Sing with me, sing for the year/Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears

A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have – Tim Ferriss, The 4 Hour Work Week

A highlight reel of January 2011 – Dedicated to Future Peter

That's 46kgs of luggage from Hong Kong to Sydney. Booyeah.

It’s New Years Day, and I’m on the last leg of my Hong Kong trip. I know when I get back home I’ll be brimming with inspiration and a new direction of life. But at that point, I was quite fatigued and shopped out.

Fast forward to the middle of January and I’m spending a whole week seeing one of my best-est broes (I’m a writer. I write however I please) heading off to Queensland to study medicine for four years. I realise I have this inability to internalise unresolved attachment issues to people.

Blink through another week and I’m at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown. The 1920′s art deco style of the Enmore makes home for Lupe Fiasco – one of my favorite rap artists of all time. I thank God that I was made like a handsome, hairless hobbit that allows me to worm my way into the front row behind the metal divider.

A rapper caught in a rockstar pose. Because Lupe pulls it off

It was one of the most intimate concerts I’ve been to. He has literally an unlimited amount of energy that amps up as the show goes on. Youtube videos will be uploaded soon.

Jump to to early February and I’m having a very uncomfortable conversation to my manager. I’m going to quit the job I’ve had for five years now. Farewell. Adieu. What I imagined was far worse than what had happened. Relief.

This is when I realise what I’ve been holding on for so long was just a crutch for me. Now I don’t have to worry about financial stability because I am not earning much but I’ve never felt more wealthy, because my wealth comes from time. Like my bro living in Queensland now, I am not confined to live a reality that does not have my dreams in it.

However, I am as poor as Oliver Twist, and I cannot survive alone on unhealthy peasant food, especially if I want to continue my other dream of being a cage-fighter. I plan a disciplined diet that involves eating a strategic amount of proteins, fats and healthy carbohydrates. My staple food become canned beans and spinach.

Follow Project Popeye here. Technically, it’s still peasant food.

Sometimes we just have to let go of our inhibitions to drive through to what we really want in life. It’s gonna involve a lot of hard work, self-discipline, and taking risks. Let’s take this gentleman for example:

I meant the 50 Cent doppelganger.

As the little-known drummer for Lupe’s little-known supporting act, he wasted no time after his set to join the crowd. As the most famous person on the floor allowed him countless vanity pictures – and picked up two African chicks he so blatantly gamed on. Well played.

Moral of the story is. You never know until you try.

THE TAXI DRIVER STORIES PART I: Drive Slow Homey

So I’m in Hong Kong one night, I’m about to catch the taxi home. Imagine my surprise when I see the driver to be an exact doppelganger of my church pastor. Unlike my pastor however, this guy looked as though he had been chain smoking his entire life to the point where his skin stank, and gave off a very bad Hong Kong metropolitan attitude to tourists. However, this inspired me to write about my many adventures that had occurred with taxi drivers in the years previous.

One night back in 2006, I was heading back home from a house party in Burwood. Being young and impressionable (read: immature and retarded), I had proven my worth as the Alpha Male in the party by consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol and vomiting all over my impressionable teenage clothing. This made my chances of boarding a cab pretty slim. However, a cab pulled up on the main road I was waiting and I hopped in.

I’m greeted by the stench old Indian take-away. I don’t mean to stereotype here, but the smell was so overpowering, I lost scent of my own nasal nuclear disaster. Not my proudest moment, but I didn’t have any issues getting rejected due to a lack of personal hygiene.

Moments later we were on the road. I’m sitting in the front passenger seat. The driver was a bald middle aged Indian man that looked like Ghandi if he were overweight. For the sake of this story, he will be known as ‘Stan.’
In my inebriated state, I decided to humour him by fabricating as much of my own life to a complete stranger. I wanted to see how well I could lie believably.

I told him I was employed at Ernst & Young in the City, a major accounting firm. I had started off being a caddy for an golf course, and one of the managers decided to hire me to be his PA. Funnily enough, Stan bought it and laughed in agreement and proceeded to tell me a story even more bizarre. Apparently back in Pakistan, Stan used to be a limousine driver to rich aristocrats and executives. While the job was normal enough, Stan admitted to me that he had a habit of going through their belongings.

He told me that it was very common for many passengers to leave prescription drugs behind, and claims to have found a bottle of Viagra once. I laughed and encouraged him to go on.

One golf bag he opened, as he proclaimed, contained a large assortment of sexual paraphernalia. He continued to explain each object in gleeful detail. There was a sick enjoyment to Stan’s face. I was going to throw up again.

