justin_guber - @ 20six.co.uk

Happy Mondays...

...now there's a band name with irony.

Thte work hasn't let up much, as you can tell. After all, don't I always update my blog during the day? Well it's 8:45pm right now and I've decided to give myself a break. If anything, because there's no one rushing me or pulling me into a meeting at the moment, which is a nice feeling. I now understand why my group head stays in late. To actually do some fucking writing.

Right now I'm listening to some trip-hop (not sure who it is. It's either DJ Shadow, Handsome Boy Modelling School or UNKLE. Hmmm...) and wondering what time I'll finish my copy, chilling in the office listening to the scratches in action and noticing how my cubicle is much darker than everyone elses.

I've also had a lot of time to think about things: like the Ham thing (see one of my previous rants) and other things. Saiful kept asking whether we wanted to 'sort this out' (this can be translated very loosely. Anywhere between having a pleasant chat to anal penetration with a glass bottle can fall in the term 'sort this out'), but somewhere between all the work I was doing last week it hit me:

Who cares?

Ultimately, all the dude said was something hurtful that I do take personally, but if some little dip-shit-dog-lick-motherfucker has to hide behind the internet to say all those things he wished he could say face to face, who am I to stop him?

What was funny was looking back, and realizing that Khaimano seemed to bring out the most extreme reactions compared to other bands I'd been in. Like that time I received an e-mail all the way from LA from someone I had never met telling me how much she liked the song 'I'm Not Chinese' because she could relate. Or the guy that just walked up to me in the middle of a mamak to tell me my band rocked.

Now I have someone who hates my ex-band. Big deal. Let the wanker rant. From the looks of his other posts, the guy definitely speaks (or should I say types) without thinking, and one of these days he's gonna get his.

I just hope I have front row seats when it happens. Or actually in the ring with the pigfucker.

We now return to you to our regular broadcast.

13.9.04 15:01

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Roll 'em up, roll up the hootie mac...

...I need herbs and spices, so I can get nices... God, what a silly song. Where is Vanilla Ice these days anyway?

But yes. The title is not inferring that my thumbs have gone green again after such a long break, nor does it mean I've decided to follow in the great Vanilla's footsteps.

It means that with the new prices for cigarettes as per last weeks national budget announcement, I have switched to rolling tobacco to save money. And it's been a long time since I hit that shit up.

The first thing I wasn't used to was the rolling aspect. I almost forgot all those tips Nadine taught me between changing our sheets and hoovering the carpets in my boarding school.

Once I rolled my semi-ok ciggy I took the first puff, and after Dunhill lights followed by two days of free Kent 6's, the hit from these little baby's felt like a fucking Gitane.

The taste was another factor. My tongue was so used to ammonia, tar and all those other lovely additives that my stomach began to turn, but I'm getting used to it.

Charlise, on the other hand, almost coughed up a lung trying it out and looked stoned for a few minutes after her last puff.

In other news, it's 9:53pm, and I'm still fucking here. The entire team has been brainstorming since ten in the morning (although I kept popping out to finish up anything else that needed finishing) and we just cracked it ten minutes ago.Almost twelve hours of brainstorming the same fucking thing. Add the hours brainstorming yesterday and last week and you'd think we'd all gone absolutely cookoo. And the presentation's Thursday morning. Fun.

I think I'm spent here. Time to go out for a drink of the non-alcoholic variety. Or edit the Singapore video.

P.S. Check it out, I change my little animated pic! Sure, nothing to rave about, but still.

14.9.04 16:01

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Hmmmm...

....and things that make you go.

So it turns out I'm going to be bogged down with a supremely large load of work till the end of the year. And that's a good thing. Apparently. I can't tell you because it's all hush-hush and on the qt, but I can assure you it's good. For me, anyway. Not sure about you. Then again, what's that got to do with me in the first place?

Outside it's raining so hard that from my window on the 28th floor all I see is Grey (kinda funny, considering I work in Grey. Inside Grey, Outside Grey. Heheh...). I can also see many many static rows of little red lights in pairs, which means that not only is it pissing down as if a herd of flying cows were flying over after fourteen pints of Fosters but traffic's moving slower than grandpa trying to get an erection without the aid of viagra.

Time to get into the work. Then maybe some well-called-for drunkeness.

15.9.04 12:43

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We only come out at night...

