经验之谈

身处险境之前，任何人都可以针对任何险境做出万全的准备; 但危险真的来临时，任何万全的准备都不再显得万全。只有经验才是最好的准备。

Horn OK Please

Indian traffic regulations are just suggestions.   - monkeetime.com -

If you keep complaining about malaysian terrible traffic, you are damn wrong, because you haven't experienced indian traffic yet. It seems like honking is part of indian driving culture. Wherever there is a road in India, there will be continuous honking sound from 6 am to 12 am. After 3 weeks staying in India, I had troubles crossing the roads in Malaysia, because the continuous honking doesn't exists in Malaysia. It is so funny because I was so get used to the sound already.

The honking is annoying at first, and is always annoying. At first, I simply couldn't understand why the hell they honk. They honk almost every second during driving, even the roads in front of them is clear. But after some while, I think I understand now. They honk to give signal, to tell other people that they are coming. Because everyone is not looking at the road before crossing it, the drivers must honk. The indians are also so numb to the honking, the cars honk, and they would slowly move their asses, unlike me or other malaysians (well i assume), the honking would freak us out, and we would run like hell if the cars are coming.

The following pictures are showing how common the honking in India is, almost every vans and lorries have the sign "Horn OK Please".

Indian traffic is famous because it is terrible. But I think it is wrong to say their driving skill is terrible too. I am actually impressed by their driving skill. Everyone drives so close together on the road but they rarely bump into each other, or crash. 

If I am given a sentence to sum up indian traffic, I would say this,

If you given a vehicle in India, you still wouldn't be able to drive on the road because you simply don't know how to.

A rather significant bass guitar

After my uncle's death, only an old guitar and a bass were what he left to us, nothing much. His ex-wife took his guitar and my mom kept the bass. Since nobody in my family was into music, my mom was going to sell it. She found some buyers but no one offered a good price for it. Soon, my father said why don't we keep it since it was the only thing he left after all.

The bass was sitting idly in my house for almost 3 years before i picked it up again last month. It is still in very good condition. Luckily my mom didn't sell it. The guitar was doing the same during this 3 years. Nobody had played them since my uncle's death. So i called his ex-wife, my aunt, for the guitar. When i saw her carrying the guitar to me, i almost cried. The guitar was inside a black rubbish bag, and covered with a thick layer of dust. I am so sad that a musical instrument is treated as such. Well it wasn't the only bad thing, due to its age and lack of maintenance, the guitar is severely damaged and couldn't be repaired anymore. There is only one place left for the guitar - the rubbish bin. I felt so sad, as if the guitar was a patient in deep suffering and had no chance to heal again, and i was the doctor and i had to end his life for good, when i threw the guitar. 

Recently, i had a dream. I rarely remember my dreams, and even rarer, i had this dream for 2 times. It was about my uncle. The dream always started like this, i was waiting for something or somebody, obviously waiting for my uncle, because after he appeared, i would follow him. He was wearing a grey turtleneck and a thick grey coat, super smart. After that, i followed him into a building which looked like a shopping mall. On the way, a lot of people were greeting to my uncle, and most of them were dressing strangely, by my guess, i think they are some sort of fashion designers. Then it stopped here and i would wake up from the dream.

My mom said it was a sign, showing my uncle was really willing to let me play the bass. Well, having the same dream twice is quite strange. Hopefully, it is like what my mom said. I feel deeply honored to take on the bass. I will take really good care of it.  ^^

My uncle's bass.

My uncle

In a restaurant on top of Komtar, i was on my stepsister's wedding. A familiar voice was floating in the air. One has to know, on a Chinese wedding, those who are dare enough to go on stage and sing are usually not very good in singing, they always are some old people, drunk and doing some no-senses on the stage. Their voice are always terrible, but nobody would listen to them anyway, while the people below the stage are busy 'yam seng' -ing. Due to social pressure, i always put a smile on my face while i am so damn bored deep inside.

However it was not the case this time. It was a rather a good voice. My attention was immediately drew to the stage. The singer was my uncle! I am amazed, truly amazed. I'd known he was in a band, he was a bassist, but i'd never known he could sing very well. I can't remember anymore what song he was singing, but i really enjoyed the moment.

He died in 2009, while i was in France. He was playing with his band in Langkawi that night. He friends said he went to the resting room, after they finished performing. He was discovered dead in that room the next morning. Doctor said it was a cardiac attack. My mom was so sad when she called me and told me the news. She didn't cry but i could sense her sadness in her voice, which made me feel so guilty, because i was rather indifferent than sad for the lost. So guilty that i felt i must do something to commemorate him. I forced myself to be vegetarian for a week.

