2003-10-09 - 12:15 a.m.
#128: No Need for The End of the World as We Know it
Note to self: I typed up this entry in a series of bursts from netcafe session to the next, so my use of present or immediate past tense for events that have happened a while ago may not make sense without keeping this in mind. The following events did not, I repeat, did NOT occur all in one night. Although some of them certainly have. But I'm trying to shy away from narrative passages based on time so I'm not going to put a timestamp on them. So saysI, the person writing this entry right now!
I recently went to the university to claim back money on a deposit for an engineering building access card, garnered from the days when I was still an Engineering student. This implies that I had to walk through the university in order to get said money back. And so I did. And it was a terrible, horrible experience. For many, many reasons, but not least was: It had gotten fancier. I mean, REALLY fancy. Swanky, even. The quad cafeteria, once the purveyor of soggy fish and chips, budgie meals of dubious origins and heavenly wedges doused in cheese (okay, so there was ONE item off the menu that I actually liked) had now become a fully functioning honest-to-goodness food court. Complete with a variety of asian foodstalls, and even a portable Chinese one that probably got the majority of its business from people who were charmed by how cute and unusual it looked rather than anything it had on the menu. A food court. In a university. Those bastards. When I was in university, I never got no steeekin' food court! I had to walk a whole five minutes to the city centre to get my dibs on food court food, and then had to walk back uphill again! But now, NOW all you have to do is just a quick hop and step from the lecture theatre and suddenly you're in a food court! I growl most frustratedly at how easy the university students have it these days.
And then there was the glass building just outside of the quad. It really made me wish I had a box of rocks to throw. Or a whole lot of uncooked rice to throw. For the effect of exploding pigeons, doncha know. Which I suspect is an urban myth, but you never know with the right conditions.... Anyway, it was a huge glass building that obviously housed a couple of uni-related facilities inside, all of which was visible from the outside (I don't think a doctors office or a womens fashion store was amongst those "uni-related" facilities.... Although I'd be greatly amused if it were); but what amazed me about the glass building was how most of it was devoted to thoroughfare for the students. Yes, the glass building was designed for students to be able to walk through in large numbers, in order to admire the delicate architecture and glass dome overhead that protected them from rain. When I was a student, that glass building wasn't there, and you had to walk on a hard gravel path edged by overgrown grass that had a propensity for getting muddy in the rainy weather! And when it did rain, you either had an umbrella to protect you from the elements, or you didn't and had to suck it up like a tough New Zealand man! Or woman. I have nothing against women and their getting wet. Erm. So now the students have a big glass building to act as their umbrella. And if I'm not mistaken, that entire area was HEATED. A heated walkthrough area with a fancy glass ceiling, I tell you! Next they'll be wanting escalators or automatic walkways that carry them from one end of the building to the other! University students these days, I tells ya...
But it doesn't end there! Oh no: This woeful tale of comfort and grandeur trappings continues, as I meandered my way into the Engineering block and stopped, shocked at what they had done to this most grey and taciturn of education blocks. No, the Engineering building now had a sleek, flash new look. Gone was the grim, cold and dimly lit corridors! Puke green linoleum floors lit by elongated flickering fluroresent lights have been superseded by plush, patterned grey carpet interspersed with expensive tile and softly embraced by the warm yellow glow of soft lighting. Hard wooden benches for a weary student to temporarily rest his aching heels have been replaced by arty, round sofas in dark, muted colours for students to curl up and have naps. Even the Engineering cafeteria, the long derided, repulsive cafeteria which no student in his or her right mind would ever buy food from, has had a massive upgrade and has now dropped the "-teria" part of its name to become the trimmer, more hip "cafe". The broken chairs and tables discarded from other departments that were once a feature of the Engineering departments cafeteria had finally found their way to furniture heaven (or hell) and the Engineering Cafe had an all new custom lineup of furnishings, made all "trendy" and "cool". Horrific. And the stairs! You think they couldn't have done anything to the stairs, but no! The stairways were now grand sweeping, curvy things, surrounded by delicate railings of glass and scented pine wood. Those bastard engineers and their fancy new engineering block. Grr. Why don't they go back to drinking hard alcohol instead of sipping demurely from coffee cups? And why is it that they only ever install and redecorate with all this fancy schmancy stuff AFTER I leave? Same thing happened to me in high school: After I left, a new arts and sciences building popped up, built from the money my father donated to the school along with that from the education fees. It was so pretty and shiny and new and I never even got a chance to have a lesson in it. Bah to the lot of them. I bet there's an architectural conspiracy against me. By Robbo and Robbo, of all people.
