I promised myself that tonight, I would kick my habit of sleeping late. I wouldn’t waste time looking at bullshit on Youtube, I wouldn’t download any porn or look for any other stupid distractions as I have to get up early tomorrow to pack for Brighton. In the midst of all this stress, severe bouts of cabin fever and midlife crisis depression I can’t even cry myself to sleep! So the stage was set, the bed made and I was ready to get (at least to) sleep. But, then I had some sudden urge to track down a song I heard ages ago on a Youtube video (I guess I was wasting time looking at bullshit on Youtube in the end afterall).

The video was by a charming young Chinese creature – who wasn’t even a dragon or ninja, but a normal girl – who was just having fun with her sister in a park. Even though this sounds like the setup for some pretty intense hentai or something, it was INNOCENT I TELL YOU. Way too innocent! It was pretty beautiful with the two just walking through the grass and exploring what’s beyond the trees like we used to do when we were kids… well, I still do it to this day, most notably for around 3 hours in India. The video had a Chinese melody in the background which just suited the video perfectly, capturing a sense of peace, soul and innocence that I LOVED.

I would find myself humming the tune sometimes over the last year, but haven’t bothered to check the video. A while ago I went to check and found that the girl had deleted all her videos! I sent her a message on Youtube asking the name of the song, but no luck in a reply. I kind of remembered the title, but that didn’t help much with a foreign singer and probably mistranslated song title. The lyrics were beyond me, so no searching would help… I guess the melody would just have to loop in my head as I hummed the song with no name or words.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PROCRASTINATION.
I sat in bed, ready to sleep tonight because important things must happen tomorrow. But hey, I’m Kenny. Fuck important shit! I must have this song, and I must have it now. This is the internet, where all your wildest dreams come true! Encyclopedias and knowledge at your fingertips! Television on demand! Foreign brides wed against their will!

I searched the girl’s username and a few keywords and found the description of one video logged on another site. It wasn’t the one I wanted, but then in a moment of either great rememberance or disturbing stalker power, I recalled her sister’s name and tapped it in. YES! The video’s description shows up with the title of the song and singer:
“Love Apple” by Joey Yung.

I scoured the whole of Youtube and Torrent websites but couldn’t find anything. Her discography on Wikipedia gave no results of such a song either, and our good friend Google just brought up loads of crap about Macs and Ipods. The fruit is at the mercy of bloody MP3 players, it seems. I tried listening to every one of Joey’s songs on Youtube but none of them rang familiar and as I was about to give up, one more Google search gave a result! In her album “Gorgeous Show” was “Love Apple!” Yes! At last! Clicking it gave me a preview which I quickly recognised and closed as I wanted to listen to the full version, but Itunes prompted me to pay for it. Fuck that shit, this is the Internet, bitch! I don’t pay for nothing!

But no search results for MP3s came up for Gorgeous Show or the song even if I searched in that strange Chinese writing that looks like gates and pencils. I was going to comment that I’m not sure how famous Joey Yung is, but Wikipedia tells me that she’s one “premier Cantonese singers in the world.” Well, why is it so hard to steal her stuff, then?! I suppose being able to read and write in the language would probably help here, but my simpleness got the better of me here. Even though I waste time for a living and I should actually have a master’s degree be giving lectures on it, I wasn’t going to let all this internet searching go to waste. I was going to have to buy it.

And I did!
Damn, I haven’t paid for music in YEARS. I think the last time I did buy a CD was around 1995 I think, either Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” or Simply Red’s “Fairground”. I have a hard drive with more music than I know what to do with which I collected from a few friends but my songlist is still pretty limited. I think my collection amounts to 1GB so I wouldn’t know what to do with one of those Ipods which contain every single song known to man, ever. Except those sung by Joey Yung of course, which are so hard to get your hands on you have no choice but to spend hours searching for and converting to MP3.

