On Saturday morning I got a call from my cousin in Sabah. My uncle had passed away in Kota Belud, my Dad’s hometown. As coincidence would have it, my Dad was in KL for a work conference, and as I got the news first, I thought I should call him immediately on his mobile.

“Dad, I’ve got some very bad news for you. Your brother is dead.”
“Which one?
“Second uncle, Ah Seng’s father…”

My dad was in a good mood at the time, and I found it a bit strange not to detect any shock or sadness in his voice, but considering the way Asians dislike public displays of emotion, unexpected phonecalls of this type are sometimes hard to read. Anyway he cancelled his conference and flew to KK that day... and is now in KB, ready for the funeral tomorrow.

When my parents first came out to Australia as students, they both lived with Australian families who rented out the spare room to international students. These landlords/guardians eventually became adopted family. I grew up thinking of these folks as my Australian grandparents. We had three pairs of Aussie grandparents – the Kidds, the Hickeys and the Scotts. I will always remember the morning that Grandpa Hickey passed away and I had to get my Dad out of the shower to answer the phone. I must’ve been about 8 or 9 years old, but I remember him standing in the kitchen, dripping wet, and crying. I can’t remember ever seeing him cry, except for that occasion.

Last night I was out clubbing with my friends at Temptation, an Asian dance party at City Hotel, when a fight broke out on the dancefloor. An acquaintance of mine got the shit kicked out of him by 6-8 guys. I think he tried to chat up one of the girls in their group and that was all the excuse they needed. One of them grabbed him by the arm as he tried to walk away. He was apologizing at the time, saying “Sorry, sorry sorry” but they must’ve been spoiling for a fight because from out of nowhere they swarmed on him and beat him to the ground, kicking and punching him senseless. One of the bar-staff intervened and pushed the attackers back. I saw Paul’s body huddled on the floor, but at that stage I didn’t realize who it was. Then one of the gang members started throwing glass tumblers and bottles at the barman, who was forced to retreat. The projectiles hit his body and bounced up into the ceiling. It was all so wrong. I wanted to tackle the guy who was throwing the glasses, but before I knew it the psycho was hugging a friend that he had spotted in the crowd, and Paul and the barman had both disappeared.

We left before the cops arrived and went for a late-night pie at Harry’s Café de Wheels. Unlike my companions, who had found the whole spectacle rather surreal and exciting, I was disturbed by the ferocity of the attack, and the way the violence switched from Paul to the barman so quickly and indiscriminately. Just half an hour earlier, two of these haters had shaken my hand and ruffled my hair, as I was resting by the windowsill.

… I went to yum cha and played tennis today for the first time in 10 or so years, with some new friends I met on a recent ski trip. I've been raving and clubbing with these guys a fair bit lately. They're very close, but at the same time, welcoming to strangers like myself. And for some reason, they're going through a tennis craze at the moment. Tennis is one of my dad's great passions, which is one of the reasons I never really enjoyed it. When we were little kids, he used to make my sister and I accompany him to the courts, rather than hire a baby sitter. Later on, we both had to take tennis lessons so he could use us as target practice for his power serve. But today, I actually enjoyed bashing a few balls around, even though the events of the last two days have left me unsettled.

Spent the past few hours watching Rurouni Kenshin episodes and chinese music videos.

David Tao's videoclip to Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin brings back memories of the happiest and saddest kind.

Memories of filmschool, of Teresa Teng, and the girl I made movies with.

I miss you gogo.

Things I like to do on weekends. Get horribly drunk at rnb parties and karoake. And read the arts section of the newspaper.

This week's highlight was an article on the concept of Beauty, which got me thinking because it relates to my last few posts about love, religion, and what motivates us to keep on living. How do we know what beauty is? And why do we seek it?

Everyone has heard that old acorn "beauty starts in the eye of the beholder." And yes, concepts of beauty differ from culture to culture. There is no doubt that beauty is tied up with perception. But it seems all cultures seek out the Beautiful, and there must be some underlying reason to all this yearning and drooling.

Some see beauty in Darwinian terms, as a sign of physical health, and by implication, reproductive ability. Handsome Kings are born of flawless Queens, which explains why the kingdoms of men often went to war over women. This theory also sheds some light on non-human kinds of beauty such as buildings and music. Things we create to impress the opposite sex and increase our chances of getting laid. However, it doesn't explain the heroin chic of the 90s supermodel scene, in which a healthy glow was considered the antithesis of beauty.

