my own bloody sweet time to get my driving license. I bought my first pair of Converse shoes (which I would never have thought of doing in a prep school, God no). I have successfully worn out those shoes. I loss half a dozen debates but always feeling amazing afterward. I finally won my battle with Math. I went to Langkawi with two crazy girls and brought back stories we’ll still laugh about in years to come. I fell in love. I did my SATs, TWICE.

I grew up.

Going to Sunway made me realize one essential fact I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. It made me realize that it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter which school you went to before, unheard or international, private or shit-comprehensive. It doesn’t matter what your background is, how you speak, what you like or what you wear. You are made up of more than the some of all your parts, and people accept you for the bigger picture. Everything else becomes obsolete.

The bigger picture also meant that despite not having to pay the equivalent of a small car for A-Levels, I still had the chance to run after that Bright Future I thought I had lost. Sure, circumstances were not ideal, I was still enjoying the distractions of having a freaking mall on my doorstep, and I didn’t have Mander Portman Woodward coaching me day and night. I still faced plenty of discouragement from all corners, but at the end of the day I filled in those blue forms and I got the interview. I got vast amounts of time from teachers who were willing to spend extra time with me to learn. So I can’t say I’m any further from The University whose picture I’ve kept in my notebook since Form 2.

Though while at some junctions I found myself making choices, at times I found that life makes them for you. A year ago I was reading Elaine’s US uni application essays prepping myself to know what to say when the day came that I would be doing the same. A year later I was fighting with my parents and it came to the conclusion that I was not applying. At least unless after my A-Levels. I’m still sore about it. But if one thing this year’s taught me, is things always come through differently than you would think. So dream big.

Tomorrow morning I’m trying to break my record and wake up before 7 since I’ve come home. I’m going to return a long overdue library book which somehow renewed itself while I was away. I’ll perhaps make my last run up the three flights of stairs to my locker.

So, in terms of an education, 2009 was just as it was. Laid back but not far from luminous. Here’s retrospective for you. Haha

Lying awake in bed fighting off the vestiges of jet lag nearly three weeks ago, I knew I felt odd; yet I couldn’t put my finger on it.I lie awake having words form at the back of my eyelids, never finding them again in the morning. And tonight, like so many other nights before, the frustration takes me in disgust.

A holiday is precisely a vacation. A moment in time where one vacates ones routine in order to embrace things beyond the confines of daily life. This trip has been about vacating the mind. I wake, I talk, I eat and sometimes, if I feel like it, I read.

It’s so beautiful how comforting it is to arrive in a foreign land and stock back on creature comforts that make you feel like you’re home. It’s self-reassuring when you go to the news agents knowing exactly what paper you read, or political magazine you align to, and which flavour crisps you love.

Or even something as simple as going back to the estate where you spent a good part of your childhood. Having clear kodak memory of what tree used to be where, which slot opens the door; and as you run through the barns and private rooms, that you know the exact overlay of the land, just as you have years before.

Yet the current affairs section of the paper -while it may interest you terribly- covers a domestic issue that doesn’t concern you in the least. The political mag you got  fights for the advancement of a nation in which you have no right to vote, and while you support their effort, the MPs that catch your attention are continents away from the constituency where you live.

Admittedly, some things remain constant. Nothing much gets in the lay of the land; and architectural fortitude has lengthened the permanence of buildings.  Yet we always fail to see that the people that we relate to to these buildings are more evanescent than ever. People age, people settle, people then will pass.

Just as, while people roughly stay the same, the mind of the growing young adult does not.

So does it surprise me how much it hurts – or how it doesn’t really – feeling so fascinated and belong, in a place where you know is not yours to call home.

Home is where the heart is. I love this city, and hopefully, someday; it’ll love me back too.

How are you doing folks? My sleeping patterns this past week is the shit. I sleep either too early or too late and resolve to only get out of bed when that nauseating throb of lethargy really gets to me.

My desk has had a crazy influx of ants lately, the source of their mad excitement something I discovered to be stale polo mints at the bottom of my pencil case. I’ve discarded the crap, but even as I type this, I have this impulse to squash any form of movement at the corner of my eye.

