Bad Night Out

Lost balance. Impact. Eyes closed. Down. Crack.

Opened eyes again. Legs, checked. Hands, checked. Mouth, tasted iron and strange. Blood. I allowed myself to swear once, under my breath. 'Fuck'. 

How bad? A gap where one tooth should be. Another tooth, a tender mess. I lost a tooth at least. Irrationally I tried looking for it, knowing that it will do me no good. There were no pain. Maybe everything will be fine if I find it. The lies I tell myself. 

Tooth found. It was a clean break. I heard myself identified 'Failure mechanism: fast fracture', while correcting myself when I noted there were smaller bits of it around the place. Shattered. Let myself swear another time. 'Fuck'.

I held on to the largest piece, which was clean and bloodless, and headed to the exit, quietly and alone. First I needed light. 

Out. A staff was at the desk. 'I hurt myself', I told him, 'lend me the toilet', giving him a bloody grin. Clearly not coached for emergencies and useless, he said there were no such facilities. He just sat there. Useless staff, just what I needed. 'You're on your own' I told myself, I'd let myself swear one more time, but only after I looked at myself. 

A slight check with the hand told me that it was still bleeding. I thought I would panic when I see my own blood. Useless staff was unable to procure me a mirror, or even tissue. By that time I was able to take a picture of myself. 'Fuck'. 

Diary entry, Jan 30, 2012

A swarm of school children taking the tube. Humans, as creatures, are pretty loud. Chirpy, not unlike those flock of birds you see in documentaries, perhaps brooding on cliffs or something.

Grown up humans, however, when compelled to use the tube on a Monday morning, are as quiet as the grave.

Regarding the differences in community between London and Hong Kong by looking at their McDonalds

In both places, the fast food chain is an import, but I feel that in either case they are well integrated, and different to the ones in America. 

 

I was in Hong Kong couple of weeks back, for a couple of weeks, lived near Sha Tin. Its McDonald's is in the mall that grew around the transport hub, between glassy retail units. Hong Kong is a land of malls with glassy retail units. I was there a few times, where the breakfasts are Fillet'O Fish and some sort of macaroni in soup. The restaurant is where kids study do their mountains of homework, and where the elderly read their morning papers. I saw a girl painting a card (Pink with Hello Kitty). 

 

Where do kids in London do their homework anyway? The underlying tone of the place seemed to be productivity and community.  

 

Last weekend, I was back to the McDonald's at Walthamstow, at the edge of London. It was a Sunday early noon, the place was still half empty. There were kids running around. Kids here appear in public to be either livelier or more feral to the kids in Hong Kong, depending. I was concerned with the family next to me: across them a strange elderly man splitting and making airplane noises. A lonely harmless crazy, something that tends to stay hidden in Hong Kong. 

Tube daydreams, alternate timelines

I'm wondering about time travel and alternate time lines, about how that time when I was in Elizebeth's room back in university. Is there a past where I kissed her, and is there a future we were together? 

Out of this World: again

Second visit to the Out of this World exhibition at the British Library. I've spent another hour in there, and I was still nowhere near finishing seeing the whole thing. Maybe I'm a slow browser, but I'd like to think that it's due to the sheer amount of material on display. It always astonishes me how London can provide us with such high quality exhibition for free.

So far, I've browsed the sections on space travel and aliens, and on future societies and humans. It's interesting to read about how right and wrong these writers were, and how our society really is more futuristic beyond their imagination (perhaps with the exception of space travel and flying cars).

Science fiction, and exhibitions like this, highlights a pretty overlap between history, science and art. It also reminded me of religion. Some the ideas presented can easily take a mystical persecutive rather than an intellectual one. And inversely I feel that some of the prophets or oracles of the olden days can perhaps be good science fiction writers, if given the chance. I guess at least one modern cult has its origin based on science fiction.

I'm looking forward to go there again another day, to look through the section on parallel universes.

Weekend routines II

I have the perfect excuse to not wake up and stay in bed and do nothing today. I suppose 'it's Saturday' is as valid excuse as any, but I tend to guilt trip myself if I don't give an elaborate reason to 'why a you wasting your life', though I do give myself a lot of practice these days. Today I actually have two almost reasonable excuses.

I skived school yesterday, and went Lovebox, a festival at Victoria Park. I know none of the bands playing, and no one I know is going, save some girl I met once, because 'she wants to go but doesn't want to go alone', a sentiment I once had before I become good at being a loner (though I understand not everyone can be as awesome as I). As for the festival, it focuses on DJs, and club and dance music (totally out of my scene, but I'm adaptable), though the headline act is misleadingly indie. The weather was uncharacteristically glorious, and I pity the revellers to that festival today. I find those dance and DJ sets have strange similarities to classical music, in that each 'piece' is long, repetitive, and are just variations of a theme, and that new comers to it will think 'everything sounds the same'. Still, I had to dance and everything and enjoy myself, anyone can do that if they wanted to, which leads to my first excuse: I don't wanna wake up because my legs are still tired, even after sleep.

The second excuse is a lot more universal. No one sets their alarm clock on weekends anyone, though I idiotically slept with my phone next to bed, and someone decided to text at 7am. It could've been a good thing, I had half a mind of going to a festival at Shoredich, if the weather is good. It wasn't, and it's still bad now. I didn't even have the look, the rain was rattling hard on the windows. With no reason to get up, I went back to bed, until I really needed food.

Out of this world: prelude

First of all I decided that Nando's is so delicious, I'm going to have it every week. Saturdays, in fact. Euston station may not have the nice huge ceiling of Paddington, or the posh new St. Pancras bit near King's Cross, it does have a Nando's, making it my station of choice for food purposes.

I am current sitting in the Starbucks overlooking the British Library. I planned to visit the 'Out of this World' exhibition there right now, but by the time I negotiated myself out of bed, got myself to Euston, and sated myself on Nando's, it's a bit after 4pm. The building closes at 5, which means I have to leave, after only got through the section on Martians and half way through the rest of the aliens. I am planning to go again tomorrow, since I'm curious as to what the big blue police box next to the mechanical walker is about.