How are you?

Nothing feels good anymore. I can hide it. I can forget things for periods of time but at the end of the day, my life sucks and for once I actually mean that. Well not to any suicidal degree but it's just very extremely not-very-good at the moment.

My way to deal with things has been to keep myself busy. Keep myself distracted. But I can only do so much. I can only bother my friends so much. I'm also trying to bother near-strangers but I'm sure they're gonna be rolling up the welcome mat real soon.

Some have told me that trying to avoiding the issues is bad. But I beg to differ. Facing them is worse. Wallowing in my sorrows is worse. Listening to sad love songs is worse.

The thing is, things were already crap before this. This was just the snot-flavoured icing on the manure cake I never wanted to eat. In an already near-empty night sky, my one shining star burnt out and left me in the dark. And so now I am miserable. Or something like it.

But I guess I can also be a little mature here and understand that I need to take the bad with the good. I recognise that before this bad patch, I got a lot of good too. Sometimes things just fall onto your lap. Other times they walk out of your lap.

How am I?

Oh yeah, I'm having a ball.

xtn watches a DVD

Last night I saw the tail end of a movie called Chungking Express. The first half I had watched on Sunday. The whole thing I had already seen a few years ago but it seemed to be a better film this time around. I don't know why.

There are two stories about two guys who have just been dumped and how they subsequently deal with things. The only connecting thing I could find between the two stories is the kebab shop where both guys frequented. As I watched it, my heart was palpitating and my spine tingled. I couldn't shake it off even afterwards when I was in bed under the covers. It could be because it was cold last night. Or that the movie has lots of bright colours and nice loud music. But it could also be because I could relate to the second guy since he went to a kebab shop often and he has a messy apartment and owns a big bear soft toy. As do I in all three cases.

Of course, I'm not a cop like he is. Neither do I live in Hong Kong. And there is no girl who sneaks into my apartment and rearranges my things and replaces my old stuff and spikes my water to help me sleep and buys me fish. And if I did, she probably wouldn't look like Faye Wong. Other than those things, we are basically the same person.

Director Wong Kar Wai may be one of the biggest wankers in the industry. His stories lack cohesion and coherence. And his characters all seem to be nuts. But he does do two things really well: his use of music, and his endings. The man writes killer endings. Scenes that make you go weak in the knees and shiver for reasons you can't articulate in words.

I want to write myself a killer ending to this episode in my life. I sure hope this isn't it. Because this one's not killer. It just kills me. So I want mine to be good, complete with a theme song playing in the background.

Something fit to make a film out of.

That would be nice.

xtn goes a little daft

There's nothing like going into a train station at 1:00am to find that your next train comes in 58 minutes and all your friends have already gone home in their cars. I was so tempted to go to Karaoke world for an hour of singing by myself but I figured that I'd need at least 58 minutes for the singing itself, let alone the walk to and from there. I also figured that it would be a very sad thing to do.

So instead, for no particular reason other than to waste time, I decided to walk all the way from Martin Place to Town Hall along George Street. Along the way I was tailing three homeless persons and one homie person a bit further in front. Walking in the same direction, but on the other side of the street, was what may or may not have been a homely person. Why she would be out at that time, I don't know. The highlight of the walk was when one of the homeless persons picked up something that fell from the pocket of one of the other homeless persons.

I didn't end up wasting that much time after all. The train was still 45 minutes away from Town Hall when I got there.

Sitting down on a bench at Platform 4 of Town Hall station for 45 minutes might sound like fun to you but let me tell you, it's not. It's pretty much like sitting for 44 minutes on Platform 6 at Town Hall Station and it's also comparable to a 47-minute wait on Platform 16 at Central.

With so much time on my hands, an uncomfortable bench to sit on and all the thoughts that I didn't want to be ruminating about, I started to think about how wonderful a person I am. I listed all my good qualities, as well as some more questionable traits that could be given a positive spin in the right light.

My mental lists confirmed what I had always suspected - that there is indeed no one as infinitely superior in every way as I. I am just nicer, more intelligent, more interesting and more humble than everyone else I know.

So next time you have dinner with someone or you're at a party and you feel bored but you don't know why, well let me tell you why:

It's because I'm not there.

Now that all that's been said, I'd like to know why someone from New Zealand looked up 'xtn blogspot' on Google. Who's in New Zealand that I know?

xtn the pessimist

You couldn't just allow me two positive blog entries in a row, could you?

*sigh*

I guess one positive thing I can salvage from this dung heap is that now I'll have more time to spend with Georgia. I don't really feel like doing just about anything else. But even this is looking pretty tragic. The fact remains that I have no idea what I'm doing and she's still completely out of tune. Not the best combination to make sweet music together.

xtn the optimist

At about 12:30 she calls and wakes me up. By about 12:31, she tells me to go back to sleep. I can't go back to sleep so I ring her back. This conversation lasts a little longer and at around 1:30-ish I'm trying to go back to sleep again.

But I can't. I try but I just can't. I feel awake for some reason. Alive. Energised. My body is still tired but the feeling in my mind is electrifying. A random burst of inspiration perhaps. Or a very literal wake up call. But I suddenly find myself with something I haven't had in a long time.

A plan.

A realistic one at that. Not like my 5-year-become-famous-and-marry-Mandy-Moore plan that I made around 4 years ago (that plan never even got to Phase 2!). This timeframe is smaller and more manageable. I give it a 6-month window with Phase 1 to be completed in one week. The goal is also more achievable.

I've wasted far too much time lamenting my miseries, pontificating on the tragedy of my all too absurd existence and dreaming of better times of freedom, fourtunes and fluffy bunnies.

True enough that I have little control over much of the crap that I whinge about. But there are also things that I can do. There are still reasons for me to get off my fat arse and act.

I haven't been so much a victim of fate and circumstance as I am a victim of learned helplessness. And now I feel like the rat in the electric cage who finally has his eye on the off switch.

I eventually fall asleep at approximately 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning. And I wake up around 8:30 and come late for work. But that is of little consequence to this story.

Now I feel like a drink.

At first, you think it's all about beauty. It's all about creating. It's the ideal. It's not about compromise. It's about purity.

Then you learn that it's all a lie.

That it's actually about practicality. Functionality. It's not an idea. It's not a circle. It's a wheel driving a car.

Eventually, you learn that that was all a lie too.

It's not about being beautiful. It's not about what works. It's about what they think is beautiful. And about what they think works. It's about what they tell you to do.

It's shutting up, nodding, your head down and then just getting on with things.