Stan told me he that he could take what he wanted, because everyone would be too embarrassed to claim missing luggage of that nature. Then it got weirder. He proceeded to offer to sell me a whole bottle of Viagra. I politely declined.

“Are you sure?” He asked in his thick Indian accent.

“I’ll throw in a few vibrators too. Good deal, you won’t get it anywhere else.”

He struck you, like a crescendo Annie

We all want to forget something, so we tell stories. It’s easier that way. – Commoner, in Rashomon (1950)

On the 26^th of May 2010 at approximately 9:15AM excitement and drama stirred in the normally quiet and routine suburb of Campsie. I was inside the warehouse of Cincotta Chemist doing menial tasks when Dominic G. – my boss, rushes in claiming that a robbery went on just up the road. The details weren’t precisely clear yet, but it involved somebody getting shot, the po-leece and all sorts of testosterone driven entertainment!

So fifteen minutes later, I did what every self-indulgent, self-made investigative journalist would do in a situation like this:

Well what would you prefer - zucchini or money?

Of course, I wasn’t satisfied with waiting until the seven o’clock news, so I did some digging around myself.  As a disclaimer, I never actually left the warehouse; I used others who were in contact with potential witnesses, so technically their truths may be obscured already – but why would a Store-Boy and Bread-Man lie*?

The first recollection came from Dominic himself, as mentioned previously. He said :

They blocked off all of Evaline St. There are choppers in the sky and this guy got shot trying to rob the fruit market! Why on Earth wouldn’t they rob them! Think of the weekend trading, and all the money there. Did you pull out all the Aisle 1 stock yet?

Around lunch-time, my valued food barterer and all around lovable store-boy Nick came back with another testimony. This time it was from the (least nice**) lady working at Charcoal Chicken: The Best Chickens and Chips on Earth. Now, bearing in mind Charcoal Chicken is right across the road from our store and at least half a kilometre away from the incident. She said:

These guys parked their car vertically across the road, stopping all traffic and shot at the fruit market. God was obviously working his miracle magic all the bullets managed to hit the rear wall of the fruit market (which in rough estimation was about 10+ metres into the store, not including obstacles) leaving nice, round bullet-holes.

All of a sudden I’ve got my very own Rashomon Effect happening. It’s when, according to Wikipedia, observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of said event. But the story continues – or just changes.

Later in the day Nick goes to the National Australia Bank which is adjacent to the fruit market, and is designed to have open three glass walls with the tellers facing directly into the street. So when he came back from the bank, he gives me another recollection – this time from the teller. Now with the description above, she must have the best possible vantage point as a witness, right? Well, read on:

These two guys came out of their car in the middle of the street – then all the four doors of the car opened. The police came right after and they started shooting. The two guys took refuge behind the car doors, shot back for a while – then promptly drove off.

My final recount came early next morning, when Adam, the nocturnal Bread-Man told me the take from the fruit shop owner’s perspective:

This car stopped in the middle of the road, and all of a sudden police came out of nowhere, I heard gunshots so I [commando rolled] into a crate of fruit.

Of course, nobody covers the story better than the SMH, here’s the full account of what actually happened:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/police-open-fire-in-sydney-shopping-street-as-gang-ambush-backfires-20100524-w6kf.html

However, if I, Peter Chi, was an investigative journalist, and I had just heard first hand recounts mentioned previously – then my story would have gone a whole lot more awry:

Moral of the story is: If Peter Chi becomes a reporter, don’t give him stories to do with any slight amount of guns, violence, Campsie or smooth criminals.

*I give full operational trust in Nick and Adam’s objective recounting skills. Yesterday, Nick was taught the meaning of faux pas, and is using it to great credibility. Adam on the other hand sleeps at 8PM every single night. That’s sign of a trustworthy person right there.

**Out of the three ladies that work there, she is the indignant one about serving sizes. The other two are pretty awesome.

Gonna keep tryin’/Till I reach the highest ground/No one’s gonna bring me down’

My first stepfather would say that what I didn’t know would fill a book. Well, here it is. – Tobias Wolff.

Do you ever imagine yourself at some point into the future? How far? Are you the type of person who sees every little step involved like a progressive series (you know, A to B, B to C all the way down to Y to “oh me in the future”) or do you shoot blindly and hope it goes somewhere (Like the A to Z, “but it’ll happen eventually”)? Or are you somewhere in between.  Give it some thought.

Unfortunately, I am the blind shooter. I can visualise the cool things in life that might happen:

“Picture this, Peter Chi in New York; gorgeous wife and kids; successful screenwriter; mentored by Quentin Tarantino; has lunch with Edward Norton every Thursday; gets calls from James Cameron about script direction; and rolls deep with his entourage.”