But you know what? It feels kind of good! It was only like, 79p for a really beautiful song which for all I know, could be about the most awful and disgusting thing in the world but I’m completely oblivious as I have no idea what Miss Yung is singing about. I am quite sure it’s lovely, though! Out of all the things I waste time and money on, I’d say this has been such a worthy purchase. It’s got me writing again, it’s got me at peace with my current situation… I could sit here… I HAVE sat here for hours just listening to her breathing out the most soothing melody in a while,

I’ve never thought about how some musicians provide us with this artform, these feelings and share their gift and how amazing that is. Just neglecting all that and downloading and in turn, stealing their time, effort and talent seems like like a crime. Well, I guess in the eyes of the law, it is. Stealing a great painting wouldn’t go down well, it’s a shame that music is so easy to copy and steal that it’s become the norm now. I really do think that they don’t get what they deserve. Having said that, even with all this piracy these people are stupidly wealthy anyway and I’m sure all the funds go to greedy corporations and record labels anyway. But now, I’m thinking I’ll cut back on all the downloading I do, despite only adding one song to my music collection every 3 months. Today’s music industry is pretty bad, I think with talentless, idiots so on the rare occasion that I feel I should, I’ll definitely be paying. It’s totally worth it, despite being a broke student.

I’d like to think that by buying this song, Joey Yung just got £1 in her pocket and saw that she has a fan in London listening to, enjoying and being inspired by her voice and feels good about that.
But in reality she doesn’t give a damn because she’s too busy rolling around in her swimming pool filled with money from the millions of fans worldwide.

Either way, it still feels and sounds good to me

I seem to be having my midlife crisis right now. The stress is pretty damn bad, but what’s even worse is that apparently, I’m only going to live for another 22 years. 44 was never my lucky number.

Oh boy, the carpet has been pulled from under my overly sized feet. After months of having a room kind of sorted out back in Brighton, I find out 2 weeks ago that the landlordy guy decided to keep the current tenant there. Making me once again, a homeless bastard. After spending over a year without a proper home, you’d think I’d have got used to it, but after spending this month with all my creature comforts in London, it’s a scary thing to have to go back to, especially considering it’s my last year at University and I gots to pick up the pace now!
So for two weeks I’ve spent my eyes glued to this laptop screen to the point where I think they’re bleeding, not eating or sleeping until I’ve got a roof over my head which probably won’t have any hair left on it because I’m constantly pulling it out over the stress.

Right now though, I’m doing an all-nighter. Despite being on holiday. And not having any work to do. Well, not my own, at least.

The girl I tried to chat up and ended up becoming her proof-reader/bitch has returned to England after failing her exams and has been given one more shot at getting into University. I’ve been too busy to get in touch or help her out on a count of becoming a depressed and nervous wreck, but now here I am. One day before her deadline, at 2AM going over her bloody essays. I’m so tired due to being sleep deprived and all the stress of finding somewhere to live by next week, but here I am.

She gets her exam results tomorrow and I’m not sure if she’ll manage to pass… if not, these essays are the last chance to boost up the grade. I’m not even sure if she’s been using me all this time, but I suppose sparing a few hours of sleep so there’s a chance she’ll get into University would be worth it.

Fucking hell, Karma, if you are reading this, give me a frigging break. I need my sleep, I’m homeless and I’m paving the way for a timid Chinese girl into full-time education even though it’s unclear whether she’s cut out for it. Read this and find me a fucking house, you absolute bastard.

Okay, I get the big deal about teeth whitening. I went to LA in December and was dazzled by the smiles of all those people and felt a bit self-conscious about my own smile at times, even though apparently it’s my right as a British person to have bad teeth. So, I bought some teeth whitening strips which I need to start using again and break out of this crappy routine of going to bed late, waking up late and doing nothing all day. I just spent this Summer surrounded by some new friends from California who had the straightest, most blinding smiles I’ve seen for a while. So yeah, I get the appeal of having a nice, white smile.

But seriously?

SERIOUSLY?

I question these people’s marketing intentions. When I saw this ad, it didn’t really make me want to grab my coat, jump out of the window and risk breaking my legs so I could get on my merry way to whiter teeth. It made me grateful that my mother didn’t use me as a guinea pig for some strange experiment to get teeth whiter. Fair enough if it’s a dentist, but a MOM? Mom’s stay home, cook food and wash shit and occasionally cut you if you don’t clean your room. I think this mother needs a day job.

“Smile for the camera, honey! No, smile… that’s not the smile we talked about, honey. You’re not doing it right. Smile. SMILE. Smile now. Don’t make me get the taser, you little fucking piece of shit.”

Opportunity knocks, but it doesn’t beg.

That’s what a friend of mine wrote in her own blog, and only now has the meaning behind those words become quite profound and relevant to me.

