How I Nearly Suffered From Pneumonia Last Night While Talking to Three Drunk Guys in a Dark, Quiet Street.

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Zareth

I’ll try and write this incident as accurately as I can. But take note that I was extremely cold, drunk, and my memory was not functioning correctly at that moment. Furthermore, there are some parts where I have no recollections. This incident is as accurate as I can remember but there are some embellishments at parts where I have memory blackout and to make certain parts flow naturally.

Now, let us commence.

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Title of the post explains it all.

I was at a party last night where I sort-of-gatecrash-it-but-really-didn’t-because-I-brought-a-six-pack-of-Heineken-and-a-friend-invited-me-to-it-through-Facebook-even-though-he-didn’t-know-anyone-too.

Long story.

So I had fun, talked, drank, smoked and happily passed my Heineken beers to my friend who invited me (since he’s from the Netherlands and Heineken is from there too) and to a German guy from Southern Germany. I can’t remember the name but it sounds like Frankfurt, even though it is not Frankfurt.

All was going well until the temperature started plummeting.

When I headed to the party around 11pm, the temperature was 14 Degrees Celsius.

But as the night went on, it got colder and colder and colder and COLDER. By then it was in single digits

And I was wearing this:

You can predict what happened next.

The party was held in an open air backyard and in the kitchen. At first, I seek warmth in kitchen. But the kitchen was too cramped and there were too many people seeking warmth too.

So I went outside to the backyard, standing with a group of people, trying to mooch off their body heat. Didn’t work. So back to the kitchen again.

So it became some sort of weird routine. It went like this: Kitchen. Backyard. Kitchen. Backyard. Kitchen. Backyard. Kitchen. Backyard. Toilet. Backyard. Kitchen. Backyard. Living room, but not for long. Backyard. Toilet. Backyard. Living room. Backyard. Backyard. Backyard. Backyard. Brrrrraaacccckkkkyyyarrrrddd….

By then I couldn’t stop shivering. It was too fucking cold.

I wanted to stay longer but fuck, I didn’t want to die from hypothermia.

So around 3:30am, I went around and bid goodbye, thanked the host for the very nice party that I sort-of gatecrashed and walked home.

Home was a ten minutes walk. I needed to get there fast. Luckily for me, there was no wind. If that night was windy, I don’t think I could have tolerated the chill factor any longer.

I walked briskly, trying to increase my core temperature and at the same time cursing myself for not dressing warmer in case of cold weather. The place where the house party was located was in a very quiet area. Although it was near the main road, Broadway Road; and in a relatively ‘safe’ place, I didn’t want to take my chances, not especially at 3:30am in the morning in a desolated place.

So I kept my sights on Broadway Road and walked at a fast pace. All was well, until I came across the Three Drunk Guys:

Loner Drunk Guy stayed out of the situation most of the time. So we’ll focus on these two above.

They were heading in the opposite direction. Probably to the bar further down the road where I bought the beers. Or they were probably heading home. Who knew?

As they were walking, they saw me, stopped and started shouting at me. For some fucked reason (maybe it was because I was inebriated too), I stopped and stared at them.

It was kinda like a Mexican standoff. The three of them standing opposite me, separated by a road and the four of us illuminated by the street lamps.

Then they started walking over to me.

I still stood my ground. I could have ran, Broadway Road was only about 200 metres away. But I didn’t run and I still don’t know why.

Loner Drunk Guy walked away, I guessed he just wanted to be alone. But Throughly Inebriated Guy and Drunk Guy 1 continued heading towards my direction. As I stood there calmly watching them, I raised my right index and middle finger to my lips, smoking on an imaginary cigarette. They didn’t get my hint.

When they were within hearing range, I calmly and very politely asked them:

Me: “Would you like some cigarettes?”

The fact that a Chinese guy, alone in a dark, quiet street in the dead of the night so calmly and politely asked them whether they would like to have some of his fine cigarettes confused them. Combined with the fact that they were both drunk, both of them floundered, unsure of what to do.

I repeated myself:

Me: “Mates, do you want some cigarettes?”

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Ssghd ljs ssswhat?”

Drunk Guy 1: “Cigarettes? Sure mate!”

I fished out the cigarette pack from my jeans and took two cigarettes out. I gave one first to Throughly Inebriated Guy because he looked and moved around in a more aggressive manner. Drunk Guy 1 was much more friendly after the thought of scoring free cigarettes.