I kind of regret typing that, because there is drool all over my keyboard and my heart is beating vigorously for some reason. And no, the future gorgeous wife didn’t do it.

But I can’t keep giving myself that tease of a fantasy any more. I needed something concrete; something real to work with.

So earlier this week, while I was rummaging through my desk to find something (probably an old issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, knowing me) I found scraps of uni work from last semester. I thumbed through sheets of last semester’s class printouts and course guides with indifference, until I came across a worksheet with questions like this:

What sort of job do you see yourself doing in five years?

My response, which was written what looks like a red crayola crayon:

97% of straight women agree that this is an attractive career choice for Peter Chi

I am a combination of amused, disappointed and somewhat regretful that I didn’t take that questionnaire seriously. Because when I read it again it was EXACTLY what I needed to get into focus.

So this week, I decided to spend my time and fill out an abridged, more personalised version of my own (As a HR student, I have the necessary skills to do this. Booer!). You can find a copy of it for your own enjoyment in the link ahead:

THE FIVE YEARS TIME TEST

I finished it on Friday arvo and something struck me like a thousand volts.

I’m probably not an A-B-C-D-…-Z person or even anywhere in close in likeness, but hell, I know what to do now:

http://www.thefilmmakersfactory.com/the-script-factory/

This is something I’m going to do. I’m nervous, excited, empowered, and a little cynical: this better not be a scam to steal my $45.

So if you read this far, thank you. If you want to support this little vision of mine – well, hugs and kisses. I will forever be grateful.

Moral of the day: Edward Norton is possibly the best actor of our generation. He is so awesome at what he does, i have the biggest non-sexual man-crush on him. yeeeeee.

Salutations and mung-beans, ya’ll!

MOVIE REVIEW 11-05-2010

I am glad Hollywood has decided to reverse the role of which type of men get the most women. I believe I’ve got Tobey McGuire to thank for this. Never has geeky looked so appealing to the female masses. But enough of that, Kick-Ass is probably the most refreshing movie of its genre I’ve seen in a long while.

Based on Mark Millar’s comic by the same name, Kick-Ass revolves around David Lizewski, a teenage nobody who decides to put some spandex on, and fight crime. This isn’t one of those generic superhero origin stories either, as the protagonist drones well into the first scene. He’s got no powers, no special training of any kind; he’s just a bored and sexually frustrated high schooler. He doesn’t even have a cool motive.

I loved the original comic book series for its complete disregard for social conventions and the Fight Club style of visceral shock-humor. The movie delivers on the same note, with enough butchering, decapitation, car related incidents and a very generous amount of prop and CGI blood usually followed by a humorously dark pique, all done in beat.

You’ve got to give props to director Mathew Vaughn for following the source material so rigorously. I’m very glad that nowadays, fan input and veracity to the source is crucial for ticket sales as well as a medium to critical acclaim. The late 00’s is a good time to be a comic book nerd.

During one stage of the movie, I instantly recognised Kick-Ass illustrator and co-creator John Romita Jr’s involvement in the animated comic book montage of one of the characters. Major geek-gasm there. Nick Cage’s character also did the ol’ Adam West-1980s Batman voice, which was once again, a tingle to the nerd-senses.

I especially enjoyed Christopher Mintz-Plasse (or Fogell as most would know him), playing the physically challenged, whiny son of the antagonist. His impish nerdiness never fails to entertain. Aaron Johnson who played David played his role well, if not a little unforgettable and I don’t blame him, that whole love story subplot made me think that instead of being in an awesome Mark Millar adaptation, we’re watching a stereotypical teen movie. Boo. It made the whole scheme of things feel so domesticated and cliché.

You know, I still can’t pinpoint the highlight of Kick-Ass. It’s not the well choreographed scenes about a purple haired ten year old girl in a mask armed with ninja swords decapitating mob goons. Although that was pretty cool. It’s not the eclectic soundtrack (John Murphy’s In a house in a heartbeat from 28 Days Later was used here PERFECTLY).

It’s just fun.

Like the comic book, it doesn’t take itself too seriously to the point where things become camp, but while dealing with serious issues as well. With the exception of a few minor gripes, I’d be most gladly to give the movie 4 stars.

And for those curious, the film got an R-rating, because a ten year old girl uttered the most profane word in the English language. Brownie points there for the daring.

