The Long Post

Currently listening to “Starlight” from “PangYa Portable Soundtrack”
Currently, does it even matter?

“Life is a canvas, and the paint is hope and promise” – Maaya Sakamoto.

Months ago, I was slowly loosing grip of my life. Loosing control of my life. Loosing almost everything that matters to me.

In short, “I was depressed”.

This long post… well, is going to be very long. The only reason I didn’t split this into multiple post is because I want to bore you will wall of texts. This post is dedicated for my friends who bothered to know what happened to me for the past few months.

Seriously, this is going to be one long boring post.

Loosing Grip

It’s all started after I took up the directorship of GACC2009 I guess. As I told everyone, I wanted to slowly fade off from EMiNA and let the new generation take over. My passion in anime didn’t die hence my involvement in Comic Fiesta became deeper and started my own ACG-related blog. Finally, I thought it’s time to slowly move on and focus on other things.

I also took part in an event that I’m not familiar with, hoping I can gain new experience dealing with different group of people : Techtime 2009 by Engineering Society. No longer leading a club or an event, I thought I could lead their design team.

When Khurshid suddenly announced his resignation ( Club Presidency & Event Directorship ), things went… a bit hectic for me. Due to personal reasons, there just no way he could continue leading the club. I was left with an option to take the lead again or just don’t care about the club and leave it’s fate completely to the new generation.

In the end I ended up leading GACC, while Guan Da takes over the club’s Presidency. Since I’m the most experienced in the club, I had to constantly advise the president, plus in order to make sure GACC runs smoothly, the clubs needs to run smoothly too.

So, at that point I was carrying a lot of burden on my back. I had an event to lead and a division in some other event. My other personal projects receives less priority and I can’t focus on CF too much too. Plus, I have a hellish Math subject that I “must” pass.

Letting it go

I became stressed over a lot of things and decided to let go of my few burdens to others. I started with Techtime; told ‘em that I can’t lead their division anymore. I wasn’t that easy. For awhile, they can’t find anyone who could replace me.

And then, EMiNA itself. I started to not bother about club matters that much and only focus on running GACC.

Constantly, I receive criticism from others, from people who weren’t happy with me. Sometimes, it’s just blind hate. They are some who enjoys seeing me depressed.

Of course, it was very depressing, but knowing there’s always someone who I can go to, it eases my depression by a lot. I had sleepless nights, thinking about the same thing over and over again: am I able to pull of my job as a good director?

While we never failed to entertain the public, they’ll be expecting the event to be better than before… and I’m running low on experienced committees. Stressed, and depressed.

Slowly, I wasn’t happy with the club’s condition but I tried my best not to interfere with the new committees that much. I just want my event to be good..

Downfall

Honestly, I fucked up a lot, in a lot of ways.

The night before Eid would be the most depressing moment that I’ve been through so far. It was so depressing that I felt like I’ve lost everything in a single second and nothing in the world mattered anymore. Honestly, edo died at that moment. Finally it came after the obvious hints that I’ve noticed months ago and foolishly did nothing about it.

For days, I literally became soulless and I just can’t stop hurting myself physically, having a hard time trying to accept facts that I’ve been denying for months. With the hellish Math papers coming, I just wished that I cease to exist.

I had a hard time trying to sleep but when I managed to get myself to sleep, I just refuse to wake up. I continued to pretend like nothing happened but it failed miserably.

One night, a day before the exam, I was reminded of something that happened long time ago. That alone sparked enough confidence in me to go through with my exam.

I tried to continue my life as it is, like nothing happened. I believed that I won’t pull me down. But again, I failed miserably. I cried, pathetically – it felt good really. When there’s nothing much left to do, I just.. “cried”. It did not matter anymore what they said because I was never a “matter” for them in the first place.

Yeah, so says Captain Obvious up there. ( Sorry, just had to put up that image for the lulz ).

Running Away

I knew my situation pretty well but I just can’t stop denying myself. It felt like something is telling me exactly what happened and what’s going to happen but I just want someone to tell me about it instead of me making it all up inside of my head and assume uncertain stuff.

I was desperate. In desperation, I did a lot of ridiculous things with my mind not fully sane. I had to thank a lot of people especially Khurshid and Shaun who kept me sane.

