who’d have thunk it?

It’s funny what our first thoughts are in tragedy.

The cameras! Don’t let the cameras fall out of our boat! — these were mine some weeks ago, halfway across the world in the middle of a river where our perahu had stalled after hitting a bunch of rocks.

About ten thousand bucks worth of equipment, threatening to tip out of our skinny wooden perahu. Six in the morning, it’s pouring, and we’re in the middle of the Skrang river in Western Borneo.

We’re not even halfway through our journey.

While raincoats may make sense elsewhere, in this part of the world, on this morning — they’re just hapless sheets of yellow plastic breaking the visual monotony of mist and forest. I turn around to the girl behind me; she’s grinning and shovelling water out of the boat. I want to high-five her but she’s too far away.

Our two boatmen, still barely sober, have climbed out and by now are standing waist deep in the river. In between shouting at each other in Iban, they’re trying to force the perahu (all ten-feet-long, two-feet-wide of it) off the rocks and back into the Skrang’s downstream current.

It’s one of those moments where you stop and think: isn’t life supposed to be somewhere else?

The seven days before hadn’t been any less of a gamble. Like any good idea, this one began with one of those mindless late night chats. I’d told the Asia-lover about the Gawai festival in Sarawak. Spirit worship, paganism, headhunters, tattoos. A part of my country I’d never been to; the part of my country she hadn’t seen since she was six and on a bumpy bus ride, trying to keep her tooth from falling out.

(We had to go, of course).

And we did. We planned a trip that had no way of working out. Where we were going, who we’d meet, and what any of it would be about were imaginary details we’d sorted out in our heads.

Reality, as it happened, took to the plans we never really made. Two hours by plane, four by road, and three down the Skrang river. Lazy mornings that began at 8AM with a plate of rice and a shot of (warm) home-brewed alcohol. Hot afternoons where we drank some more, and got talked into running races with the village boys (crushing loss there). Nights in a longhouse with 27 other families, with baths in the river and animal slaughters in between.

When the week was up, I’d just about gotten used to the idea of barmy booze and public nudity. That I would go back to this other soulless, rush-hour existence suddenly seemed a terribly depressing prospect. The placid ride down the Skrang that morning wouldn’t convince me otherwise.

Until we hit those rocks. Until I found myself clenching the sides of the perahu so hard that my knuckles turned white. Until we finally reached the riverbank in one piece, where I lit a victory cigarette and handed it to the laughing boatman, who took a long, relieved drag while the soggy stick of nicotine trembled violently between his fingers.

Some days life is elsewhere. That quiet, throbbing morning on the Skrang, it was right there, and then.

Disclaimer: only if you’re a precious child of the eighties, because she went: “Who’s Rick Astley?”

(source of images unknown)

Weddings make you think of one’s happiness; the way funerals remind you of one’s mortality, someone recently told me.

Last Saturday I found myself chanting this over and over again in my head.
“Perfect beach wedding, BROTHER’S HAPPINESS”.
“35°C weather, MY MORTALITY”.

Happiness, mortality, happiness, mortality.

I couldn’t have wished for a better day though. My brother and Jan got married over the weekend, in what was at once the most intimate and the loudest party-like-it’s-1969 beach wedding.

Rose petals lining the entire path to the dock where they exchanged vows. The couple doing the Robot at their first dance. The pastor praying a solemn blessing for the couple. Derek, our six-year old ring bearer, getting so excited that he clapped the cushion hard enough to send the wedding rings flying across the dock. White linen, low lights, and wine flowing steadily. The band playing “(I can’t get no) Satisfactionnn”, and half of us yelling along to the chorus.

I was tasked to manage the entire affair. Out of love, loyalty and a complete lack of self-awareness I agreed to do it. This produced several moments of discovery:

Multilingual angst. I can yell in three different languages. I mouth off in English. My spoken Malay, usually reserved for the gentle nasi lemak mak ciks, comes flying at the AV guys who are taking too long with the microphones. My Cantonese is rapid-fire, except that I’m not sure if I just told the banquet manager to move the wedding cake, or to give his pet Chihuahua a bath.

Event management is not my thing. “Bring the groom’s pants to Room 113″, “Arrange the unity candles for the ceremony”, “People from table Nine are sitting at table Eleven. Tell us what to do!”. I can barely get by myself, let alone plan for 200 family and friends to live through an evening of festivities. A borrowed dress, bare feet, and me running around hoping no one notices I have no idea what I’m doing.

All mush. Sunset. I watch my brother standing on the dock over the lake. Beaming, while his bride walks down the aisle to Gustavo Santaolalla’s The Wings. Beneath my sunnies, eyeliner runs down my cheeks. I stand up to make a toast at some point during dinner. Not one minute into it my voice is quivering; I want to say clever witty things about marriage. But the speech that I never wrote down now comes out as a rambling tribute to one of my best friends in the world and his lucky, beautiful wife.

Happiness. Mortality. Happiness. Mortality.

Happiness.

AN OPEN LETTER TO ORANGE
(as in the telecommunications company)

Dear Orange Folks,

I think you’re doing a good job. I do, however, have certain strong feelings about a particular product of yours.

One of your corporate services, BEW (Business Everywhere) is a big part of my working life due to the nature of my job. It lets me dial in to my company’s private servers from wherever I am in the world, as long as there is an internet connection present.

Now that is all good. (And kudos to the guys who worked on the last upgrade — connections are more stable these days. Chest bumps all round!)

Where was I. Oh yes. While I have few complaints about your services, I must say the first eight seconds of any dial-in process quite bothers me. You see, this is the image that greets me each time:

*silent scream*

Now what is odd about this picture?

For starters, those photographer-types will tell you that your focus is all off, and uh, things like depth perception are wonky. But. As a general know-nothing plebian, I have issues with the woman in the picture. I speak for myself and for several colleagues, as well as (possibly) the other thousands of silent suffering BEW users all over the world.

Surrealism bites! Who is this strange woman in strange corduroy trousers and a green knitted top? In what looks like a field of dying weeds? I mean:

• Those trousers are terribly ill-fitting.

• That sweater looks like some random garment the stylist threw at her right before the photographer went “Okay, now look into the camera and pretend like you aren’t worried about rattlesnakes crawling up your roomy pantlegs!”
• And what about that hair? It doesn’t say ‘windswept’. ‘Frazzled as all hell’ is the message that comes through.

What is she thinking? Who is that phantom man standing in the background? And why are they in a random field looking like they’re waiting for the mothership to return?

I ask myself these difficult questions each time I use your BEW service. Those eight seconds or so distress me in a manner that I cannot explain, and I think I may not be alone.

When people operate remotely and have to dial in to work, let’s safely assume that they prefer their first visual encounter not be one like this. I’m not talking Man Ray surrealism here, this is plain disturbing randomness.

Now I cannot speak for anyone as to what that ideal visual should be (because in my head, I would probably say, juicy cheeseburger) but this just does not work.

I hope you will be struck by the gravity of this issue, and how it affects the user experience. Let’s have some change we can believe in, as Senator Obama would say.

Yours in hope,
L.

3 AM, no more wine at our place, and my friend Francesco’s sudden desire to speak in a language he did not know, to a girl that did not exist.

We completed ‘filming’ fifteen minutes before I had to get on a conference call to KL.

I’m not sure how amusing this is to someone who’s not familiar with the Malay language (or KL landmarks). Click here to watch the outtakes instead.

PS. I love the speeds on my shiny new macbook. HELLO, MINDLESS VIDEO-EDITING!