...hey, at least it's a better song reference than the last one. It's the Pumpkins, it's off one their best albums, and it's one of the quirky tracks too.

But yes. It's 12:37am, and I'm STILL-FUCKING-HERE. Is this what all my blog posts be reduced too? I foresee readership dropping rapidly.

I've got the Beastie Boys & DJ Shadow pumping out of my speakers and a head full of Carlsberg but this is no social function. We we're brainstorming in the fucking bar, for fucks sake. And it's hurting my brain.

This happens often when I'm driving back home from a pub. I think it's the pain of trying to concentrate as if sober even though all your mind and body wants to do is say 'fuck-it-all' and find a nice, warm corner to sit in and think about the absurdities of existence and the color coordination of goldfish.

But the question is: is it worth it? Fuck, yeah, it's worth it. My job is what this blog is: writing. Writing and thinking and writing some more. But whilst this blog allows me to spout out a stream of free-flowing conciousness at work I have to think it through. Still writing, though.

I was telling my group head earlier in the bar how when I was on the client side working late was a chore. Here, I work late because I want to get the fucker right.

(as I type, the orchestra remix of 6 underground plays. quite nice music for a reflective moment, don't you think?)

There are certain things about me that you'd have to pry from my cold dead hands to get me to give up. Writing, as you may have gathered by now, is one of them. I can't imagine living my life without a keyboard in front of me. I've long given up on pen and ink, my hand can't write as fast as I think, but my typing can keep up. Ideas, thoughts, stories, scripts, poems, lyrics, anything. Writing got me through my education. If it wasn't for writing, I'd never have gotten 3 A's in my GCSE's (two of them were for English, the other for Drama, which isn't that far off). I'm pretty sure the only reason I got my university degree was not because of the content but the quality at which it was communicated. I find no other explanation other than a) a university degree is not as hard as you'd think, b) i'm supremely intelligent, which I doubt, or c) the university really needed the money. After all, in UK uni's foreign students pay 10 times more than the locals.

(as i type now, one of my electronica tracks is playing. when did i make this mix cd, i have no idea what's on it. you can check out the electronica stuff in the 'My Music Makes Monkey's Multiply' list of links on your left, under 'A Girl Named Jane')

Music's another thing that's ingrained in me. Take that away from me, and you might as well strip me naked, dip me in honey and stick my dick in an anthill. The tips of my fingers are permanently rough from guitar strings and I wouldn't give that up for all the cheese in the world. It's another way to write. If you ever heard the very first Khaimano demo that I made in London, you'd notice every single track was a story about my life so far, and it's still going strong. And now, with Triple 6 Poser, I find myself using the guitar more and more to release those emotions, thrills and spills, and Y2k to spew out those lyrics that some of you have been enamoured by (or flat out despise. Yes, I'm still bitter. It's my blog, I'll write what I damn please).

And, of course, there's film. Cinema and television was my teacher, guru, savior and guide. It was movies and tv that taught me about the wonders of music and writing in the first place: i got into writing through screenplay writing, thanks in no part to Faber & faber publishing Tarantino scripts; I got into music through movies: Eric Clapton through Goodfellas, Queen via Wayne's World, Chuck Berry via Back to the Future and the list goes on. The big and small screen have given me my accent, my outlook in life, my mannerisms and quirks. U & PG movies taught me morals and dreams and 15 & 18 films taught me the harsher lessons in life. It taught me how to flirt, kiss, the meaning of love and the joy of a good, hard fuck. It showed me the joy of humor and the guilty pleasure of excessive blood-letting. Movies & TV made me, and I'm pleased to announce that it has not influenced me to murder, rape & steal, even if that's what politicians and the press would like us to believe.

Hmmm. That was fun. Haven't written something like that in awhile. 1:08am and still here. Better check how progress is on the ads. Cheerio.

15.9.04 19:14

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Langkawi - in a nutshell

The bus was to arrive at Empire towers at 10.45pm. I got to the office earlier than expected, and Aza and Naz were sat down watching 'Requiem for a Dream'. I joined them, and realized why everyone was raving about the film. The ending got me so bad I couldn't get the entire last twenty minutes out of my head. Intensely depressing stuff, but good. I now cannot get the words 'ass to ass' out of my head.

