At the very least, 1MontKiara (I kid you not, that IS the name of the mall) will have a decent place to fill up your stomach, should you ever decide to go there.

Situated at the lower ground level of this mall, I Love Yoo occupies a slot right across the entrance to Village Grocer. It’s small and cozy, just what one would need after a long, busy day as a young professional. You could literally come here to get away from it all; this mall is so new the lower ground level has no mobile coverage yet.

It’s no-nonsense comfort food at a very affordable price: a big bowl of hearty dry scallop porridge (or dried oyster porridge, if you prefer), freshly made soya bean drink, and a serving of yoo tiao and sesame ball, for 2, and all for only RM8.80. Keep in mind, this is only a limited-time offer, so you better click here and redeem the coupon if you want the savings!

If you ever find yourself at this mall and you’re in the mood for some tasty grub to fill your belly, you can do no wrong by getting this set. It’s no-nonsense goodness, perfect for sharing with a friend.

On another note: 1MontKiara? Really?!

Turns out she was an otaku, and she was exactly where she wanted to be.

That was my first introduction to Clare Okalany. It was… unique, having an Ugandan girl in an anime club. It kind of gave us a few extra points in the “street cred” department, as if to say that we’re so cool because we have foreigners joining our club out of their own volition. I didn’t really know what to make of it. But I could clearly remember that it was always fun talking to her. It was never dull, because she has this element of spontaneity in her responses that would always keep you on your toes.

For one reason or another, I lost contact with her after that initial excitement of hanging out with new members. I became consumed with the mundane routine of life in MMU. Clare disappeared into the crowd of international students who were part of the student community, but wasn’t really. Sometimes I would message her and she would message me, and we would meet up and get caught in a rush of updates and catching up. But the wait for replies would slowly get longer, and soon I would be consumed by those routines yet again. It didn’t help that we were in completely different faculties, with completely different schedules and commitments. I would see her in random EMiNA events, and we would again lose contact soon after that.

I always wondered how she felt, being thousands of kilometres away from home. Being pigeonholed into the standard African stereotypes that we’ve come up with. Being sidelined in groups. Being the “token black friend” whenever she hung out with her classmates/coursemates/friends.

When she entered her final year, we started hanging out more. I don’t really remember what changed actually, just that it was easier to meet up with her for lunches or dinners. This was when I noticed the stares that she got, no matter where she was. The wide-eyed stares that she received when she ordered garlic butter naan, or the awkward glances from people when they noticed how much she enjoyed her serving of nasi lemak.

I felt guilty when I noticed all these things, because I was guilty of them as well.

Her last few weeks in Malaysia didn’t go well. She was forced to travel from her sister’s place at Bandar Tasik Selatan to Cyberjaya several times a week to waddle through the red tape of her convocation issues. She lost her passport, and received no support or help from Malaysian immigration. In the end, she was given an ultimatum: either get on a plane back to Uganda within 24 hours, or  arrested as an illegal immigrant. This, despite having an official letter from the Ugandan High Commission, as well as a certified police report for the lost passport.

“They welcome you in, take your money and then kick you the fuck out,” she told me, partly out of frustration and a resigned acceptance as we were having our final lunch/lepak session together. That very night, she boarded the plane back to Uganda.

Clare was interviewed by Poskod.my before she left for home. They were doing a project for National Day: a series of write-ups on communities of foreign nationals who decided to call Malaysia “home”, either temporarily or permanently. Her story become a part of their collection; a three-part account of her post-war childhood, her life in Malaysia, and everything in between. These write-ups on Clare were published after she was back home.

I knew that she was being interviewed by someone, but the existence of these articles only came to my knowledge when she posted the links up on Twitter. They showcased a part of her that I never bothered to find out. I knew very little about her, and I was satisfied with those pitiful bits of information. It was just the tip of a very large iceberg, an iceberg I never bothered to explore.

Sorry about that, Clare. Hope you don’t kick my ass too much the next time we meet. Now I know (a bit) better.

Thursday has just begun. It’s been just over 28 hours since I kissed her goodbye. It was a whirlwind 48 hours before that: us zooming around the Klang Valley, trying to meet as many people as possible and do as many things as possible and get as many errands done.  We walked around and drove around, holding hands and intertwining fingers as long and as often as we could. It was never enough. It’s always like that: never enough. Just wanting a little bit more.

Ah, so this is what an addiction is.

She came here on Monday, for a workshop at UTM. Just two days; arrived on Monday, the workshop’s on Tuesday morning and she went back at 10 p.m the same day. On Monday, I waited for her at KL Sentral. Left home when my dad went to work at 6:30 a.m, and I was at KL Sentral by 8:30 a.m. Her flight took off from Kota Kinabalu at 9:15 a.m. I was supposed to be working on my documentary research while waiting for her call.

