Fiction: The last drumbeat

He pelted out a last frentic medley of clanging cymbals and reverberating drums, mesmerising the screaming fans like a tribal drummer. The glow of the polished cymbals reflect into his twinkling eyes.

He didn't want this to end. The last moment as the band, the last time their instruments would ever harmonise as one. He just had to hammer on. No stopping. Drumbeat after drumbeat, cymbal clash after cymbal clash.

But exhaustion always rules. He ran out of ideas, he ran out of concentration, and had no choice but to end his extended outro with a loud and dramatic flourish.

He clutched his drum sticks in one hand wiped the sweat off this forehead with his other. Will he ever play these sticks again? Will he find his way again? He doesn't know. It's all doubt and uncertainty ahead. He doesn't want to think about it.

Unlike other concerts, he left the drumsticks neatly on the skin of the snare drum, then staggered away behind the curtains, never to return as the current band anymore.

Chest pain, oh noes!

This is not fiction.

Medical students - we're masters of denial.

"I've got this weird wound on my foot, I'm young, so it can't be anything! I'm not seeing a doctor!"

"I'm in the medical field. I'm a mascot of health, gee I can't possibly be unwell!"



And so I woke up last night with a pain in my chest, and then deduced that the sharp nagging pain was indeed NOT from leaving a dinner fork in my bed.

I brushed it off as something inconsequential.

"Hey, it's chest pain, but chances are more likely than not that it's just a muscle strain!"

==

But but it'll be a crime if I just decided to ignore that pain just on that basis. So like any responsible medically-trained individual (trained, being defined by having barely passes all those end-of-posting tests), I went through the 2 most important tenets of medicine that the sleepy-eyed professors kept on drumming into us - clinical history and physical examination.

Clinical history. Male, 22 years old (too old already!), presenting with left lower chest pain for 1 day. A Sunday. It sucks to be in pain on a Sunday.

Oh, I almost forgot. I was coughing for a day before that. I had a sore throat 2 days before. No fever. Upper respiratory tract infection, no? Or lower tract, a.k.a. pneumonia, where I would have to rush myself to the doc stat?

But the chest pain's worrying. All the symptoms point towards an inflammation of the pleura (the lining of the lungs). Pain when I breathe in deeply. The location of the pain. The history of a respiratory infection. That is a Bad Thing.

Actually, it's more of a Bad Thing because I have not experienced this before. Hey, on the other hand it's so easy to delude myself that since it happens to me, and I'm a self-defined Average Joe, it can't possibly be such a Bad Thing because Average Joes don't suffer from Bad Things.

Gee. Medical students are inherently way too biased and self-delusional to diagnose oneself! Or is it just me who's off the rocker?

==

And the physical examination. I'd like to pretend that I did a proper one, but there's really no way to examine the back of the chest if you're not a gymnast from China. But hey, my unreliable ears tell me that I don't hear any obvious signs when I used my stethoscope. No pain when I pressed my chest wall - which means that it's probably NOT a simple muscle strain. Oh noes.

Likely inflammation of the pleura. Not a good thing. It's a sign of pneumonia, tuberculosis, autoimmune diseases such as lupus (where the body's own immune soldiers embark on a bloody civil war), asbestos or cancer.

Ouch.

And like any delusional medical student. I ignored this fact, being too freaked out to even think about it.

==

And miraculously (either a miracle of my physical resilence, or a folly of diagnosis) this very medical student's still walking around chirpy a day later, and the chest pain's getting better.

Sometimes, delusion saves a trip down to the doctor, doctor's fees, the side effects of probably-useless pills and the hassle of having to explain oneself.

The hardest part is, how do us medical students reconcile with our own hypochondria and our own self-denial? Do they cancel each other out? Or do they exhibit a synergistic effect, causing us to be triply delusional?

==

There are stories of a doctor who had died of asthma because he wasn't willing to eat humble pie and seek early hospital treatment. And in the UK, there's the ongoing buzz on how clinicians are often in denial of their own mental disorders. (Somehow, it seems that the UK docs are the ones who are self-absorbbed enough to do all sorts of studies on themselves - rather than on their patients.)

