Odelaid
snapped a picture
Pop goes the champagne. Been opening a lot of them lately. Silly, silly birthday parties this month. Love it.
I'd actually describe myself as a classy scavenger. A man with poise and grace with utmost gentlemanship when he scours the land for free shit.
The other day I attended a close friend's party. He had a large-ass bottle of Moet champagne which had a rather decent amount of leftover. Wandering, wandering hobo, what shall he done?
I poured it into an empty bottle of mineral water. The next day I went to work, painting up a house and organizing stuff while sipping on that smooth ghostly lady the whole. I took a bus back home that night too, gently sipping and savoring the last drops of oh-so-delicious free fine champagne.
I attended another birthday party yesterday, a day after Siddy's homely one. I liked Siddy's one. It's delicious to stare at him the whole time.
So yesterday was a club-fling's one. He's a rather talented illustrator and I admire him for that. Being a rather cute-face didn't hurt. Champagne was popping, red wine a-spilling, all in that little rooftop of Hotel 1929 just behind the local gay club scene.
Great time there. After spending some time with my dad in his newly opened hotel in KL, a boutique hotel called 'Frenz Hotel' (i know. Frenzzzz), I'm starting to get into this whole luxurious hotel fiasco. It's a setting I'm very familiar with, and it finally 'clicked' in my head when I realized that part of that hollow feeling of disconnection to home is because I never felt at home unless within the setting of a hotel. (Backstory: I lived from the age of 4 months till 12 years old in a Holiday Inn in East Malaysia)
I went clubbing after that, seeing how the boy cancelled his plans to come over the night. It's a different kind of high, the combination of champagne, wine and absinthe. God, I LOVE absinthe. Totally raided that bottle. I could only describe that mix of high as uplifting, energetic, and humorous. It's definitely unlike the silly angry downer of whiskey or beer, though gin has been pretty much been a happy puppy with me.
It took a turn though, around 3am that night, when some asswipe started staring at our table and hell was about to break loose. Dude, it's a gay club. We bitch in gay clubs. Not fistfight.
It's like clockwork, clubbing. The moment it hits around 3am, I noticed our group separating. Not in way that couples go off together to their little corner to flirtatiously stroke each other's gonads on the dancefloor. No. More like half a couple with us, and the other half is missing, and a pissed off face as cherry on top. Obviously, it's largely because of alcohol.
It's usually around this time that either I hook up or walk out. Since I can't be bothered with hooking up seeing how the majority of the population of that club I've pretty much laid with before (okay, I'm lying on that one), I walked out of the club. AGAIN.
The day's uplift couldn't much help the downer of that night, on top of that I was getting ripped off by the previous production on the basis of legal technicalities. It also happened to be the eve of the SC marathon so they had these ridiculous roadblocks set up, splitting roads into three, and closing entire roads on the other. Abbreviated, down, and pretty damn annoyed, I thought, 'Fuck it. I'll walk home. Goddamn communists.'
I ended up walking through a new hotel, The Fullerton Bay, unknowingly. The staff were around, giving me a glance and carrying on with their work. There was absolutely NO SIGHT of guests or passersby there. I can't even tell if the hotel was open or not.
I walked by another popular straight club and saw whatever I saw that I didn't ever want to see or be associated with anymore in life; screaming drunken girls, vomiting men, fighting, arguing, passed out ladies and sad lonely souls walking out without a hook up. Some of them have put in their entire hopes into that one night, probably thinking the same thing I've thought of sometimes - 'Today I will X in celebration of X.' only to walk away with naught in their hands.
I walked further down and took off my shirt once I reached out of the city area and up Nicoll Highway. It was a great chilly night, with sporadic traffic. I wandered off in the middle of the road, kicking rocks and generally taking a deep breath. Hand in my pocket, I felt so deeply disappointed.
Disappointed because no longer do I find much fun in filmmaking, after this experience with the previous production. I understand perfectly that business, is business, but I simply cannot fathom the fact that technicality gets in the way of common sense and human empathy. I do not like the system employed by the production. It is cold, uninspiring, uncreative, and the looming factor here is less on whether it'll add value to the visual or production of the product (yes, product), but more on whether or not so-and-so would be happy with the financial burden of it. There is absolutely little respect for another's profession. Regimental, and more of a 'do as i say, not as your expertise tells you to'.
Though, of course, much of what I've mentioned does not warrant its blanket generalization of the industry, but I can safely say that much of it is like that. At least, the ones that make money. It is disgusting.
I finally got back home. And decided I'm pretty much settled on receiving whatever measly stupid sum they want to give me. I'm done with them. As much as I would like to fight them tooth and nail on the basis of logic and common sense, it is not worth the effort. I do not intend to satisfy the dangly noodly bits of the Chinese market and the whole rara of glitz and glamor and general circlejerking. I am not fazed by their spouting of the local TV corporation's name in my face.
Consider my involvement with any local chain tied to the TV industry done. I find it absolutely bland and desaturated by old coots.