While I was handing out the cigarettes, I spoke to them in a very matter-of-fact manner. I told them that my cigarettes were different. It is clove cigarettes from Indonesia. It tastes sweet, mild and different from other cigarettes and that they should give it a try because if they don’t, they will be missing out on something.

Throughly Inebriated Guy looked confused, and sniffed at the cigarette. He played with it for a while before handing me back the cigarette,

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Nah…. I don’t want this…..”

Me: “You sure? It tastes good. You should try it.”

Througly Inebriated Guy: “Nah… man…..”

Me: “All right, then.”

Meanwhile, Drunk Guy 1 had already lit up the cigarette and was savouring the flavour like some cigarette connoisseur.

Drunk Guy 1: “Man… it tastes really good. It’s really mild. Man, it’s really good.”

I smiled at him and lit a cigarette for myself. By then Throughly Inebriated Guy was itching to try it. I could see the look of hesitation on his face.

Drunk Guy 1 motioned to his friend:

Drunk Guy 1: “Man, you should really try it.”

Me: “Yeah, give it a try, dude.”

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Ok, can I have one?”

I gave one cigarette and lit it for Throughly Inebriated Guy. He took a puff and a look of realization hit him.

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Man, this is some good shit.”

At this point, I felt like a drug dealer. Like, I had these two in my control and I felt, well, like a drug dealer. Powerful, you know. The three of us stood under the street light and smoked in silence for some moments. Actually, they smoked while I was trying to light my cigarette again and again and again. It just so happened that I picked a defective cigarette. Throughly Inebriated Guy decided to break the silence.

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “So where are you from?”

Me: “Singapore.”

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Japan?”

Me: “No, Sing-A-pore.”

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “What? Where? Japan?”

Me: “No, SING-A-PORE.”

At this point, Drunk Guy 1 interrupted the conversation.

Drunk Guy 1: “Oh, Singapore. Man, he’s from Singapore. Its a great place.”

I wasn’t sure if Drunk Guy 1 actually been to Singapore but who was I to argue? So I just grinned at him and agreed with his statement.

Throughly Inebriated Guy was excited to hear that I was from Singapore so he came up to me and gave me his fist to pound on it:

A round of fist pounding took place.

I turned my attention to Throughly Inebriated Drunk Guy:

Me: “So, where are you from?”

Throughly Inebriated Drunk Guy: “(Some incoherent sentence)”

Me: “What, America?”

Throughly Inebriated Drunk Guy: “No, (another string of incoherent sentence)”

Me: “America?”

Drunk Guy 1 had to interrupt again:

Drunk Guy 1: “No, MARRICKVILLE.”

At that time, I could not remember where the fuck was Marrickville. It was probably some suburb outside Sydney. So I just went “ahhh….” and nodded.

Loner Drunk Guy decided to join us. He came out from the shadows where he had been waiting and stepped under the glare of the street lights. Throughly Inebriated Guy saw him and began excitedly telling him about the wonders of my clove cigarettes. Loner Drunk Guy stared at me stoically, there was no expression on his face. He continued staring at me while I grew more and more uncomfortable.

Just as I was about to slowly back off, Loner Drunk Guy raised his right arm towards me and nodded.

Oh.

Another round of fist pounding took place again.

Loner Drunk Guy asserted that I was okay and disappeared back into the shadows after taking a few puffs of clove cigarette. Remember how I said I was heading home because I was fucking cold? Well, I was visibly shivering by now and Throughly Inebriated Guy and Drunk Guy 1 were oblivious to my condition.

So I decided to state the obvious:

Me: “Hey mates, it’s cold and late. I need to head home now. Enjoy your night.”

Throughly Inebriated Guy and Drunk Guy 1 nodded and agreed with me. We did another round of fist pounding. What the fuck.

Then, Throughly Inebriated Guy turned to me and asked me for directions to Central Station. He pointed down the road to the direction where he, Drunk Guy 1 and Loner Drunk Guy was heading.

Me: “No man, that’s the wrong direction, its the other way,” I pointed to my left and Drunk Guy 1 agreed with me.

At this point, I think I had a memory blackout because I can’t remember what the fuck happened. I remembered talking to Drunk Guy 1 but I can’t remember what the conversation was about. But I remembered Throughly Inebriated Guy doing this:

He kneeled down and adjusted the seams of my jeans so that they didn’t go below my shoes and dragged on the floor. Problem was, the seams of my jeans were already above my shoes. Throughly Inebriated Guy just wanted to make it neater. After he adjusted the seams to his satisfaction, he stood up and we all did this:

Yet another round of fist pounding.