My uncle was the only sibling of my mom, it is totally understandable that my mom was particularly sad. Unlike my mom, i wasn't very attached to him. In fact, he used to be a mystery to me. I only knew him from what my mom told me. I was never sure about what he did for living. He sometimes was selling water filters, sometimes selling insurance, sometimes helping his friend taking care of an underground casino with some commission. In the matter of fact, i can say his full time job was a musician. He played in band of four, in various bars and pubs. 

He is a very kind and generous person. May be too kind and too generous. Too generous because whenever he got money, he would spend all the money on his entourages and his friends, rather than saving some for his own uses. From what i remember, he always invited me and my family for some decent meals, and he always bought things for us whenever he paid us a visit. Too kind because he believed in people so easily, that he got cheated so many times by his so-called 'friends'.

My mom always complained to me about him. Often my mom scolded him for buying us all those useless stuffs, told him to save the money for his own uses, and find a better job than playing in a band. It was hard to be a full time musician during his time. His job wasn't stable at all. It varied through out the year. Sometimes he would be jobless for quite a long time. Without income and control on expenses, it was a really hard time during the job-drought.  Most probably, it was also the main reason of his divorce a few years before his death.

I am so sorry, that i always looked him down when he was alive. I wished i could tell him how much i enjoyed his singing on that wedding night. At midst the noise of glasses clinging each other and people's laugh, i wished i could tell him, i was listening.

My uncle on the left, and Lim Guan Eng on the right.
This photo is at least 4 years old, Lim Guan Eng was much thinner that time.

My uncle and his band, the Blue Star band.
He had been in a few different bands before.

Wandering and wondering

'I have only a few things that matter in my life.' I like it because of the implication of simplicity of life, that life can be concluded by only a few things. Like Orkham's Razor stated, "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily", in other words, the truth is often very simple. This statement might not be true for what life should be, but at least it is the truth for me. Regardless the simplicity of the statement, unfortunately it appears to be dangerous according to my own experience.

The danger is when you lose all those things that matter, even losing just some of them, the consequence will be drastic. Because they are important in one's life, they will eventually define your life, and fighting for them makes life worth-living and beautiful. It is also because they matter a lot that it makes you vulnerable. By losing them, your whole world will crumble. You will eventually losing gasp of what matters what doesn't.

There is a moment in my life when i lost count of days. Monday to Sunday system didn't apply to me anymore, day became night, night became day. I hadn't talk to people for so long that i felt i had lost my ability of communicating. Living without a motivation, a clear purpose, is proved to be very hard. Diverted from normal life even made me doubted my sanity once.

It is also during this moment that i used to had a bike ride in downtown every night around 3 to 4 am. I found it really calming. I usually fell asleep without any trouble after the bike ride. It is a period of time when it is too late at night for even the drunks have already fallen asleep, and yet too early in the morning since nobody wakes up at this time. This is the time i felt total freedom and loneliness, the kind of loneliness that i wanted, that i wasn't bonded to the social obligation to speak to people.

The town is entirely mine.

What is normal, what is abnormal anyway ? Norms differ throughout the history, differ according to different people. Suddenly whatever Tyler Durden said is so strangely beautiful to me.

During the daily bike ride, i have noticed many details that i missed out before. For exmple, what time the police patrol car passes by the avenue daily, what time the the lawn infront of the Hotel de Ville is watered by the automated water spray, and so on. 

I have noticed one thing, in every town in France, there will always be a SDF who is always there. He wanders around but never leaves the town. Well in my town, there is also one. He always sits down in front of the cinema. I have never seen him in other places of the town yet. I always passed by the cinema whenever i did my bike ride at night. I really wanted to ask him his purpose of life, his point of view at the world around him. He became SDF by desperation? How desperate was he? Is it by choice just like Diogenes of Sinope, using his lifestyle to criticize the social values and institutions? 

I don't know why but i didn't ask him in the end.

Everything always has both good side and bad side. As my confusions grow, I eventually seek for the professionals to guide me through, to help me organize the total mess in my mind. This mess was also the reason i couldn't sleep at night. Well it wasn't entirely a bad thing after all. Whenever i couldn't sleep, my inspirations flow in like Niagara fall. During this time, i had written a lot of poems. May be Arthur Rimbaud is right. He once said,

I say that one must be seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences.  ........ For he arrives at the unknown!

May be i have met some of the qualities of a poet, by Rimbaud's standard.

By going through all those things, i have better understandings of my own, understandings to many aspects of life. I am just glad that i didn't deal with the problems in extreme ways.