That was one of the longest waits of my life. I couldn’t really do much except idly browse websites and correspond to tweets, all the while wishing that time would move just a wee bit faster. The tables around me filled up and emptied with different groups of people, and I patiently waited until I got the message: “Ish here!” That was at 2:10 p.m.

She could never afford to be away from home for more than 3 days at a time. Anymore and she starts to get worried about her father back home. It’s painful, to see her torn like this. Wanting to be here together with me, yet never being able to leave her father unattended for too long. It’s one of the reasons why I’m sometimes in awe of her. She says she’s just a normal person, but she’s actually one of the strongest person I know. Her thoughts and opinions and worries gives me perspective. They make me realize that it’s not really as bad or as serious as I think it is.

The one good thing about having such a short time to be together, is that every moment you have really is that important and precious. Each moment automatically becomes that perfect one, so there’s no need for planning or the desire to spend large amounts of money or whatnot. Long conversations about nothing in particular were simultaneously intimate and funny and wonderful. All the worries and doubts about this long-distance relationships of ours disappeared immediately, replaced with the here and now. Nothing else matters, and that’s just how it is.

I would catch her having that worried look on her face from time to time, thinking about one of the many things waiting for her back home. All I could do at those times was give her hands a reassuring squeeze, or stroke her cheeks or give her a soft kiss. I hope they helped, even if just for a while.

The last time I met her before this was three months ago, for a total of four days. Even during those four days, she was working. She had to rush over to meet me during those moments in between classes and then rush back to college. I felt so guilty for forcing her to do this. I still do. It’s not fair for her to have so many responsibilities.

I honestly don’t know when I’ll be seeing her next. Nothing is planned, and nothing can be confirmed. The “efficiency” of her college administration means that the teaching staff never know for sure when they’ll be teaching, how many subjects they’ll be teaching, or when they’ll have breaks.

Or if they’ll even have classrooms to teach in.

I miss her already. I know we’ll meet again, so I’m not going to waste time moping around contemplating suicide. We both have things to do and goals to achieve. The one thing we promised each other, is to never let go of our goals. We reiterated that promise on Tuesday, amidst mouthfuls of cheesecake that I miraculously managed to make two days earlier. It felt good, to know that we both thought along similar lines. The focus and the priority is there. So there’s that to tide us over till next we meet.

But I really do fucking miss her.

So I watched Sucker Punch last night. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, even after watching the trailers, reading the interviews and watching the featurettes. I knew it was going to be visually stunning; that’s a certainty from Zack Snyder. Even Dawn of the Dead had moments of beauty in the way certain scenes were filmed amidst all the gore and brutality. But the story… hmm, it could be an Inception or a Tron: Legacy. I was hoping for something in the middle. Us moviegoers, the majority of us are a fickle-minded lot, lol. Kalau too smart tak paham, pastu cakap boring.

And after watching it, I was confused. No, make that troubled. It was an amazing experience, no doubt. The story is definitely not as shallow as people say it is. There is another layer in the narrative but I couldn’t really figure out what it was, and it took Naoko’s piece for the movie to start clicking for me. I generally agree with what she says, but I’m just gonna touch on a few points.

I would say that Sucker Punch is a pretty dark and disturbing psychological movie. Sure, the action scenes were amazing, and seeing five girls beat the shit out of enemies with a raw intensity that is rare in movies nowadays is a welcome bonus, but the story of this film is pretty damn disturbing, especially in a few key scenes. The slo-mo is a nice gimmick to gloss over those scenes, but you know what’s being implied here. I’m surprised it got a PG-13 in the first place.

The structure of Sucker Punch is very much like a novel, like Naoko says in her post. The story of this movie is entirely from the point-of-view of Baby Doll and no-one else’s. It’s a first-person narrative where each line of speech and body movement is presented as how she sees and imagines it. The reality becomes so hopeless and bleak and gruesome for her that the only way to get some semblance of control is within her own subconscious. It’s where each dance becomes a battle and each gyration of her hips becomes a killing move. Her dances are not shown to us because they are irrelevant to Baby Doll. She doesn’t see it as a dance to satisfy horny-ass guys. It’s a battle against nearly impossible odds for their survival, and ultimately freedom.

