Glove your shoes

I got a shoe about two weeks ago. Fits like a glove. It’s perfect in every sense, and I love it to death. It looks good, works good for me, does all the things a normal shoe can do but way better. I’m very happy with this shoe. It’s the kind of shoe I want to have for the rest of my life. You know?

It’s the kind of shoe that’ll always be in style. That’ll work better than expected for all seasons. The kind of shoe you should really appreciate, and keep well, regardless of some bad weather.

But as it goes with anything new, I guess there’s going to be a lot in the way of the ‘gloving’ process. Gloving is probably not an actual word, but it’s been used now, so I guess we should glove and move along.

To glove, I guess, is to gel. The same way a couch would embrace your bottom’s mould after months of use; it’s the approach to a perfect fit.

“The bee must brave the hornets before the honey”. (To whom this post is about, I just said that to you.)

My point I guess is that, gloving can be painful. Silly when you look back at too. Easily regretful. But I guess that’s part of the process. The approach to the perfect honey-filled shoe.

(If you haven’t made it out to sense yet, no, I didn’t buy a shoe)

I knew writing would make me soft.

Can’t say it’s something I’ve not genuinely been worried about. Not just writing in general either. Wearing the occasional fancy shirt, having shoes to match, a job behind a desk; what’s the worth of any of this if you don’t get to set something on fire ever so once in a while?

I’ve always been a fan of mechanical things. I completely adored the way fire – or an explosion if you will, could turn into immense pressure when contained and cause cars to move back and forth on a highway. I also really wish sometimes that I’d have been gifted the opportunity to sit there and watch Mr Wankel concoct the rotary engine in his mind, then pen it down on some paper. It’s all just genius.

Mind that I’ve just used two almost identical – but not quite if you think about it – examples in the above. It’s a job related thing I’d much rather not get into now.

My point is somewhere in this:

Some people are fortunate enough to have jobs. Some more fortunate to have careers (massive difference, but to explain this now would be to stray off topic, which we mustn’t). Some even more fortunate to have success in their careers. And the most fortunate of the lot, are the ones who have careers doing the things they actually like doing. They’re more involved in the very sense. They are the news, not the ones who tell it.

Growing up, I always wanted to be a fighter pilot. Sometime after cutting the umbilical cord with my Ninja Turtle-obsession, gunning down Luftwaffe jets over the Strait of Malacca was all I could fantasize about – bite me, I didn’t know it all back then.

Hitting 13 or so, things started to change. I grew some pubes, and well, you sort of just start to notice girls.

But girls were rubbish back then. Yeah, it’s all giddy and fun, but not nearly enough to draw me away from my next serious obsession. Cars. For the longest time now, I’ve wanted to make known to the world that Mr Schumacher was rubbish too, and that I really was better than him – if only someone in F1 had let me drive one of their cars for a bit. I still I do. And can. Really.

A couple of years later, I decided that age had now become a factor and that I wasn’t getting any younger. So I’d settle for a go in GP2. Then Formula 3. Then the DTM. Then the GT3 series. Then a Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race. And while the last one is still very likely yet, I’d become a Sports and Motoring Editor somehow. A writer of the news. Not its maker. Gutted.

Even the bits and pieces that got you around from when you were younger, like setting random objects on fire, sharing new explosive mixes with my cousins, foraging nearby forest reserves for tombs and playing ‘Lightning Football’ (literally a footy match under some lightning with video footage to capture every second of our screaming like girls), all gone and somehow have been replaced by a desk and some pretty excellent internet connectivity.

Which is another matter. Google; since when did it become any kind of a healthy replacement for an old fashioned ‘put your hand in the fire to see if it’s hot’ method of research? I thank God every chance I get for being someone who’d rather learn a lesson by trial and error; fire then pain.

And then the flip.

Not so strangely, Google helped me write this and most other things I’ve written in one way or the other. That, the desk job, and its excellent internet connectivity, helped me pay the bills over the years, and gave me the opportunity to meet some really great people, some I’d like to keep for life.

And Mr Schumacher’s legacy may remain intact, but how many of you can say that you’ve been around the Sepang Circuit in a very powerful Mercedes; brushed shoulders with multiple Formula 1 World Champions; or have Steve Slater proclaim you ‘Champion’ of a race and to hear it on loud speaker before? He only ever does it these days for the Hamiltons and Vettels of the world.

Yeah, writing the news isn’t as fun as making the news. But then again, who ever makes the news for any of the right reasons anyways these days? If they did, would you really want to hear about it? Do you really want to know why Jenson Button won the Australia GP? Or would you just rather see images of a topless Tamara Ecclestone?

I’m blessed with knowing that I have a job that will one day see me doing all the things I want to do at work. I trust this job, and the next, to get me ‘there’ – wherever that might be. Some might call this having a career. I might say that I am very fortunate. For now. Until I get to being a part of the most fortunate.

The fancy shirt and shoes to match beats an old pair of torn jeans, scruffy t-shirt and an unshaved face any day, so they tell me.

Soft? Try calling me one to my face, and I’d gladly oblige to set you on fire while writing about it in my next blog piece.

Funny how things work out eh? One thing’s for sure from the above, and from my life’s experience. It really isn’t my will be done at all.

*this one’s for you Jess… Sorry I can be a raging idiot sometimes.

Can’t say I haven’t wondered what Jesus would do

I was born to a religious family, and so religiously, I was in attendance at all sorts of things that happened on a Sunday, despite Sunday’s definition in the Bible being a day of rest. Sunday Mass, Sunday School, Easter Sunday, Sunday Pints. Ok, so maybe I made the last one up.

