Besides, it’s not like I really have to collect it.

I’m quite ashamed of myself now.

And what’m I going to do with my Touch, if I do actually get the phone?

Bah.

It’s true.  I maintain some pretty platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex, but the problem is, a good chunk of that pie is made up of girls that I’d previously gone out with in some capacity or another.

I’m trying to rewire myself to act in a capacity of a girl’s BFF, and not just oblige her for the sake of me having hidden notions.

And it’s a good thing.  Because I get to become that emotional base that all girls need, without the physical payoff and the hassle.  Which is good, because karma dictates that if I up my sincerity, I’ll probably get a reward for being such a nice guy, and not a douche.

Karma.  You bitch.

But yes.  I should only be so lucky to hang out with some of the most gorgeous women the country has to offer [okay, that's a half-lie]…but knowing that it should rightfully lead up to me meeting the most gorgeous of the lot makes it all the more worthwhile.

[Okay, that's not true, but I'm trying to imbue myself with the patience of a monk.]

Some come, some go, some stay.  Boys and girls alike hate to be lonely.  But it doesn’t mean that hooking up is the answer.

[It probably is.  I do know better.]

I should see this BFF thing out.  It makes me feel good to make someone else feel good without having to try too hard.

I guess honesty really is a good policy once in a while.

This cat was planted in our extra room on the third floor for what must’ve been a few nights.  We’d found cat droppings in two of the rooms upstairs, and assumed that she must’ve somehow magically come in through the window and left the same way.  It didn’t help that we’d shut the windows, hoping for her not to get in, when she was already [hidden] inside.

There’s also the slight possibility that she was pregnant, although she might’ve just been fat.

Anyway.  The clincher?  After an hour of trying to talk to her and stroking her with a backscratcher (which she didn’t like, the ungrateful cow), and getting the hissy fitt and claw treatment, I asked my stepmother for help.  With a mop in hand, we coaxed the finicky feline out the window.

She’ll be back.  And we’ll be ready.

Strangely enough, this would probably never have happened if I’d done a proper perimeter sweep of the top floor rooms that first night we suspected something was amiss.  It goes to show you that you can never be too cautious — if you feel that you are, it’s only because the nooks and crannies are too small for you to look into.

Damn cats.

Like me.  The only exception is, I can’t do it, because I lack the |33t skillz needed to shamelessly plaster my mugshot on your browser.

I’m still trying to build up a small audience who’s willing to bear witness to my bouts of random insanity…random insanity that everyone takes the wrong way.

It makes me ask: is there something genuinely wrong with the way my mind works?  I suppose that it was tolerable when I was, let’s say, fifteen, but currently I’m a 27 year old who’s reached the pinnacle of his Peter Pan complex (although I’m doing it with a good amount of wit, wisdom and panache).  It’s difficult being a swashbuckling buccaneer when all I really want to do is to have my dog on my lap, a large bowl of salty popcorn within my arm’s reach with my focus on the PlayStation.

I managed to scrape through a Quarter-Life crisis (a.k.a “What do the fuck do I do with myself?“), and I’ve somehow accumulated enough points to visit the glorious shores of the Identity Crisis (a.k.a “Who the fuck am I?“).  Most of my friends have started to realize that there’s some strange inner toddler lurking, who’s rearing more and more of his head in the open.  I think the filters, muzzles, chains, leashes, restraints and hairpieces are gradually reaching a breaking point — in due time, I’m going to turn into a non-stop gargantuan juggernaut of limitless idiosyncratic energy.

And it’s all based around that one question: who am I?  Who am I, really?

I was having a talk about it the other day with a sounding board, and I was relating my own inabilities to live up to what people perceive Brand Tai to be: the happy, jolly, loud monolith man who dominates every conversation with a girlish, high pitched exclamation.  Brand Tai is a guy who rustles the bushes, sets your pants on fire, fights your mother, thinks he’s smarter than the next guy and blackmails your cousin for sordid sexual favours.  Brand Tai is the antagonist — Brand Tai is someone who drives you up the wall.  Brand Tai is the guy who makes you happy that you’re such a good person.