Slowly, I regained my sanity but it wasn’t good enough. Being in Melaka is depressing, very depressing. I need to runaway from this place. I must runaway from this place. Being called “cry baby” in public and treating it as a joke wasn’t funny at all. So, I ran away.

“When I stand here I start to think that someday… I’ll get out of this city and never come back. I’ll go where no one knows me. I can be someone else. Yeah, I’ll forget about all that’s happened… and become a different person.” – Jin-Roh

I had plans to move to Penang previously, for her sake of course. But after the depressing incident, it does not matter anymore now. After few encouragements from my close friends and mom ( and by watching Jin-Roh and Honey & Clover ), I continued that plan.. not for her sake, but for my sake. I told no one about this except for my close friends. They did their part by not telling anyone about it.

I left Melaka on the 18th October at 5.30am. Packed everything that I needed into my Kancil and drive up. I didn’t head straight to Penang first, I made a stop in Cyberjaya first for obvious reasons. In Cyberjaya, things turned out extremely bad. So bad that I just want someone to kill me instantly right there.

I was right. I was replaced.

I had a hard time trying to continue my journey to Penang. At that moment I intended to kill my journey and turn back to Melaka, but my due to other’s encouragements, I continued. I will learn a lot from being away from home for a very long time. I know that I’m going to be depressed in Melaka. My Cyberjaya friends slowly leaks out about my whereabouts from now on.

So, I continued driving up at 2.30pm. With my unstable mind, it was quite dangerous. I broke into tears instantly when I reminded of the incident that happened earlier. Harsh words that were thrown at me earlier kept on ringing in my head. I just.. cried, non-stop, pathetically.

After I passed Rawang, there was a huge downpour and it wasn’t safe for me to continue driving. I stopped and took a short break, and tried my best to look at things in a different way. Well, I managed to see it in a lot of perspective, most of ‘em and bits of them are good. I only wanted to look into these good points and move on to Penang.

Slowly I became excited. Excited over the fact that I’m actually heading up to Penang and not going to be in Melaka for 3 months plus plus. Happily, I continued my journey and tries my best to forget about anything that happened.

Settling Down

Once again, I get to drive Suzie on the Penang bridge again! Nothing spectacular, it’s just that I’m happy that my car took me here again. It felt great that I’m going “crazy” things again. Being abnormal feel good, really.

The night I reached Penang, I met my Penangite friends. They’re from my Comic Fiesta circle, at least I’m not feeling that lonely in Penang. Of course, I have other friends in Penang too but they don’t know I’m in Penang yet. Jessie knew I was coming though, but she’s kinda busy with her work and don’t wanna bother her that much.

Thanks to Adriane, my accommodation is quite settled ( also thanks for the fact that I actually stopped in Cyber and Nikki brought her along to see me ). I met her mom the next day and she took me to her second house. Oh yeah, her mom is awesome, very nice lady. Located in Bandar Baru Ayer Itam ( or “Farlim”, as the local calls it ), it’s an old apartment… but in a very neat condition. So neat that I felt guilty if I pay the rent low.

So yeah, I rented the whole house for myself. The picture up there is my room. I love the house a lot. I did spring cleaning like every weekend, lol ( I wish that I’m that motivated in Melaka ).

Tracking Life

Back then when I was in high school, I kept a secret diary. Guarding it close to me that no one knows I actually had one ( except for my cousin who accidentally found it.. and “accidentally” read it contents =_=. It was careless of me ). Due to some depressing incident, I burned it.

I started writing once again, logging my daily actions and hopefully in the future I can understand myself better than before. It helped me writing this blog post a lot too.

At the same time, I’ve started to draw again. A lot. Not surprised that my drawing abilities has rusted a lot. The diary is full of scribbles, just like my old high school textbooks. Some of the scribbles ended up in my blog.

I killed off my IM for quite sometime, don’t wanna talk to anyone except for my close friends and assistant directors.

Job Hunting

Looking for a job is quite challenging knowing that I need to make a lot of money to cope up with my expenses in Penang. Most company that gives high pay refuse to hire anyone who can only work for 3 months.

