Year End Partying!

Drinks! Vodka on the rocks. Black & Coke. Lots and lots of water coz you are dehydrated beyond belief but need to party for a few more hours…at least!!!

Dancing. On the dance floor. on the sofas. on the space between the sofa and the wall. on those little ledges you find here and there. on tables. and on other people!

Screaming out the lyrics to songs you know!!! (so loud your voice is hoarse when you exit the club) “ALL DAY! ALL NIGHT! JOHNNY!!!! LA GENTE ESTA MUY LOCA! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!”

Acting out what the song says  “PUT YOUR HANDS UP” *wheeeeeee*

Meeting up with the old clique, the familiar faces, the heartfelt hugs all around, the squeals and shrieks of acknowledgement, the sips offered off someone’s drink, the cigerette youre forced to smoke coz its given to you and another is lit up to replace the one the owner handed to you!

Girls. The ones you know. the ones you loved. the one you love. the pretty ones. the party-harders. the funny drunk ones. the hot ones who can REALLY dance! the dancers. the singers. the one who smiles at you from across the room, the ones who sing along with you and the one you dance along with even though your separated by half a dance floor!!! The drop dead gorgeous ones you’d die to dance with but are too chicken to go bother!!!

The guys. The schoolmates, batch mates, team mates, the drinking buddies, the trippers, the stoners, the hardcore drunks, the brothers you never had!

The conversations – the ones screamed out above the bass beats of the woofers, the drink orders that just HAVE to be right (no no NO ice…NO ICE…*sigh* ok I need another one WITHOUT ice) The long deep ones you have outside the club just far enough so you can make out the songs their playing. the quiet nice one you’ll remember that happened holding a hand seated on a sofa with very few words spoken!

Meeting new people, Being introduced to someone you’ve seen for years but never really knew. Being reintroduced to people. Being introduced to people you once dated

The hugs, The OMG Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’s, The kisses, and THE KISSES!!!!!

Answering the question “When did you get down?!??!!?” over and over and over again!!!! and the ones that follow…how long are you here for, how is the Maldives, did you misssssss meeeeeee?!?!

And last but not least….The People. Friends. Family. The ones that matter! I love you all! Thank you for the awesome AWESOME welcome and home-coming!!! Lets raise our glasses to the year gone by, the lessons learnt, the lives we lead and the bonds that’ll never break!!!

JOHNNY!!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?! LOL!!! =) *this years theme song for sure*

Hope(less)

Mythology tells the story of Pandora’s box – which contained all the sorrows and troubles of the earthly world. The story goes on to say that “Hope” was the last remaining thing left in the box after all the evils had escaped. “Hope” was released from the box to make up for the mess. to ease the burden and help the mortal world along…

But to me…”Hope” was nothing more than another evil. cloaked by lies. Sinister and unassuming, yet unleashing little horrors on his unsuspecting believers!

Hope is what leads people to believe in miracles…miracles that never happen.

That you will be cured of cancer.

That you will walk again after the terrible accident.

That people change…for the better.

That love would prevail.

Hope is that lie. 

Dude! WTF is wrong wit you??? O.o

That question always causes little explosions in my head to go off…SO much wrong!!!

It is probably the most frequently asked question from Zee Kaiser next to “Is that it?” and “Where is my money?”  So me being the genius I am I have decided to post a comprehensive list of things wrong with me and upload it for you judgmental reviews…Happy reading.

I imagine I am the ruler of a post apocalyptic world known as Chaos. I call myself Zee Kaiser and refer to my friends as “foot soldiers” I frequently find myself checking out gas masks in occupational safety shops and I firmly believe the Armageddon is upon us!

I cry at movies. Yesterday I cried watching "Tangled” before that it was “Sucker Punch” I think? and today it was “Mr. Poppers penguins” (I cried when the eggs were hatching!!!!!)  I cannot watch “City of Angels” without balling like a healthy new born baby, I cried my eyes out (much to the horror of my darling date) at “Hancock” and most movies including Rambo, Die Hard 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8…and Terminator will cause me to tear up and feel sad for a long time!!!

I squeal, giggle and grin when I get ice cream in a cone and I can occasionally be found jumping on the bed, I buy cool toys, action figures, LEGO, remote controlled helicopters and other things meant for 12 year olds. I have temper tantrums at least once a week and I still bang on occupied toilet doors and wail “I need to peeeeeeeeee” while clutching the crown jewels!!! (I’ll be 30 in a couple of years just for the record)

I live off Pringles and diet coke. Pringles coz I like them. Diet coke to feel “healthy” after all it is DIET coke right? RIGHT?!?!?