Plato thought the true lover of wisdom gained a heightened sensitivity to perceive natural beauty in the world. Thus a life of true virtue brought one in touch with the Beautiful. Many who followed Plato and Aristotle also intertwined beauty with truth and goodness... spreading the idea that beauty springs from moral purity, and because of this, beauty historically signified goodness. This explains why heroes and gods are always beautiful. However, ugly people are often nicer than their beautiful counterparts, perhaps because they have to try harder to attract the opposite sex. They cultivate inner beauty to cancel out their outer ugliness. Beautiful people have it easy. They are born with physical assets that bring happiness to others. This kind of effortless giving is akin to a headstart in life.

But if there's one thing I've learnt in months of clubbing, it's that beautiful people can also be sluts. This goes against the traditional view of beauty being associated with virtue and goodness. I think the Neech had it pegged right when he said that "truth is ugly." We possess art lest we perish of the truth. And similarly, beauty, much as it is tied to physical appearance, is actually this more complex, spiritual thing. Beauty belongs in the world of art, of ideals and dreams, and not the world of everyday truth. Because that beautiful young girl you see with the angelic face that radiates hope, innocence and a romantic future, is often an unpredictable, high maintenance bitch who sleeps with gangsters and backstabs her friends.

There is something inherently random about beauty. Part of its appeal is it's rarity. Cosmetics, surgery and clothing only go so far. True beauty is effortless superiority. Nature encourages mutation and constant adaptation. The natural distribution of all this variety creates beauty as a necessary and mysterious pinnacle towards which our loins command us to climb. Beauty as an evolutionary goal, an ancient, instinctual lust. And thus strange and wonderful species like the proboscis monkey came about because the babes kept choosing mates with big noses.

Lastly, beauty is inspiring because it gives us a glimpse of some greater existence - whether it be the hand of God or some natural order. Iris Murdoch wrote that "Art and morals are, with certain provisos, one. The essence of both of them is love. And Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real." A beautiful girl, apartment, painting, or song, answers in us a primal need to believe in something greater than ourselves, and to be mesmerised by it. This transcendent moment of wonder and recognition allows us to triumph, however fleetingly, over death.

Soon George and Chai plunged into argument again, this time on love. Chai was very reserved on love, but he had decided opinions. "Love is having a wife that is well chosen. All else is fool's play. A wife can make or ruin a man. That is clear."

George snorted at this. "Well, love, like poetry or like life, has a thousand definitions. Many are brilliant, suggestive, clever, and enlightening. Love... I can't tell what it is. But it is only real to those who have experienced it. It is as the breathing air that gives life to all living creatures; the bird that was put in a cage without ventilation died. It is divorced from logic and has nothing to do with acquiring a respectable wife and four or five children. But just as with life, nobody can define it except by living, so nobody can talk on love except by loving. And I have loved a thousand different ways, some ardently, others half-heartedly, and still again reluctantly, and now I have come to the conclusion, to love is loving and is nothing else."

"Yes, the man who loves many wastes time and energy," said Chai. "In the end he is left with nothing to show." ("Like four years in college and not even the diploma in hand," commented Chu with personal reminiscence.) "Never love wastefully. That is my advice to you."

"Hell, you are wrong!" cried George the romantic and the non-Confucian. "Love has to be wasteful, or it is no more love. Yes, it is wasteful, but it is not losing anything. You, Chai, are not saving anything up... only to miss the radiance of the tender morning and the grandeur of the setting sun. Even when the love is gone - and in this life nothing is sure - the picture of the lost world, the memory of yesterday's love, gives the strength for tomorrow."

George went on talking about various aspects of love, and Chai equally contradicting. He said a kiss could not possibly last as long George said. George said, "Well, I need every bit of the time allowed." They made a bet. George said he would carry it out as soon as he could get June up to Chulmo's. So she did come up, late one night. While Chu was making cooksoo in the kitchen, George said to Chai to get out his watch. June was sitting on the Morris Reynolds table smoking a cigarette lazily, and she agreed that George ought not to lose his bet. George began just as the minute hand reached a certain point, and Chai said, "Go." Chai stood right there looking at his watch as if he were watching an egg boiling in water. Chai lost his bet. George won. A kiss from George did take as long as George had said it would.

What are you looking for in a partner, and why?