The general consensus by silly Americans is that the dialogue is atrocious. That’s just bullshit. Why write lines of text describing a certain emotion or an inner thought or what-have-you, when you can just show it in its entirety in just one shot? This is why I say Zack Snyder is an unabashed otaku. Storytelling like this remind me of the riverboat sequence in Ghost in the Shell and the parade sequence in Innocence. For Zack Snyder to attempt storytelling in this way is pretty fucking amazing, especially considering that this is a big-budget triple-A Hollywood production. There was one point when I thought that maybe Sucker Punch should have been a big-budget theatrical anime instead. At least then the expectations will have already been set. Non-linear storytelling and meanings within meanings within meanings will be appreciated by the correct audience.

Thing is, most people will forget that the bordello is in her mind halfway through the movie. The reality of the mental asylum will be long gone by then, because it keeps coming back to the bordello, and the story continues there. However, if the connection between her subconscious and the reality is shown, the story becomes too easy, too predictable. People can spot the twist a mile away. It’s just me, but I think it’ll lose part of its charm. So it becomes a question of which narrative style to choose.

A lot of people won’t get Sucker Punch. They will love the action and the girls in skin-tight outfits kicking ass. The titillation will unfortunately be the major selling point. And they will just leave it at that. Some of the female audience members will go “fuck yeah female empowerment woohoo!” and that’s fine, because one of the points the movie made was about utilizing what you have to take control of your own destiny. But it’ll just end there. If you take literature, gaming and anime seriously, you will get Sucker Punch. And I don’t mean Naruto or Bleach here, I’m talking about works like Ghost in the Shell, Paprika, Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, and Kaiba. The similarities are too strong for me to ignore. I think the fact that I take anime seriously as a storytelling medium helped in my understanding of Sucker Punch. I would even go so far as to say that it is live-action anime done right, and proof positive that it is possible to make an awesome Hollywood adaptation of anime.

In fact, a live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell will work if Zack Snyder directs it.

So yeah, that’s how I viewed Sucker Punch. It’s an amazing experience that will be misunderstood by most people, just like Speed Racer and Wanted. If you’re like me (subscribing to the school of thought of storytelling being as much a visual medium as it is a literary medium), then I highly recommend you watch it.

You said you wanna let go of your past, but now you’re emo because you weren’t part of any projects we talked about in past years. What the fuck is this.

You made your choice. No-one forced you into it, no-one ostracized you into it. There was no grand betrayal, no soap opera-level drama. You didn’t find yourself waking up in the middle of the road with a bump on the head and a knife stuck in your back. You went through the same shit we all went through, you saw the same ugly side of humanity we all did. You saw how fickle humans are, how easily their thoughts sawyed. And when the odds were stacked against us, you up and left.

That’s fine, you know. We were all tired. We understood why you did what you did. The methods were odd, but we got the message. We wouldn’t have faulted you for it. But now you want to bitch about it? Champion la you.

No-one said we were giving up. You of all people should know how easily a plan can fall apart, and how it can be modified. You should know how the smallest of changes makes the difference between a well-written proposal and an honest-to-goodnes event. You were fucking there, in the middle of it all. We never gave up. You did. And now you post up your cryptic messages on Google Talk, hoping no-one understands? Macha, WE CAN ALL SEE IT.

I admit, I’m the last person to say all these things. God knows I can be emo also. And a hypocrite. And lazy. And a person who goes back on his word. Someone who procrastinates. Someone who gives excuses after excuses. I’m just amazed I still have friends who accept me, faults, warts and all. I’m exactly all the things you are.

There’s just one difference. You want to know what that is? Just a teeny-tiny thing.

I fucking stayed on.

I’m still reeling in the afterglow of seeing an article I wrote, published in a pretty big Malaysian tech magazine. It’s a pretty straightforward approach: a general introductory piece to a new lifestyle of a connected generation. Nothing too fancy or detailed in the content, just enough for the reader to have a starting point, should he or she wish to explore it more. But still, nothing prepared me for the experience of seeing it in print.

I’ve done write-ups before this, and I’ve seen them in print. But they’ve all been in a small scale before this; part of the campus newsletter, part of the promotional material for EMiNA‘s events, that sort of thing. This, however, is something else. And it’s a wonderful feeling. This makes it real. I know for sure that I can depend on my writing to become a significant part of my future career, if I wanted to. The challenge would be to keep and improve the quality of my writing, while keeping a consistent output at the same time. I think that’s doable, in the grand scheme of things.

This also means that I cannot make an excuse of not writing here anymore. I’ve been abandoning this place for too long, always under the fear that my opinions would be ripped to shreds, my thoughts dissected without mercy. Hmm.

Yeah, that’ll probably happen anyway. But a bit of narcissism seems to be needed to get ahead in the world.