I love book and I love to be surrounded by books. Naturally, the first place I went to look for work was BORDERS in Queenbay Mall ( in Bayan Lepas, which is quite far from my place ). Don’t be fooled by Penangite’s definition of far. Distance between MMU and Mahkota Parade is considered “very far” for them, and their “nearby” is like between MMU and Ixora Apartments.

Shereen works in Borders too, but there’s nothing she can do to help me other than ask the supervisor to revise my application.

Oh yeah, I met my orientation junior Nabil ( Green 10 ) while I was applying for Streamyx at TMpoint! He told me there’s MPH in Gurney Plaza. It’s nearer than Queensbay Mall too.

But due to the amount of suffering I took just to get to Gurney Plaza, I canceled my plans of getting ANY jobs there. I was stuck in traffic jam for 30 minutes and stuck at the parking lot looking for a parking spot for 30 minutes. Gah. I don’t like Gurney Plaza anyway, although a lot of people loves it, I prefer Queensbay Mall anytime.

I ended up working in “The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf”. Yeah, the company where some of my friend used to work. I’ve always wanted to open a small cafe as a side business and maybe this is a good start.

Working for Living

My working experience is great. For sure, working in a busy outlet is fun, really fun. I’m not bored of my work at all. Everyday, there’s always something interested happened.

My outlet is one of the Top 3 busiest outlet in Malaysia ( busiest would be MidValley, of course ), and I’m proud to work there. There’s no such thing as bonus for us part-timers but it does gave me a bit of satisfaction when we managed to exceed the daily sales target.

I need to go through training for a month before I became a certified barista ( is wat you call those who makes good coffee for you ). Yeah, I had to wear white shirt before I can wear the so-called “cool” maroon shirt. I had to master brewing skillz, ice-blending skillz and gourmet skillz. Uh well, I didn’t master them, I just “know how to make them”.

I worked my arse off. Naturally, I’m a slow worker but I tried my best to compensate it with working my arse off and not lazing around. Oh, non-stop they kept on calling me a slow worker, because.. I’m just slow. I applied for crazy amount of overtime (OT). Working 12 hours in a day is quite normal and I never hesitated to extend my working hours. I NEED THE MONEY. Thank gawd they’re running low on staff. I didn’t get to do much OT as they get more staffs.

I’ve learn a lot while working here. One of them was to tolerate IDIOTIC customers. So next time when a customer asks for “Milo Ais” or “Kopi O Ais”, I would politely say “I’m sorry sir, we don’t serve < insert kampung drinks here >. How about < nearest suggested item >, sir? It’s good” instead of “What the fuck?”. But again, these idiotic customers can be considered as a source of entertainment for us. Yes, we are mean enough to laugh at these idiots at the back.

Getting Around

I drive Suzie, my trusty Kancil. Yes, the car is aging but very reliable. After driving around for 2 weeks, I dare say that I’m good with Penang roads. It was proven when I had to actually help out my Penangite colleague who was lost in Penang.

Traffic is Penang is killer and unpredictable. Once, I was stuck in a traffic jam for 1 hour and late for work! Jam from my house all the way till the bridge ( yes, I had to pass the bridge entrance in order to get to my workplace ) Worse, there was a time that my car ran out of petrol when I was stuck at a traffic light.

Oh! Penang’s traffic lights ARE RIDICULOUS! and dangerous too. Normally, a normal green light ( with no arrows ) would generally mean “GO”. Nuh uh, not in Penang. At some junctions, normal green light would mean “straight only”, and turning right will most likely end up in an accident. Yes, you can’t turn right! You have to wait for a “Green Right” light before I can turn right. I don’t even know the “Green Right” is even there, because there’s NO “Red Right”. Yes, Penang traffic lights ARE FUCKED UP.

Penang drivers are horrible too. Way way way more horrible than Melakans. Melaka drivers are fast and dangerous. Penang drivers are.. SLOW AND DANGEROUS. They will just come out from a random corner without waiting and EXPECT you to slow down! And… uh, ok I just don’t know how to describe them. They’re just.. DANGEROUS.

Hanging Out With My Colleagues

Back then, when I was working in Shakey’s Pizza before I entered MMU, I didn’t hang out with my workmates at all.