We got on the bus, and were greeted by a tour guide who told us that she will switch off the lights soon so that they wouldn't hustle' us anymore, and other strange phrases. She may need help in pronounciation. And grammer. And the english language in general.

6 hours on the bus and I slept maybe 1 1/2 of that. Got on the ferry. Got off the ferry. Big sign: 'Langkawi - duty free island'. Nice. Direct and to the point.

From there we had breakfast and proceeded to hit up the stores for cigarettes and alcohol. When a litre bottle of Jose Cuervo is only RM40 (approximately five pounds or ten us dollars, give or take) you know that things are looking very bright on the horizon. Cigarettes were about RM3.80 (around 50 pee, or USD$1, give or take) a pack, and with the recent increase in taxes on 'sinful products' (government's actual term) this was indeed an island paradise.

Got back, got into the rooms, got my guitar out, learnt how to play 'Tribute' by Tenacious D, then forgot the chords except the main riff. Then went poolside to figure out our group performance. Went back. Changed. Came back to the lobby. Eddy was dressed in a Captian Hook suit, except he looked more like the lead singer of a Guns N Roses tribute band. Went in. Free flow of beer and whiskey. Heh. Did our group performance. Watched the others. Got drunk. Got rowdy. Orange team danced to some r n' b in such a way that they'd be perfect for a Christina Aguilera video. Continued the rowdiness and drunkedness. Went to the Fun Pub and had fun. Woke up in a friends room all alone and achy.

Next day: went to the beach, armed with water balloons. Then went to the pool and ordered overpriced fruit juice to rehydrate before tonights dehydration with the brotherhood. Got stuck in the pool when it rained, and when the freezing cold was too much to bear, made our way back, regardless of the fact that it was pissing down, and had a hot shower. Then stayed in and ordered room service, which was shit. For a five star hotel, it had all the facilities and piss poor service. Hmmm.

Got dressed, went to the beach at 8pm for the dinner thing. Brought all our bottles: 1 litre of Jose Cuervo Especial, 1 litre of Jack Daniel's, 1 litre of Absolut, 1 bottle of Valpolicella and a 2 litre bottle of Red Label. Got eveybody to do body shots. Hassled finance to give us all bonuses. Got supremely pissed. Woke up in another friends room, got on the coach, and returned to civilization.

Might post the pics at some point. Or maybe not. Either way, lots of fun. Two thumbs fresh.

20.9.04 14:35

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Bad dreams and presentations

Happy dreams, I'm used to. Wet dreams don't happen often, but I have experienced something close to it, and I'm used to those as well. Even nightmares, I'm used to. But dreams that piss me off, that's something new on the menu, and it happened last night, leaving me in a pissy mood for most of the morning.

In my dream, I was a movie director. One of the tour guides from the Langkawi trip (who was a heinous bitch, I might add) was my production manager and was pissing me off with her shouting. The cranes were all set, the crew was ready, camera's on standby, cast on cue. After I called action, I watched the proceedings and called 'cut' immediately. It was all shit. Why? Because I was unprepared. Everything and everyone was set up and ready to go, but I wasn't. I didn't even know what the script was about. I called lunch and made my way to meet my friend Rauf.

When I got to the stall where Rauf was the first thing he did was tell me off for not hanging out with him and the boys anymore, which gets me even more pissed off, and I let out a string of obscenities and ranted about how my work was very important and my friends should understand. Then I woke up and felt like shooting something small and fluffy.

Second I got back to here I find out the presentation for the latest ad I worked on is this morning. I was still feeling a bit tender, but fuck it. Went in, presented, got out, had a starbucks (courtesy of the account director) and now I'm back in the office with RM2 to my name. I have to pick up my fucking KLue cheque now. There's my bro's birthday party, my friend Saiful's birthday party and my dad's birthday party all going on this weekend and next week, and I have nothing to buy them. Eek.

21.9.04 07:14

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Tribute to Khaimano, R.I.P.

Yesterday I couldn't help but google that old, old band of mine, and see what's been written of them on the World Wide Web. The nostalgia reminded me that I promised some of you the story of this teeny little band that didn't make much of a difference in the Malaysian Independent Music Industry, but it sure as shit on a cornhole made a difference to the lives of all those involved in the band, most of all myself.

