Phew..
1:53 AM
| Author:
UrbanProphet
Well I managed to get the first post for "The Great I Am" up. Initially I had written like 2k+ words but decided to lop it down a bit because I was repeating myself too much... Any comments would be much appreciated and if u notice any spelling rrors etc, pls do tell me...
Anyway, I can't wait too see if my video makes it to be the first 50. Seriously, I can't stand waiting for any news at all from Australia and I hate, hate, hate al this waiting! Lol! Last I checked my video was the most popular one from Malaysia so I hope that counts for something. Well I guess I just need to be patient then...
Anyway, I've already booked my tickets for my flight back home to Malaysia. It's a bit of a shock to be going back so soon but it kinda works out in my favour, well in a way kinda. I think I'll be transferring all my credit over to the UK and well, if I nd up there, life will much, much easier...
Anyway, that's all for now.. Over n Out!
Nik
A Word From The Author
I've decided as an attempt to push myself to finish writing that damn book i've been saying I'd write for the last few years, I'm going to publish a few pages of it every week on my blog as a web book. At this rate I think I should be able to complete the book within 6 months if I write roughly 3,000 to 4,000 words per week I should have a decent if, smallish, book of just over 80,000 words. The epilogue and the first 2 chapters are actually from stuff I've already written, I've had to modify them a bit to fit in this medium. Mind you this is going to be a live work in progress otherwise, so please if you see any spelling mistakes or simply have a point to give, please do leave a comment. I'll be publishing every Monday, and perhaps thursdays depending on my work load. It'll be the best way to for me to finish writing the book as all this while I've been procrastinating with the writing because it seems like such a daunting task to write.
Anyway, this book, or rather e-book now, with its current story line has been a project of mine for at least 2 years but has its roots actually in several other pet story lines I've been working on for at least 15 years. Of course none this has ever been published and mostly resides in notebooks literally scattered across the four corners of the world. Thankfully a vast majority of my notes still is in my head. All of that provided me with a working world to play with and a back-story for The Great I Am.
You could say that the story is actually the last monologue of a dying man who hasn't realize that he's dying yet. After finally realizing his predicament, man truly sees for the first time what it means to exist and understands who he truly is and what everything really represents. It's from this self realization that he finds himself suddenly planted in a world new to him, how he got there, why he's there, and more importantly, how he'll get back, is all but unclear to him.
I would like to think of this work as an exploration into the different philosophical stand-points and discuss them and how they differ from one another and how much the same they truly are. At the same time I'll try to inject some humanity and humour into what essentially would be incredibly dull and boring to read otherwise. I've always found that in order to ensure that the message gets delivered, humour works wonders.
Anyway, I'll be posting the first part of the Epilogue this Thursday, 26th Feb 2009 by twelve noon EST. Hopefully I won't be delayed, but unless something really drastic happens, I should be posting it on time. Anyway, I have a lot of work, redoing the Prologue, so until Thursday, ciaou!
Nik
I spent most of my morning yesterday in agony. Pure and simple, something's-eating-me-from-the-inside-out-alien-chestburster-bursting-out-dragging-a-net-filled-with-broken-glass-and-fish-hooks-agony. Yes my dear friend, i felt mucho gusto bubu in effect...
Basically, this morning started early for me considering its Sunday, roughly around 07.30 a.m. My first thoughts when I woke up this morning were of the very startled "Huh, what the..???" flavour as it felt like i had just been punched in the stomach by a heavily over-caffeineted middle weight boxer with his freakishly large hands, which incidentally was the caused him to have a deeply ingrained inferiority complex that made him pissed of with the world and he was letting it all out on me. My second thought was of the, "Gasp, arg.." variety as I slowly curled myself into a tight ball.
To say the pain was intense would have been an understatement. Usually, I'm quite good at putting up a brave front in the face of adversity and when push comes to shove, I've always thought of myself as somebody who could keep it together when it became necessary to do so but how wrong I was. I was close to screaming like a baby!
Anyway, after I managed to gather enough of my wits together, I got dressed and dragged myself over to my door to see if I could get one of my housemates to help me out. By this time it was already 9 a.m. , I had waited one and a half hours because, initially, I wanted to head over to the convenience store and buy some antacid as I thought it was simply heart-burn. However, the pain grew more and more stronger as time went by that by the time it was 9 a.m. , I could hardly move.