By then, I was shaking violently from the cold. Throughly Inebriated Guy mistook my trembling for fear so he came up to me, put his arm around my neck and said:

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Hey, you see tha guy over there?” There was a man walking towards our direction.

Me: “Yeah.”

Thoroughly Inebriated Guy: “Well, if he comes up and attack you, you just need to kick the shit out of him.”

Throughly Inebriated Guy stepped away from me and did some shadowboxing in front of me.

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “Like that, got it?”

I nodded.

Throughly Inebriated Guy: “All right, mate. See you, man.

Me: “Yeah, see you too, dude.”

Then we did this:

I waved goodbye to Drunk Guy 1 and Loner Drunk Guy and walked briskly towards Broadway Road. I tried lighting the defective cigarette that was in my hand the whole time but it was useless so I threw it against a wall. As I neared Broadway Road, the man that Throughly Inebriated Guy pointed out to me passed by. He looked completely sober and did not seemed threatening. In fact, we both seemed slightly embarrassed for some reason and kept our heads down.

Luckily he didn’t ask me to pound fist. If he did, I would probably pound his face.

I managed to reach home without any futher interruptions, although I nearly froze from the chill and crawled into bed with pure ecstasy

Nine hours later, I woke up with NO FEVER! NO FLU! NO PNEUMONIA. I wasn’t going to die. Damn, I am very, very lucky this time. Next time, I’ll bundle myself with my thick trench coat. But for now, pound it, Bro:

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The Pixies was an influential band during the 90s. Although they didn’t achieved mainstream success, they were very influential on bands like Nirvana.

I first heard this song when watching the film Zack and Miri Makes a Porno. I love the vocals and the lyrics of the song. It has some very compelling story-telling in it. It’s very hard to describe, just listen to it, very hypnotizing.

Pound it, Bro and Sis.

Does This Makes Me an Art Critic?

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Zareth

I finished my last exam paper on Tuesday. It was a Philosophy paper and surprisingly, it was not that difficult as I thought it would be.

So this semester is sort of done for me.

Bring on the alcohol!

Since I was bored, I decided to draw another random painting and this time, add my own criticism! Who says one semester of Art History does not pay off?

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A Self Portrait… of Myself.

Dimensions: 800 x 600

Multimedia Art

Zareth Lim

This painting is developed in the style of Zarethism, a fusion blend of Neo-Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art using the medium of Multimedia and Graphic Designing (i.e. MS Paint).

The central figure in a Christ-like position alludes to the persecution of today’s youth while the lack of colour within the figure’s body points to the lack of identity and belonging.

At the same time, the smiling Pacman on the figure’s T-shirt is a representative on the entrenchment of pop culture in today’s youth’s mindset.

The lines of the painting is broken up by two cartoon characters on the left and right and by the floating texts. These broken lines serves as a discordant effect, disrupting the unity of the painting and serving as a metaphor for the mindless hivemind exhibited by the Baby Boomers and Generation X, Y and Z.

The use of bright colours has two uses: it brings out the stark contrast of the white background, creating a lively but yet empty atmosphere and the bright, shocking colours refers to the prevalent shock culture used by today’s media and youth.

As a whole, this painting serves as a metaphor for the challenges faced by the current generation: identity and belonging in an ever-changing world.

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I have too much time on my hands.

Going to practice my skateboarding now.

Here’s some uplifting song after the depression criticism of my own painting:

Now go do something productive with your life, you mindless, hiveminded youth.

Mee Goreng Massacre

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Zareth

I have a Geopolitics exam tomorrow.

CAN’T. CONCENTRATE. CANNOT. STUDY.

FML.

So I decided to take a break and draw this picture for you. This picture explains my current plight. I have been eating instant mee goreng (fried noodles) for the past two weeks EVERYDAY, partly because I am trying to cut costs (IMMA POOR STUDENT) and partly because it’s exam period and I can’t be fucked to cooked.

During the two weeks of eating instant mee goreng for dinner (and sometimes lunch too), I feel like I’ve been killing innocent strands of noodle after noodle.

I’m the cool pacman with awesome hair, eyes and teeth.