Khaimano, as a concept, was born in Shrewsbury, circa 1997, the child of a mad Italian named Filo (whose only input in the child's upbringing was to name him before buggering off to dope, drink and debauchery before fucking off to Italy) and me, a Malay musician named Khai in a dingy room in a boarding school named Concord. At the time I was playing in Crap Budget Tattoo, my first real band, on bass, with Jordan (of Flatline fame) on lead vocals and guitars and Spaceman on drums. At some point Charlie Cibai joined the band, we played the proms in the college, and went our seperate ways musically. Spaceman joined a boy band in England, Jordan started up Flatline and Charlie Cibai crunched numbers in an insurance company.

"i have a bone to pick with u, i thought u were like totally gifted in the music writing business only to find out when i listened to a sublime album that u had nicked loads of their songs, not impressed khai redeem yourself. pls. tell me its not true."
- taken from an e-mail from Laura E. Turner, flatmate during the Khaimano creative process in England, friend, and radiologist.

411C studios consisted of my dorm room, a laptop that was in danger of spontaneously combusting, and an old shoe for a mic stand. Using Mod Plug Tracker in ways the designer never envisioned and N-Track, I began writing songs, inspired by the heavy doses of Sublime I'd been listening to. The songs were all originally meant to be 3 minute punk rock ditties, but everytime I plugged in my Zoom 505 into the laptop on a distortion setting the sound that came out resembled an elephants fart through a Metal Zone booming out of a Vax Jamz amp. Inspired by Brad Nowell's ska/reggae/hip-hop stylee, I changed all the chords into sliding A's, D's & F's, slowed the beats and concentrated on the lyrics to carry the songs. It was my final year of uni, my exams were over, the exam hall had been burnt down and there was nothing else to do except skate, get blitzed and write songs till my flight back. By July, I had 14 songs on a tape. Some made people laugh, some made people like Laura cry.

KL was filled with nothing more than fattening food and skating. I hit up the Mid Valley skatepark at least 3 times a week, skating for hours and hanging out with the Flatline boys. Uni was over, student prices were gone for the purposes of beer, and my parents were constantly down my neck to get a job. The Khaimano stuff was already on mp3.com for feedback (but now no more, since the fuckers sold out) and the Flatline boys had heard the stuff. After their first gig at Monash, where I helped them out with a little rap, they asked whether I wanted to open for them at some chicks birthday (Rauf, help me out with the name here, it's been so long). I had two weeks to make a band and teach them the songs.

I figured it shouldn't be too hard, but nobody was available (Imran from One Buck Short almost came onboard, but he had a kenduri). A week before the show, I got a call from Ariff, who I had tried to contact earlier but couldn't get through.

"Hey, I just got your voicemail," he said, "sorry I couldn't make it for the gig. I would really want to play."

"What're you talking about? The gig's this weekend, not last weekend."

Aha.

Ariff rounded up a very good female bassist named Jules who learnt the songs overnight. Ariff was a bit rusty on the drums but I was confident we could pull it off. Then, the night before the gig, Ariff called.

"Jules can't make it."

"What?! What the fuck do you mean, she can't make it?"

"Her dad won't let her out on a Saturday night with two strange men."

Well, I guess that makes sense. Saturday morning, Ariff rounded up MoJam, a hip-hop and r n' b b-balling b-boy to bust out the basslines. As we waited in Black Widow for our turn in Studio C, I watched MoJam play some jazz guitar and figured if he can pull of a D#dim7 my basslines shouldn't be a problem.

"Ok, dude," I said to Jam in the studio, "this one's really easy, it's just C, F and G the whole way."

"Okay. Where's C?"

Fuck.

Needless to say, we sucked ass that night. I guess it didn't help that the entire audience were b-boys and b-girls decked out in fly threads. Flatline rocked, incidentally. But we had a shit-load of fun, and we continued, jamming out songs and writing new ones almost every session, recording each jam so that I could back track.

Our next gig was at Lim Kok Wing, and that was a whole new ball game. We had songs, we had some sense of skill, and Jam knew where C was on a bass. We rocked amongst the hot Lim Kok Wing chica's. Now, it was time to hit up the underground.

"Next up were frat-party boys Khaimano, with their danceable funky ska punk rock. This six-month old band, with Khai 'I'm Not Chinese' who looked and talked like Fly Guy the hitz.fm deejay charmed the crowd with their in-your-face humor."
-taken from an online article by Albert Ng, XFresh writer, blogger & bud.

