visitations, guitars and chocolate

time goes by far too quickly; sometimes – anytime at all – i take a mental step back from the present and think to myself, this is a moment; it’s gone. it happens especially during conversations. i listen and watch intently, trying to preserve words and motions in my head. how can i preserve this? this is now, now is then. to capture this moment this instant the gesture the stories the blink of an eye —

apple has always wanted to be taller

—and so we have cameras now to store memories, at least when i remember to bring and use it. but you cannot live experiences behind a lens, so stories must acquire a fog that comes with the hazy filters of memory. with each telling they become crisper, clearer as details get smoothed over and sharpened. besides, is a photo accurate? are photos real memories, or pictures of a memory? i cannot tell clearly. clearly. but this is overthinking. i’m still harrowed by stories, sickening stories which weigh heavy on my mind, despite having just watched Definitely, Maybe (which i actually enjoyed a great deal – good storytelling and enough plot twists to keep me interested; absolutely loved april though you kind of know she will be The One in the end; abigail breslin is quite the little charmer).

late birthday cake

that said, i think (if indeed i do at all) it’s important to meet people who are buckets of fun, talent, intelligence and general goodness. so a month and a day ago i emailed zhi wei after discovering his music for mp3s. worlds are small – we’d met two years ago at the preliminary rounds of wsdc. i have absolutely no recollection of this, of course, thanks to my abysmal memory, but he did and reminded me thusly. and i never fail to be amazed by the way friendships can begin and be sustained in this digital age, having cultivated some of my closest friends, like Z, Ad and JY, mostly online, before so in person, and keeping them so by the same means.

and so it is with this friendship – it is only a month old, and it still astonishes me that i can map out its course over archived conversations on gmail. but i digress too much. zhi wei came up to KL and stayed the night, bringing with him his voice, movies, irrepressible good humour, stories and hilarious Yoda/Scooby-Doo impressions, and then some.

there was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, much file-sharing, hefty doses of irreverence, torrents of awful puns , molten chocolate babycakes (for which the first two failed) and a kind of lame birthday song,

guitaring, rock band-ing, a soap opera till about 2.30 in the morning, curry and stories for breakfast, songs and singing and Business Time obsessions and slug sex as narrated by David Attenborough – surprisingly beautiful.

there was no vanilla ice cream, alas, but this time food takes a backseat in the face of simply having a good time. meeting people like zhi wei is definitely one of the several highlights of life so far, and in the process of that reaffirming how very cool my sisters are. to the point: it was great having you here, zhi wei! you’re welcome here anytime. in about three years time when you get back from the UK.