I like reading girlie magazines..NO..not the ones where the girlies are naked…the girlie girlie ones…with shoes and gossip and those funky scratch and smell perfume strips!!! I like boy magazines too…but their not as entertaining as the girlie ones!!!

I have this delusional idea that I can write!!!

I talk to planes, specially when they start giving me trouble!!! (“what is WRONG with you Alpha-Delta-foxy…why you always give me false ECAM warnings ah? I gave you extra fuel also…your sucha bitch…now don’t be mean…RESET" ok angel?)

I know the lyrics to most Taylor Swift songs…I follow her on twitter, have ALL her songs saved on my laptop, have ALL her songs saved on my phone and have a few pretty pics of her! and I’m a proud little “swifty” <3

I like to watch ants…I do not however like them living in my laptop! which they do!!! I also torment them occasionally…leaving pieces of biscuits here and there and then moving them six inches as the ant-army comes to claim them!!! tee hee hee (I also imagine they talk to each other “huththo! I’m telling you the choco-chip cookie crumb was over THERE a few seconds ago”)

I am a complete alcoholic…I have been found drunk in ditches, under bar tables, atop bar tables, professing my love to strangers, making out with OLD women and peeing on the walls of HFC bamba and at the Kollupitiya police station after a “night out”

I am rude and I think its funny…I frequently have people walking away from me coz I scream shit like “OMG you WHORE!!! long time no seeeeeeeeeee” and I refer to everyone including the relatives as “losers”

I fall in love with different people once a month on average…and go into a state of complete depression when I realize their not “the one” this day will be spent listening to Taylor swift and crying after movies as mentioned above!!!

I run away from the police even though I have nothing to hide…and once had them chase after me…no I didn’t get caught….I can still run to save myself pretty well!

I am an absolute idiot in most cases…current affairs, general knowledge, economic thingies, maths and physics…however I seem to have a bit of common sense which saves me!

I will do insane things if I think they’ll be fun…skinny dipping, swimming with sharks, throwing rocks at a cop car and crashing into stationary objects on my bicycle…and yes…I still ride a bicycle!!! (mostly coz I cant afford a car)

The sole ambition in my life is to build a whopping huge pool in my house…(ok so I want a bar and a BBQ grill beside the pool…but the pool is the main focus….just saying it makes me grin…Poooooooooooooooooooool!!! <3

I still believe in “true love” Apparently that’s “wrong” too…people apparently “learn” it doesn’t exist after they turn 20 or get their hearts broken more than 3 times…but I’ve passed both those measures (by a considerable amount) and I can safely say “I STILL BELIEVE”

I think I am awesome and tell complete strangers that I am…usually this makes them think I’m a jerk…but I’m not…well not really…! REALLY!!!! I’m not I swear…I’m just…uh….awesome!!!

I think having dangerous animals as pets is cool….much to the horror of the mommy! Snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, piranhas and a rather large centipede that is forever lost under my bed!!! O.o (Don’t tell the mommy though)

Given the option of sex and a night long making out session…I chose the latter…more than once!!! (cowers from the guys throwing things at him and calling him a big fat ponna-patiya) heheh

I do the weirdest shit on dares…Jumped off the wings of a rather large plane, crossed Galle road like a monkey, rode a broom in front of Bishops College, and ate a live worm for 50rs!!! *shudder* – it seemed to be full of mud for those of you who are wondering!!!

Hmmmm….that seems to be it…yep…that is all the weird I am!!! So tell me…what the fuck is wrong with YOU?!?!

*Breathe*

Today was one of “those” days…where the cool sea breeze reminded me of you, when the sunset was breath taking like you. One of those days where every song I heard screamed out your name at me and begged me to reconsider. I even said your name out loud just to see what it felt like, to see if it still made me grin like an idiot…it didn’t.

Someone once told me that you should never regret something you did, because at some point in time that was EXACTLY what you wanted. Is this what I wanted? really? It must have been…Strange really…I’m usually not one to question myself yet here I am pondering upon my choice of action…I must have got that from you.

People ask me how you’re doing and when I say I honestly don’t know, they stop. period. and then they change topics immediately…It’s funny really…Were we really that close? Were we one of those couples who knew what the other had for lunch?!? It seems that way sometimes.

