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wonderful waste of time

Karl 'C - Wonderful Waste of Time
[download from my music site]

well go forth now, i said, time is running out -
we are young and it's late, it's a perfect reason to be loud

(pre-chorus)
momma says we're wasting our lives -
but how can we be if we're just living it right?
yeah, i know she's says we're wasting our time
but we're sure not gonna bring
ourselves home tonight...

(chorus)
it's a wonderful waste of time
it's a wonderful taste of pounding bass
and the middle and treb's so fine
oh! and it's a wonderful waste of... well, whatever we had
by our side, in our hands
we will make no amends
and we're leaving regrets to die

(repeat pre-chorus)
(repeat chorus)

oh yeah
well go forth now, i said, time is running out... (end)

(c) Karl 'C 13 June 2005

shaken and stirred

i've always been a very timid person. i don't know why. since eternity i've been trying to change this fact, for since eternity i've realized it, but since eternity until now nothing much's changed. i'm still afraid of everything, remain terribly apprehensive of everything. going out somewhere scares me to death, i can never explain why, but i always have to pep-talk myself that it's ok. a waste of time, if not anything! even driving a car scares me to death, that's why i don't dare to "practise" driving with my dad without great difficulty and more pep-talks. i don't know why.

i guess i'm a little schizophrenic. i hear voices. i talk to myself. i'm still trying to understand myself, believe me someday i will. but till then, i just can't stop feeling very weird.

i have all these wisdom inside me. but no words sufficient to print them. hence, frustration. hence, disappointment. hence, more doses of eccentricity. hence, me.

the "20" pledge

i'm beginning to have doubts again. i can never forgive myself if i make the wrong choice this time. when i was 16, i wrote my first song in 5 minutes and immediately recorded it, along with backing vocals which was really me playing back the track and singing along to myself. i was so proud, i sent the whole song (unedited, unclear and very large in *.wav format) to all my friends and relatives. and they spurred me on.

i soon wrote many more songs this way. get myself high (this is perhaps the only thing i won't elaborate about), write a new song in a few minutes, hastily scribble the notes and chords to it, and record it whenever my parents weren't around. and naturally, i wanted to become a singer, maybe join a band, do some gigs to introduce our music and produce some albums.

but i never could find someone else with the same passion for music than i, who wasn't stuck-up or extremely individualistic and unwilling to work as a team. i must admit, i was that way too, more ready to work alone than in a team.

i was 16 then, still in school - the typical malaysian student always pushed for paper excellence and encouraged to neglect all the rest (good to note that i've never neglected my electric guitar). so i resolved to work hard for that slip of paper that my parents would be proud of, and decided to leave my musical dreams until i was 20.

18 years old, i was still writing songs and playing my guitar like mad as if i was in a concert, except there was no one listening. 20 years old, i still do.

but wait a minute, i just turned 20 two days ago. and these few days i've been constantly reminded of the pledge i made to myself some years and some songs ago - to realize my singing ambitions when i was 20. am i not 20 now?

i missed malaysian idol season two - cause it will clash with my university admission, and because season 1 flopped very badly. i can't study music in university, cause i don't have the paper that supposedly tells more about you than you ever will. then i wanted to study mass communications and become a journalist or proofreader, my second ambition.

when my parents heard that i was considering mass communications, they had faint ideas what it was but were clearly disappointed. my mum had little knowledge but she had a friend, an editor of a chinese daily who has to drink and chain-smoke regularly in order to meet the deadlines and furious demands of the print industry. she takes every opportunity to remind me of this. i think she just doesn't want me to end that way.

dad, on the other hand, hinted forth some points: there would be less job security, employment is hard and vacancies are scarce due to old staffs never leaving (which is true), and having to travel outdoors often without the comfort of an office cubicle. more interestingly, he felt i was of the wrong gender for this. now this is an false overstatement, but the stereotype exists, and very heavily in mass comm. as such, i took a walk around the communication campus of one renowned university hoping to prove them wrong, but returned disappointed and hopelessly confused.

i have once commented to my mum that i couldn't decide whether my talents were a blessing or a curse. she said not to say things like that. so i keep my thoughts to myself.

anyway, i made this pledge at 16 that i knew would be hard to keep. now the time has come.

birthday honours list

i'll never forget the farewell-cum-birthday bbq party thrown last sunday by my work colleagues. i've never had so many people wish me happy birthday before, what more this is my 20th birthday (which is today), a very prominent landmark in my two decades of life thus far. thanks michelle, emily & husband + baby boy, lyna & husband... and also the ex-boss emerson & girlfriend, several customers ooi and bee chin (ms lim) & baby, my friends from the singapore hq thomas (currently unemployed) & desmond (stationed in bangkok). we used the managing director's apartment at n-park and from the 28th floor, the view was wonderfully breathtaking.

on one end you could see the penang bridge lighted up during the night... further down there was komtar and the whole city landscape. on the other end from the balcony was the jelutong expressway, right down to the coast and ships passing by around the island. it was just wonderful. and i wondered if my singapore friends had been impressed as much as i did. probably not - one was thinking of golf and meeting girls and the other was thinking of karaoke and his next meal. after all, take away the good food and you don't have penang.

most memorable? the cheese-stuffed sausages which were fairly easy to barb and ummph oh-so-delicious in the mouth.

moving on, due thanks too to alicia, olivia, esmond, desmond, leroy (who shares this birthday but who just forwarded desmond's birthday message... very cheapo), never forgetting dad, mum... will never forget dad's birthday wish for me. what he said surprised me: "may all your dreams come true". i don't know, but my dad has always been an earthing wire who would ground me whenever i ever tried to fly. i wanted to be a singer and he would hint of how many singers suffer under their own art. so i stayed under the radar. i wanted to study mass comm and he would talk about how only girls would succeed in this arena, that it would pay better and offer more security if i were to be an engineer. so i changed my mind. all well and true. all with basis and experience. all perceived and believed... all folklore and myth.

where mum is the uniting force of my family, dad was the one always earthing us. so to hear him mention my "dreams" really sped me off course in satellite around the planet... i'm pretty sure he knows what my "dreams" are, though he relies on heavy hints to avoid the bluntness and harshness of truth. which is a good thing, except that sometimes it does get tiresome and it seems he's avoiding reality. i instantly forgive him everytime he labels my eccentricities as "funny" (in a bad tone) and others which i hope i never have to recall. he's not so good with words.

for it is these eccentricities, these minor imperfections that build up the perfect me, that enables my dreams and thoughts to take form in the immeasurable expansion of this mind. perhaps, and there's a high chance of it that i've never doubted, my dreams will come true?