just a brief rant that i will probably regret regurgitating come the following morning. i am in a place where i no longer recognize 1) the people around me, and 2) who i really want to be.

the past week has been a very loud culmination of various leadership and friendship issues, mostly separate but with enough intersections. i’ve always loved working with friends, but what happens when you engage in a project with friends only to realize that all of you have very different goals, and in order to win, none are too shy to whip out arsenals that have been stealthily built over the years? how do you deal with friends who don’t pull their own weight but help out the team just by being there as a good friend with moral support? and then what happens when factions form and every well-meaning thing you say and do is used by the factions against each other, and ultimately against you too?

i am learning more and more that to be a good leader, one needs to be firmly grounded in his or her values and goals with unwavering and adamantine integrity. without integrity, a leader is nothing but a crafty but misguided and self-centered dictator who doesn’t understand that his job travels far beyond himself into a realm that involves bigger ideas and other people. but i am also learning more and more that in order to be popular and to be friends with everyone, it seems that integrity is the last thing you need. all you need to do is just be damned two-face and make sure you don’t get caught. which is sad. it’s fucking sad. you might ask, who needs to be friends with everyone? just a handful of good, true friends will do. but that is not the point. the point is that two-faced people are still getting away with what they are doing because they know what other people want, and know how to use charisma to dangle these promises in front of others. you know what really bothers me– it bothers me when i recognize who two-faced people are and what they do to other people, but won’t say anything about it because my stupid integrity nags at me and reminds me that i shouldn’t say bad things about people. very often i slip, and i start ranting angrily, and then i hate myself after my tirade for being so weak of will — especially if there is a paper trail, which ‘friends’ are fond of using against others. but the rest of the time, when i do successfully bite my tongue, i still get increasingly angry about the injustice i see unfolding before me that i can’t or won’t do anything about. it’s a very confusing state to be in. i understand that there is no black or white in this world, and that i don’t always have to have a fixed policy, but it’s still bloody confusing. at the end of it all i have no idea who i am, what i want to be, or what kind of ethics i stand for.

i used to have this silly concept of friends that i jokingly called a circle of immunity. they aren’t necessarily my closest friends, but they are the friends whom i would still love despite us having directly conflicting principles or even if they did things to me or to others that would ordinarily really upset me. they’re just that special. but i recently folded that circle because i realized that everyone in there couldn’t be trusted. it’s a very stunning thing to realize about the people you’ve allowed to be very close to you. it’s funny but more often than not, it’s not that they had cruel intentions or premeditated motives — but rather, the uniform pattern is that everyone just likes themselves a whole lot more than anything else in their world. it could be any number of things: people like to sound smart, people like to seem plugged in, people like to feel as if they’re everyone’s confidante, people like to appear to others as if they have these piercing insights into human nature, and sadly, things that you once entrusted them with become collateral damage in the process.

it’s so awful. basically i have no idea who to talk to anymore. i sometimes wonder if this is the reason why i always fall into such deeply close relationships with my boyfriends– i need someone to love me so that i can hate the rest of the world; at least at the end of the day no matter what happens i still have that one someone.

or maybe i’m just really paranoid.

i was feeling a little nostalgic today, so i started rummaging through some of my photos from travels past. then i realized that i’d actually marked some photos to blog about, but had eventually just forgotten about them altogether. so here are the last of some istanbul pictures. at some point, if my memory still serves me, hopefully i’ll get around to putting up photos from paris a year ago, and barcelona from two years back, along with some small stories found in those beautiful cities.

it’s funny but i haven’t been as shutter-happy as i once was, which explains the dearth of photos in this space over the past year or so. i’m not sure why that is. these days i’m content just drinking things in with the eyes, and don’t feel that same need to tell or show anyone what i saw. actually, these days i’m content not talking to anyone at all. which was why it was nice to sit down and stare into space with J the other day, as the chatter of uproarious brickfields moved thickly around us like curls of incense smoke. these are the best relationships — the ones with obligations that don’t feel like obligations, where so much is instinctively understood that not much needs to be said. at some point we asked each other if it was okay to just be quiet and be far away into our own thoughts. yeah it’s okay. the next time i toss a coin into a fountain, or make a wish on birthday candles, i will wish that everyone on earth gets to keep one such friendship with them, on them, always.

photos from istanbul:

(i wrote the above about two weeks ago, but got interrupted while i was resizing photos. in the time between then and now, timtam, who was with me in istanbul, uploaded his own photos to facebook. with his marvelous camera and exquisite eye for a good picture, i really no longer have to share mine, because his photos just outshine any and all that i have. so i’m going to put his up instead :) with his permission of course.

…. BUT!!! not without claiming some credit for most of the shots, cos timtam IS SUCH A PHOTO MOMENT STEALER >:( basically i’ll stop to take a photo of something or someone, and timtam will come up behind me to do the same… except he emerges with the distinctly better photo. life is unfair. everyone, buy an analog camera.)

