the dimunitive american

i met for the very first time the smallest american adult yesterday. for fear of being sued, i am unable to put a photo of him up here, you just have to trust me. most of the americans that i have come across either in real life or in the media are big and tall. most are overweight and overbearing. nothing prepared me for this guy who is at best 5 feet 2 inches. he does have a roly poly look but that does not take away the compactness of his physique. due to the length of his legs he moves in small but energetic steps. i was very tempted to ask him to remove his shoes to see if he has hairy legs ala the hobbits but refrained myself in the name of social grace. i am sure he is a nice guy but his stature is remarkable at least from my viewpoint. will wonders never cease?

How NOT to give a keynote address.

Good eva-ning ladies and gentlemen, blah blah blah………..blah…. co-co-dial farm blah blah…….hysterical city.


This actually is an excerpt from a speech I heard given by a prominent member of parliament of a city which I will not name. co-co-dial actually means crocodile and what he was driving at with regards to mass hysteria in the city was historical. Cruel humour I know but I can’t help myself! This man is hysterical!

big spender

why do some people lie about how much they have spent? does it come from some misguided sense of modesty? are they being overcautious and not wishing to advertise the fact that they have money to burn in case a would be kidnapper spirits them away in the night hoping for ransom? maybe it is so as not to insult the other person who is obviously just keeping his head above the poverty line.

at a conference i ran into an old college mate. after the obligatory exchange of inconsequential pleasantries he mentioned that his company had sponsored one of the foreign speakers. this was said very quickly and in retrospect he probably regretted saying it at all. we parted ways and the next day i spotted him again at the back of the hall. i asked him if the speaker on the podium now was the one he had sponsored. he said no. i did not push further and thought that maybe i have misheard. this was not so as a few minutes later into our conversation, he asked my opinion of the said speaker. i then asked him again if he had brought the man over and this time he said yes. what the hell?! all in the space of a few minutes. i excused myself and walked away. he has totally lost my vote of confidence this time.

the price of bringing this speaker over to another country is obviously considerable but i do not see how the lying helps. i am not in competition with this man from a monetary point of view and i have nothing to gain or lose by my knowledge of this 'high profile' investment. anyways the machination of the business world has always baffled me and this only proves my case.

the story so far

everyone has a story. we are all walking novels. life is a series of events like a string of pearls. each pearl is a chapter and the string is the printed pages. some people may remember a movie way back in 1988 called 'working girl' in which melanie griffith earned an oscar nomination for her role as a lowly office worker who has a bright marketing idea only to have it stolen by her boss. there is one scene in the beginning that is the spark for this entry.

the story starts in a pre-9/11 new york city and it is the a bustling business day. you get a bird's eye-view of throngs of people hurrying to work in the proverbial concrete jungle. the camera floats above momentarily and then swoops down and picks up the main character. at any one time you can pick a face out of the crowd and open up a brand new book. i don't know that's what the makers of the flick wanted to convey but thats what i got and for some reason thats what stuck with me all these years. the rest of movie i can't really remember.

however mundane you may think your life is, to someone looking in, it may be one great epic novel. this and the entries preceding it reflects my life. hopefully someday someone may feel that he/she has been entertained responsibly by my blog.

in a city where the streets have no name

went to bed with a splitting headache last night at 9pm due to the previous night's lack of sleep. wide awake now when the rest of the world sleeps. sitting at the desk of my cold and impersonal hotel room. internet access is at a premium but what the heck. cheaper than the place i was at last night which boasts free wifi but where you are obligated to buy an overpriced drink to validate the reason for you sitting there in the first place.

attending a conference which is work-related. will be travelling to another city after this and then back home on the evening of sunday. on thursday i am again flying out of town for a meeting. travelling so much is tiring. more so than actual working days. the constant waiting at airports. the queues, the wailing babies, women chattering incessantly during the flight. more waiting, the endless cups of coffee which can't be good for me, the social code of inane greetings between people that you hardly know and people that you would be better off not knowing. its just exhausting. the only hope is that you run into someone whom you genuinely like and can relate to, who can share in your dismay at being in the present situation.

real time - an experiment

I have been sitting in this gourmet coffee retail outlet for the past one hour and have to admit that I have been eavesdropping. I can't help it. They are speaking really loud. A group of yuppies (its been along while since I have used that word) discussing market strategies and various business models. The bottom line : how to make money with the minimum breaking of sweat. One young man started to brag about how much moolah he makes doing direct sales. The others listen with fake attentiveness. The woman besides him try to cover the fact that she yawned.

The owner of the place saw fit to place an old clock on the wall hoping to give the joint a classy and authentic feel. The poor thing is being stifled by the ikea-styled furniture. Instead it looks like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. A doughy looking woman saunters in and practical drapes herself across the cash counter. Putting on a painfully fake American accent she proceeds to um and ah her way through the ordering of a cup of coffee. She is obviously in love with the way she speaks. She flirts with the young and good looking guy manning the cash machine. He plays along recommending various condiments to accentuate her cup of coffee. she finally settles down at a table and stares into space.

The clock goes tick tock. Soft and easy listening provides a soundtrack to the whole scene. By this time the cold chocolate drink has chilled me to the bones. It has also left stains on my pants when I had absent-mindedly wiped my fingers on it. bathed in the alien glow of my ibook i type this.

useless factoid

of all places, i read this in an inflight magazine. not exactly a bastion of literature and knowledge but good enough for me.