Anyway, I grabbed a random housemate from the kitchen and told him in no uncertain terms that I needed to go to a hospital. He looked at me funny, and then proceeded to hand me 20 bucks and told me that's all he has and that i should use it to call a cab. I kind of just blinked at him for a few seconds then at the wadded up 20 dollar bill he had just shoved into my hand, then I more or less went no no no, its not your money i want, i want you to follow me to the hospital so that the cabbie won't just shove me out of his cab in front of the emergency room after I pass out, or worse yet, throw my body into a disused dumpster. So no I want you yo come with me. Maybe he would have responded to me better if I had called him by his first name, instead of by my other house mates name, the one that he doesn't like that is, but hey I was delirious, and both their names start with "R".
So he calls a cab, and I roll up into a ball on the sofa, the pain had progressed from a constant pain to a throbbing, traveling one, as it slowly started climbing up the pain scale. The wait felt like it took forever, as I kind of over-acted on the coach I noticed little things which I hadn't before, like how our carpet in the living room really needs cleaning and how their just too much cobwebs next to the heater. To be honest it was all very surreal, it felt like I was watching something horrible happen to myself but not actually feeling any of it until I started thinking about it. It's strange that in adversity your brain can just tune out, or detach itself and make everything seem like its a dream. Eventually the cab did arrive and shuttled me and my kidnapped housemate to Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.
When we reached to hospital, to be honest, I don't really remember much, i was in a daze when I was getting myself registered and had a preliminary chat with the attending doctor. After the necessary signing of names, I was shuffled back to the waiting room, just so that I'd achieve the necessary quota of time spent waiting waiting before the y finally shuffled me back into the ward and a nurse gave me a cup to pee in and jabbed my arm repeatedly trying to find a vein. While the nurse was doing that a doctor came in and began asking a few more probing questions about where it hurt what kind of pain it was. For some reason she was fairly insistent on how much I had to drink the week before, I dunno, I guess she thought I looked like an alcoholic or something. After I told her, no I'm not an alcoholic, she felt around my stomach and then told me that since the pain is in my pancreas, I must have pancreatitis. I was like "what? what the hell is that? How serious is that?" and all she said was, "Hmm, well let's discuss that when we get back the test results. I'm sure it's nothing that serious god-forbid." All I said then was stifled, tiny, little "....eek...".
After they had collected all the bodily fluids they wanted from me and we're done scaring the shit out of me, they then left me on a hospital bed in Room 37, which was actually just curtained up space and not really a room. While I was lying there waiting for the Doctor to come back to me with my test results something even more surreal happened. I'm lying there on my cot, very obviously trying to control my tendency to writhe in pain when a pretty face attached to a fairly attractive young lady peeked through the curtains. She smiled at me and said, "Hi there, I'm -whateverhernamewasiwasintoomuchpainthatiforget-, from bla-bla pharmaceuticals and I was wondering if you'd like to take part in a survey study we're doing on HIV awareness. If you do, we'll give you a free HIV test!" I was perplexed, I felt like I was going to literally die on that cot then and there, there I was, grunting like a stuck pig, practically rolling of the bed in pain, convulsing with pain, and here comes this chick wanting me to participate in marketing survey? It was at that point that I truly began to believe in karma, considering what I used to do for a living before this that is.
Anyway, since I couldn't run away and even though I could have easily told the girl, "Well I'm truly sorry miss but I'm a bit too busy right now writhing in pain to answer your questions, but maybe if you come see me later when i'm all doped up, then maybe we might be able to talk." but seeing that I was delirious I just said ya why not. in a way, I guessed that anything that could take my mind of the pain would be good. So the first few questions were relatively easy, and it had to do about how you could get AIDS and my a few on my personal life. 30 questions in total and I only got stumped on one question, "Which is safer to use, a latex condom or a natural skin condom?". I was like, what, natural skin condom, what's that? Turns out, as what I understand from what she explained to me, it's a condom made from the intestines of a sheep. I was like really, you guys use condoms like that here? I mean, that's like, you know, ugh, gross. I can't even imagine putting it on, much less a woman letting me go anywhere near her with it on. Anyway, she then shook my hand and made me sign a certificate of participation and then tried to get me to take that HIV test. It was around this point that my pain level rose from 8 to 10, meaning the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. So I kindly declined her offer. To be honest I don't even know if she was real, I mean the nurses and the doctor seemed to just ignore her like she wasn't there, for all I know in my delusional state, I hallucinated the whole thing. Seriously, I never thought I'd be in a situation where I'd be incapacitated with pain and have to explain in detail my sex-life to a complete though strangely attractive stranger.