Things are quite different in Penang I guess. I hang out with my colleagues more than my friends. After closing, we usually lepak somewhere until 3-4am in the morning. There’s once my boss treat me to Counter-Strike until 7am.

I like my life in Penang.

… and one day she contacted me.

The End

I usually left my phone inside my bag when I work. Only after business work ended, I check all the messages that I received. Usually, I just ignore most of my SMSes except if it’s important.

She messaged me “Hey, how are you?”

That short message was enough to change my face completely. For all I know, it’s not going to be beneficial to me at all. I know where it’s going to lead to. And I’m afraid that I’m not willing to let it lead that way.

In short, she wanted to see me and have a proper closure.

So, we met and everything was fine. She spilled out everything that I should know and I managed to prove my assumptions that i’ve been denying for months.

Ultimately, after she left I granted her final wish: She just wanted to be happy. It does not matter whether I’m happy with it or not, she just wanted to be happy. For sure, she wont be truly happy being around me.

This is the day where I stopped logging in my diary. This is the day where I decided to cut my connections with her. I knew from the start, it’s going to end up like this. It’s hard… and I had no other choice. Just like 8 years ago.

Moving On

I continue living my life, trying to move on. She doesn’t care about me anymore although some parts of me are still blindly worrying about her for nothing. Well, she said it herself that she wanted to be selfish and just wanted to be happy.

Oh, I just don’t feel like talking about it anymore. I have no interest in disturbing other couples.

I requested for more overtimes, hoping that work will occupy me and those horrible past will leave me behind.

Well, it worked. With working my ass off, I slowly carried on.

Comic Fiesta 2008

Finally Comic Fiesta 2008 arrived. Hey, it’s the day where I get to meet a lot of people with the same interest. I’ve been looking forward for this day. I took 5 days off for this. This time it was held in Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre.

Originally, we Penangites ( lol, me Penangite ) wanted to drive down with 2 cars. 1 car filled with cosplay materials and another car filled with passengers. But suddenly my Penangite friends told me that they can’t finish their costume in time and Sizer is not coming also. So, it’s only me, Raz, Jin and Shereen going, hence we only drive down with one car.

We left Penang at 6am and reached KL somewhere around 11am. Straight away I help out with the event setup.

Although during the pre-event night we were running low on committees, I had fun, kinda. Especially during the preparation of the goodie bags, we get to talk a lot of nonsense “offline”, instead of the usual online chats.

Me and Yuhi slept at BmJ’s house. Yeah, we slept at 4am and we had to wake up at 7am. It was… OK.

Oh, the opening video was… kinda lame in my own opinion. It’s quite EMO too. You can check it out at my youtube channel. It’s also sets a new record: the shortest opening video I’ve done. Hate it.

The event hall is big but a lot the space is occupied by the sponsors too. The doujin booths are placed at the other end from the stage. The number of crowd increased too compared to last year, but due to the hall is too big it felt that the hall is less crowdy.

As usual, I was stationed at the stage. Controlling the stage flow was what I’m supposed to do but I ended up running around in the event hall hunting down for committees. I was holding the megaphone most of the time, making short-distance announcement in the doujin area ( because the stage is too far and the doujin area is kinda cut off from any announcement made at the stage area ).

They can’t stop molesting my.. tail…

Really.

Ahem. The event was… ok. It does not matter whether it sucked or not at that time because I just wanna have some fun. Yes, it’s time to “chill out”. And I did have a good time.

It’s sad to know that the event ended and I had to go back to Penang. Sigh. Yeah, long hours of work awaits me in Penang.

Working 22 Hours Non-stop

One of my unforgettable experience work at that place was I had to work for 22 hours non-stop. Enter at 12pm in the afternoon and go back at 10am next morning.

There was an event called “Penang Bridge Marathon” and Queenbay Mall was the starting point. That day, I’m supposed to work for 12 hours only. To increase sales, the operation hour extended from 12am to 2am, but later we found out that… we were literally trapped.

Our cars were trapped in the car park. All the roads are closed and there’s no way we can go back home. We can’t change shifts too since there’s no way for people from outside can enter inside, even with motorcycle. So, we extended the operation hour to 4am… hoping that the road will be opened to public by that time.