(The author happens to be actively trying to delude himself into thinking that he's normal - ever since taking a look at the DSM-IV .)

Fiction: A drunken stupor

Don't ask me to vouch for the accuracy for my account, for alcohol does things to the mind. It slows, it numbs, and it makes everything one hazy fog.



Not exactly a hazy fog. But rather, a movie with scenes snipped off, replaced with blank film. I can clearly recall some snippets as though they had happened a minute ago. Staring out of the bus window in utter hopelessness. Fumbling with my phone, trying to tap out a message to someone despite the alcohol affecting my fine control of my fingers. Lying down on the sofa at home, writhing in pain. (Alcohol's not good for the stomach.)



Everything else in between these snippets were more or less a blur. Pardon me if I have to make up bits of the story here and there. That's the best I can do, the wine having addled my memories of that moment.

It started with wine. Some strong, sweet wine. Port, 20% alcohol it says. 3 glasses of it. It evades me what spooked me to down them all at once, even despite being with my extended family, with a great possibility of embarassing myself right there and then with my drunkenness.



Trying to infer backwards, I probably had alot on my mind then. The usual calm, sober me wouldn't have downed that much alcohol at once. I've forgotten exactly what was on my mind. Come to think of it, it's sort of funny that alcohol does make you forget your sorrows. But it brings on new sorrows.

A glass. Then another. And yet another. And I felt the world around me slow down, the lights brighten and a warm feeling coursing through my veins. I couldn't be seen by my family in that pathetic state.

I went home. Alone. Remembered struggling to keep my eyes glued to the traffic light so that I'd know when to cross. The alcohol intoxication was getting worse. The cars kept rushing by at the speed of light. The green man lit. I walked across. I don't recall much after that, except the headlights shining in my eyes.



I just wished for a truck to run me over. A pathetic existence I am. It's the alcohol talking, but perhaps the alcohol might be talking more sense than my self delusion. What am I living for? I don't know. I'm here, on Earth, messing up everything here. Everyone here too. Even the air I breathe's tainted by me.

Next thing I remembered was being on the bus. Answering messages on my phone. Refusing phone calls from my closest friend, for I didn't want the friend to hear me being in such a pathetic state. I regret it. Being drunk and so lost in my drunkenness I wasn't there for when I was needed the most.

Next was another road. Truck, oh please do me in, put me where I belong.



Home. Sofa. In the dark. Writhing in pain with all that alcohol messing with my stomach. I closed my eyes, not knowing what would be in store for me the next time I open my world-weary eyes.

Hey, fiction.

I don't know if this will work, but I've decided to write fiction here instead. No more of the crap of deciding what's safe for public consumption, or what's going to be used against me in real life.

Here's to the fictionalisation of my blog, yay!

And it seems

that my blog has attracted some unwanted readership. People who I totally don't want to open up to emotionally, for they will tear my paragraphs down like wrapping paper, trying to score some factlets on my life, then manipulate me using them.



Daily events, what I do, where I go to, who I meet, these are thorny issues too. Shall I say, I do get judged for all sorts of shit and I would be foolish to write about them, now that things have taken very complicated turns.



Ironically, I keep my thoughts away from the people I know best. I've got this policy: I don't give a damn what someone thinks of me, but I do care about what they DO to me because of what they think of me. And the people I know well, are the people most likely to hurt me that way.

And now, I'm sort of stuck with my blog not knowing what to do with it, only being able to safely write neutral stuff. Reviews. Music. Movies. Stuff like that. I don't have to talk about myself at all.



I dunno what direction this blog is taking. Yet. I'll figure it out along the way. But I sure do not want to lose my current audience, because it's the audience that keeps me writing.

It's sort of a writer's pride kinda thing, feeling good about the fact that people actually bother to read what I write, and that people do come back. Writing is communication, and what purpose does communication have if there's no one on the other end?



I'll be back. Naturally.