And that's enough about my rants on the University of Auckland and its upgraded faclities. Unto something more worthwhile: Like my thoughts on Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl. I watched it again recently, a film that's even better the second time around than it was the first. Once you knew what the best bits in the film were, (most of which admittedly revolving around Johnny Depps performance, with Geoffrey Rush a close second) it simply becomes a matter of opening your senses completely to capture those special bits while only remaining mildly attentive to the everything else that went on. I'm hardpressed to reccomend anything in this movie that surpasses Johnny Depps bombastic acting. I mean, sure there are pirates and zombies and pirate zombies and even a pirate zombie monkey.... Oh, and a midget.... But those were mere background effects and added only the slightest hint of colour compared to Johnny Depps' Jack Sparrow. You know a character from a flm is memorable if you walk out of the theatre and start acting like him and just can't STOP acting like him no matter how hard you concentrate. From the partially inebriated slurring of words down to the very walk he affected onscreen. In fact, I find the walk a lot of fun to emlate: which is half drunken swaying, half inspired acrobatic balancing. It's like one of those nodding head bird toys that dip their long, pointed noses in water and gradually raise their heads up again before dipping itself in. You almost expect the extreme angle the bird seesaws into to throw its entire balance out of whack but! It rights itself just in time and dips its nose back in it.
Then there's the rhythmatic speech pattern, which maintains tha easy balance between drunken cheeriness and cheeky irreverence. Upon viewing the film a second time, I noted that a lot of his lines were actually quite straight forward Hollywood scriptwriter trash: but coming out of Depps mouth in that accent and in that manner, the lines become almost Shakespearian in its high comedy. The only bad thing I can say about this movie is: If I ever buy this movie on DVD (and I will), everytime I watch it, I'd be knocked over the edge to once again imitate Jack Sparrow. I would comment about the "everything else" this movie had, but quite frankly without Johnny Depp it would have been quite the boring film, especially at a grandstanding total running time of two and a half hours. Even with Johnny Depp, that running time seems a bit excessive (even if he is a pleasure to watch). But anyway, it really is quite a masterful performance, and he'd better win himself an Oscar or at least get nominated for best actor with that wholly original character he constructed. He has to. There's just no way he couldn't be nominated, otherwise it'd be the biggest upset since The Angelic Layer girls didn't win the cosplay competition at the Wellington Armageddon 2003.
So what else happened in this final week of Auckland living? Well, I got drunk again on Tuesday evening. First I got drunk with Fergus at a Korean restaurant with Kunfei, Wong and Francis abstaining from alcohol and watching us down enough shots of souJU (thanks Finn for correcting my spelling) to empty 2/3rds of our individual bottles. In the space of a half hour. That was probably a mite on the excessive side, and based on that I've decided I really don't like souju very much. It's not the kind of thing I can drink for hours on end without heavily repressing the urge to hock it back up because of its shoe polish taste. It's really just the taste: I mean, alcohol is supposed to have a certain chemical taste to it, but souju really revels in it and it completely drives me up the wall.... A feeling that only gets worse with each subsequent shot. But I had to take shots, because Fergus was making toasts (well, sorta. mainly stupid ones) and its rude not to go along with the flow so.... Yeah, that's going to be my excuse, "he got me all drunk and liquored up, offisher! ish not my fault i had to drink ash much ash he wash!" I think I'll stick to sake and Japanese restaurants from now on. Not that I intend to get drunk by myself very much from now on. It just wouldn't be fun to get drunk by myself, and I doubt I'd find ready drinking buddies in Adelaide on my first bar troll. At least not the kind of drinking buddies I'd like to hang around with for any period of time when we aren't drunk.