The other day, I was shifting through some of my old things, moved from my old room into the shed at the back of the garden along with the rest of the family’s junk. Inside one of the boxes was a CD I backed up all my old files on. As I was such a introvert, geek and socially retarded guy back then (or at least, more so than now) that CD pretty much contained my life from 2003 to 2007. I looked through it all, mainly chat logs and saw how much I’ve changed in those 4 years onwards. The most important thing is developing a sense of awareness and consciousness.

I like to break out of conventional thinking and social boundaries and norms. I like to take myself out of the linear bullshit and autopilot mode most people sink into and drift through life, unaware of all the amazing things happening around them. I’m so into the world around me; I don’t wear gloves because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to feel the cold air in my fingertips. I don’t wear earphones because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to hear the sounds of the city. I don’t wear sunglasses because I’m afraid I won’t see the true colour of the grass and sky, even if the Sun decides to blind me for a moment. I’m afraid to neglect my senses and drift out of the present and forget that it’s the only place I can really feel in, hear in, see in and live in.

To learn in.

Last Summer, I made a lot of friends who were destined to leave the country and I at some point, and when thesmiy did I felt the hurt. Bad. I lost some people who were really important to me because of my stupid decisions which then translated into stupid actions. One of my friends advised me to “never get attached, or you’re going to get hurt.” I ignored him and became driven by emotions to set rights wrong, but it was too late. Once it was all said and done, I started to realise what the ‘lesson’ was, but I didn’t learn anything from it, I didn’t have anything to gain. I had been through it all and it was said and done.

This Summer, I made more friends who were destined to leave the country. Amongst them was a girl… OF COURSE. It’s always a girl, isn’t it? You can go through the worst of the worst, but it never gets any worse when there’s a girl involved. You can lose everything, but when you lose the girl, everything seems to have an exaggerated meaning.

This girl, I hardly knew ye. The one thing that was certain, was that she wasn’t going to stick about forever; 8 weeks at most. There was a time limit, a deadline and what inevitably follows those is an outcome, and something that I had been trying to disassociate myself from. Expectations at the finish line, which make you idealise and hope for something that when a third party is involved, is more often than not, out of your control. She was going to leave, and if I got attached, I was going to get hurt.

But then, that web of emotions is far to big and easy to get stuck in, isn’t it? And then the jaws are sunk in and that venom called love, lust, infatuation, whatever you want to call it, courses through your veins and it’s too late. You’re trapped, you’re hooked and it feels AMAZING. Logic will tell you to flee, though thoughts of her won’t allow you to. Run Kenny, run! You’ve been through this before, it all ends in tears and possibly years of therapy. Quit while you’re ahead!

Through the magic of superficiality, I wanted her, right now. But I was in a far off place, stuck in my head thinking of things that were yet to happen, things that probably wouldn’t happen and things that could go wrong. When I was at work, when I was out with friends, from day to night thoughts of her seemed to plague my mind and even though she was a real person, that’s the only place I allowed her to exist; in my head. And upon every meeting, everytime we spoke it was a different reality than what I had imagined. I neglected what I wanted, I restrained myself, I didn’t pursue her and I didn’t take action.

Yeah, she was attractive. Was there more to her? I let the halo effect kick in and fill in the blanks. I left meetings down to chance, and Lady Luck is a busy woman who hasn’t been on the best of terms with me lately. Fear was sat comfortably on my shoulder, persuading me that the best action would be no action and I believed him. Nothing met up to my expectations, the game-plan that was laid out in the creases and folds of my brain and so, the less I did, the more distance separated us – despite living 3 minutes from one another – and the more I willed myself into believing she was something she was not.

8 weeks flew by, nothing came of it and she took off on a plane to travel around Europe.  Did you learn your lesson?
No! Life goes on, there’s nothing to dwell on here, nothing to mourn over. London awaits me, so off I go to a life more luxurious than the one I led yesterday. Free food, good friends, beautiful women and plenty of all of that. Free from worries, it would be time to move on, I believe.

Or not.
Travelling, it doesn’t turn out to be her thing and so she decided to escape the warmth of Barcelona and return to London and needed a place to stay. I looked out of the window and saw no flying pigs, but now my mind was pretty clear and over the whole “Summer of Love.” I invited her and her friend to stay for 2 nights and now there wouldn’t be a context. I had no expectations anymore, there would be no outcome. I was just going to have a guest over, a friend.