Right. We found out the road will be open only at 10am. So yeah, since we were trapped might as well just work and earn those awesome OTs. It was VERY VERY tiring but looking at the customers, I was feeling “energized”. The shop was filled with “school girls”. FULL OF EM. School girls just wont stop coming in. Yes, i was feeling energetic for the wrong reasons. We ran the shop with only 5 people ( but later with only 3 people because 2 “walked” back home ).

At 9am, the next shift crews were surprised that I was still there since yesterday. I went back home at 11am for some good sleep.

I had to come back for work at 4pm later day that.

Yes, my foot was hurting liek mad that day.

The Final Month

Life is getting more and more interesting. Although stressed and all, my colleagues never fails to whack the day out into a good one.

Occasionally, me and my Penangite friends would come to my house for some Pizza party. I’m a crappy host really. We did 3 gatherings.

There was a time that I was transferred to a different outlet in Gurney. The Coffee Bean The Beach Hut, it’s not a busy outlet and most of the time there was no customers. I had a hard time trying to adjust myself to that outlet since I’m too used to being in a very busy outlet. But still, I enjoyed working there too since the staff there are even more whacked out.

I only worked there for a week and I’m back to the busy outlet again. Yeah, being in the busy outlet does give me the adrenaline rush.

Oh yeah, my appetite skyrocketed while I was in Penang. I had no problem finishing 3 packs of Nasi Goreng and got hungry again 4 hours later. It was very scary. I think my appetite when back to normal level again now.

Oh ya, I met Shin Dee once. Dexter and Sim once. And Jessie too. They’re busy and I didn’t get to see them often although I tried to ask em out quite often.

My time in Penang is running out. I had to go back on the 31st of January. My driving license dies on 2nd February. I was a bit sad knowing that I had to go back soon. Ok, not a bit, A LOT. I wanted to stay in Penang longer. I love Penang… and the food.

I’m sick of looking at the Penang bridge though. You can get a clear view of the bridge from my outlet. You know, previously I would awe at the bridge because it’s not something that we see everyday. Now, it’s just a… “bridge”. They’re expanding the bridge too, so it looked kinda messy with the construction going on there.

I’m.. going to miss my colleagues, a lot. Especially Hasnul and Hafiz who became really close to me.

Leaving Penang

My father came down to Malaysia 2 days before I left Penang. He planned to drive up to Penang and at least stay there for a night and drive down with me. Of course, I strongly object. I want to end my final days in Penang in peace.

On the last day, I finally get to meet Adriane ( and to pay the house rent, of course ). It supposed to be a short visit but we ended up talking for hours. I left Penang at 6pm.

Btw, my aircond died while I was in Penang and I didn’t bother fixing the aircond since the fuel consumption without the aircond is really low. I gained slight immunity to heat and humidity. Urrgh.

On the way back there was a heavy downpour at near Sungai Perak. The situation was worse than before because previously when I drive up to Penang, I still have my air conditioning running fine. Now, the windshield fogs up instantly and I can’t see shit other than the taillights of the car from front.

After the rain settled down, I continued my drive to KL. The original plan was to stay at my friend’s place but I found out that my parents were at my grandma’s place in Section 14 PJ. Oh great, that reminds me that “her” grandma lives on the same street. Crazy coincidence, isn’t it?

I met my parents there and… I began to tell em my Penang stories. And they told me about the story of my cousin who ranaway from home 2 days before.

Melaka

Honestly, I don’t miss Melaka at all. I thought that I didn’t see Melaka for a very long time would make me miss this place. Not a single bit.

Slowly, I get a bit “depressed” when I returned here. Like I said, being called “cry baby” in public as a joke wasn’t a joke at all. Nothing’s changed here. And I guess, it does not matter anymore. I’ve requested for a transfer so that I can work in Melaka’s Coffee Bean. No reply until now and most probably I’m not getting it.

All I wanted now is my own happiness. I wanted to be happy, a clean happiness, not at a cost of hurting someone else.

Sigh, but for sure, It’s good to see my friends again.

“I’m Home” & “Godspeed, Ed”

PS: Noes, mai fingahzz..