Went to see the open mic thing thursday. Now I have this overwhelming urge to write something epic, just to go read it in front of the audience. Problem is, I have nothing epic to say. As I sit here, gnawing at a rubbery jam-paang for breakfast, and wondering if the jam bit of it has done a runner down to my lap, my mind races looking for suitable subjects to write a groundbreaking piece on that just confirms what everyone knows already anyway. I imagine writing of how the singhalese call me a tamil and how the tamils call me a singhalese, but that would be mostly fictitious. Sri Lankans to whom I belong, are generally a tolerant lot, at least in my experience. Personally I've only come across a few black sheep who shamelessly throw racism around. Should I shamelessly rip off meese(heese? yous?) and elaborate on how people form into their own 'gangs' at open mic, and rarely ever mingle around. Nah, too obvious. But then, stating the obvious gets you brownie points too, if you make it rhyme.
But I guess I just live a life that's too... uninteresting, to have much of interest to say. I'm the dude who rides the footboard at times, but has a walkman blaring in his ears blocking out all noise. That guy who walks through Pettah with a Terry Pratchett in hand, reading the book instead of staring out at the world when on a bus. Hell, even _I_ can't remember half the posts I put up here. Hence, I have taken the decision to rename this to 'A very philosophical mind with overtones on war, sex, food and glow-in-the-dark-condoms, not necessarily in that order". Hopefully that will stri my mind into deep thought mode. Then I will quote scripture at you till one of you goes "OMG dood you shud totalleh read this out at the next opahn mike!!". I await your response.
All in all it was pretty interesting. Walk in with
a bunch and I'm immediately struck by the resemblance to a hippie siesta session or something. Only things missing were the dudes idly strumming the guitars. Oh wait. I walked in expecting it to be some kind of "Hi, I'm Jerry and I'm a blogger *chorus of 'Hi Jerrrrryyyy....'*" thing, but it was not to be so. We just walked all the way to the back where the rest of the bloggers I knew were gathered round. I slowly put away my laminated ID card with Name and blog title on it. What?
With regards to the actual listening bit, I must confess to having paid scant attention to those who went up to the mic to deliver their words of wisdom, or stupidity, depending on which side you're on. The funny bits immediately attracted my attention due to everyone suddenly looking in that general direction. The rest of it, I only caught snatches of. Unless it was someone I knew in which case I automatically paid attention, further enforcing the 'group' thing. I guess it's just that people listen to what they're interested in. If your text sucks, too bad, go read it to someone who cares maybe. Fact is, if the content read out is interesting enough, people pay attention.
Fortunately or unfortunately, again depending on which side you're on, I only managed to plaster faces on three people. In between automatically going "hiya" at a pointy haired dude who was hustling the croud at the back(Who just stared blankly for a second and looked away), having a particularly anal-about-acronyms rhymer pointed out to me(Yes ladies, this poet is one sexy beast) and bumping into someone who looks nothing like their caricature(Whoever drew that thing at the top of your blog must have been blained. No offense, 'allartisworthless'), I managed to tag biggie Mr. Ca himself, St.ROFL and MiddleChild.
Oh, Finally found out what the arrack thing was. Only a bottle of paint thinner and a few cockroaches short of kasippu ;)
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Shifted office to a different place. Now we're smack across the road from a cluster of international schools. It's a little annoying when the parents of some muslim girls school stare at you as if you slapped them on the asses or something. I didn't realize the pavement was off limits to penis holders.
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Mom's off to India again to help prepare for a wedding. Since the rest of us are mere helpless children at organizing weddings, we'll be setting off a couple of weeks later. Till then it's back to scavenging what food there is in the kitchen. This is also the reason for the jam-paang breakfast.
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Life's good. Really good. Never realized people more awesome than me existed. Apparently there IS someone. I am torn between staring aghast at my wounded, limping pride and worshiping at the altar of awesomeness that is... SOMEONE. In the end I resign myself to just constantly being happy, jubilant even. Stuff that happens in movies really does happen sometimes, it seems. Doesn't seem like such a bad deal when you look at it. Not a bad deal at all. And I just realized how weird it is writing this up here. Even this, stripped down, barebones acknowledgment of smitten-ness.
And no, it's not Gehan.
