-but on the bright side, ladies and gentlemen-
i'm alive.
and so are you, reading this now.
so clap for a while, haha.
;-)

hmm. i dunno whether i'll do too well this semester.
chinese philo is going good, history 101 is keeping me alive too, and sociology is interesting.
geog 101 .. i've skipped too many lectures. sian. and my project isn't exactly an exemplary attempt at academia.
the SEA industrialization one.. that's gonna be a tough one.

but oh heck, i've been working on quite a few essays and projects lately, and i didn't know i could meet those deadlines. somehow makes me fulfilled, in a way, or am i imagining that i am fulfiled just because i'm doing work? i am easy to manipulate. haha.

2 more essays and 2 more presentations for these 2 weeks, then time to begin revision.

random poem scribbling mode.
revvin' up to do some writing.

-
begin
-

The hammers of your thousand whispers
strike this drunk fool
trick him
into imagining
he has a mind.

The hollow reeds of my dreams
unshaped unheld uncontained.
For lack of a name, for want of form,
i delude myself, and
name them you.

i knew you not - and you cared not.
intoxicated by fear
blades waver and flit uncertainly
masks gather and fit unwillingly
all to join this dance of ours, love.

-
end
-

I was dreaming again.

I was all alone again, rotting in that dank, forgotten dungeon, with the walls wrapped around me in a tight death grip. I had no proof that I was alive, that I existed at all; the only things that marked my continued presence in the cell was the stench of my filth. It was the stink of my body's wasted remnants, the stink of apathy that chokes my guts up into roiling fits of despair, the stink of metal that accompanies the manifestation of my mind's children.

My faithful children, who have served me as my only companions in those ten years of misery. They were my sole friends, my boon companions, my nurses, my lovers, mine to toy with and to shape, gears and pistons, teased forth into delicate perfection through my fevered manipulations.

It was my lovely children who had gotten me condemned to this life - what had the Qadir's court called me?

"Sorceror. Witch. Heretic. Hell-summoner!"

Ah, those names.. those barbed words, spat forth with venom, flung by the gentry, as the superstitious peasants, less skilled in verse but in now way lacking of vitriol, flung their stones and rocks at me.

They named me a witch, and branded me a slave, and threw me into the deepest pit they could find; perhaps, in their cruel humour, they left a dish of water next to my broken body, for me to wash and drink from. The fact that my arms were shattered by the peasant's rocks seemed to be of little significance to them...

As was the fact that I was indeed a witch.

My children that I brought forth and weaned upon my mind's energies saved my life as they nursed me back to health.. and perhaps they saved my life in other ways as well. The superstitious Persian nobles and guardsmen all had no wish to be cursed by a sorceror whose death they had caused - the manifestation of my children seemed to have bought me the assurance of my continued life, at least. Food and water was brought, and I slowly regained my strength, and plotted revenge. The fire of vengeance burnt out shortly afterwards, as I realized that despite my power, that despite my healed frame - the nobles were never going to let me out.

I was hale of body, strong of mind. When I die - it would be of natural causes - and not from their neglect.

Their souls were protected, their consciences fortified, against whatever death-curses this lowly witch could inflict.

And I rotted slowly.. wishing for death, but unable to kill myself, unwilling to smear the arms of my beloved creations with my gore. They had spent the better part of a decade bringing me beyond death's grip, and I would not taint their deeds by forcing fraticide upon their innocent hands.

I, Faris Al-Jadan, it would seem, was destined to live at the mercy of a fleeting dream, and to die upon that same mercy as well.

That dream has finally caught up with me.

hell. i wanted to take the bus 36 to watch the streets of orchard, to see the people in the city heart, to observe - and there're places to go study there as well.

but no. the town centre's another hot bombing target.

(Ok, admittedly, it's not exactly the prime time slot... but hey.. paranoia takes no prisoners, yeah.)

so in the end, i walked home from the Airport.

no, i'm not feeling whacked out or anything now. please don't drug me. :-P

hi. guess i hadn't been able to post any fiction online lately, between school work and the LARP matters, i haven't been able to get much free time to myself at all.

Thought i'll just throw in an update now.

Last night, i was having a meeting with some of the LARP guys regarding some storyline resolution matters at the Airport, and I was originally planning to stay at the airport to do some studying of my geopolitics and genetics modules. Meeting ended at around 11 pm, so i settled down to study after that.

At around 12:30 am, i got freaked out.

I suddenly remembered it was the 12th of September, and that there were soldiers walking about, manning the place. I could see the TV screens, with the news feeds of the world moving in its lumbering sublime complex glory, and i was sitting at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, sipping tea.

On the table in front of me, there were a few books on the nation-state, on how terrorism and the rogue-state have shifted the new geopolitics into focus. And i wondered -

"will i get blown up tonight?"

strange, yeah. It shook me out enough for me to clear out of the Airport, and to begin a long walk home.. Silly of me, yeah?

