This is what happened when I try to go to sleep early. Even when it’s 10 pm early. I woke up three hours later and can’t go back to sleep. I can force myself to but then I’ll toss and turn for an hour and if I’m lucky, then I’ll go back to sleep. It’s funny how my body works. It seems that I sleep in chunk size of three hours. Afternoon nap and night sleep. That’s why I try to be very sleepy when I finally turn in and only then I can get my 7 hours sleep.

I used to think that I need to sit in front of my laptop to be able to write. But, the funny thing is that when I’m in front of my laptop, I tend not to write! There are so many distractions available when I open my laptop and it becomes a case of putting the writing to a later time again and again. Nowadays, I write what I can in my little black book and only copy it later to my laptop. Of course, the developing process is still done on my laptop and the perils of procrastination is there but baby steps.

Somehow, it feels better to write with a pen on a piece of paper rather than typing away on a laptop. Maybe it’s the extra effort that you need to pour out in literally writing out your letters and words rather than tapping some squares to produce digitally made bits of data. I have a feeling of accomplishment and work well done (hopefully) when I see those little pages filled with ineligible scribblings that I hope I can decipher later on and sooner or later that book will be filled out and hence, gives me a tangible measure in my work rather than looking at the size of my computer file.

My little black book is barely filled now. It hasn’t even cracked a quarter book yet. But someday, they are all going to be filled.

When I was younger (not that I’m old now), I used to shrug off sickness. I never got serious illness, just the normal flu and headache. I hated the idea of taking medicine and the only cure for all of my illnesses was time and to sleep it of. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but time usually cure everything. Because of that, I once had a very long coughing problem and flu. And yet, I still didn’t take any medicine. I didn’t know why, maybe it’s youth foolishness or some kind of machismo act, but I realised now that it’s dumb.

Nowadays I take all the medicine I need. I want the instant gratification of being healthy straight away instead of labouring under some sickness. I can’t really pinpoint when and why I changed my point of view. Maybe, I now realised that it’s stupid to waste time by being sick when medicine that can cure it is available freely. Maybe I’m just getting old.

Whatever the case is, get me my flu medicine now; this flu is killing me.

Once in a while when the mood strikes me, I dabble in writing. Mostly due to my inferiority complex, I always think my writing is bad. And by bad, I mean really bad. They all looked good when they were still in my head, but the moment they were turned into words, they sucked. A few days ago, I realised one of the reasons why my stories are as such. It struck me that I don’t know how to interweave a frame into the stories.

Let me explain, for me, a story has two parts: The core idea (or the picture) and the supporting details (or the frame). The stories that I’ve written almost always make do without the frame. They are straightforward and sticks to the main idea as close as possible. When “A Single Man” came out in the theater, I was suprised by the similarities that it has with a story that I was writing at that moment. The difference is, and what makes “A Single Man” a great film, that there’s a beautiful frame surrounding an equally beautiful picture. There’s an interesting story interwoven with the main idea and that makes it much much better.

I need to learn this. I need to be able to create a supporting frame to my central idea. I need to be able to write better.

Probably, this is why my scripts can’t past the 25 pages mark.

In the middle of a busy schedule helping my mom, I went to Bandung for a Magic tourney since a friend is leaving the country for good. I needed the time to decompress and have a bit of fun. I had a blast and even covered the entry fee plus a bit more since I ended up fifth in the cube draft.

Sometimes I just need to get away from everything and do something different. Many years back, when I felt cramped up, I went to a bookstore and bought a small book about wine just because. Or took a long walk from Orchard to somewhere random. Or saw a friend that I hadn’t seen for a long time just to catch up. Everyone got something that they do to decompress, to relax. And I did mine that weekend.

The best advice I ever get about writing is from episode ten of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”. And if you’ve never watched Studio 60, you’re missing on one great TV. Lucy and Darius were trying to write a comedy sketch about a really bad criminal. They failed time and time again until they decided to stick “by the premise, by the bit” and to throw everything else.

Sometimes when I write, I tend to put a lot of things that I think is cool to write in. Only on later readings then I notice that it has nothing to do with the story and thus, has got no business to be in the story at all.
Lots of time I’m caught in details that are of no consequence, I lost sight of the big picture. It’s a very refreshing look at life for me when I’m able to strip down a situation, a problem or anything to its bare essentials and work from there.

Probably that’s why I can’t write long stories since I tend to write off trivial bits.

The best advice I’ve ever get in playing Magic is to take each match independently of future matches. Often times when I’m competing in a tournament, I’d think about future matches instead of the one I’m playing. It could be because I am underestimating my opponent at that time or perhaps I’m losing and I am thinking other ways I can top 8. That’s bad. Really bad. Since I got that advice, I played every game as if that’s the only game in the tournament. Focus is really the key to make the minimum number of mistakes for me.

Strangely enough, or maybe not that strangely, this also applies to real life. Focus on what you have now and let the future unfolds itself. That’s my life principal now.

I was watching this comedy shows involving several people on TV just this evening and I noticed that I couldn’t hear what they were talking. The problem is that they were talking at the same time and it became a shouting match between four to five people. While those people might be able to understand what they were talking since they are right there, me as an audience couldn’t.

So please take turns when talking. Even when it is necessary, having four to five people talking at the same time will just defeat the purpose of delivering good lines.

Other than the amazing Craig Ferguson that uses no script for his talk show, I love Opera Van Java on Indonesian TV that riffs on the most absurd angles during its shows. Although I can be sure that they are not scripted, but it shows some degree of improvisations enough to appear so.

Improv comedy seems to appeal more to me because of its unpredictability. On a scripted comedy, sometimes you can notice the punchline miles away and when it gets there, you already left. On improv comedy, since even the actors don’t know what is going to happen next, the audiences are taken on a wild ride. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. But when it works, it pretty sure beat the crap out of scripted ones.

Basically, I sleep from 11 pm to about 2 am when my brother comes into the room to sleep and then around 9-10+ am to around 2-3 pm when he’s not around. I got woken up by the tiniest amount of sound, I need to work myself to be really really sleepy so that I can get knocked out fast.