Chaotic Mess of Gray(Grey?) Matter

Hectic. Heck, hectic is even more relaxed compared to what I’ve been through supposedly only for one weekend. It turned out to stretch waaaay onto Friday for me to have the time to access the net. See, the weekend is spent by attending a wedding. No surprise there, right? Then on Monday morning, supposedly the time I’m supposed to be back in UTM to continue my work, a call from UPM arrived. something to do with end of the year evaluation form that I MUST fill in or die from the consequences of not doing so (I may be exagerrating, but…. you never know).

So hop in to KL, stopping by UPM first before even seeing home for 3 hours filling in the damn thing. Then I bummed out at home for a day, my brain battery went dead and I spent the day sleeping. When I got back here the day after, I was still bummed out, it’s as if a fuse went off in my brain. Impromptu trip to KL is NOT fun when your cash is out dry.

Gyabo.

Martin was never one to believe in fiction. Being a lecturer struggling on his annual academic paper, he was very pragmatic. Logical. And sometimes quite a pain in the arse when arguing about logic (or the lack thereof). But seeing beautiful 20 something girls in waitress uniforms and halos hanging on their heads serving multitudes of people just burst a logic bubble in his brain.

“I must be going bonkers….,” he muttered under his breath.

“Not at all sir. Welcome to the Seraphim.”

She was suddenly there beside him smiling a warm smile that can melt a thousand hearts within eyesight. Martin’s single heart nearly jumped out of his chest when he saw how beautiful she was. The waittress is a head shorter than he is, shoulder length blonde bobby hair matching silver pupiled eyes. Must be wearing those fancy coloured contacts.

“A.. ba.. baa.. excuse me?”

“You’re not going bonkers sir. It’s a marketing gimmick we’re working on to attract more customers by word of mouth rather than posting flyers everywhere… though we do that as well, but not as much since we’re rather short after setting up this place.”

She made a small giggle after that, covering it with her left hand while her right held a round tray. Funny how he never noticed the tray before. He was too entranced by her pretty face alone. It took him another fraction of a second to notice the he didn’t notice her halo earlier on as well.

“Is that….. real?” Martin cocked his head to one side as his eyes fixed on the halo an inch over her head.

The waittress made another small laugh and glanced up, then looked back at Martin.

“What’d I tell you? It’s a marketing gig,” she winked at him and began pulling Martin’s arm towards an empty seat.

“Well, no use coming into a cafe and ogling now right? Hopping on for some breakfast?”

Martin took another second to digest her words. Her hand is smooth. Like baby skin.

“Well… errr… yes. Bacon and eggs please. Coffee. Black.”

“Black coffee now? You sure? Our blend tastes better with sugar.”

“Well….”

“Tell you what, love. I’ll just put a few sugar cubes beside your coffee and you can put it in when you feel like it.”

Martin didn’t even get to utter another syllable when she trotted off. He looked around the place. Every table with a customer seem to have its own haloed waittress attending them. Be it talking to them, joking about and even laughing with their jokes. The whole place seem to be shining. He wondered how they put on their halos to hover like that. Magnets would be the more logical answer, but wearing a small opposite polarity magnet hidden somewhere in their hair seem ridiculous. No sooner than he could finish his thoughts, the blonde waittress returned with his breakfast, balancing her tray containing his cup off coffee with a few sugar cubes on the saucer and his plate of bacon and eggs.

“Here you go, love. You need anything else?”

Martin couldn’t think of anything else. He couldn’t think of anything, period.

“Well, uh…..”

The waittress stood there smiling at him. With the tray in her hands hugged in front of her.

“Tell you what, when you need me, just call my name okay? Don’t need to say it too loud, it’s not really that noisy in here, tough it IS busy.”

“Yeah…. okay. Sure.”

The waittress was turning to leave when something hit Martin. He forgot something. He was about to say something when she turned around, bopping her head lightly with her hand.

“Oh silly me. I haven’t even told you my name yet. It’d be kind of difficult to call me without knowing my name. Can’t go on “Hey blonde girl” now can we?”

Martin tried to stifle a laugh and it came out a whimper instead. The waittress laughed at this display.

“Well…. I suppose that IS difficult.” Both of them laughed for a bit.

“It’s Terry.”

Before Martin could reply, she turned around and off to the door behind the counter the was labeled EMPLOYESS ONLY. Martin took a sip of his coffee and cringed. It certainly IS more bitter than he’d first imagined. He popped in a cube and took another sip. And then, he blacked out.
*****
He awoke in his bed in his apartment. He took in the morning rays that slitted through the blinds as annoyance. It was some dream. Waittresses with shining halos on their heads. He was about to discount it as such until he saw a folded note beside his pillow. Opening the fold, he read:

Dear Martin,

Cheers,
Terry

He scrambled over to the bed counter and held up his handphone. It read 23rd September. Which was the morning he went to the Seraphim. And the time he allegedly went down to have his breakfast hasn’t passed yet. He dropped the note to the floor carpet as he sat on his bed, stunned.

to be continued

I think it must’ve been about 10 times that I got on this create-a-blog-entry page, wrote something halfway, then closed the browser without saving. Somehow…. somehow things that I’ve wrote down before seemed… empty. Wrong. I think I found out what was wrong. I had a story to tell. It’s not novel material, I don’t have the time or tenure for it. But it started as a wayward idea, then an itch. Finally it consumes me. I felt I had to tell this story. So what better medium than a blog ey?