Buddy you’re a young man hard man/Shoutin’ in the street gonna take on the World some day

When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead – Barney Stinson

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, there are some days you’ll feel like this:

People have often asked, “Peter, what do you do when you’re depressed?” And often have been returned with a sly smile, maybe a wink, and a simple, effortless response like: “ha-ha, please.”

Not really.

Beneath my accent-toting, comic-book loving, charming man-child of an exterior (who also has a nice bum and is single, by the way), is a living, breathing human who is also capable of feeling down, despite my Herculean strength, and infinite awesomeness.

So I’d like to think.

Y’see, this week was terrible. Possibly the worst week in the world. Remember the time Hitler tried taking over the Allies in Europe? See how lousy that week was? Ad infinitum. That was my week.

What happened next?

There was a movie I watched once upon a time ago – the name, I forget, but I know the main character would sound like how God would speak when God spoke out aloud back in the day. This one line in that movie was forever be embedded into in my life:

Get busy living, or get busy dyin’.

There was something I came across today that further crystallised this mentality:

Then God blessed them [us] and said “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it…” – Genesis 1:28

God doesn’t want me to remain passive and indifferent either. I wasn’t going to throw in the towel, or be depressed the slightest – because simply, I was too busy to be depressed. Like I said to a friend earlier this evening – there is simply too many things I want to, no, NEED to do. Yeah, you’ve been Bible’d.

Right now, there are many experiences in life that I want to be tantalised with, too many things to learn, and too many of my talents I want to stretch and explore before I can roll over and wave the white flag (or in my case, get a girlfriend again, ooh he di’nt!)

If my life was one day turned into a career reel, I’d love it to be one of those tributes that highlight all the badass things I’ve done. Sorta like this guy here.

Moral of the day: The nineties had all the best sporting legends.

No seriously, if you can’t pick it out from my post then I suggest a frontal lobe lobotomy. If you are a one Andrew Tse, please don’t mention the inaccuracies of my description – I know, you are medic-awesome.

This is Peter Chi – GEHT TO THE CHAWPER!

Steak knife/Card shark/Con job/Boot cut.

Efficiency is intelligent laziness. – David Dunham

I had a conversation with my boss on Monday. It was a boring, meaningless topic regarding stock control, time exchange and the efficiency of goods.

Blah blah.

The tedium had gotten into me so badly; my brain actually exited my cranium and flew to the Whitsundays for a long deserved holiday. So I stopped listening, and relied on my response-jerk reactions to see where it’ll take me.

So this a small sample of how the conversation went:

My Boss: When you put stock in the Kardex through verify…

Me: Productivity Plus!

Etcetera ectetera.

But it made me realise something: you don’t actually have to pay attention to anybody, provided you answer them the way they want to feel answered to.

And the non-versation was born.

The non-versation is universal. Everybody’s done it. If claim you haven’t then either you are a saint, or you’re a compulsive liar. If you’re the latter then you’re having non-versations all the time. Even right now. That’s right.

Also, for those euphemistically believe they’ve never been on the receiving end of a non-versation, congratulations. This song is a tribute to how awesome you really are.

Think of it as a game: Can you non-versate until the end of a conversation?Of course the simple “oh, yeah”, “uh-huh”, “sure thing” would suffice, but if repeated enough times, the victim will catch on and eventually ask if you were listening, hence destroying your non-versation streak. Plus it’s undoubtedly boring.

Sometimes it’s wise to just ask the occasional open ended question to make sure they’ll ramble so you can importantly zone out.

My Boss: I will not tolerate the loss of an actual item blah blah.

Me: So what do we do about it?

It’s more than just a simple solution to a boring conversation, it is an art form. Those who excel at this can say the most absurd things under the intended victim’s radar, without even listening to what they said before. For example:

My Boss: When there is no stock on the shelf, you check the POS and then you blah, blah, blah

Me:  It’s not you, it’s me.

…If you’re good enough you could even start responding with slogans from every day products:

My Boss: … That customer was complaining about the service in the register she said …

Me: Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

Sure the risk is well rewarded with personal entertainment; but the golden rule is to always, always stay in context. (More on this next week.)

Which brings me to the moral of my story:

Be nice to your bosses. Or else you’d end up like this:

NB: Everything recorded as conversations here were true. I did say those responses. My Boss’ , however was edited simply due to the fact that I actually wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying at the time.

NBB: If you were one of those self-deluded folks who’ve never been on a receiving end of a non-versation, guess what. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers just had you. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

NBBB: If you are Dominic Grieco and have decided to read this. It’s not about you. I swear. This is a written recount from my friend named MacLovin. I am legally inclined to write what he reports at his work.