Note to Drivers

Dear Kuching Drivers,

The first day of Chinese New Year does not make you and me immortal so stop driving like a suicidal fuckwit.

Kthxbye.

The other side of dreaming

Writing for a living is what every writer dreams of but there are usually things the leisure writer doesn't take into account.

After spending an intensive couple of days writing like your life depended on it (which is every Monday and Tuesday), you come home, look at your blog(s), close the browser and go do something that doesn't involve any member of the alphanumeric family leaving your person.

Holidays are nice but when you work in the media, there's no such thing as a public holiday. Heck, there's no such thing as weekends for some of us. My day off is in the middle of the week. Long holidays like CNY also means that we have to file in double our usual number of articles.

A famous writer once said that joining the newspaper will teach you how to write on demand. He didn't mention that you'll have to quit if you ever hope to pursue anything outside what you write for work. There simply isn't enough time or creative energy left at the end of the day.

Blogs were not in the equation 5 years ago. I wrote some of my best stories or blog entries when I was working in a dead-end job with no reason to wake up in the morning. My creative side was a happening place. Now I have a job I love which uses my best skill at the price of no longer having creativity left for other parts of my life.

I met Pierce yesterday, who asked if I went to the Kuching Bloggers Meet. I wanted to drop by after MacBeth but the play was scheduled to end at 10:30pm. I didn't last till 10:30pm. Being sick as a dog wasn't originally in my plans, so I left early and went home to pass out in misery.

As you can imagine, being sick and having to work on double the usual quota at the same time doesn't translate into anyone's idea of a dream job.

Standing in the reception of the building, we spoke briefly about blogging. He revealed that his presence had something to do with my company finally deciding to keep up with the times on the information technology front.

Apart from that, Andrea and I have done more retail therapy that we should. I also pretty much have not seen or been in touch with people I normally hang out with. Drawbacks of being sick and hideously busy. You only hang out with people who share your pain (and weird day-to-day schedule).

The Vanishing Tattoo

Too tired to give a shit about much now, but to those of you who are interested, the Tun Abdul Razak Museum will be screening “The Vanishing Tattoo” this Friday at 3pm.

It’s open to the public and I presume it’s free. I forgot to ask that bit, but they sounded really surprised when I called… maybe because they didn’t expect anyone to actually turn up at such an odd hour of the week. The guy I spoke to said he’ll call me back to confirm. A lady did within 10 minutes, and said that they’ll keep me informed about their future events, to which I said “Please do” since events equal possible article.

This is what we’re probably watching. I’ll be really cranky if it turns out to be another Vanishing Tattoo that I didn’t know about.

So if you’re back on holiday or can tangkap ular from work for an hour are available at the time, drop by… or else I’ll probably be the only one there.

To those of you in Kuching, I’m starting to use Upcoming.com to record upcoming events in town (and you can too). It’s similar to meetup.com, except it’s event-centric and they don’t make you pay to be able to use it. If you’re reading this from my blogspot, you have to scroll down a bit to see the widget in my sidebar. It’s also on my website.