Anyway, we were pretty blitzed after drinking that much (foul tasting) souju in such a short period of time and wheeled our way back to the apartment, where Francis, Kunfei and Wong left us alone. Alone meaning Fergus and I. And my bedroom, which Fergus seemed to express a great interest in by entering with all the lights out. And thusly began our night of experimentation, culminating in Fergus saying out loud, "My ass hurts!" and receiving a shiny gold dollar for all his troubles. And to prove that this night did in fact happen, I even have video evidence, garnered thanks to the movie recording option on my spiffy new digital camera. Which I heartily enjoy. Then Finn and Sara showed up laer to join in our little twosome, which I did not capture in a movie. I would continue with the suggestive homoerotic subtext as in the previous sentences, but I'll stop right ere. For such things that transpired between Fergus and I after the others left and before Finn and Sara showed up are our secret alone, and must never be fully disclosed in a public electronic forum such as this. Public real life forums are fair game, though. I wonder who would be interested in the movies I took? Looking at them now when sober, I can't help but feel pangs of regret and shame at not being limber enough to capture all the precious moments of our drunken intimacy. However, I did manage to capture a shot of him with his arms draped over his eyes, reclining onto his back and moaning that I was such a porno maker with my firm, steady filming technique despite our bodies in motion. Oh! How embarassing that I remember that moment! Oh! Okay, now I'll stop with the suggestive homoerotic subtext. But it's just so easy with a guy like Fergus. "easy". Heheh. Okay, NOW I'll stop. Really.
So. Finn and Sara showed up. And we drank some more. First shots of Midori and lemonade, then graduating to Baileys and milk. Looking back, I wonder if they felt a little uncomfortable with us already being drunk. I mean, besides getting a headstart, there's just times when you don't like to see other people being drunk, especially when you're still sober yourself. I don't know how many situations I've been where the most drunk people at the table are having the most fun while the sober people just look on in a bemused fashion. Being the sober many times in such situations is kinda boring when the drunks just converse and giggle amongst themselves over jokes that aren't so funny when sobered up. But in any case, in the end we all got a little drunk and it was all okay for uninhibited crazy drunk talk after that. Or at least, I think so anyway. Refills of Baileys were enjoyed by all untill my parents walked in through the door to the apartment, at which point we all suitably sobered up: and 3/4s of our party strode out the door (completely steady, of course) and 1/4 (that's me!) stumbled into bed and slept off the night. Before they left, I even got hugs from Sara and Finn, which was nice. I guess this is the final goodbye until I come back into Auckland again six months later (or so).
What else? Well, that's about it as far as the weekdays went. Apart from the above I spent most of the weekdays wandering the familiar sights of the Aucklands CBD (Central Business District), trying desperately not to spend what little cash I had left after being rendered cardless. One of the detrimental effects of living in close proximity to what amounts to a shopping street mall. You see, I've develped such a pavlovian like response that whenever I enter the city, I have to be on a mission of acquiring goods and services through the exchange of money. Or shopping, to be straightforward about it and put it in terms that are even less reasonable to the unforgiving critics amongst you. Shopping? you skeptics might be asking, You HAVE to shop? Yes, indeed. Whenever I go into the city, I'm struck by the unequivocal urge to buy stuff. I am the consumer whore. I've burrowed my way into this mindet thanks to my pragmatically practical manner, strangely enough. You see, back in the day when I was still living in Howick (oh, so long ago.... two whole weeks! oh!), coming into the city was a major chore because of busfare, time of travel to and fro my destination, and actually getting to the closest bus stop to my house (about 20 minutes away by foot).
Therefore, whenever I did go into the city, I made it a point to make it an "all in one" trip. Meaning, if I had the hankering to go to the city, I had to plan and have at least three or four different tasks to perform, before even thinking of embarking on such a long trip. Usually, the main reason I went to the city was for an AAC meeting, but since that was in the evening (well, before the current schedule of Saturday morning meetings) I would spend the entirety of the daylight hours beforehand making sure I got all I needed to do done. This could include going tothe cinema, eating at an old favourite arcade or (more usually) shopping. Often of the comic books/gaming persuasion, but occasionally of the novels/DVDs/music CDs side. It got to the point where I was spending as little as possible for the rest of the week so that one day out of the week would become moneybags spendmores day. So now that the city is within easy access 24/7.... Well, you can guess that the dark side calls to me. Willing me to spend what little petty cash I have left on trinkets that, at the tme, seemed to be completely essential to the very fibre of my astral being; yet upon leaving turns intoanother piece of deadweight to add to my luggage. I need to get out of here. I need to leave fast. Of course, once I leave this city I'll be going straight to Adelaide and living in THAT city centre. So I'll be out of the frying pan and into the fire. Only it'll be even worse than that, because I'll have to readjust to the new stores there that I'll have no immunity to after entering the country so soon. It's a phenomenon most tourists fall for when arriving in a foreign place. Explains the crappy merchandise selling so well in tourists stores, anyway.