When did everything become so cliché’? Everything I need to say seems like a line out of some cheesy low budget movie. I never meant to hurt you. I wish things had ended differently between us. I’m sorry. I miss us. Cliché’

The thing with people is that they will always let you down. To be in love is to give your heart to someone, to give them the power to destroy you, but to trust them not to. Strangely I’m yet to find someone who didn’t betray that trust. You came so close, gave me so much hope, gave me something to believe in, and then you faltered, Stalled and failed. Completely.

I occasionally sit in the dark of the morning and type these long loving letters to you…letters which have no real beginning, no proper end, and then I go to sleep frustrated, hurt, confused; and in the morning I read through the first few lines and delete them. I mean what is the point? honestly? What’s done is done. what was said was said and at the end of it all. we failed. not you, not me, neither of us individually…but us..as a couple. we didn’t make it. couldn’t make it. and I for one hold no grudges.

I do however blame you for the abrupt endings. you gave me no closure. no final farewell. one day we were fine, the next…nothing. and that was highly unfair of you. That hurt. That was what broke me and made me give up on you. once and for all.

Letting go of people is never easy. it always feels wrong. it always makes you turn around and gaze upon your glorious past together and ponder upon the outcome of things if a few variables had changed along the way. the great “What if”.

But after a while I have come to realize that sometimes the bridges you burn will light your way. occasionally the ties you severe will set you free. And sometimes the people you loved with every single heartbeat were the weight that held you down, the chains that bound you to your limits. Do not hate. for once there was only love there. Do not hurt for once she was your every joy. but I pray..do not dwell in the dull glimmer of hope. it was never meant to be. It will never be. you had your chance, you took your shot. you fell short. for whatever the reasons it didn’t work out. This is the fate of things, the way is it meant to be…accept that. admit it to yourself, and carry on with your life. I beg of you.

Life is glorious. wonderful. exciting. it is vibrant and colourful. it is everything they promised it would be but YOU have to let be so…you have to give it a chance.

“Nothing but the end of the world is the end of the world”

Close your eyes, remember who you are, count your blessings, and breathe.

This is our song now…

Fortunate.

I spent most of this week researching soil sample testing on Google. Basically needed to find a place in Lanka where I could get the load bearing capacity of the soil in my backyard to see if I could build a pool! (yes I have weird obsessions like that) So while clicking on multiple tabs and trying to figure out which tab was playing that god awful music I was hearing, I stumbled upon this random tumbler pic that made me remember a person I once had the pleasure of knowing…This is her story. Or at least what I know of it.

Her name was Karunawathie..which roughly translates to “compassionate”. She used to come to our place to cook. She was the smallest, oldest person I had ever seen…I don’t recall when exactly she came into our lives, but I recall her being at home once or twice a week when I came home after school. She helped with the cooking…but more than that she helped me grow up. Karunawathie had always had a life of hardship. She used to recall a time when our heavily suburban neighborhood used to be a dense jungle with tiny foot paths for travelling about. She said her house was one of the very first in the area, a fact that she stated with pride. She had never really gone to school but she knew things…She would tell me how to choose vegetables and would carefully point out things I missed, she would talk about the effects of different foods on your health and give little pointers about cooking and combinations…and since she was always very sick with either asthma or the cough she knew what aggravated them…and would prescribe little home made remedies when someone at our house fell ill. but all that was nothing compared to what she knew about life…

She used to tell me how blessed I was and that I was the luckiest person she knew…she said she would go to school at her age if someone would just give her the chance, she begged me to eat healthy and would peer into my half eaten plate and give me fake looks of disapproval when I hadn’t eaten everything green!!! I always used to go over to her place for Christmas to give her a plate of goodies…which of course she wouldn’t touch coz of all the sugar and oil…and I recall seeing her make “kevum” once at her place…seated on a large rock, with her utensils laid out on the floor outside her doorstep on the eve of the Sri Lankan new year…a strange memory I have considering I don’t know what I was doing there at the time!?!? (It almost seems like a dream now)

During the evenings just before she went home she would ask me random questions…like what I wanted to be and listen intently as I explained the world of aviation to her…she quietly nodded her head and said she had seen many a plane fly over head after the Ratmalana airport came to be. she also told me that someday she would like to fly on one of “my” planes…our little inside joke it used to be…mostly because we both knew by the time that dream blossomed karunawathie would be no more.