Bloody Math Rock

Been trying to get myself to like Thom Yorke's The Eraser. For months. Yorke's the brains of Radiohead, seeing them through the pop-rock of Pablo Honey to the experimentations of OK Computer, to the weird-shit stuff you hear on Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief.

And well, The Eraser is the same kind of weird-shit stuff. Only weirder-shit. Well, you could say that the disjointed beats and weird time signatures are quirky and a breath of fresh air. But well. I don't like it. They could write those weird-shit stuff until the cows come home, but I'd rather have the typical 4/4 time signature, verse--bridge-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus kinda stuff. Harrowdown Hill is sorta OK - if you ignore the weird time signature, but the rest just makes you want to wear down your 'next track' button.

Musical taste is so much about peer pressure and acceptance. You can't be caught dead liking Avril Lavinge and Dream Theatre at the same time. Or mentioning Blink-182 and Sepultra in the same sentence. But well, sometimes, no matter how much our peers love the stuff - and how much we want to like the stuff - it's just not us, no?

I don't bother listening to Thom Yorke anymore.

Some random snippets of Wednesday

Decided to cut off the hem of my old pair of jeans. The bottoms are sorta permanently stained, so heck, why not experiment and make some frayed bottoms?


Morning run. Felt really weak, maybe it's tiredness, maybe it's just being out of shape, maybe it's the crap I've been eating lately. But oh well, at least I'm trying, so it's totally OK by me.

Thai Express food!:



Beef kway teow. Yummy.


Chicken in green curry with rice. Ueberly hot, and like msot thai curries and tom yam, makes my nose go crazy. Other than that, it's pretty okay.


Dessert. Steamed tapioca with coconut milk! Actually ordered a mango glutinous rice too, but apparently they ran out of good mangoes. Arrgh! Was looking forward so much to that, having ate it last time.

They don't advertise it or anything, but Thai Express desserts are good. The last time I ate at Thai Express, I ordered a dessert only because there was some promotion or something. And that mango glutinous rice turned out to be heavenly.

Decided to try out my culinary skills and do up a beef steak.

Got the cheapest beef from NTUC. This costs $2. Marinated it with herbs, paprika and pepper.

Cooking isn't easy. I got everything splattering all over, I was fumbling around not knowing if the meat was cooked, panicking all throughout. Halfway through the beef slices popped out in the middle and I had to press them forcefully back onto the pan and all. Yikes!

The result:

Tough. A little bland, from a lack of salt. Even though the meat was still slightly pink (therefore being not overcooked) it was really tough. It's probable that the cheapest cuts of meat are inherently tough - should've got a pricier cut of beef, maybe a ribeye! Also, after Googling up some recipes I realised that I was using way too high a heat.

Well, better luck for me next time!

Good Vibrations Festival 2007

Thanks STOMP for the complimentary tickets! Tagged along with Ryan, Kate, kengz, japster86+friend, and later into the night, Julian.


Our tickets were VIP ones, so we got either the orange or pink ones, and got to go through without queueing up.

Here's the schedule of performances. I originally pined for Beastie Boys - they're the highlight of the whole festival, being veterans in punk rap - in addition to Saw Loser, Bushmen and Electrico which are local favourites.


4pm, and the venue's pretty empty. It's held in the main arena of Fort Canning, in addition to a smaller dance area behind called the Chinese Laundry.




Saw Loser
Saw Loser's previously known as Pug Jelly, being famous for their hit Give or Take. They're a local emorock band which had gained some popularity among the South East Asia lately.

However, the performance was sort of lacklustre, as there wasn't really much of an audience to play to, being early. It might be cruel to say so, but they've been riding on the fame of Pug Jelly's hit Give or Take and may well fizzle out like all other one-hit-wonders in time with their poor performance.

NDC

We took a saunter over to the Chinese Laundry stage, and were wowed by the smooth and jazzy beats that the DJ fashioned.

Bushmen
Bushmen, a local reggae band, has achieved quite good popularity here over the last year or so, and it's easy to see why. Their catchy reggae tunes may sound a little unoriginal, but they groove on all the same. They got the crowd moving and throwing beach balls wildly over the whole place.