Exquisite Cadaver 2010

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Zareth

I took part in USyd’s Writers’ Society’s Exquisite Cadaver this semester.

Phew, that’s a lot of apostrophes in the first sentence.

What is a Cadaver? Well, first, it’s not a dead body and there’s no writer conducting an autopsy on a body. What a cadaver means in this context is basically a story where each writer contribute their own part. What happens is that the editor starts out with the beginning of the story and the next week another writer will contribute his/her part and the following week another writer contribute and so on. There are some ground rules, i.e. continuation of plot and characters mentioned must be in character. Of course, new characters can be introduced and new sub-plots can be developed etc…

So basically what you get is a story but with a mish-mash of different writing styles. Kinda like a real cadaver. Imagine the monster in Frankenstein. Its body parts came from different people, but essentially it was a functional, whole body and all hell broke loose when the scientist Frankenstein brought it to life. So that’s our cadaver, except for the all hell breaking lose part.

As for the word Exquisite, the editor decided to stick it at the front. It was the editor’s decision. So essentially the whole thing means Beautiful Corpse. Yeah…..

Anyway, I took part in the cadaver and soon it was my turn. By then, about nine writers (including the ed.) had written for the story, so just imagine the amount of pages I have to read just to get a sense of the plot, characters and situation development. And all this took place when I had to study for my Psych exam. My housemates thought I was mad when I still went ahead and wrote for the story. But a writer’s got to do what a writer’s got to do.

The story developed pretty coherently, given that nine writers contributed. However, when I got to the part where the last writer left off, I was stumped. For two reasons:

1) The last writer wrote a sort-of sex scene. Yet, no sex happened. Just lots of making out and dry humping.

2) Worse of all, the last paragraph ended: “She did none of these things.”

I stared at my laptop, wondering how the hell to continue. Should I just write the sex scene? But yet from the previous entry left by the last writer, the character, Rachel, did not want or, to put it more bluntly, was not that keen to have sex with the other character, Peter.

Hmm. So sex scene was out. I thought of writing about rape where Peter forced himself onto Rachel after she gave him blue balls. No, that would be tough to write. Then I thought about writing a scene where Rachel kicked Peter in his balls and kicked him out of her apartment, leaving him with painful, blue balls (yewch). That would be doable but it would be boring and predictable for the plot. And what the hell am I going to write after Rachel does that? Say that she went back to bed and think long and hard about the characteristics of men? I’m a guy and frankly, I’m not a good writer yet and I don’t know what women think about men. Generally.

Then I hit on a brainwave. Sure, it was an easy way out but it was sure better than writing some lame, half-assed paragraphs. The brainwave was to return the story back to the original character, the sort-of protagonist, Felix, and introduce a new character called Monet.

I managed to finish my part within 3 hours and email it to the editor. So in this post, I like to present to you, my part of the story. I’ll like to post the whole story but unfortunately it’s still under progress and its supposed to be published in the Writers’ Society’s literary journal first. So you just have to read my part for now. I’ll put up the whole story once it is done and published.

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“I had this really weird dream. I dreamt that I was a prince, walking up this really tall tower, really, really tall. Probably taller than the Burj Khalifa. Anyway, I managed to walk up all the way to the top of the tower where there was a chamber.”

Felix leaned against a tree trunk and sipped iced lemon tea from the plastic bottle in his right hand. He needed alcohol but the park where they were currently taking refuge was an alcohol-free zone. Next to Felix was Monet who was sprawled on his stomach, eyeing the redhead in front of them.

“So I went into the chamber, the door wasn’t locked,” Monet continued his story, “in the chamber was this hot chick lying on a bed in the middle of the room. She was encased in some sort of glass bubble, and the only way to get to her was to crawl through this tunnel at the bottom of the bubble.”

Felix nodded absently. He fixed his gaze on the pigeons as they feasted on the breadcrumbs handed out to them by an old woman.

“I crawled through the tunnel and got into the bubble. She was beautiful, very beautiful. She woke up when she heard me entering the bubble. Her eyes, I fell in love with her eyes. I can’t remember the colour but I remembered that they were so, so, what’s that word when you fall into a trance?”

“Hypnotizing,” Felix said.

“Yeah, that’s it. Hypnotizing. So the chick got up to me and gave me a kiss. It wasn’t really a kiss, more like a brush on the lips. I still remember that kiss even after I woke up. But after the kiss, she fell down dead.”