As time passed she came around less, then she used to drop in just to say hi and for small loans to buy herself an inhaler for her asthma and finally she stopped coming by altogether and sent word of how hard it was for her to make the trip from her home to ours. A few weeks after that I heard my parents talking about how sick she was and how the hospitals had refused to admit her coz she was beyond their help or something on those lines…Sometime after that, on a weekend my mother mentioned that Karunawathie was very sick and that she wouldn’t be around for long…and how she had asked about me and I that I should pay her a small visit. There was no hesitation on my part coz I quite enjoyed our little chats…so I put on a t-shirt, grabbed my busted up old bicycle and rode over to Karunawathie home.

The slums are an intriguing place….you get the best and worst sort of people there. Drug addicts, minor drug dealers, prostitutes, alcoholics, thieves mingle with honest hard workers like street sweepers, garbage collectors, and everyone from the local market. All the faces are familiar to me and some people smile at me, wondering what I’m doing in the side of town…When I tell them I’m here to see beloved Karunawathie they beam broad grins and offer to show me the way…I tell them I know exactly where she lives and they start laughing out loud and say “of course you do” 

I park my bike against an old tree in front of Karunawathies house and I’m greeted by her daughter. Not one of my favourite characters but today is not about my dislike for her. She leads me in to their house, and the door sill barely clears my head…not that I am in any way tall, but that’s just the way houses are built around here. The daughter tells me to give her a minute to tell Karawathie that I am here. I stand where I am and wait for her to arrive coz I few steps in either direction leads me into another room. I acutely feel the heat searing down from the tin roof…a ceiling is out of the question since the roof is a mere foot away from my head!!! Not even a few seconds in the house and I’m already sweating…partially because of the bike ride, mostly coz its much hotter in here than it is out there!!! How do they live in here I ask myself?!? I look around and for the first time notice things about the place…it is a cramped up mess with a certain order to it. 3 plastic chairs around a small wooden “coffee table” a radio atop a cupboard which holds everything from clothes to cups to toothbrushes, a towel rack bent over by the weight of things upon it. slippers beneath the rack. someone’s books in a neat pile on the floor with a pen and eraser beside them. A pen and eraser I gifted to her. I smile to myself.

The daughter returns and asks me to come “in”

Karunawathie is on a small wooden bed. the only one the house I am told. her breathing scares me…a lot…its loud and heavy in short gasps. I say her name and she takes my hand. she is cool to the touch. I am surprised coz I assumed she would be fever hot in here!!! her hand feels terrible light in mine. “baba kohomadha” (how are you?) she asks me, I tell her I’m fine and ask her how SHE is – stupid question really, but what DO you ask someone in her position? “Aiyo innawa” (Oh I’m ok) she replies. her face is expressionless, probably coz its such an effort to do anything other than breathe and talk to me. Her daughter rambles on about how hard things are and how much work she has…I zone out on her and hope she goes away. I feel awkward. sitting there…not saying anything. but what CAN you say really. I just hold Karunawathies hand and listen to her breathe. Her arms are just skin and bones…her skin hangs to her in layers of wrinkles, her hair is silver-grey, still neatly tied in a bun as it always has been. She seems smaller to me…almost as if she has shrunk a bit, and her hand feel soft in mine…its like holding a baby’s hand. I thought it would be rough and coarse from all her work. After what seems like an eternity I lean in and whisper to her that I am leaving…she cups my face and I choke up. I feel like a tennis ball has been pushed down my throat and I beg my tears to not to flood over. I get up and leave. That was the last time I ever saw Karunawathie.

We all rush through life worrying about SO many things…material things. Money, bank accounts, interest rates, exchange rates, inflation, the cost of a new car, how much a new pool will set you back…and yet there are so many people who you meet every day who don’t have a bank account, who live for the day with what they earn, they don’t ever wonder about buying a car or building a pool…and yet they get by…but what really blows your mind is that they live wholesome, rich lives. They know more about the world than you do. they share without hesitation. they don’t hate or envy or crave as much as you do. They have SO much more of what truly matters…the stuff you don’t take with you when you leave this world! And you…you with all your wifi and ipads have SO much to gain from those people. the ones who have nothing at all. the fortunate ones.

“If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank, your wallet and a bit of spare change you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of imprisonment or torture, or the horrible pangs of starvation, you are luckier than 500 million people who are alive and suffering. If you can read this message you are more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world who cannot read at all.”

In loving memory of Karunawathie.