Yeah I needed a new wallet anyway

'I'm outside the 7/11' I messaged the Grab driver.
My feet are wet.
It was sometime around 11pm on the outskirts of Kuching. I had just arrived from the airport and attempted to catch a bus into the central city from the Kuching sentral bus terminal. Being the stubborn tough guy that I am, I decided to walk to the bus terminal, along the highway, on the grass.  You can learn a lot about the geographical makeup of a place by doing stuff like this. Today I learned that this particular part of Borneo consists of wetland; and that canvas sneakers don't offer much protection from water when your foot sinks into the ground.

The bus terminal closes at 22:30 if the sign on the door is any indication. Of course I had to walk there to find that out.
I guess I'll be taking a Grab ride into town after all!

Welcome to Borneo!

The next chapter of my journey really began in Pudu Sentral bus station, Kuala Lumpur. Throughout my travels, there have been pivotal moments which have had a lasting impact on my perspective and how I see the world.

This particular defining moment occurred when I hopped onto the airport bus only to realise 5 minutes later that I left my wallet back at the station. I had been thinking about getting a new wallet earlier that day but I never had any intentions of losing an entire weeks allowance and a train pass with about three months worth of credit.  Accepting the fact there was nothing I could do, I search for my passport wallet where theoretically there should be a backup debit card.
I open it up and see two empty transparent plastic pockets.
"Oh fuck"
I go through every compartment, feeling for the outline of plastic cards but to no avail I could only find expired transit cards and a hotel security card which are about as useful as Indonesian coins at a currency exchange.  I do however manage to find my backup stash of 100 Ringgits which although not quite enough to cover my 3 nights accommodation in Kuching, is a relief nonetheless.

At this point I'm wondering why all three of my debit cards were in the same wallet.  Or were they??
There is one more place to look... My electronics organiser bag - the final bastion of hope. If you can't find something, always check the electronics bag, it always provides the goods when times are tough. I know for a fact I have another 50 ringgits and a fat stack of Indian Rupees here but was my third and last debit card in here?
I unzip the main compartment.
The smell of burnt weed wafts out from the electronics bag.

'They can't charge me based on smell alone?' I think to myself.
'Some stranger exhaled all the marijuanas into the bag just as I was closing it!!' - That's my plan for if I get detained and questioned at the airport. I'm wearing my Khaki trousers though so unless there are sniffer dogs wandering about I should go unnoticed as I look like a respectable member of society and not a guy who was drinking Mountain Dew and watching 'The package' at 4am earlier that day.

Luckily I manage to find it tucked away amongst the medical emergency booklets and other stuff I'll probably never read.

And that is how I arrived in Borneo

Limiting beliefs

I used to subscribe to this belief that everyone found their place in the world through dedicating huge swathes of time to a regular schedule of work (aka regular jobs), and that the people who didn't do this were basically fucked.

It's often said that the only way to see something for what it truly is, is to stand outside of it and view it as an outsider. When I look back on my lifestyle during the months and years prior to the current moment, one of the first things that springs to mind is the word 'stifled'.  I don't mean to say that it was due my physical situation at the time but rather it was the mindset that I was stuck in.  I say this now realising that I held a very narrow perspective regarding my self.

When posed with the question 'who are you?', It's one thing to respond with a well thought out, deep, clever verbal answer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with it on on a subconscious level.

You think you walk the talk but do you really?
If you say you are more than your chosen profession or job, then why was it so difficult to leave that all behind? 

The reason I say that my perspectives were narrow is because I could not imagine deviating from the established course I had somehow set up.  There's nothing wrong with choosing to dedicate a good chunk of your time towards a particular field of work but I recognise that there is a difference between really wanting to do so and acting out of fear, anxiety, or uncertainty.

In hindsight, I can see that I had set my life up to run along a nice groove but I was scared of what might happen should I take myself out of it. I couldn't imagine life outside of the groove.