Felix stared at the pigeons. For once, he wished he were a pigeon too. Free food, free lodging, the freedom to take a shit and piss anywhere and anytime and relationships in pigeon world were probably a lot less complicated too. Life as a pigeon was free and easy. Damn it, he wanted to be one.

“Oi, Felix, are you paying attention? Stop staring into space. Have you been listening to me?”

“Yeah, I am. You’re talking about this chick who was trapped in some bubble at the top of a tower and she fell down dead after making out with you. So what’s the point, Monet?”

“There’s no fucking point. You asked me to tell you a story to distract you from your current situation and obviously it’s not working.”

Monet pushed himself off the ground and stretched. He reached into his pocket and pull out a packet of clove cigarettes, fished one out and lit it. As he inhaled and blew out the sweet-smelling smoke, he walked around the tree, picking up his jacket, bag and hat that were scattered on the grass.

Felix remained oblivious to Monet and took another sip from the bottle. The redhead wiggled and rolled over, this time sunning her back.

“She’s pretty hot,” Monet said.

Felix shrugged.

“Hey Felix, listen. You’ve been depressed and moaning about this for five fucking days. Seriously, get over it.”

Felix stared ahead. When he first heard about it, he didn’t want to believe it was true. But the next few days, he felt more and more depressed as he thought about it.

“Yeah, I’m trying to.”

“Doesn’t seems like it. Look, if Rachel fucked Peter, she fucked Peter. End of the story. So stop being depressed about something you can’t control. This thing is really fucking getting on my nerves.”

“Yeah, but I really like her.”

Monet squatted down in front of Felix. A small, squiggly line of smoke from Monet’s hand curled and wound it’s way up to his face before dispersing in the air. Felix shifted uncomfortably, both from the smoke and the sudden invasion of his personal space.

“So you like her. Okay, fine. But think about this. Rachel is perfectly normal, rational, okay probably slightly irrational but all of us are anyway, and she is human. So she had sex with someone, she’s just a normal human with a normal sexual appetite. What makes you think, that if, and that’s an if since you’re still in a fucked state, that if you get together with her, she hasn’t fucked some other guys before you?”

“Well, she’s just so reserved, I guess. I don’t even think it was possible of her having sex.”

“So,” Monet raised an eyebrow and sucked on his cigarette, “you prefer virgins?”

“No,” Felix sighed, “look, the whole point is not about Rachel having sex. The whole goddamn point is about Rachel having sex with Peter. I know Peter. You know Peter, and she having sex with Peter, it just complicates stuffs.”

“True,” Monet slowly rocked himself on the balls of his feet, “but knowing Peter, it’s probably just a bunch of shit with exaggeration. And even if it was true, just move on, there’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, there’re other girls out there.”

“But…”

“But what? But what? You’ve been thinking about this all the time and has it changed anything? No. So stop fucking thinking about it. Either you do something about it, or you move on. Look, I’m late for work. Just stop thinking about this, go home, and get a beer and some sleep.”

Monet stood up and took a long drag from his cigarette before walking over to a nearby trashcan and extinguishing the butt. As he cut across the grass to reach the paved walkway, Felix called out to him.

“Hey, what’s the tall tower you were talking about? The one with the weird name?”

“The Burj Khalifa?” Monet asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Where’s that?”

“It’s in Dubai. It’ll be the tallest building in the world once they finish building it. Why?”

“Nothing, just curious. I thought I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

“Don’t ever think of jumping off that building. It’s going to be the most expensive suicide, if you can even afford a plane ticket to Dubai in the first place.”

Felix flipped the finger at Monet.

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Yep, so that’s the part I wrote. Yes, I know I screwed the next writer. In my part, I did not give a clear mention whether Rachel had sex with Peter. It is still rumoured and frankly, even as a writer, I have no idea too. Did Rachel fucked Peter? I don’t know, ask the next five writers. Hopefully, they’ll manage to bring this story to a climax and resolution, otherwise, this story is destined to be some:

“… postmodernist no-beginning, no-ending, all-middle piece” (Words of the ed.)

So yeah, fingers crossed!

On a side note, I’ve just finished my Psychology paper today. I better damn well pass this. The exam consists 65% of the total course. Fucking exams. Still have two more papers to go.

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New MVs. I’m currently in love with this talented, Irish singer called Lisa Hannigan. The first song is “Lille” while the second is “I Don’t Know”.