Met this really cool girl in a waking dream. She studied computer science and reprogrammed games in her spare time because the cheap animations annoyed her. She laughed in the most infectious way... one couldn't help but smile each time. We talked about our favourite games and of her modified tank sprite, which she had nicknamed "bumblebee" because of its skittish, buzzy behavioural patterns.

I woke up, greatly disappointed that my new friend was but a trick of the mind - not the sort of fantasy girl my conscious mind would invent, but an inspired, alluring vision of someone in love with life. Apparently what I seek in a partner is someone who is a warmer, better person than I am. Someone who will push me to become a better person, by balancing out my tendency towards introspection and complacency.

What is beauty? What the truly beautiful girl gives is melody to the whole man. She brings about inner harmonisation, so that the whole man dances. Sometimes this harmonisation is so powerful that the man is re-created. That is to be in love.

To be sucked in my warmness
To be caressed by thrilling feminine tones that have no shyness
To be melted away in tones
This is the greatest discovery -
Self-absorption.

If the universe is first and foremost only a furtive arrangement of elementary particles, then egotism can't be the only thing that exists. It's a contradictory conclusion. Which raises the possibility of other ways to live as an atomised individual. So what if all this returns to nothingness? It is not within our ability to grasp the infinite timescale of our becoming and ending. We can only experience the now. And that in itself is not necessarily an argument for unbridled egotism.

In contrast to western nihilism, the Chinese have a history of contemplative fatalism. Their poetry and landscape painting reveals an acceptance of overpowering, everlasting nature. These scholars were in awe of their relative insignificance, rather than depressed by it. Instead of egotism, they promoted a culture of contemplation and harmony with nature. Whereas some insist that life is a rat race for fame, power and fortune, the Chinese poet-philosophers saw themselves as being part of a greater, universal system - a furtive arrangement of elementary particles that could not be argued with, or changed. One's goal in life is to learn and appreciate the beauty of this system, and eventually returned to nothingness. It is very Chinese to perceive beauty in the unstoppable tragedy of this cosmic play. This belief system allows one to understand suffering and see beauty even in sadness.

"A famous Chinese philosopher was asked what he could do with a useless tree. He said, 'Why not plant it in the land of non-existence and yourself lie in a state of bliss beneath it, inactive by its side? No axe nor other harm could touch it, and being useless, it would be safe from danger.' This has been my philosophy, in utilitarian civilisations where I and my muse are not wanted. My life is the useless tree. I try to plant my tree in the land of non-existence." -- East Goes West

I like this idea of producing and contemplating art to tap into some eternal meaning, beyond the physical world. Instead of saying "nothing really matters" this philosophy says "I can find beauty in the useless." I can create something out of nothing, and I can give it meaning and depth, which is an act of love, and not of egotism.

Came across an interesting quote in an article about Michel Houellebecq:

"The universe is only a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A presage of transition to chaos. Which will carry it away in the end. The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure "Victorian fictions." Only egotism exists." -- H.P. Lovecraft

I am struggling against this nihilist philosophy. Something in me wants to resist it. This amoral faith, which I first accepted when I was introduced to Nietzsche back in uni. Power, Knowledge and Freedom. That course changed my life. It came at a time when I had rejected Christianity, sickened by the irrational arguments of campus missionaries. These young men of God insisted that all my Buddhist relatives, despite being kind, loving people, were condemned to an eternity in hell unless they converted before dying, because all humanity is tarred by the brush of Adam and Eve's original sin. I debated with these lunchtime evangelists, and struggled against my own devotion to God, before finally rejecting the religion in which I had been raised. Original sin could not co-exist with my new-found understanding of humanism and the relativity of morality.

Freed from the peer pressures of a dogmatic religion, one can easily believe that good and evil are arbitrary, shifting values created by a fragile, fateless race. Robbed of divine predestination, life is ultimately meaningless except for what is yours in the moment. The rules of attraction. Take what you can until death or someone else takes it from you.

Yet part of me still resists, still wants to believe in a just, benevolent God, and a universe crafted with purpose and intellgence. Because if egotism and avarice is truly the way of the world, then liars and charlatans will prosper, whilst the weak and lost stand aside or get knocked down. How do I live in such a world? Even if I no longer believe in destiny or divinity, earthly injustice still makes me angry. You see, a mind freed from the Matrix must take up arms and fight for survival.

What do I want in a relationship? For it to be real, and beautiful, and lasting.