Not that this makes for brilliant blogging subject matter. But I just wanted you to know, y’know.

“Ainaa Hafizah binti Azhar, saya daripada MPH bookstore”
-”Er, ya?”
“Awak ada order buku?”
“Er. Tak, kut.”
-”Ya, ada.”
“Eh. Takde. Buku apa ni?”
-”Entah lah. Dalam plastic”, and he went on, “awak ada dekat rumah?”
To this I answered “Haaah. APA?!”

About three hours later I arrived home and there it was, three books daintily stacked on the sofa; one of them with a cheque with my name printed across.

I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard my mother acknowledge my writing, and it was rather funny how she tried to narrate what it was about to my father, to whom this must seem completely foreign.

Flipping through, cringe-worthy would be the biography section, while most people wrote about growing up liking Narnia and C.S Lewis, the younger me pontificated my love of prose and Nabokov. I’m afraid I may have come a bit as being up my own arse.

It’s a rather queer feeling though, reading something you wrote at 15. Trying to decipher how in God’s name did you ever possess so much passion and eidetic flair, when three years later you find yourself with a dumbed down level of college English, over-using phrases like like y’know, and yeah, exactly.

I’ve only been able to read a few of the other stories so far, but dear sordid blog reader, do rest assured that despite them omitting one line, that being the title of this post, I was the only 15 year old of the whole anthology who incorporated a graphic – though somewhat romantic- depiction of sex and -heavily implied- homosexuality, subtly enough to be published by a Malaysian bookstore.

Hehe. Now, some things never change.

I’m lying on my best friend’s bed which I’ve not done since we both left school, and despite it all, it felt like the single most reassuring thing I’ve felt for a very long time. Hanis turned 18 today, and with a box with five different slices of cake and a package with new lingerie (traditions always stand), I made my way up the staircase that I would have taken four to five times a week without fail a year ago.

While I play around with the dials on your SLR, trying to keep up with your new accounts of college life and connections with the lives we thought we left behind, I can’t help but look back at how far we have changed since last year.

Last September, we were both school girls in baggy white tunics. We knew what we wanted from life and wouldn’t settle for less. Our lives were spent between being in front of the CS3 making edits on typography to chasing an exam we both knew we didn’t give a shit about. The light at the end of the tunnel was getting out of school, and the long stretch of holidays where we could do whatever we wanted. To intern at a proper magazine, a think-tank, to host a play, to write a fantastic discourse on life. We knew we wanted out, and we knew we were going to explode. You with your photography, me with my pen.

Did we settle for less, or have we merely learned to manage and make do with whatever things have dealt out for us? Should I be bothered that our tight troupe of friends and believers no longer breathe and exude the passion we once held at sixteen? Is this what it means to grow up, when you accept what is given to you, and you learn to let things go?

So this might just be me growing up, when I choose to fill my extra hours integrating some function or another in the cold recesses of the library. This is me making that one step of maturity when I fill in uni applications for subject codes which I don’t know I will love but which I know I will have to learn to.

This is me growing older when I lie on my side, pulling lint from your jeans, denying, but knowing deep inside that our paths have diverged, despite me being happy with how things are going for you, and contented with how I’m going.

But it’s us growing older together, nonetheless.

No matter how much things have changed, and no matter how many calls we missed from each other in the past months; no matter how we’re both at the opposite ends of the valley, no matter the fact that you have a good friend in college named Ainaa; no matter how great of a photographer you have developed to become; and no matter what any of us are ever going to be.

Happy 18th Birthday Hanis.

<3

Perhaps I could link this whole existential denial to the fact that I always somehow thought Sunway was some kind of halfway house between places where I wanted to be. Correction, a halfway abode between places I thought I was meant to be.

January was spent acclimatising to new unchartered concrete and air-conditioning, crouched over a corner in the library finalizing applications and personal statements. Rejection number one, but I knew this application was going to be just right. February was spent running for the student council, organizing little sales and getting comfortable with people. In March it was back to rejection number two, and three.

Since then it has been a series of ups and lows, all finding their place in the tiny lines of my little red book. I’ve not written in my real journal because I fear that when I do open up the page I won’t have a single thing to say.