Best local band today, I gotta admit. (Which, obviously, means that Electrico would be a disappointment. Be prepared for it, dudes.)





Wicked Aura Batucada
Lovely African-influenced percussion group. The lively and intricate beats keep you perky and raring for more. It's a surprise favourite among the crowd, and Kate swears she had seen them perform in Orchard before!


Electrico
If you haven't heard of Electrico, gee, were you living under a rock? They're a local rock-pop band that managed to make a huge dent in the airwaves. Their first album So Much More Inside saw several great singles including Runaway and Good Time while their current album Hip City is receiving good sales figures.

But what happened to this gig? Despite the enthusiastic crowd, I can't help to feel that the whole gig was a roughly copped-out trailer for their upcoming concert in March. (They did remind us of their upcoming concert more than a couple of times.)

They didn't play a single song from their first album. Neither did they play any of the favourites from the second album. They jumped straight into tracks that are yet to be released as singles, as sort of a taster.

They seemed weary. Their tracks sounded all the same. The cliched U2-style echoey guitars, the droning rhythms. What had happened to Electrico?





Hung around and got to catch a bit of Cut Copy which didn't tickle my eardrums at all, since their works aren't exactly exciting or new. They sound like a mishmash of 80s favourites like Erasure and Sonic Youth. That's about all to them.

Jurassic 5
Hiphop. While they're pretty well-received, I have to admit, it's just not my kind of thing.


And now for the band that every member of the audience was waiting for:
Beastie Boys

The crowd had really built up. The anticipation's really killing everyone. A couple of false alarms. And Beastie Boys finally emerged...


...in New York-esque shirts, suits, ties and bowler hats. And they jumped straight into rocking the whole arena. A great medley of their hits - they didn't forget their old stuff - including No Sleep Til Brooklyn, Ch-Check It Out, Sabotage.

The thumping rhythms, the way they use silence and interruptions in the beat for good effect, the creative use of vocoders, the frentic percussion and quirky bass and guitar riffs, who can possibly not love the Beastie Boys?



The audience was particularly wowed by Mix Master Mike's flawless turntable skills, especially when he did a really impressive solo during the encore, just before the band burst into the crowd's favourite, Intergalactic.

They may be old, having more than twenty years of stardom under their belt. But the white hair and maturity belies their youthful enthusiasm and energy they put into every one of their songs. And no, they do not forget their fans. I wish you had been there, then you would have felt and heard what I mean.

Chinese New Year!

And indeed, I woke up at 7.30am, had a very light breakfast and off to mash the pedals I went!

Spent a whole stretch trying to readjust my gears again, they're sorta out of whack after I relubed everything.

Haven't been bicycling for a while, and it shows! Slightly slower now than a couple of weeks back. The roads are quiet, the park is quiet, but still, weirdly, the cyclists are still in full force, and the wiseman in Bishan Park's there today.




Yellow bird. Is it like a good luck sign or something?

Chinese New Year, and my relatives are visiting us today. Sorta spent a large part of it hiding in room. I don't like the awkard silences, the inane conversation about stuff like your body size ("Wow you're thinner by alot!"), pineapple tarts ("I spent the whole afternoon last Sunday queuing up for this really famous...."), parents comparing their children ("My son's planning to study soandso course in suchandsuch place so that he can...").

And I don't want to make my cousins feel bad when my parents talk about my education and my brother's work.

So in my room I hide. Either that or I show my face, smile a little, then act busy by stuffing pineapple tarts and chocolates into my mouth.

And now a tour of my home:



Mandarin oranges.



The kumquats growing in the balcony.


Living room.


Goldfish!


Stairwell.


Dining room.






Pussy willow. If Christmas has its Christmas tree, this is literally like a Chinese New Year tree.


All that food.


Some really tasty and crispy snack I dunno the name of.


Pine nuts!


Macadamias!


Cake. Somehow my family's feeling particularly generous in terms of food this year.