I e-mailed the entire length and breadth of the local scene begging for gigs, trying to preach the word of Khaimano (and inadvertedly pissed of Abang Rom in the process, but all is fine now), and nobody replied, except one: Saiful. With his help, I organized the Spanky Ben Gomez show at Blue Planet, with acts such as Dragon Red (back when everybody thought they sucked), Tempered Mental (back when nobody knew who they were), Flatline (back when they still threw tantrums), Iodine 39 (back when they still existed) and Silent Scream (back when they annoyed me, which has been fixed now, thankfully).

No one came.

The good thing that came out of it, though, was the fact that I still play with these guys and I got to see them grow. Now they've all got their slices of fame and glory that they all deserve, but back to the plot.

Cannot get it up is a coool song but "UNDERGRADUATE" is the COOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEESSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- dEdE, Dragon & Revolution writer and one of the few that actually thought we were good.

We persisted. We went to XCess to record an EP and after three hours had over 20 songs which we cut down to about nine. The 'Fly Fatass Fly' EP was born, which surprisingly sold ok, all things considered. Hit the gigs non-stop, played wherever we could play, our main break (as is often the case with most of us locals at the time) being Peter Hassan Brown's 'Acoustic Jam'. Saiful and I started FYI. Arieff started Tombston3. MoJam started MoJam Interactive. Our EP got reviewed in KLue. Our interview came out in Dragon. Our band was actually known, al within the space of a year.

One day when I was sat at a mamak with Rauf discussing the finer points of cow fucking, someone I'd never met walked up to me.

"Hey, did you play that gig at Charlie's Place?"

Yeah.

"You guys rock, dude."

Two words, dude: 'Bangga, sial' (translation: 'who's the man!?')

Hey -

Through the wonders of modern technology, I was able to download and hear a live version of your song, "I'm Not Chinese," all the way over here in Sacramento, CA, USA. I'm a mixture of Filipino and white, and I also get the business from people about, "What are you?" I've been mistaken for everything in your song, too. But because there are so many Mexicans in California, I also get asked if I'm Mexican. Or Hawaian. Or Native American, etc. Anyway... I love that song! I've changed the words a bit so that I can sing along and apply it to myself: "Won't you believe me when I say tha I'm Pinay?" I haven't heard any of your other stuff, but that song rocks. Just wanted to let you know.

Peace.
- Maja Seif, Sacramento, CA, USA

What a song.....What a song indeed. The title basically tells you what it is about(if you think that way). This band has a great sense of humor in thier writing of music so i would recommend this download to anyone who likes ska.
- EAT THE EMO KIDS "shoeboxin" (WASHINGTON), taken from Amazon.com

Then, just like any good book, things started to die down.
For one, we were playing more and more like that first gig in that tennis court on that girl's birthday. The band was beginning to deteriorate, very slowly. Still, I persisted. We went in to record some new songs for the upcoming album, one of which went onto the FYI compilation for Dragon which was aired on WOW fm back when it existed. On the down note, I got dumped by my girlfriend for reasons unbeknownst to me and during a trip to Egypt I found out she hooked up with someone she assured me she wasn't dumping me for. If I had discovered emo during this period, I would've been fucking addicted to the shit.

Taken from Jamtank, circa Feb 2003:

Cammy: you want girl??............. i give u goooood price......heheheh. i miss that guy khai, what ever happened to him?

Khai: Khai mutated into the horrendous capitalist pot bellied figure you see before you... that old Khai of fun and laughter is dead and burried beneath 6 feet of decomposed gila monster carcass. I am the new Khai, and I killed Santa Claus.

As you can tell, I was reading a lot of Transmetropolitan at the time.

On the lighter side, I got the call to do Dragon Music Magazine as an editor. I juggled my day job with this fun little task and hired MoJam to design it. During the same month as the deadline for my first issue, we had three important gigs. One was on the same billing as Disagree, Tempered Mental and Prana (who Jordy and I once played in for a few months before they got big), one was at ICOM, another was the Punk Rock Rest in PJ. By the time I got to the gig after an excruciatingly long meeting, I found out Khaimano were closing. This was the first time Prana, my old band, were gonna see my new band, and I wanted to be on top form.