Ah, curse it all! My only sanctuary in Auckland is the local university (where I have the pavlovian response of failing my engineering bachelors course miserably), and that's too far away! And even then I'd probably fall prey to the call of spicy potato wedges doused in cheese sauce! It has me at every turn, that shopping witchcraft.... On the otherhand, I could just stay in my room and read since I've brought and bought many a book with me to wile away the hours at the apartment. Those books having been bought on my recent forays into the city, ironically enough. But just stuffing myself into a single place seems to be like admitting defeat and I'm far too proud an individual for that. So into the city I must go, to grimly pursue my fun with steely resolve and a pocketful of change. About my only comfort is that by the time I reach Australia, I won't have any money at all. A monetary situation that will undoubtedably be reached thanks to a variety of essential factors, most of them involving buying breakfast, lunch and dinner every morning, afternoon and evening. I'm trying to cut down to just one meal a day, but that ends up being big and expensive for three meals, anyway. And then there's the reckless spending of hours at internet cafes. I've poured about 20 dollars plus into netcafes and it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. I need a computer of my own with internet connection, badly. Only a week without one and look at me: I've gone completely barrel of nerves and self-confessed shopaholic to boot! Shame on you, Edwyn. Shame.
My last weekend here went from highly mediocre to very, very bad. It started off with the last Saturday AAC meeting I will ever attend as an Aucklandite, which was a complete waste of my time. I shouldn't have bothered turning up, but what else was I going to do on a Saturday? What conceivable excuse could I cook up not to go when I was living in the city itself and had no life outside the club to speak of? And so I went and was summarily disappointed. The most noteable event was Amber turning up to sign the Giant Robo DVDs which she missed out on last week, and who made a one and a half hour trip back and forth especially to say goodbye to me in person. She even gave me a goodbye hug, which was a pleasant surprise. That makes three hugs in the space of one week. I must be on a roll for hugs. I need to be hugged more often, although to the one I know who'll read this and would immediately act on the suggestion, I would much prefer to be hugged by women. Not men with an overly feminine disposition. Anyway, that was quite a special moment that was utterly ruined by my being inside the viewing room all the time. Something I'd promised myself not to do last week. Which shortened the actual goodbye grace period to a little over half an hour, what with her needing to get back to her mothers birthday and all. Yikes. I'm flattered, though mortified.
But anyway, the rest of the day was.... just a very ordinary AAC meeting, albeit with a very small and exclusively male viewing group. I guess I was expecting a bit more, when all the "more" had already happened the week before. This narrative development just felt a trifle anticlimatic and I left almost immediately after the meeting ended. I just didn't want the day to get any worse than it already had in my personal field of wildly emotional moodswings. Upon reaching the apartment I did the only thing I could do. I slept the rest of the daylight hours away (no shopping for me that day!) and only got up to have dinner before going back to sleep again. And yes, I did have dinner by myself, for my parents had gone out to dinner so I was left alone in the apartment. Sometimes, I think my lifes narrative is being penned by a cosmic entity with a digustingly sadistic sense of humour, and what happened after that rather mediocre Saturday basically confirmed it. Sunday came, and it was the day my dad was due to leave for the airport and head back to Malaysia. But that was not the bad thing, I'm used to seeing him off at the airport (and vice versa when we visit him in Malaysia). That might sound like me being all macho and flippant about what must be a tearful farewell and parting, but when you do this sort of thing several dozens of times in lifetime, those tearful farewells and partings mutate into a simple wave of the hand and "See you later!".