Thoughts you don't get every night. Paranoia, maybe. Hell, the Airport is still standing now, in one piece, and me - my instincts were just products of a paranoia instilled by - what? My own fears? The media frenzy? The lateness of the hour, playing its phantom tricks of delusion upon my mind? The subject matter I was reading?

All this time, I was looking on the "War on Terror" and our local Singaporean media's approach to it as being the cut and thrust of standard diplomatic wrangling with the New World Order of the US.. but now i felt the effects of that terror.

Terror of those who will be bombed by the most advanced munitions and armament of the world. Terror of those who think of themselves as righteous, who think of attacks upon them as being the acts of cowards. Terror of watching around and seeing the blithely ignorant world around me, and the horrible realization that any moment that it could -all- come crashing down, and that i'll be another statistic, and so will everybody else around me.

Terror, most of all, that i seem so powerless to change this course of events. That the present seems so screwed - and everyone i know is selfishly, perversely ignoring the woes of the world, and seem intent on "expressing themselves". Or something like that. Terror that i'll be living into a world with a future born from the seeds of the present, terror that ..

somehow this won't mean a thing at all.

Hmm gonna start posting some character fiction for Raihan's D n D game.
the draft is being done now, and i'll transcribe chapter 1 tomorrow.
school's been great so far, and i don't fall asleep in lectures anymore ;-p

i feel alive, horrendously, vibrantly alive!
you know how it is.
when the world seems full of hope, and you feel that you can overcome anything, defeat anything, or even if you can't, there's something to learn, something to do, something ... to throw yourself up against.
i never knew i had a competitive, ambitious streak in me.
now.. we'll see how far i can channel this ambition into a fighting spirit worthy of my ancestors.
Ancestors, dog-man-who-stalked-me-in-my-sleep, all of you, watch me now.

i'll make something out of this life, and influence this world.

Just don't expect me to update this blog too often :-p

the fortean times has been down for 3 days running now.
why?
Charles Fort, your legacy stays alive in inspiring this young wide-eyed kid. Onwards in the search for high strangeness!

Oh yeah. This is an open poll.

Currently - i am training myself in the following.

1, Research and study techniques (reading and applying some principles from books i've self-studied)
2, Topographical Navigation techniques (courtesy of Edmund)
3, Self-defence (basically keeping more alert and practising my stances/ strikes)
4, Fitness (i've started going to the gym again, whoopee.and i'm about to run again soon.)

Well, what other areas of expertise do you dudes think i should take up?

Here's the concept = shao han, international spelunking rogue scholar by the age of 30.

Please assist, thanks!

i'm tired! but not exhausted yet. you haven't gotten me down...

i haven't slept in a while, and i just got out of the gym, but it was an evening/ morning well spent. Edmund was over at my place, and i was running some Superheroes game for him - he was playing a Canadian shapeshifting mutant and the fight sequences went a bit weird, but i guess at 2 am in the morning, you can't ask for too much. He then fell asleep at my place, and i couldn't manage to drag him away. So i went online, and talked to yan, somebody whom i seem to have developed quite a strong affinity for.

Was pensive and somewhat full of doubts last night, about myself, about my life - you know how it happens. yan managed to talk some sense into me, and i'm really thankful and grateful for her presence last night - i've been the one who people talk to all the time, to seek counsel and advice from. Rarely can i find somebody whom i can talk to naturally with no sense of false pretence? To the buddies who may be reading this - I value you, my friends, but sometimes it's so damn hard to talk to each other, haha. The machismo thing, the cross-frequencies as we try to communicate, and sometimes just fail to.Talked to her till 5:30 or so in the morning, then i went for a shower, and got ready to go to camp, where i was practising some punch/ kick variations from Shorinji Kempo. The concept of shapes helps out a lot - you throw a jab foward, you will need to pull it back to chamber before releasing another jab. But in Kempo, there is a Sensei, Lee Bachman, who advocates shifting the blow of your fist upwards into an oval arc, for another quick strike, instead of pulling back.

Fascinating.

Was practising some stances as well, and i'm happy to say that after a night of no sleep and general tired-ness, i can still give a straight kick up to approximate shoulder level. Still trying to practise breakfalls.. but no success. i want to spar with Edmund. he's strong and fast and tenacious, and he's got some modicum of skill. If i'm to be able to defend myself successfully in the future, i need to be able to take on somebody of his body mass/ strength/ ferocity.

Well, that covers it for the weekend. Heading down to meet Josh and Syamsul now, tonight we have some LARP thing to handle, i feel tired just thinking about the costumes i have to wear - sigh, i need to do the c-sheets too. That's a bother... but it's all in the game.

Goodbye, you all - and may you deny fate as well as fate has denied you. Ta.