And our guitars were out of tune.

In the rush to get on stage, everything got screwed. The tuning, the timing, everything. It was embarresing as fuck.

The ICOM gig went ok, and at the same time I was trying to edit the magazine and get together with this girl called Yaya. My day job was hell, and timing was of the essence. Every day on the final week before deadline I kept hassling MoJam for the designs. Every CD he passed me was blank.

"Must be something wrong with the burner," he replied.

On the day of the deadline, he dissapeared.

All calls were not picked up. His mom didn't know where he was. His friends didn't know, or they were lying. Ariff sure as shit hadn't a clue.

That night, I made my way to the Dragon office and begged for another week (where, after going through a crash course in Quark Express and only three pages to go, my hard drive decided to erase itself completely).

The next weekend was the Punk Rock Fest, and we had no bassist. We pulled out. I sat down with Ariff trying to figure out what to do. Hafiz from One Buck Short walked past.

"Dude," I asked, "do you know any bassists?"

"Why?"

"Our bassist's gone, we need a new one."

"If you're gonna change the bassist, you might as well change your drummer."

I awkwardly pointed at Ariff.

"I already have a drummer."

"Oh," said Hafiz, sitting down, "what do you usually play?"

"Drums," Ariff replied.

"No, I mean, what's the instrument you know how to play?"

"Drums. I'm a drummer."

"Oh. You ever thought about getting lessons?"

He was right. Ariff was making more and more mistakes. I was making more and more mistakes. This band was dying a very painful death.

On Monday, May 12, 2003, at 9:05 am, I posted this message:

For Any Of You Who Would Actually Give Two Beans...

It is with much grieviance that I post that after long consideration, Khaimano has now been officially 'put down'. Yup. Khaimano is no more.

Due to other activities, innability to time manage, many circumstances and events that occured over the beginning of this accursed year 2003 and complete lack of inspiration to write another tits and ass song, I have decided that maybe it's best that we put this mule out of its misery.

It's been a wonderful year of gigs, and I know that a year really isn't that long for any band, but on behalf of Khaimano, I'd like to thank all those that supported us out there (if there are any), and a special thank you to Onisan, Jay, Amil, Peter & Markiza Brown, Sham (XCess Studios), Mr. Khoo (music expo), Andi Fam, Adlin (KLue), Brian (KLue), Kevin B (WOW fm R.I.P.), Su, Lena, the City crew, the Slacker crew, the FYI crew, Adli and Adam of Urban Revolution, all those I forgot to mention or couldn't be bothered to write your names so just put you down in a 'crew', all those on Jamtank and all the bands we've ever shared a stage with. Here's to another year of kick ass gigs.

Khai

P.S. And as for all those guys out there that thought we were worse than a seventh layer of shite - YE HAPPY NOW, ARSE 'OLE?! YE KIN FOK OFF 'N DYE, EH... WHERE'S YE WANKY FOKIN' POSTS NOW, YER BOLLICKS!!

'Move too fast and you'll fall... Good bye to Khaimano~ heh...'
- Cold Fusion, posted on Jamtank

Name: happy dude
comments: i would like to extend my happiness with the breakup or most appropriately, the very deserving-ly death of khaimano. 3 cheers to khai for disbanding one of the most stupidest and most pathetic band to have ever existed in Malaysia. Now let us all await for the death of these following bands:-

Y2k
Flatline
Dragon Red
Estranged (especially the bassist. he's fucked up and stoopid)

till then..cheers to the death of khaimano. losers.
- posted on the FYI Entertainment guestbook.

I never realized how much people knew about Khaimano until it was announced in the news section of KLue and all the hatemail I read afterwards about how glad some were about the break up? Did people really know us that much?

A year later, and everything was different. The hell of the break up of the band and my relationship, followed by a nervous breakdown, some serious therapy, and leaving the office to never return, I was back on solid ground again. A few months back, I got a call. It was MoJam.

MoJam met with me at a mamak close by and he proceeded to apologize. I proceeded to blast him with anger. I never thought someone I used to think I could trust could give me such a fucking migraine.

The last time I saw him was on Trish's birthday, together with Ariff, and we took a photo together:

A long way from what we used to look like:

I guess everything came full circle. I still see Ariff from time to time, and I still pop on a Khaimano track occasionally, but it's all dead and gone. To some, they couldn't be happier. Me? I'm just glad I'm happy and still playing music.

