Updating For the Sole Sake of Updating (Part err... I Lost Count)
by YBLalat

Howdy.

The finals are long gone since last Friday, and the few days between then and now I had utilized fully for the enjoyment and relaxation of that. The much loathed summer is here once more, and all three months ahead of now, I am looking forward to finding a new hobby, and not just writing for this page. As of this moment, I am currently working my ways on getting my idle hands a baseball glove and a ball and starting a baseball game with Malaysian students who are still around for the summer and not going back home.

Yes, I am all alone now in my apartment, with the exception of another roommate, Anas, who went out for a soda. Mamat went out for a 7-day fishing-and-camping trip at someplace I have never heard of before, and yes, with his broken foot still cemented. Pyan has gone back to his hometown and took along with him his much beloved laptop, in which a lot of my entries for this page were saved in. So, that and the fact of me enjoying the coming of summer and the end of my finals cover pretty much the desired explanation for not updating my journal for so long.

That is basically my plan for all summer – playing baseball. It’s been years since I last played one. Softball (or the “female” version of baseball) is my favorite sport and the only one that I am proud to say I am very good at it. I like to think of it as a thinking man’s sport, although like any other popular sport, it is indeed a team sport, and not an individual sport like tennis or ping pong. I fell in love with the game when I first tried for the school team back in high school. One evening when I was 13, I went down the field to try for the school rugby team, and upon failing (the coach said, “…sorry but you are too soft for this kind of sport”), I walked away quite frustrated, only to find out that at the far end of the same field, the softball team was having its own tryout. And so I went.

After managing to impress the coach with my batting ability, I finally got into the team and stayed there for the whole years of schooling, having earned the honor of playing for the school in both of its under 15 and under 18 teams. We didn’t go far in the Malacca softball circuit but we had the chance to play against the best and in very rare occasions, we won. In both teams, I was the left outfielder, or the guy who stood the farthest from everyone else in the diamond and was responsible for the much crucial high flying batted ball. In my short career as a high school softballer, I had my fair share of failing my teammates by not being able to catch the goddamn ball, and also saving them from utter humiliation of defeat. Hey, the ball is round, right?

Since Friday, I did most of my apartment spring cleaning. Each time after the finals’ week, the apartment will morph itself into one heck of a shipwreck. The piles of garbage, the mountainous laundry, the junk mails, the dirty dishes, the living room carpet, the magazine rack, the bathroom and the kitchen floor – filthy, filthy, filthy! It took me nearly 3 days to straighten things out around the house, and what hard labor it was. Who could imagine the amount of dirt and crap four people generated in mere three months?

One thing that I did to celebrate the end of my finals was Star Wars’ Episode 2. What have I to say about the movie? Well, a lot of important future events in the saga (I mean, in Episodes 4, 5 and 6) were explained beautifully and its relations with each other was made clear, and to me, that is the most important of all. George Lucas really is a genius filmmaker. He showed us the saga’s ending first before even trying to explain how it all started. In every sense, that is how I see Episodes 1 and 2 - I know how the story ends and am dying to know how it all began. Episode 2’s main strength is not in its vivid visualization of the faraway galaxy or in the interpretation of the strong characters by Hollywood’s prettiest actors (okay, so I could see Natalie Portman’s nipples through her wacky space-age costume, but, so what?), but rather in its strong, unfortunately romance-tainted, narrative part.

I acknowledge the fact that the romance scenes in the film is equally important to other developing storyline in the saga, that it elucidates the history of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and the birth of Darth Vader, but I am not quite fond of it. Each time the two leading characters are left alone and the romantic score begins to slowly creep from behind, I would cringe in my seat and slightly cover my eyes and ears – I can’t stand it. To me, even the sight of Jar Jar Binks in the background doing nothing is revolting enough. Personally, some parts of the film were very much too campy for an average Star Wars hardcore geek like me and could have been omitted or shortened without disrupting the flow of the film’s narration. But all that was soon to be forgotten and forgiven when Yoda came leaping into the screen and kick serious ass! Hell yeah! Hey Yoda, it’s your birthday, hey Yoda it’s your birthday! You the man! No, you the man! When I grow up, I want to be you, Yoda!

Okay, enough excitement for today. I must get back to my doing-nothing activity. Thanks for listening to my ramblings.