Or not.
Now I had escaped the endless array of crap running through my head, I was finally able to open up to her and enjoy her company and the feeling was mutual. Gone was the awkward tension! We spent two days indulging in the luxuries of public transport, the streets of London and interiors of malls and clothes stores. I carried her bags, had late night chats with her when her friend wasn’t around and for the first time in around two and a half months, I saw that all along, she was an interesting, funny, witty and… wow. How did I miss this? Why did I let myself miss this? What a complete idiot! For lack of a better word, and even though I hate it… I would say I was in ‘love.’

I loved the way she walked in zig zags when she browsed the endless rails of clothes. I loved how her eyes would widen with wonderment at the smallest of things, and I would get lost in how big and colourful they were. I loved how the ends of her hair had been fried by the permanent straightening she had done before she came to England. The way her smile went lop-sided when she explained things. How soft her hair was. How she would panic when I tried to wake her up. How she just seemed to glow when the makeup came off and how she would squeal when I picked her up to check how much heavier she was compared to her luggage and her infectious feminine giggles. The way her mouth dropped open when I teased her, before she “socked” me on the arm. I loved how tall she was, how her hands and feet were a bit too long and her big toe was HUGE. When she spoke softly to her parents over the phone in Cantonese. The way her voice echoed through my ears as I became entranced by her eyes and stunning smile which completely took me as we looked at one another, and our gaze was held for a moment longer than it should have been… when things should have been different.

I never fall for them, but when I do… I fall for them hard.

I loved how perfect she seemed in all her imperfections, and the few short moments we had together. I hated the night’s sky, for it spelt the end of the day when I would leave her and anticipate the next morning when I would get to spend a little while longer with her. And I hated myself, for experiencing this too late. For biding my time, thinking I was being patient but really was just wasting my time and not going for what I wanted, or taking the time to step outside of my head and see her for what she was.

My journals all at some point came to the same ‘revelation’ for a while that I don’t do enough. And now the moment was right, but I still couldn’t bring myself to do anything. Yesterday morning, I escorted her and her friend to the airport, the tension still there.

Last year, I fooled myself into thinking someone was important to me and gave them a shark tooth I wear around my neck, essentially giving a piece of me away, telling them that it meant I would have to come and get it back. A year on, I thought about how I had learnt a little too much a little too late. Around my neck was a new necklace, one that I had struggled to give meaning to; a pair of jigsaw pieces, which fit together. I reluctantly took one of them off and handed it to her. She asked me what it meant, and I suddenly knew, but I didn’t tell her. All I told her was the same thing I said a year ago: “It means I’ll have to come and get it.”

I guess the romantic thing to suggest would be that she was so special to me that she was the missing piece to my puzzle… but no. It’s a symbol, a constant reminder of the lesson that I’ve neglected thus far and now, I have to learn from it. Not only did I lose the girl AGAIN, but a piece of something that kind of represents who I am. Now I’m minus one puzzle piece; it’s across the Atlantic Ocean, probably sitting at the back of her draw now, a meaningless momento.

This Summer has made that lesson apparent, and I’m determined to drill it into my head. Everytime I look down, I’ll see that jigsaw hanging from my neck, incomplete without the missing piece, because I messed up. I can’t say I’m very fond of this piece of jewellery anymore, I really want to replace it, but that’s what I’ve been doing for all these years: brushing my mistakes under the carpet and forgetting about them. Now it seems I’ve cut myself a scar made of silver, a reminder of that mistake and how I deprived myself of making an action that could have led to something better. I’ve told myself before that I would rather regret something I did than something I didn’t do. The philosophy has hung itself around my neck, weighing me down until I can really LEARN from this experience and grow and take action next time rather than stand down and lose, rather than gain.

Yeah, opportunity definitely knocks, but it doesn’t beg.

Everything we want is on the other side of fear and what we do means a hell of a lot more than what we don’t. Action speaks louder than words, and right now all I’ve done is type around 1970 of them. Time to take the bull by its horns and control of life.

I’ll have to wear this thing proudly, I suppose, even though it’s an annoying reminder of my stupidity… but also the good times which I won’t let escape me next time. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see her again, but letting go of her brought her back to me, so I guess despite what I feel, I’ll have to do it again but remember this lesson…  and when I’ve learnt from it, perhaps I’ll see her again and take back what I’ve been missing.

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
Albert Einstein

… but when he does, he falls for them hard.