Jesus, how'd I get so fat?

22.9.04 11:04

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Fuck.

Feeling quite fucked at the moment. Slept late last night, then had to wake up for a 9am meeting for that fucking baby milk brand again. Throughout the time my girlfriend tried to wake me with phone calls, I dreamt that my phone kept going off and I kept yelling at the damn thing to fuck off. After the 8th attempt, I finally got up, answered the phone, went back to sleep. Then my alarm clock went off. Fuck.

Then off to the meeting which, after three excruciating hours, the client turned around and said that actually what she wanted was blah blah blah (something completely stupid and not worth the three hours of hard brain work and arguing we'd been through). Fucking whores, the lot of them.

Now I feel like Stephanie Swift's cornhole after gangbang angels#1: fucked beyond repair, disrespected and quite fucking sore.

On a plus note, got an offer for a paying gig (for once) which sounds cool. Tonight, jamming with Y2k. Till then, I'm going to write shit, surf the net and eat different colored jelly babies and see what the color combinations do to my puke.

24.9.04 10:11

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What would've been a happy post...

...is now no more with the advent of strange illnesses that are making me feel woozy.

This post would've been about my weekend. About my bro's birthday (and the b-day gift I bought him: his first bike) and hanging out with my girlfriend and hanging out with the crew and eating way too much over the course of saturday.

This post would've also been about my latest purchase, Green Day's 'American Idiot', which is a totally kick ass album that's been in my car cd player non-stop for the past two days.

This post would've also told you about how my ATM card isn't working, and how much that pisses me off.

But I'm ill.

I'm feeling very screwed up right now. And to top it all off, I got an e-mail from my creative director about how all my copy is wrong because it doesn't have the tone-of-voice of a well respected, mature and witty company.

Instead it sounds like a young, carefree, wise-cracking punk: me.

My nose bled this morning, my throat feels iffy, my head feels woozy and the tea is odd. If things get too fucked up today I'm taking an MC, regardless of what others may say.

Shit, that reminds me: I'm supposed to apply for leave for next week. Singapore gig. Whoopee.

I feel like curry night remnants in a toilet bowl.

27.9.04 04:25

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Nosebleed.

The adrenalin has taken over, even though my stomach still has a slightly achy feel, interspersed with gastric problems of an audio-scentio nature, and my nose still feels like it's going to threaten another nosebleed, but no worries. Am on slightly normal form, and one of the creative directors (who, since the time I've joined, have failed to impress) actually complimented me on my copywriting for once, which is a first and has put me in a jolly mood indeed.

Even though there is still the fear of the nosebleed.

Nosebleed's don't freak me the same way it does most people. It's just something that reminds me of an incident in my past concerning a girl I once knew (who I will always remember as Hawa (Eve), even though that's not her real name, but her brother's called Adam, so go figure).

When I first moved into Damansara Heights, everything felt kinda strange, yet again. New neighbourhood, new school, new everything. Then the doorbell rang.

"Hi," said Hawa, "welcome to the neighbourhood!"

She was about a year or two older than me, and the coolest friend I ever knew at the time. Wide eyed innocence is too vague a description of this girl. Nothing bugged her. To imagine her sad was to imagine the world turning upside down.

My mom loved her, for the simple fact she always wanted a daughter, and was instead stuck with a rebellious son with a tendency to cut up her dresses in the interest of creativity. I'm quite certain if I knew her longer we'd end up going out.

We hung out a lot, played outdoors together, spent a lot of time together.

One day we visited the mummy exhibition at the national museum. We strolled around the ancient dead bodies wrapped in white.

"Do we get wrapped up like that when we die?" she asked my mother.

A few weeks later she came ringing on my door, as usual.

"Hi," she said, sun beaming through her smile, "just wanted to let you know I won't be around for awhile. I'm going to the hospital!"

Anything wrong?

"My nose keeps bleeding all the time. The doctors are going to try and fix it."

One surgical fuck up later, and the doctor is asking the parents whether they'd rather pull the plug or let her live a vegetable for the rest of her life.

At muslim funerals, the deceased are wrapped in a white cloth. I watched as her relatives carried her to her grave and stood at the side as they prayed.

That was the first funeral I ever attended.

27.9.04 12:05

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