14 Months

The Duff enters his fourteenth month of exile furtively, almost unknowingly. It crept up on him, clawing his back with its prong-shaped talons of hate, poisoning his soul with dejection and desolation. And thus he is nursing himself with a cup of warm green tea, soothing his itchy emphysemaic throat and firing up his fever. He thought he could make it through the tenure down under without a bout of sickness, but as many wise men had said before, "Shit Happens."

It must be the air on the ground, for he hasn't danced amongst the clouds for quite some days now. It also doesn't help that his room-mate had moved out, and in the process given new life to a year's worth of cosmic soot into the small room's aneurysmic circulation. It also followed a stretch of sloth where he stopped jogging for 4 days, and filled those 4 days with junk food, beer, sleep and facebook games. It was a perfect storm of sorts.

And all this free time stems from him waiting for his final flight test. A long queue, a smorgasboard of ridiculous reasons and of course the balmy weather that drifts away at the most inopportune time. His luck seems to have never clicked here. Could the magnetic difference with his yin and yang? Could his chinese compass needle have dipped?

The Duff tries to always look on the brighter side of things, that the glass is not half empty but full of dark matter *snigger*. He has finally resolved the issue of selling his car. While it worked perfectly before, now it practically drives itself. Again, a confluence of misfortune has perturbed him and his friends unendingly, with vehicle inspections (and exchanges with an obnoxious racist), trips to the mechanic(a friendly yet disappointingly careless operator) and a nail-scratching-on-blackboard level of experience when dealing with the new buyers. Never had The Duff met a more irritatingly penny-pinching excuse of a man. The whole experience left him with a tangy taste of bile in the mouth.

And thus, when he went out to the movies yesterday, he borrowed another car instead of using his (co-)owned mode of transport. This other car belonged to a friend, and it requires a push start everytime. While it started nicely twice during that evening, it refused to do so at a petrol station, the last start up that we required. The Duff, being the OX OF A MAN that he is volunteered to do the pushing instead. After 8 ATTEMPTS, his heart almost exploded. A better comedic act was never on display. 2 funny looking men pushing a car all around a petrol station. It finally started on a last ditch attempt. Boy was the Duff relieved, for his buttocks and thighs were aching like there's no tomorrow, and his heart was exploding in his chest. If he was to have flown the next day, he would surely have failed the sortie.

The Duff learnt today that his ex-boss has cancer and is closing down his company. While he was hardly in my good books, I found myself still managing to feel sad over this situation. As harsh an impression I had of him, no one should ever have to suffer this fate. The Duff wishes him all the best, and that his religious beliefs hold him over this predicament in as comfortable a manner as possible.

The Duff wonders if its this softness of heart that prevents him from leading the crowd. The apathy to the sometimes devious acts of others, the inability to crush others under his heel. While he understands that this is a large aspect of his personality, and he is rather comfortable, even satisfied at times, with his core values, is this empathy really worth having? Could the ultimate zen masters be the largest pussies?

What is the Truth?

Playlist: Cranberries, Damien Rice, Coldplay, Keane, Green Day
Movies: Closer, Public Enemies, My Sister's Keeper, Red Cliff