College has had a somewhat numbing effect on me. I do not go into a frenzy about some new book or a new film or some thing or another. I find no comfort in having no one to push me to my limits, no one beside me that inspires me to do more.

I have gone for months without reading the papers, except for the few weekends I actually bother buying the FT or the few evenings that I actually have the energy to read The Guardian. The stack of books I bought in December, thinking I would have to replenish by the month’s end is still the way it is; appreciated yet forlorn.

There is no spark, no fire, no drive. Farhanis tells me I don’t seem to have anything to say anymore on the phone, because that’s the way things have been. I didn’t want to say anything, and I got comfortable with saying nothing for a very long time.

There is also a sort of philistine experience when you thought you just got your way into a centre of new educational opportunities. There are no deep philosophical conversations in student cafes, the arguments you would find yourself in are pedantic and so-high-school.

People honestly don’t care. And you try to learn not to care too.

I’ve got a backlog of emails I’ve not replied because I just can’t seem to put myself to say the things I should have months ago. I’m sorry if I don’t reply your messages either, or picked up your calls. And I know why you’re doing that to me too.

It’s one thing pushing something away and hoping it’ll never come back and having to pull it back and work things better.

Oh God, why are all my posts so fucking depressing?

It was the December 08 issue, so they had this whole section of people who are – or, in this case 6 months later- shaping the world in their respective fields.

One of the articles was about a computer game designer who creates these simple but adorable 8-bit games that have a whole deep existential flair to them. His game, Passage, was said to be by tech-reviewers as proof that gaming is in itself a type of art comparable to music or literature.

According to the interview, he lives in a hut on a meadow with his family, keeps electricity to a minimum and does his coding in a super old-school dell laptop. Like, super cool, kan?

Intrigued, I checked out the game, read the reviews and had a few rounds.

So basically it’s just this rectangular box on your screen where you have to keep moving on to get to somewhere you don’t know any shit about. The far corners of both ends of the screen is blurry, and only gets clear as you walk onto them. Your character is a super pixelated blue-eyed brown haired character. It’s possible to move up and down, step on some chests to get more points, but basically moving itself gets the number tally on your upper right screen going on.

Thirty seconds in, you will meet a girl with green eyes, and just as pixellated as you are. Walk into her, and a big heart will form and the whole game will go on with her being beside you. Being with her means you can’t walk into certain passages where you could get more points from treasure chests.

As you play on three minutes into the game, you realize your pixel-hairline is receding, and before you realize anything, your wife’s hair is turning white. The environment in the screen turns from yellow to red to blue to purple. Your character starts to bend double.

And then your wife dies and in her place lies a tombstone. You could move around a bit, but you too, stop and have a tombstone in your place.

There are no monsters to kill, no quests to partake on, and nothing to kill you; except inevitable death.

In the three odd trials I had of the game, I tried marriage. I tried being single. Then some other strategy came to mind. Do any of you remember in one of the old Mario games, in the first 10 seconds of the game, if you don’t land or jump on the turtle-shell, then you won’t ever have the chance to go back and do it?

Well I tried that out. I avoided the girl, ran on in the game, collected about 300 points and jumped on every goddamn chest I could get my square little legs on. Then I ran back to the yellow environment to get to her. It worked.

We fell in love, though seconds later we grew old. Our hair turned white, we bent double, and she shortly died thereafter. My points were about 500+.

I was reading the reviews and there was this really sweet comment from some guy who said when his game-wife died he merely left his character beside the tombstone and died beside her. He played the game with his real-life wife nearby and couldn’t bear to think about leaving the tombstone.

So Passage tells us that it’s possible to go and run after ‘having it all’, to go back and fall in love. That it’s possible to get great points by chasing treasure chests alone, but that 4 minutes in, it just gets boring and pointless.

That at the end of our five minutes, we will all have to die.

That it actually feels better to die knowing you have loved and lost.

Than die alone with nothing but 700 points you will lose anyway.

And yeah, before you have to ask me about the cryptic past posts, and the new Facebook updates in between, I did meet someone with slit brown eyes. We jumped on treasure chests and hid behind library shelves. But our five minutes was up. And we let go.

Passage by Jason Rohrer is available here. His personal page can be found here.