In high-school, I joined the Catholic Student’s Society; a decision initially based on there being passageway to girls from other schools and churches. What started off as me being a casual attendee, ended up in my being the club’s music coordinator, then treasurer, and then much later on, the Inter-School Catholic Student Society’s Vice-Chairman; a whole other club that saw schools from across the Klang Valley get together in worship and all-round happy things.

The reason I’ve just told you all that was to paint for you the picture of my initial upbringing, and the way I went about religion before acquiring what I guess said religion sincerely wishes upon all its devotees: Freedom.

Then I started to question it all. “If God is real, prove it to me. Show me one strand of His existence and I’ll exalt everything he stands for”, I used to say. Typical responses would follow. “You’ve got to have faith”, “Religion is about letting go and believing”, “Just because you cannot see the air, doesn’t mean it isn’t there”.

So you see the validity of my initial religious rejections.

I left the School Societies for dead. Quit the church band; because the music was just terrible and of course refused to accommodate any of my four-minute guitar solos, and as soon as I did a little math on how much donations my church potentially acquired over just ONE single weekend and never saw spoils, lost the patience for Sunday Mass.

And that was the least of it. Seeing religious leaders at a Sunday Mass competing in a ‘Who can raise your hands higher in praising the Lord’ contest later at a pub chugging away the pints and womanizing everything that moved, struck a chord or sorts.

Then there was the politics. And no, I care for you enough to spare you this bit. So moving it along then.

It just didn’t add up to me. Why would an institution of all that was sacred, benevolent and correct, be so irrelevant, devious and wrong?

So I walked.

I told myself, ‘By religion or not, so long as you, Christopher Aaron, do what is right, you’ll be alright’.

Just a little less than 10 years have passed. And I must say, the world looks a little different to me from when it did 10 years ago. This is why Part Two of this post will spell the changes. This is why there’s a need for a Part Two. But not tonight. Sleep deprivation is a cruel mother I’ve yet dared to detest.

So it’s New Year’s Eve. 2011 is upon us!

The time right now’s about 6pm; mom’s got stuff in the oven for tonight’s big dinner and people around are going absolutely mental trying to ready themselves for what’s to be the beginning of a mass welcoming of a new decade.

The air is so electrified with energy, you can smell it around everywhere you look. Everybody everywhere is buzzing about the significance of tonight for some reason or the other. Be it change, promise, ambition, reoccurrence, alcohol, you decide.

As for me, I’m sitting in front of a laptop at a desk which looks out nicely on to a sunset, listening to U2 – which for some reason takes me all the way back to my pre-teen era – and writing this. And not to forget, a glass of cheap wine for company.

As with most bits of my life, I’m not entirely sure how it’s come to this – I seem to be highly negligent of my blog by nature – but I’ve narrowed it down to two likely primary reasons. The first being that I’ve suddenly realised that come sometime in 2011, I would have spent 26 years of my life on earth, and that Joyce (a dear, dear friend of mine) made me do it.

That’s a heck of a long time isn’t it? 365 x 26 = a lot more memories, experiences, days, whatever, more than I can count, let alone remember.

In guess in essence, I fear ageing. I hate growing old. I turn into the Birthday Grinch every time November 26 comes around and just want it to be over as quickly as possible.

But that aside, I guess it’s about time I start making the days count. Having lived 25+ years already and done nothing remotely significant is not exactly as the initial plan would have it.

Maybe being struck with the disadvantage of not being able to walk or talk effectively in my first couple of years, and then not having the capacity or liberation by law to do all the things I wanted till I was 21 humbled my approach a little at first, but I’ve got nothing to stop me now.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, it’s time to nut up or shut up, as Woody Harrelson so eloquently put it. 2011, like every New Year, needs to be more than the last one that’s over in just a couple of hours.

So here’s a glass raised to the promise of things to come. No wait, the promise of things we’ll make come our way by our own limitless capacity. Be it by complementing fuel-cell production, curing poverty, having the balls to get out of a destructive relationship, making the person you love incomparably the happiest person in the world, or simply learning to play a musical instrument.

God knows I’ll be on a mission. Visor on, limiter off…

It’s just my mouth, and sometimes my head, but never my heart..

So I’m in want of a little practice with this. Practice in both possible senses of the word. Practice. With practice I guess comes patience, more on your part than mine.

At the heart of the matter, I want this for two likely reasons. The first being, other than my guitar, I want some form of ‘release’ as I pilot my way through the everyday minefields of life. Secondly, I hope that through this ‘practice’, I can get better at it. I live for ‘getting better at it’.

So forgive me for a lack of material tonight. All I can provide you with tonight is an intent for things to come. And to go with that, a side of hope for getting better at it.

I know a lots been said without too much being said, but I hate to deal in air. I’ll put it down to a lack of faculties for the night. What I can do is prepare you for things to come, just so you know what you might be getting yourself into, I hate being called a tease…

I like music, strictly the good stuff.. Guitars, social experiments, matters of the heart, mind, body and soul, and all things unseen and everything in between. I am too a little of a petrol-head. There isn’t the slightest chance you’d see me taking apart a V8 Hemi and reconstructing its valve design, but ask me about the new F430 Scud and prepare yourself for an evening of mouth watering facts. To me at least…

So hopefully, I’ll keep to the good stuff and both of us can get something out of this thing.

I’ll leave you with a thought for the day, or whats left of it.. A quote from a song by  a favoured artist of mine..

“She’s dressed in yellow, she says “Hello,
Come sit next to me you fine fellow”
You run over there without a second to loose
And what comes next, hey bust a move!!”

Inspires awe…

To your best and nothing less..
Chris A.,