Bear with me. This is very different than what I’m used to. This story may take a few entries to conclude.

Martin sat in his study twirling his pen. He twirled and twirled it between his forefinger and thumb until finally he lets the pen drop. This is useless, he mused to himself, since there was no other living soul in the study with him. I’ll never get anything done at this rate. He picked up his half written manuscript in front of him and tossed it in the bin beside him. The paper submission is in two days but he did that anyway. Besides, that’s a print-out. The original is still tucked safely in his computer hard drive, awaiting to be recalled and to be re-edited. And boy what a monumental re-editing effort it would take.

It is perhaps accurate to say that he is annoyed with himself. He was expected to improve a previous student’s theory but even after reading and rechecking all his notes, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He THOUGHT he had it all figured out earlier. Then he tried the experiments. It came out all wrong. Impossible perhaps. Feeling down, he pocketed his lighter and a thinning pack of Marlboro (probably 3-4 ciggarettes left in the pack of twenty) and headed out of his study. Heading towards the door of his apartment, he grabbed his keys and then sauntered out of the door towards the elevators. Living on the 14th floor made him rather reluctant to use the stairs.

Pressing the down button. He waited for the elevator to creakingly make its way to where Martin was. He refrained from lighting a ciggarette yet and looked at the bulletin board beside the elevator. As usual, it was tacked and stapled with advertisements and get rich quick scams. A notice did catch his attention however. It was a new one, for he didn’t see it yesterday.

Seraphim Cafe, we have angels attending!

No doubt the ‘angels’ mentioned on this flyer relates to pretty young girls as waittresses. It’s just across the street it seems. Martin wondered why he haven’t noticed it before.

There was a [ding!] as the elevator reached the floor and opened its doors, with the arrow indicator pointing down. Martin stepped inside and again saw the flyer celotaped on the elevator wall facing him. They must’ve just opened, I supposed it’s no harm to go take a look. It took several seconds before the elevator reached the ground floor. Oddly enough, there was no one else hopping in to go down along the way. Usually when riding an elevator, there’s ALWAYS someone riding in along the way. Especially when you live in a 15 storey apartment building. Martin was scratching his head at this phenomenon but paid no heed to it when another [ding!] announced the elevator’s arrival to the ground floor.

The apartment lobby was shabby in comparison to his own apartment. Then again, Martin took great pains to refurbished his apartment to look civilized when compared to the rest of this old building. It was no mean feat either, considering that you had to make several trips with the elevator to trick out to the interior design of his liking. The old caretaker is there, sitting on a steel foldable chair reading today’s paper. He ignored Martin as usual.

He headed towards the revolving door and the assault of metropolitan noise and smells assaulted him in all directions. Had he the choice (and the money), he would’ve lived on the coutryside. But this apartment is quite cheap and quite near to the university that he was attending. The only kosher is that it’s in the city. The outskirts of the city, yes, but the city nontheless. And there it was.

Right across the street, perhaps a little bit to the right from where he was standing. Seraphim Cafe.

After the traffic light went on his favour and stopped the incoming cars, Martin briskly crossed the street as did numerous other people. Whether they were going in Martin’s direction or opposite, they crossed nontheless. He walked up a bit towards the new cafe (either that or he was very, very unattentive) and was surprised that the windows of the place are heavily tinted. It was like looking at panels of obsidian, protecting this place from harmful outside influence.

As he twisted the elaborate door knob and headed inside, he discovered his assumption was correct.

to be continued

A lot of things happened when I’m not blogging, I wish I could write everything down in detail, but by procrastinating I forgot most of the eloquent details (actually, I’m just lazy). So here’s stuff in a nutshell:

• Ignored my ex’s wedding. I hope never to see the couple EVER. (evil)
• Played in TTT pre-release, got muh dragon peeps. (cool)
• Got a Drakhun. (cool)
• Watched Pirates 3 on the second day with very good seats without lining up for hours. (awesome)
• Upgraded the looks on my guitar by changing the chrome knobs with golden plastic ones and even the switch hat to a strat’s. (cool, picture will be up when I’m done)
• Finished my seminar paper on time. (good)
• Helped a few people with their problems, hopefully they’re good with what they do afterwards. (good)
• Got FREE FOOD FROM FRIENDS for TWO days in a row! (excellent!)
• Forgot 90% of my KMNS alumni as I was browsing the Friendster group recently. (bad, I think)

Sometimes I wonder if memories are worth keeping around if they’re going to lead to hurtful memories one day. I dunno. A lot of things are creeping in my head at the moment. I need to free up some space to make sure I don’t bonk myself with my Masters.

On the subject of my guitar, I’m planning to turn my RM540 Squier Telecaster guitar into a RM9,500 Gibson Les Paul…. well, not exactly, but close. It’d cost me not more than 3 times my guitar but i’ll be RM7,000-8,000 cheaper then my intended goal in the end. Not bad ey? The golden knobs already look awesome on the Tele…. with a black pickguard, it’ll look smashing. I’ll post a pic when it’s done, don’t fret. I even have plans to paint a Dragon Clan mon in gold on the black pickguard, making it an L5R geek fanhood Tele. Blonde, black, gold and chrome. Not too shabby for a colour scheme.

Adios. I remembered that I actually have to do work Niihaha