What happens when you do?
What happens when you take the metaphorical train of your existence off the track?

Nihilism, depression, hedonism, poverty, religious fanaticism, drug abuse. These are all scary words and these are all things which can happen but don't necessarily have to happen.
In my opinion, when somebody cuts the lifeline and throws themselves out into the world, they can go along two general paths...

You can go down the path of least resistance, or you can make a new path. Making a new path is never easy but doing so can yield some interesting results.  All it takes is a vision and determination.

What's my vision? I'll be fucked if I know.

"Existential confusion is a powerful force"

"No thanks, that won't be necessary" I replied, in response to being asked if I would like to inspect and test the camera out before purchasing it.


In truth I didn't even know how to operate the bloody thing.
Shutter speed?
Aperture?
Fuck it I'll go for the highest one.

I walked out of Hartono Electronik like some rich guy who doesn't test out his consumer electronics on a no-returns purchase because he knows he can just buy a new one.

---

It wasn't long before constant disappointment in the quality of my phone camera images eventually culminated into 'I need a DSLR to document this shit I'm seeing'. (To be honest it was more my inadequate composition skills).

As soon as I had made up my mind I was straight outta Bali and towards the nearest city to drop a stack of cash for a tool which I didn't actually know how to operate.

My mission now, was to capture the sights of these new lands. These lands were full of interesting sights and environments, most of which are only interesting or novel to me because would be deemed illegal in New Zealand. It brought about a sense of satisfaction, in part I think due to being an active participant rather than simply being an observer. There's always a need to be doing creating or doing something. To simply observe or consume just doesn't seem to bring any sense of satisfaction but I've been thinking about whether the need to 'do something' is just an elaborate distraction.

Existential confusion is a powerful force and it will make people do things in order to make life meaningful in the absence of things like 'going to work'.

Was I successful in patching the slow leak of existential anxiety?
Sometimes I swear I can still hear the faint hissing sound but I can't tell if it's real or a hallucination.

For now I'll keep pumping the tyre up. If it sticks, it sticks; only time will tell.

---

Now I said in the last post that I would be producing a real banger of a story but now I'm sad to say that won't be the case. Unfortunately due to night shift scheduling and the high possibility of going through some intense interrogation by pimps and gang members or getting mugged and having all my gear stolen has meant I will not be venturing the streets of Chow Kit at 01:00am unless of course I am accompanied by Ross Kemp and a camera crew, or the support of the Vice production team. (And of course a camera that shoot 12800 ISO images without looking like a sandpit).

So I'm just going to slowly release some of the already existing content in small bit sized pieces.

-----

Like 'Trans America Airlines' without the Airlines or America

"Come Inside!" Xe beckoned as I walked down the dimly lit Chow Kit road.

Most of the shops had locked up for the night but I wasn't able to spot the vocal individual standing underneath the shadow of the overhang, behind the roadside power box.
It was as if the straightforward intentions of a man had been placed into a woman's body that was only 90% complete.

My struggle to find the correct exposure settings on the camera was only matched by my struggle to find the right thing to say in this awkward situation.

"Not today sorry"
(What that was supposed to mean?)

I wasn't feeling so enthusiastic about following a transgender woman with a archetypal homosexual male voice up a narrow, poorly lit concrete stairway. Who knows what goes up on in that nondescript run-down building.

---


Some alleyways are cleaner than others.
A lot of the time, they are occupied by rats, people digging through dumpsters, people sleeping on cardboard, and heroin addicts scampering around with their needles.

If there is one thing I learned tonight, it's the ever present watch of the Colonel. Open 24 hours, the  Colonel's ever-present gaze keeps this alley way clean.
KFC, safer communities together.

This was an alleyway I could go through and would go through. For some reason I decided to eat the cold, exposed chicken that had probably been sitting out in the 'outdoor ambient temperature' shelf for 8 hours. I now had less than an hour until the impact of my culinary choices would manifest itself in the form of mild stomach pain and/or liquid shit.