Yet, likewise, despite this strange, eccentric homage to all things good and quirky, all I really am is a caring guy with a heart of gold who just wants to play video games and fuck occasionally (and I do handle the task with much aplomb and splendour).  Admit it: you want to do that, too.

Our own struggle through life is supposed to define us.  We’re supposed to be molded and hardened against the harsh realities of life, and, to an extent, we are.  But whatever is at the core of the essence of our inner beings risks being compromised by the idiots and buffoons around us, who make it a point to drive us to desperation to make things “better” for ourselves.  We’re conditioned to be conditioned.  Hence, our obsessiveness with being popular and accepted overwhelms our own ability to clearly define what makes us us.

I have no desire to be part of the pack, yet this desire also makes me part of the pack.  I do things that are expected of me, because I know my actions bring some sort of perverse joy to be people that I affect.  Do they bring joy to me?  I’m not so sure.

Look, some of you are more than secure with the knowledge that you are who you are.  Good for you, godspeed, may you be on your way.  I still have a niggling doubt that something bigger has to happen to me before I can settle down on being what I’m meant to be.  And how can you be satisfied with what you are, anyway?  Some may claim to be content with being competent, but there’s always a struggle for more, isn’t there?

Isn’t that what we’re here for?  To struggle to find out where we should be, and not be content with where we are?

I don’t quite know anymore.  Everyone around me seems quite cushed up in their rounds already.  It’s as if stability is the new uncontrollable dosage of static that off-focus television sets give.

Who am I?  I don’t quite know anymore.  It’s not really exciting as much as it is intriguing.

You can be whoever you want to be — you can be whoever you want to be.

I’m muddled, and confused, and the only person who can guide me is me.  I am the guru in the mountain in my mind.  I am a sage who transcends wisdom.  I just have to find that inner monkish side of me, first.  I suppose I have to be the zen that lights my own path.  I can’t rely on anyone to show me.

Or can I?

Like facial hair, there’re certain things that you want to keep around, even though you know that doing so would only make others question your judgment and good taste.

For example: a woman.

I’m not being misogynistic, and I frequently remind most of my friends that I’m not sexist, because I really like sex.  It’s just that there’re certain women that just aren’t right for your friends.  And, more importantly, their friends.  All women tend to bite into the bromance aspect of a heterosexual relationship shared between a group of men — it’s very underhanded, even if it’s unintentional.

If a woman refuses to give in and budge, why should a man have to be pussywhipped into doing the same thing?  Why can’t he hang out with the guys to slay zombies once in a while?  Or to grab a pint (or five)?  Or to watch the big game?  Or hang out and play laser tag?  And have an UT3 Deatchmatch Night once a month?

These days, guys are allowing their women to disband the Band of Brothers.  It’s very dangerous behaviour, especially when she leaves you on the altar, crying like a little bitch.  Granted, there is one thing a woman can do for a man that his friends can’t, and, again, granted, it’s a very good thing.

But it shouldn’t be used as a carrot on a stick.  Nay.  A man’s stick should show resilience through a time of hardship, and be a ship of calm in story seas.

However, your love is yours, and yours alone, and so, as repugnant as it is, you have every right to keep it.  Just like how I can keep my scruff.

So leave me alone about it.  You tossers.

A good amount of this feigning might be done for the greater good (in her mind, at least), but that leaves out one small, yet outstanding detail: the person whom the disassociation would affect the most.

I’m startled by the high potential for a quick and easy disenfranchisement of emotions and bonds to materialize.  It’s unfair.  It’s uncouth [even if it's done with a velvet glove].  And in certain respects, it’s unholy.

Yes.  I’m fucking bitter right now.  I still don’t know how to deal with these things.  I’m a 27 year old boy; now, even more so.

