Me sitting in a bus coming down from a mountain in Chiang Rai.

It costs only 25 baht to get down from halfway down the mountain to Chiang Rai city, but for a city kid like me, the sights and experience of being in that relic is, in the words of the Mastercard Visa ad, priceless.

The bus

You really can't take the public transport here for granted. Miss one, you can go back for a meal, take a nap, hang out a bit, then come back out for the next bus. One day will probably go by just like that for the average citizen.

The drivers are a friendly lot though. They would slow down at villages and sound their horn to pick up the people. They would wait patiently for them to come to the bus and to secure their luggage before moving off. The passengers take care of one another, too. It took no campaigns, no reminders stuck on the insides of the bus. They give up seats to those who need them, like pregnant women, or women carrying young children. Some passengers just hung at the tail end of the bus, and went the whole way like that. Compare that to our 'educated' lot.

The scenery

Moving along the sides of mountains, what else should one expect besides other mountains? Coming from a cramp city like Singapore, however, the vastness and scale of the land just reorientates the mind to the actual enormity of Planet Earth, though... Ok, so this isn't Grand Canyon, but it was great to able to see a few kilometers ahead without any concrete jarring your view. The sky extended longer into the horizon, and the spirit gets lifted that much higher. Through the simplicity of the scenes of life that enters through your eyes, life itself takes on a somewhat unadultered quality of what it was originally meant to be. That there is beauty in the random orderliness of unengineered mountains and greenery.

And that was only bus ride...

Itsuka douyobi-ban ni naru

JLPT stands for:

a. Japanese Language Proficiency Test

b. Japanese Love Powerful Testicles

c. Japanese Lay-people Pay Taxes

d. Japanese Ladies Parade Tartily

I signed up for JLPT 3 to be taken in December this year, and at that instant my registration cash met the hands of the registration officer's, I knew I have to try my best to chew down the part that was too big for my bite, but which I went on to chew anyway.

A little Googling for some JLPT past papers revealed to me the enormity of the challenge, of audaciously taking on a test of my profiency of a language I had barely learned for a little over a year, passing with only walking monochromes every time a test comes my way. A further research in the library shows how I have underestimated the depth of the history, quirks and cultural disparities of the language from the ones I already know (English and Chinese). That goes for any language I could've chosen, I guess.

So, if I emerge unscathed from the test, what would I have actually proven?

a. That, as in Don Henley's song "Heart of the Matter", "the more I know, the less I understand..."?

b. I can take a really big bite that outsizes my mouth and chew everything down without choking myself to death, then come out unscratched and tell everyone "Hell yeah! I've overcome the Goliath!"?

c. I can deceive myself into believing that I am really getting proficient in Japanese, and I'm ready to march into the Land of the Rising Sun and counter-conquer them, and actually believe it?

d. That, with self-belief, a healthy dose of self-confidence, and enough hard work, I can do whatever I put my mind to?

The list of questions goes on...Next in line:

So what?

I'll still do what I want to do. I take on the challenge 'cos it's what I want to do. It's not about proving anything to anybody. Like one of the more inspiring characters I've read about, namly Richard Branson, Virgin head honcho, says, "It's about not wasting your life."

When it all comes down, it's about finding your way to being your Saturday night.

What are you waiting for?

The Truth about Fact and fiction

Fiction is something that you throw out of your window.

Fact is something that gets thrown in through your window.

Someday I'll be Saturday Night

"I'm feelin' like a monday, but someday I'll be saturday night"

Something about the Bon Jovi's song "Someday I'll be Saturday Night" strikes a chord with me, giving me the imperative to choose the title as the name for this blog. The lyrics gives us a voyuer into a bunch of characters (two named, actually. But heck, this is art, cut me some slack...) in a Vegas town whose lives are pretty much bound where the sun doesn't shine. Dreams unfulfilled, innocence forcibly taken away, a girl turning hooker, life crashing on autopilot...

Bad breaks, bad beraks...

"Now I can't say my name, and tell you where I am/I want to roll myself away, dont know if I can/I wish that I could be in some other time and place/With someone else's soul, someone else's face"

We all get flushed down life's toilet one way or another, one time or another, some more than others, some hidden further from view than others. We can't pretend they're not there. The human in us just want so much to escape, to run away from it all. There are Houdinis in some souls, sitting ducks in others.

What would you be?

Survive

"And Tuesday just might go my way/It can't get worse than yesterday/Thursdays, Fridays aint been kind/But somehow I'll survive..."

Sometimes that's the best we can do. Many times, being able to is a blessing. Think about those who didn't. Still...

"Hey man! I'm alive, I'm takin each day and night at a time/Yeah I'm down, but I know I'll get by/Hey hey hey hey, man gotta live my life/Like I ain't got nothin but this roll of the dice/I'm feelin like a monday, but someday I'll be Saturday night"

...
It's about choice. And loads of guts. We hynotise ourselves with the mantras of people who don't live our lives, and base our choices as if we are living theirs. Choices to conform while not having the capabilty to bear the weight of what we've been conformed to is not really a choice. It's assimilation.

Do we have the guts to stand up, walk out, and someday be a Saturday night?