Thursday, May 31, 2007

Dadda's Sick Again

Dadda bursts into my room where I'm lying stretched out, underlining pertinent points in Random Walk through Investing, between naps.

"JENNY! What time is it?"

Bloodshot eyes wide in shock, grey hair in a three hundred different directions, sarong crumpled and dishevelled.

"12.30, why?"

"OH MY GOD!" he almost falls back in alarm. "I got to go to work."

Amazing. He's completely wiped out the memory of the past two hours.

"You're sick Dadda. You're on MC. I took you to the doctor, remember? You got the day off."

I see memory creeping back into his eyes. Horror recedes, a hint of a smile.

"Oh yes."

"You hungry?" I was supposed to buy lunch. "Porridge OK?"

(His throat is scratchy, he spent all last night coughing, the prescribed cough mixture having no effect and woke up today dizzy, in a cold sweat. Whereupon, fearing an attack of some sort, he crawled back into bed. Doc said he couldn't have anything fried, anything spicy and no fruits. So that leaves soup which he doesn't want. Or porridge)

"Yeah, OK."

"You hungry now?"

"Nolar mol."

He staggers back to bed.

I shift my girth out of bed and take a shower. Then I take myself off to Jaya's where I purchase some porridge with ikan masin (salt fish) and chicken. And a roast pork rice for self.

I come back and Dadda eats. He's hungry. Feels a little better after the blackout sleep. I think the medication must be good if it let him drop off. Also, he's exhausted from his disturbed night.

Then I take myself off to work. It's 2.30.

(I've done fuck all today)

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Where's the truth, y'all?

Strange times.

Tuesday, a meeting. The boss runs through a white paper with ticks. Here, satisfactory, there, superb, there, needs work. Tick, tick, tick.

He lifts eyes from paper and smiles.

"I'm recommending you for confirmation."

My heart plunges into my stomach and I stare back through hollow eyes.

That's the reason why some times I'm feeling under,
That's the reason why some times I'm feeling down...


"Do you have any comments?"

I stare back with hollow eyes.

"Is there any way I can do this, freelance?"

"No. Not for your position. What's the matter, aren't you happy here?"

Pause. Silence. Deep breath.

"No. I'm miserable."

"Why?"

Where is the love, the love, the love?

"You feel tied down?"

"I feel tied down."

The truth is kept secret, swept under the rug, if you never know truth, you never know love...

"You don't have to stay in the office you know...as long as you do the work, we don't mind where you are..."

And I'm off to San Fran Best Coffee. I sit in cafes and read Lord of the Rings.

I want to feel...

Wednesday morning. 4am. Dadda shouts, Jenny is that you. It wasn't. I open the door and see our front door open, our front gate open. They broke in (or rather they fished our keys from the coffee table, let themselves in, and ransacked Julie's room. Dadda woke up to see a hand moving through the window of his room, feeling for stuff, took his mobile, two watches)

And we're shivering, the door open, the guy's got Julie's keys, he kept the keys, and ran. The police find the pole with the hook outside. The pole they used to fish for the keys.

We stay home.

Breached.

Sunday, another dead rat. This time under the sofa. A dead rat without maggots.

Strange times.

And today I was at a shooting. No, not that kind. A reality TV show. I never knew just how contrived it was.

"Your reactions are not strong enough. Let's take that again. Another take. Another take. Another take. One more for safety."

Where's the love y'all? (I don't know!)
Where's the truth, y'all? (I don't know!)


After that, Starbucks. A cappuccino. A laptop.

Talk to me. I'll type. We need to get this article out. We need to get it out of the way.

So much more to do, so much more to do.

But weird times. No man's land. Between here and here.

Reality slipping away.

A meeting.

Maybe not.

A meeting.

Maybe not.

I slip away.

Where is the Love?

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Thursday, May 10, 2007

In A Former Life

I drop on the bed exhausted, my eyes drooping amidst the pages of the Witch of Portobello.

I bought the book in a wildly beating hearted frenzy of desire, pure lust, the kind that comes to you when you see there is a new book out by your favourite author, and you've never heard of it, and you didn't expect it, but still it's there and there's this ballet dancer with red hair gracefully arched away from you so you see the back of her neck and think, how vulnerable, the back of someone's neck, and you grab the book, press it to that beating heart and make your way to the counter to pay, although it costs RM69 and it's paperback, which means it should have cost less...

And then I wake up with a start, aware of the growing discomfort of a wildly beating heart, that made itself felt through my exhausted sleep, dreamless because no dream could compete with this discomfort...

And I don't want to think about work anymore...

And I wish I was in Australia again to sit down on a slightly battered park bench with Katherine and we do a free write and then we read our raw stuff out to each other and then we write again, read again, write again, read again, talk some more, play a game of Articulate and trounce the boys cos they're geeks and we're writers.

So I root around among the bookshelves because I promised Dhash I would bring a book from my former life that would tell her how to structure a proper business plan, one that we can be proud of. I told her I would bring it in today, but I forgot. And she forgot to remind me.

And then I find it, the book Angel Investing, which also tells you about how to write a business plan. And there are papers stuffed into it, papers which I take out with interest, wondering, wondering, what could have been important enough, or insignificant enough to stuff away and forget about.

There is a card to my cousin from Edelman PR. It has no stamp and now I know these papers are from the year 2000 because she was only with us for five months. In the year 2000.

And I find a bunch of questions I wrote to a telco. Way back when I used to cover telcos. Questions typed out on my PC and then printed on the Atex machine, so I could fax them through. No, it was unthinkable at the time to email them although I had had an email address for three years. Emails were for friends. Not contacts.

I started typing out the questions to show you because I thought they were funny, but then I realised they really weren't. They were dumb.

So let me leave you here, ladies and gentleman with a thought, a single thought, in all these meanderings.

Let go.