So I'm reading about this guy, who is now living my life - sleeping with the same girl as me, sharing the same breakfast on the same couch, feeling the same love and the same happiness, enjoying the same books and cd's that I introduced her to. Now I am sure I'm not the first man to be jilted, nor the first to experience this unsettling convergence. It must have happened innumerous times throughout history. What number am I? Just 148,452,855? Yet I feel anger and pain at reading his words... it is immediate and consuming. But I check myself and ask why? Beyond envy, beyond bitter recriminations, or moral judgements, why does this upset me?

I used to be uncomfortable whenever my girlfriend wanted to borrow a CD or movie that an ex had given me or shared with me. Hermann Hesse, reflecting back on the key romances in his life, wrote about how each girl gave something only she could give. I've always felt these differences were important, otherwise why bother? I treasure each of my past relationships, and I observe those boundaries by not blurring experiences. If I had been to a special place with an ex, I would avoid taking another girl there. Like who wants to go to overseas with someone who's just been there with their ex? It's not about being first, it's about wanting to experience things on the same level. To share the same discoveries and relive the memories with the same vividness. It's these little things that build the bonds that last, that help a couple grow together, whereas walking in someone else's boots only leads to jealousy and doubt.

Next time you're snuggling up to your boy or your girl, imagine them being the exact same way with someone else. It's just wrong. In the story of your life you want to be the main character, not an understudy or stand-in for someone else. Likewise, I wouldn't like to know that my girlfriend had been the exact same way with another guy. It would cheapen our relationship. Our special experiences become just one of many... a commodity. So this is not insecurity speaking, but a desire for meaning.

It really pisses me off that J has pretty much gotten away with this betrayal. My friends are still his friends. He's happy and I'm feeling blue. I've lost a year of my life... and maybe more. I've been trying to move on, by seeing new people and throwing myself into my work, but I feel hardened and incapable of love with a capital L. D says I'm too cynical. But it's not by choice. My heart is closed... once bitten, twice shy. Sometimes I feel like walking away from all the troubles in my life. Go overseas and start a new life, start afresh. But I'm scared to leave what I know, and I find myself dependent on the same friends to lift me up and away from the downward spiral. No doubt I am stronger as an individual, having lived through this suffering, and having learned from my mistakes, but I think I preferred blissful ignorance to this bleak, unforgiving distrust. I may have gained realism but at the expense of my idealism. A year on, and it seems I'm not ready to fall in love without already anticipating, and thereby internalising, its failure. It may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And how to overcome this, I still don't know.

To move on is to accept without reacting. To react, is to not move on. Why do I find it hard to let go? To not react? Perhaps it is primal instinct… an urge to defend myself, to protect what I have cultivated and nurtured. Perhaps it’s just morality… injustice must not be ignored and unpunished. Because, if you accept injustice as the way of the world, you accept the strong taking from the weak, and discount the suffering of all those who are forced to give to an oppressor. If this be true, I will become either a nihilist or a ruthless egotist who acts with impunity because he believes it is natural to take what one can, and ignores what other people think because he believes in himself above all else.

No, despite my cynicism, I still believe in a balance between selfishness and mutual obligation. This balance underwrites humanity. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. A sense of natural justice is therefore not unreasonable.

Sometimes you gotta dig deep, when problems come near
Don't fear, things get severe for everybody, everywhere.
Why do bad things happen, to good people?
Seems life is just a constant battle between good and evil
The situation that I'm facing, is mad amazing
To think such problems can arise from minor confrontations
Now I'm contemplating in my bedroom pacing
Dark clouds over my head, my heart's racing
See when you're shining, some chumps will wanna dull ya
Always selfish jealous punks, will wanna pull ya
But just as you'll receive what is coming to you
Everybody else is gonna get theirs too
I ain't no saint, therefore I cannot dispute
That everyone must meet their moment of truth.

So I turned the radio on,
And this woman was singing my song:
Lover's in love and the other's run away
Lover is crying 'cause the other won't stay
Some of us hover when we weep for the other who was
Dying since the day they were born
Well, well, this is not that
I think that I'm throwing, but I'm thrown

I cannot reconcile the image of the girl I fell in love with, with the person she chose to become, and the person she chose to be with her.

I loved you gogo. I trusted you I trusted you.

But somewhere along the line you lost me, and I lost you.

Remember how you said you would always love me? And through the tears, I told you "Garbage!"

Well I accept that foolish pledge now, as the farewell from the girl I loved.

helluva! check what this crazy fool has done to my darn blog!
http://snurl.com/bitethewax