ALMOST happens to be the longest, commonly used word in English where all the the alphabets are ..........well in alphabetical order.

this will not change anyone's life in any way but that's not what we are here for are we?

social conditioning 101

from the moment of birth, we are all subjected to various forms of social conditioning. a name is chosen and this is seared into our consciousness in the hope that at the very least we can be distinguished from the constant stream of humanity flowing out from vaginal passages all over the world (i feel sorry for all the people who carry the same name). as we begin to grasp at the faculty of speech, we are conditioned to speak our parents' tongue. we are dressed in a certain way and we listen to music that our elders play around the house.

in school we are told that certain things are important in life and that we should learn it well. we are also told that certain actions and words are good and some bad. we are told that some people are good and we should emulate them and some whom we must drive a stake through eg. hitler. in our teenage years we are informed by friends that we should look and dress a certain way and never to look like our parents. there are things that older people might frown on but will make you feel good.

the media will tell you that slim and young is socially acceptable while fat and old will not cut it. they will decide for you what is hot and what is not, what is beauty and what is butt-ugly. all this is the name of preservation of the human race, for the greater good. in order to survive as a species we have to follow certain pre-ordained standards. these standards have been in place since human history however they are highly malleable and change with time. remember when flares were in? nowadays it is retro and even slightly ridiculous. our perception also changes with the right amount of social conditioning.

i often imagine a man sitting on top of a snow capped mountain somewhere whose job it is to decide what the social norms should be during any given period of time. 'this year the rape-victim look will be the bee's knees!' he proclaims in a loud booming voice. minutes later young girls are seen parading the streets of some anonymous metropolitan city looking as if they have just escaped the grubby hands of some would be sexual deviant. concerned you run to them and inquire of their well being only to be thought of as a sexual deviant yourself. 'i saw this is in [-insert name of some trendy fashion magazine-]. its in,' she explains all the time staring at you with hands wrapped protectively around her ample bosoms. 'don't you read?' she asks with a pitying stare. with burning ears you hang your head and walk away.

where the performer is demystified

ok, ian curtis while fronting post-punk mancunian legends joy division hung himself in a fit of existential rage and despondency. in a stroke of wanton wastefulness his fate and that of his band was sealed. ironically his band attained a level of mysticism that they would never have dreamed of in a thousand lifetimes if he had towed the party line and gone over to america to conquer the college circuits.

combining the mannered monotony of curtis' vocal stylings and the bloodless throb of the rhythm section, they carved beautiful things out of great big slabs of darkness. sucked dry of american influences, they offered a tantalizing vision of a cold and grey european cityscape, sexy to the extreme despite of its minimalistic and grainy veneer. would they have been any less relevant if curtis had lived out a ripe old age of embarrassing world tours and liaisons with underage groupies?

here lies the question of whether the external packaging and baggage of a band can be separated from the actual creative output. i used to think that it can, but as age catches up with me and cynicism attains adulthood within, i begin to doubt it. perhaps it is the current atmosphere of the music industry (there i have said it) of quick cash-in and staged fame-chasing that has soured it for me. would the teeny-boppers buy justin timberlake's latest album if he wore a brown paper bag over his head? you are only as good as you look.

even taking on the role of an outsider, which joy division exemplified, is just that; a role. no one can truly be who they are when put on a stage under the sweltering heat of the limelight. the reason why someone gets on to a stage is to try to raise himself above everybody else, to break out from the everyday. look i am better than you! what matters is what they do with their time. and of course how they look.

wong kar wai weekend fest

revisited 2 wong kar wai's movies this weekend. first up 'days of being wild' and later '2046'. for people who do not know, 'in the mood for love' completes the trilogy. the first one stars the late leslie cheung who plays a sociopath whose serial affairs hides a desperately lonely and nihilistic individual. his dalliance with a nightclub performer is the common thread that runs through the 2 movies. after leaving her to find his fortunes in the Philippines, she moves restlessly from one relationship to another looking for someone to replace her former lover.

she appears again in '2046' a few years after his departure and eventual demise at the hands of gangsters in the Philippines. she bumps into another man who claims to know her in the past. she drinks herself into a stupor in the night and is murdered by a jealous boyfriend who finds out that she has been cheating on him. the story then shifts to the man from her past who resembles leslie's character from the first movie albeit more compassionate and humane towards his conquests. he is a columnist who has fallen on hard times and now etches out a living writing erotica for the local newspaper. in between affairs he decides to try his hand at a sci-fi tale of people returning on a futuristic train from a place called '2046'. the train is manned by androids who resemble the people he interacts with in real life as well as women he has slept with.

the movie is peppered with references to his past movies and certain scenes even rehashes signature music from his previous outings. for instance there are 3 women sharing the same name in each of the movies in the above mentioned trilogy. the story lines are intentionally non-linear and intersect each other at crucial moments. a character who has died may turn up again at a later part of the movie throwing the audience a curve ball that they may not recover from. it is strictly make or break and some may be forgiven for scoffing at the movie and losing patience.

the only consistency is the breathtakingly beautiful cinematography and mood shots which says much more than what the script can. characters are often reflected on broken and dirtied mirrors. on many occasions half the screen is occupied by a blank wall and the remaining by the protagonists. the detailed settings, furnitures and ornaments are actors in their own right bringing to life a hong kong in the late '60s. the camera has a tendency to linger on a wordless actor's face for prolonged periods of time perhaps hoping to squeeze the humanity out of them. lighting is saturated and shadows are used for dramatic effect. believe me when i say that nothing will prepare you for a wong kar wai movie. in a world of big budget production trying to outdo each other with the number of explosions, car chases and mangled bodies, wong is a true maverick. putting list A asian actors and actresses into art house movies is his way of gently sabotaging the movie industry from within. he might not be a box office draw but his movies will stand the test of time and the fickleness of the human mind. he is truly an asian master and the world is richer for it.