Countless books, guides and literature on how to get through these things have been written.  I really should read them, but there’s this narcissistic quality about me that I like.  It endears me to the world at large, and to that audience in my head.

I’m not taking this very well.  I feel ashamed of my lack of maturity in handling such an issue.

Ah, but what the fuck, eh?  I always told you that I was a hypocrite.

Let me be the bastard.  Let me take the blame.  I’m simply not good enough.

You didn’t articulate it, but I’m sure it was at the tip of your tongue.

I don’t know how someone can disassociate herself so quickly from something that could be heartblindingly positive.  But, fortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to mumble my way through it.  I’m on a streak of sorts.

How’d you really feel?

I’ll never really know.

And this will be the last time that this”ll be mentioned here.

Maybe.

That’s the way the world works, I suppose — everyone’s selfish, even that holy fellow by the altar there.  There’s got to be some sort of a nth degree of imperfection, no?

A few days back, I was listening to Lennon on the car stereo and it hit me — spreading universal love and joy isn’t really that hard to do.  It just takes a lot of willing members to create a movement that basically will overpower all the cynical people in the world.  However, it hit me even harder when I realized that I was one of those morose, cynical souls.

Shame on me.

What spurs you on to be a better person?  There’s got to be some sort of a drive, a force, that leads you upon that path.

It’s not that hard to be nice.

I guess it’s being consistently nice that’s tricky.

What I can’t stand is the revelry.  I don’t like firecrackers, because I think I can scare demons away by simply stripping.  I also don’t like Chinese New Year music.  I run away from it.  I refuse to visit malls during the CNY period because there’re no tasteful CNY songs that exist.

No, really.  There’re none.

But that shouldn’t dampen the spirit of CNY.  After all, I get a week off.  And I’ll be granted the time needed to sink my teeth into Dante’s Inferno.

If it arrives on time.  Poslaju isn’t so laju when people are aware that it’s okay to slack off.

Wankers.

Happy Chinese New Year.  May it be the Year of the Tai-grrrrr (sorry).

But why should I wait?

Projekt Rob Downey Jr. begins…in a week.

I’m going to attempt to grow a goatee of respectable length, and shed off all the weight that I’d shedded off previously that I’d put back on.  All in time for Iron Man 2.  I will truly be an…iron man.

At least I can try.

This is Saiful Bukhari Azlan.  You have to admit, he’s quite a good-looking guy, complete with fair(ish) skin and sharp features.  He claims to have been buttfucked (albeit, politely) by Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s de facto Opposition leader.

This is Anwar Ibrahim.  He’s been charged (again) for sodomy, which could threaten to end his political career (again), and he’s arguably getting the short end of the stick (in more ways than one…again).  He’s not a spring chicken, but look at that face: you can’t help but be enthralled by its strength.

I belong to the unique camp of people who believe that Anwar is possibly a bit limp-wristed.  But in a “I’m-going-to-gag-you-and-whip-you-endlessly-while-you-moan-and-groan-in-pain” kind of way.

I also belong to the very unique camp of people who believe that being (allegedly) hit on by Anwar is an absolutely compliment.

Anwar wanting to ram his meat into your bum is akin to being bestowed a halo by the Almighty.  Or being knighted by the Queen.  Or winning a year’s supply of Krispy Kremes.  It’s a once in a lifetime experience that you can tell all your friends about…or at least the taxi driver who’s spiriting you away from the scene of the crime.

Now, I’m not saying that Saiful is a liar, and is doing a Dick Dastardly because the Powers-That-Be in the Federal Government have given him a blank cheque to go AWOL.

Nay!

I’m saying that, if he’s telling the truth, he’s had the privilege and the opportunity to see things from the other side of the tunnel.

And despite all his bamboozling, Saiful could’ve just said no, right?

But, honestly, wouldn’t you want to be fucked by Anwar Ibrahim?

It’s kind of hot.