Evanescence Into Clouds

Tsuki wa aoi desu! The moon is blue. But that's photoshop's fault. What a big moon. Not surprising though. It's seventh month and near the 15th. I wonder if the moon acts like Batman's sign to all those wandering spirits? Like they see their callsign flashing in the big dark night and know that they have to plod back through the gates of hell or whatever.

Speaking of death and destruction, I shall now proceed to bore my limited readers with a comic report of my death. Ho ho.

22 August 2005 - Tamaleh Times Headlines ~ Boy Immolates Self in Huge Bonfire of Bio SPA Notes ~

Yesterday, a 16.75 yr old male burnt himself up in a fiery pile of Bio SPA notes. It was a very big bonfire because there was so much fuel for it. The Tamaleh Times went around interviewing his friends, acquaintances and enemies to see what they felt.

First, we talked to his school teachers to see if we could shed any light on the events that led to his horrible death. Upon visiting the school at 9am on a school day, we sighted his G.P. and Physics tutors in the canteen, sipping drinks and generally slacking.

"So tell us, how has this student been performing in school?" we asked. Physics tutor scratched his head. "Urm. Ok lar. Actually I donno. I think I was usually here during lessons." Oh-kay, so we shifted the attention to his G.P. tutor, who had fallen asleep over a cup of coffee. "Oh, that student?"(she says in a slight Brit accent) "He was always asking me to let the class go library during G.P. so that they could all sneak off for break."

The Tamaleh Times proceeded in search of his other teachers. We then met his Chinese teacher, who happened to be wearing a very obiang outfit. "He was my favourite student!" (sniffs) "His Chinese was very bad but at least he slept in class with more discretion!" Then, we came upon his Maths tutor, who looked scandalized. "I read in the papers that when the police investigated his home, they found a lot of undone Trigo tutorials! I had no idea that he was faking his way through my class! Served him right that he mati-ed. He shouldn't have said I was a HK country bumpkin."

We find his little clique, who call themselves the Slackers, mugging hard in the library. "Oh, he gave up and died arh?" says a Cantonese fellow. "I was going to kill him anyway for taking photos of my wallet..."growls a Hakka fellow. Another Cantonese fellow who looks like he came from Hong Kong but blatantly denies it says: "Yay! Now he can't go around bragging about his new handphone any more and make me feel bad about my two-colour phone." One clique member growls when approached. "GO AWAY! I'm reading my Campbell's Sixth Edition." The last clique member plays Tennis on his phone. "Do you want to hear about my pak chiu cheng exploits?" he asks, giggling somewhat and turning red. The Tamaleh Times reporters turn away in disgust.

Finding the rest of his class, we got a rather bo-chap response. "Oh, he died arh. Now we don't have anyone to take photos at class gatherings liao. So sad. Never mind, it doesn't matter much anyhow." One classmate grabs our tape-recorder and bellows into it: "I feel a bit sad that I broke his eraser and used up half his roll of correction tape, but I refuse to say sorry. He deserved it anyway, because he never lent me money, knowing that I never return any. By the way, can you lend me five dollars?" We clutched our wallets tightly and fled in mortal terror.

We met a tamaleh friend of his. "Now I don't have anyone to tell me tamaleh jokes already!" he sobs. Then, a breakthrough! We see his Bio teacher wailing in a corner. "I should have asked the HOD to cancel all SPAs! I brought this upon him!" Feeling sorry for her, we passed her a tissue and left the school, but not before remarking at the miserable state of the canteen and the depth of degeneration of food quality.

The Tamaleh Times went to find other acquaintances of his. We checked with old classmates of his. A certain A. Hakeem commented succinctly: "He was a sucky climber and always full of shit." We traveled to interview an A. Lye. "He burnt himself up? Really? So fun! I want to try it too!" Before leaving his home, we gaive the IMH a ring and told them that person's address.

Walking past the mall, we chance upon a Mr. and Mrs. Gwee walking out from the Lancome shop with face-masks on, clutching a big box of Hello Pandas. "We're going to burn this at his funeral," they explain. "He never ate proper meals, only snacks." What good friends. But they could have gotten a jumbo bag of Twisties while they were at it, since Twisties were on offer, we think.

Traveling past Geylang Lorong 22, we find two people who knew him, a Kevin and a havoc-looking poly student. Says Kevin when notified of his death: "Whatever. Do you want to know the handsign to show that you're a member here?" And the Lady Havoc says: "Oh that big-mouth arh! Really huo2 gai1 man."

We rounded up our information hunt by calling his secondary school teachers to ask about his conduct. Generally, the response was the same: "He talked too much." We did get a different response from his Maths teacher though. She said: "His Maths was terrible! I would have made him write a few thousand lines if I hadn't been focused on verbally ripping apart other classmates of his."

Well, that's about it for our report. We're proud to bring you some of the most dramatic shots of his last moments, taken with a Nikon Coolpix 3700. He was a passionate photographer to the very end, even setting the camera on time-lapse photography and charging the battery fully before he jumped into the flames.

-End-

Roflmao! I feel like I've gotten back my joie de vivre again. I've been feeling so gloom-and-doom for a while.