No, the bad thing was that they were fighting. Very loudly, at the wee hours of the morning. It was the first time I'd ever heard them go at each other like that and I probably shouldn't have heard half the stuff I did through the thin walls of my bedroom. What they fought about I won't be disclosing here: It was over a very personal and unpleasant subject (though let me just say now that it did not involve my brain tumour) but that's not the important part at all, really. The important part was that they did fight, that they'd never fought like that before (at least, no in my close vicinity) and that they knew I was listening in. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by that last part. No one, not even me in the sort of deep slumber that can be replicated only by REM patients or the dead, could have missed all the banging on walls and raised voices. I think they briefly tried to force my opinion with theirs for the fight (my mother more strongly than my dad, who basically just mumbled, "Don't tell anyone about what you heard." to me when she was parking the car at the airport) but I was having none of that, especially having just woken up and had a bad enough day before without this explosive situation. So I just mumbled my way through whatever argument they were trying to rope me into at the time, which seemed to work well enough.
Fortunately, when we were on the way to the airport the row had settled into the calm of "seething, tense silnce" with the occasional innoculous question directed towards me (and only towards me) like "So how's YOUR day?", "What do you think you'll do when you get to Adelaide? Because what I'd like to do is KILL MYSELF!". That last part being directed at my father not me. After we dropped him off at the airport, we went back to the city but not before dropping by for lunch at the house of a friend of my mothers. Where we had to act perfectly normal and give the impression that we were a happy, loyal and FORGIVING Christian family for the sakes of appearances; even if the likelihood we'd ever see them again after leaving New Zealand was slim. The amount by which my mothers face raised into a smile and sagged again into a frown when we came and left would be almost hillarious if it weren't happening to my family. In the last few days I've made it a point to stay out of the apartment and from my mothers point of view as much as possible. I've found that the cinemas and city library provided decent sanctuary. And the latter was a free public area, which was a nice thing for me. I'd feel better if I could stay somewhere else entirely, but that's not really an open option given the current circumstances. There must be something unhealthy about listening to your mother making crankcalls to your fathers mobile phone at 1AM in the morning. I mean, beyond the mild deprivation of interrupted deep sleep.
I don't know what's going to happen now. The move to Adelaide is going ahead, no doubt about that, but what's going to happen when we get there has me extremely worried. And when I get extremely worried, I start not thinking about things as a safety mechanism. I just don't want to think about it. I'll just take it when it comes. I just hope what comes is going to be all right and that I can handle it. I hope that there won't be waves that can drown me, and I hope that I'll be able to get through and come out on top in the end. I hope, I hope, I hope.... This move to Adelaide is my chance to put my life back in order, and quite possibly my last to do so freely with financial support from my parent(s?). Please don't let me screw this up like I've always done. I really couldn't handle doing that again.
Wedenesday evening was my last night in Auckland, and happily it was filled with wonderous activity and fun. Most of it getting drunk at the Don and then sobering afterwards at Open Late Cafe, one of which was a new haunt for AAC members, the other an old haunt from the days we were still in the Auckland College of Education. Whatever depression I was feeling up to that point cleared up with the appropriate party of people who showed up for my farewell dinner (Zeb, David, EB, Fred, Alex, Michael, Xavier, Fergus, Kunfei, Bev, Wong, Jamie, Amy and Matt in the order that they came) and getting drunk with completely sober people watching is an exercise that continues to be amusing for the drinker if not for the non drinker (but in this case, it was. Entertaining, that is to say. I'm still suffering slightly from drunk logic as that all happened only a short time ago). And after the meal, the night still didn't end for a couple of us as we trawled the streets of Auckland City, specifically McDonalds to terrorise the family atmosphere within (well, whaever was left at 10PM at night) and then onwards to the arcades where we made complete asses of ourselves in photobooths machines for commemorative photos for my leaving of New Zealand. And now I'm here in this internet cafe typing all these events up. It's just hit midnight so technically I already AM into my last day here. I'd like to thank everybody who turned up for the goodbye party and the great time which I hope was had by all (watching me get drunk must be as much a delight from an outsiders point of view as it is in the wild ride of my brain): especially Zeb for turning up even tough she was suffering from the flu and paid for my meal, and Amy for drawing me a beautiful headshot picture of Subaru and Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon, which I proceeded to crush and cause wrinkles to form. Sorry about that! Hopefully the creases will iron out. I should have more farewell dinners. They're so much fun! Farewell dinners for everybody!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my last week and a half in Auckland. Tonight will be my last night, and tomorrow I take to the skies to Adelaide, Australia. Strange how so much (and so little? or not enough?) can happen in the that time. Well, see you all when I get my hat with corks on strings!
