What?

I am a dream person. I believe in dreams. I believe things are infinitely much better in dreams.

So every morning, after smacking my clock’s alarm to dead silence, I lie on my bed with my eyes closed, just to live the heart warming dreams a little longer before getting up to a much colder reality.

Instead of going through the usual routine, things were a little different this morning. I killed the clock about an hour ago, but I was still in bed with my eyes wide open. There was a feminine figure lying next to me.

Her eyes were closed, and her face displayed serenity. In total stillness, I admired her face. I breathed slowly and gently, afraid to disrupt her sleep. I began to wonder if she was having a dream, if I’m in her dream?

Then, I imagined my fingers gently caressing her face. They circled her beautiful eyes, teased her perky nose, and touched her soft lips. Slowly, they followed the curve of her chin, and wandered down her neck. God, how can I not know such pretty person existed?

As my imaginary fingers started trotting playfully on her right shoulder, she moved her head slightly. She took a deep long breath, and let it out with a sleepy moan. She stretched her limbs and started turning her head to another side, before turning it back to face me again.

When her eyes opened, she was greeted by a grin on my face.

“Good morning, baby.” I whispered.
“Good morning.” She replied lazily. “What are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Just watching you.”

She glanced me with her suspicious eye for a second before closing her eyes again.

My grin grew into a bigger smile. I really did nothing. It was just my imagination having a feast of her body.

“Wake up, Joycie!”
“Hmmmm.” I turned my head to another side.
“If you don’t wake up now, I’m going to bite you.”
“Hmmmm.”
“You don’t think I’ll do it huh?” The bed bounced a bit.
“Hmmmm.”
“DIE JOYCIE DIE!”

I opened my eyes. My cheek felt wet, and I smelled coffee. I saw my cup few inches away from my face, lying sideway on my keyboard. Bright lights from my five monitor screens forced me to squint.

I fell asleep on my office desk and I spilled coffee on myself. I grunted and stood up. My head hurt. Then, someone knocked on my room’s door. The door opened.

“Hey Joyce, meeting postponed another hour. The team needed more time to finish the program… are you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m good,” I lied. I glanced at the clock. It’s 11am. “Shit. I need to go buy present for February. It’s her birthday.”

More pain in my head. My legs wobbled a bit, and I fell back on my chair. The guy standing by the door came around my desk. He knelt beside me. His face showed disgust after seeing the coffee mess.

“Hey Joyce… you sure you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m good. I just need some sleep and buy what I promised February.”

“But… she’s gone, Joyce.”

“What?” I scoffed. “What do you mean she’s go…”

I stared into him for a couple seconds. My head still hurt. I realized it was a dream.

“I’m so sorry, Bob. Don’t worry, I’m fine. It was just a dream. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t sleep for quite some time already.” I stood up again and gave him a reassuring handshake. “I’ll clean this up and I’ll see you at the meeting, okay?”

“… Okay.” Bob got up, and walked out of my room.

I waited until Bob was gone. I slumped back on my chair. My computers buzzed. The air conditioner worked hard on sucking in and spitting out air. Sunlight forced it way through the window blinds, casting neat rows of shadows on floor. I took out my wallet, opened it, and stared at February’s photo.

She’s gone, Joyce.

It was one of those Wednesday evenings. Gloomy monsoon season sky, and nothing interesting was showing on Discovery Channel. Uneventful, unlikely to get eventful. So I made myself a cup of tea - a routine to make what I call “fooling time” a bit more meaningful.

Few minutes later, with the cup of tea sitting on my table and in front of my computer, I rolled up my sleeves, and login into Nuffnang Innit.

As expected, none of those rated top 10 posts of the day were remotely worth browsing through. No one was chatting at the chat box too, where I usually pick up internet-fights on purpose, just to kill time.

I was about to move on to another fooling-time-site, when Superwilson’s latest update bumped one of those top 10 posts of the day off the chart. Titled “The Difference Between Journalists And Bloggers“, it lured me into clicking on the link effortlessly.

I wasn’t expecting a bombshell anyway, so the article didn’t let me down at all. In fact, the article itself supported some of my assumptions.

Blogs will never replace mainstream medias, because of one main reason: blogs don’t get edited. Read more…

What is Flicked Mind?

Copied directly from their MySpace Music page, Flicked Mind, founded by Yuki in June 2007, was named after her wrong pronunciation of the word “flicker” and also of her frequent changes of working styles and ideas. Flicked Mind started out as a band that focuses on playing Japanese songs because Yuki’s voice suits that type of music, because she has cute high pitch voice.

So naturally, Flicked Mind is a good fit as a band, in Anime related events, like this Anime Hanabi Festival 2009 at Berjaya Time Square. Read more…

So, what I’ve been up to lately? Well, there was this massive protest at Iran and military shooting in United States of America. I made a killing out of those events with my brilliant photojournalism skill.

Just kidding.

What I’m doing lately, is going through a phase, which generally involves me forgetting about everything else in my life, like a blog, and just cherish in the ongoing moments. Translation: I attended gigs by local bands, and they rocked the deepest part of my core.

Frankly, I never thought high of local bands. For decades local artists and bands were merely following the trend of the west, always trying to make a fail tribute here and there. Then there was this particularly annoying period of time - everyone was doing hip hop and nothing else. Suddenly, everyone wears baggy clothing and rapping on the street.

So I never really followed local music industry even though I have a K.R.U. mug from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That was, of course, a very limited exposure in the world of music I had as a photographer. Until that one random day Joanna Gough Marie introduced me to the International College of Music, or ICOM for short. I never knew it existed. I covered several concerts and live performances as a photojournalist, but there was nothing like what I saw in ICOM’s Friday Performance. I was so impressed, a couple times I forgot where the shutter button was.

Read more…