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timtam, i support any endeavour of yours to start your own online photo gallery. can’t wait for island creamery bonding time in a week!

at some point i think i’ll say something but for now there’s just more to do than talking

for joe

there’s something quite despicable about built-in furniture and the permanence they impose onto our beings, that tie us to them like gnarled roots do to soil, or viscous soil do to roots. there is an eyesore of a wardrobe attached like a fetus to the corners of my bedroom, and protest as i might it is never going away, unless the edges of my fury can collapse this house and we can all, once again, start from the ground up and build things just the way we like it. this life has become something that i merely inhabit, and during the winters and the springs something in me is sleeping that can only be awakened from the choppy waters of a familiar accent or the promise of something small (… that thing with feathers). every day in my parallel universe, i am tired- and every day i am losing battles waged against myself until i win everything i want. then i find, that in fact, both these lives cannot be superimposed onto each other because they will not fit, and ultimately i am the ultimate loser, because i did succeed in creating two lives — which of course, is something very unfair to the rest of the world and should not be attempted without a proper plan. the million dollar question is: who, really, is expecting me to be someone i am not? the lot of us can kick and scream against ‘the system’ or ‘the pressure’ or ‘my own drive’, but i think the thing to be blamed is the meta-system that tells you there should only be one system, or one world, or one you, (and yes,) or 1Malaysia. i think it should be perfectly fine if i want there to be two of me living in one world. but no, society thinks this fickle, or fake, or spreading oneself too thin. someone once told me, “nobody in the real world will understand this”- and while i used to think that only the purely self-absorbed or the crazy would dare utter such words, i find that the more i grow older, the more i believe this is true.

what can i do to teach myself that it is okay for me to live one day before the other? what can i do to ask you to accept me for who i am? i miss this one person but he is far away. i think my country is going to the dogs. and lately i’ve been learning that the alternatives to the dogs isn’t everything i thought they were. i’ve also since discovered that many of my superheroes are actually just human, with quite human intentions. presented with such foundations, it’s no wonder people attach themselves to drugs, alcohol, sex, music, books until they blend into these things and can no longer tell one from the other apart. i am the book, the sex is me. that must feel a lot better than drifting like a ghost in and out of this world — at least in the altered state you are something. can i say all of this without rebuke?

in the deepest of crises i close my eyes and i think of you. when i hear something funny i wish to tell you so that we can laugh about it together. everything i see i want to see it with you. i dont think i know you all that well yet but this is simply how i feel.

at the end of the day, we must always choose freedom. it’s funny but sometimes i think i do everything else but.

in the face of such revelations, i dont quite know what to say anymore. i’m often surprised that i’m still surprised, but mostly i’m just disappointed by my own ineffectiveness and lack of resilience. a don’t-care attitude would be so helpful in dealing with these hurtful and unfair events, but my application for one just keeps bouncing. i wish i could stop myself from feeling hurt, or caring, but i can’t. i wish i could erase history, or turn back time to go down different paths, but i can’t. this is that much of my life that i’m never getting back, in terms of time. this is also the results slip and the consequences of my very bad judgment when it comes to whom i choose to love and trust. it is some balm that i’ve only ever chosen wrongly this once, but evidently even one person can cause a lot of damage and tell many far-reaching lies. like my predecessor, i’ve been arduously wiping him out from my existence (no, despite what you might have heard, it’s not because ‘this is the only way we can move on with our lives’), but still annoying little traces remain. like last night’s events. like how my friends keep referring to this when making jokes about my judgment calls. like how i get stupid snippy comments on this blog from his friends who’ve only heard one (mostly fallacious) side of the story. like how i was priming my parents to meet Kafka, and told them he’s such a good guy – and they laughed derisively and said “are you sure? that’s what you said about the last guy too, and look how he turned out!”

i think i’ve paid enough penance, thanks, and would very much like all traces of ‘that last guy’ to evaporate. so please, if you’re a mutual friend or even a complete stranger who thinks you’ll be doing me a favour by telling me the most recent of his stories about me, please spare me. i’ve officially come to a point where it’s all no longer worth the anger. if you’re a friend of his but not a friend of mine, please exercise a little bit of reasoning or actually get to know me in person before you believe just one side of a story told by a highly dramatic person who has no qualms making collateral damage out of other people in his raconteuring. you hear some stories and you read a blog and then you think you know me enough to hate me, but really, how does that make you any more than a gossip who doesn’t think very much before forming an opinion? once upon a time i trusted him too, and have since come to realize that i very seriously misplaced that trust. that’s why i blocked him on facebook, and ban all of my friends from saying anything about me to him – because i dont trust him with anymore of my life than i’ve already given up in the brief time i encountered him. i guess it must be fun to talk a lot of shit about someone you’ve never even met, but take some time to think about how i never did anything wrong to you. i’m a real, actual, living breathing person with a life and loved ones. a blog is just a place i go to to pen the occasional thought. you’re giving this blog and yourself way too much credit if you think you can piece together a good idea of who i am just from reading some weekly writing and listening to some skewed stories.

i think what happens between two people, especially two people who trusted each other, should remain private and untouched by prying eyes or gossipy mouths. it’s a shame that not everyone i choose to love shares the same principles of discretion. a renegade blogger who called himself the vigilante of the malaysian blogosphere once wrote me an email to say that it’s best that i learn whom i cant trust while i’m still young. can’t say i disagree. i think i’m quite prepped for the real world now, and the real wolves of that place. but for now i’m thankful for real people, real friends, and real love. i’ve got a bit of a scratched up heart and a big crack in the part of it that’s used for trusting, but this is slowly healing, and so i’m also thankful for the godsend that is Kafka.