When the nurse finally came back with my medication I was practically insane with pain. First, she gave me 4 units of morphine to control the pain and 1 unit of erm, wolfram, wolvram, walphreim, wal-what-ever to control the nausea. To be honest, the morphine did sod-all for the pain. Nothing, not one bit of relief what so ever. So now, not only was still in pain, I was stoned to boot! My friend who had come with me, asked me how the pain was and I managed to tell him that it was getting worse. He ran off to get the nurse. To be honest I don't remember him coming into the room, it was like all of a sudden there's Ryan. For all I know, he was the pretty girl with the questionnaire I talked to earlier.
Anyway, the doctor came back and gave me another 4 units of morphine, which somewhat controlled the pain. Now at least I was wincing in pain, and not writhing, and best of all it put me in a happy, laughy mood. It was around then that I just started to talk nonsense, I mean I was just talking around in circles and my friend Ryan just well, encouraged me. I remember I was talking about the show House and how every week, the usual first diagnosis was for a disease called what was it again? Sounds like a dog's name, u know? Rufus? Dufus? You know, like, woof-woof? It was at that point that the guy in the next cot said, I'm sorry to cut in but I can't take it anymore, its lupus, lupus!
The doctor came back again and stopped our little bantering and asked me if I was still in pain. I told her yeah i was, she then asked me if I wanted more pain meds? I said no I shouldn't I don't want to be too out of it, as it was, I was grasping for straws at keeping my head together. Anyway, she said that the test results came back inconclusive, but it was definitely not pancreatitis because it would have shown in my blood-work. She squeezed my tummy a few more times at which point I winced as she hit different places. That's odd she said, hold on let me try something. The Doctor puttered off to get something and left me in a daze as the morphine started to really hit me. Ryan was like, wow, your eyes are just all pupil and I was like, yeah, its pretty isn't it, butterflies.
The Doctor then came back and shoved a little cup of strangely pink liquid. What's this? I asked. It's Maalox mixed with a bit of novacaine so drink it quickly like your taking a tequila shot or else your mouth will go all numb. Like the good little school boy I listened to my doctor and proceeded pump my system full of yet another narcotic (the novocaine) to my already addled system and lo! Within less then a minute the madman with a knife trying to cut his way out of my stomach withered and died! It was like instant relief, like if you were wearing a shoe thats way too tight and then someone quickly pulled it off your foot.
With that, the doctor then told me that he was changing my diagnosis from pancreatitis to GERD, or Gastro-somethingoranother-disorder, in other words acid reflux. With that she patted me on the back, took of the needles in my arms let me of on my merry little way. Now, at this point, in hind-sight, I'm really glad my house-mte stayed with me through out it all. I mean, there I was, all morphined out with a sprinkle of novocaine let loose on Boston. I mean there I was, stoned immaculate with a bad slur from the novocaine. If I was alone, I'd have given myself 10 minutes on the train before something unnecessarily unpleasant would have happened to me one way or another. For that I have to thank Ryan for sticking it out with me and making sure I got there and back again through all the different states of incapacity I went through yesterday. Kudos to you!
I have no idea how much the bills going to be, or if my insurance will suck all that up or what. The hospital just kind of gently showed me the wya to the door and let me of on my merry little way. I guess they'll send it to me in the mail or something. My housemate said it shouldn't have to fork out that much, he had to have a cat scan the last time he went to the hospital and it only cost him $400 without insurance and I'm insured so well, we'll see. Anyway, the whole experience was quite amazing I think, I've not had to go to a hospital in well... ever. Though I have to say, as fun as it was, it's something I wouldn't wanna have to go through again.
Sincerely,
Nik
After almost a week of being deprived of the Internet, I'm finally online again! Woohoo! And from the comfort of my own home even...
To be honest, I've technically not had an internet connection for almost two months now as my housemate, who handled the cable contract decided to cancel it... He's off to France soon, so he had to terminate the contract.. Unfortunately no one else in the house wants to take up the new contract for various reasons, thus leaving us without a connection... All this while I have been'poaching' my neighbours connection, as he well, didn't bother to put on the encryption on his router (sorry dude! :-p).. Everything was going ok unti earlier this week when his housemate moved out and cancelled the electricity contract without informing him... Thus the guys over at NSTAR came over and cut their power thus leaving me internet-less... I mean all this just as I'm trying to submit that video, I had to run off to a cybercafe to send my file.... Well I suppose, it sucked worse for my neighbour, I only didn't have the 'net, he didn't even have power in the middle of winter n it took NSTAR like a whole week to sort out... I mean the poor guy was more or less camped out in the basement until they reconnectd the power....
Anyway, I've already uploaded my video to the Queensland Tourism Board for that Island Reef Job thingy.. It took me the whole week to do and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result... I'm only upset at my attempts lip-sync-ing. After like two million attempts at trying to record myself giving my 1 minute monologue, I finally reached a point where I like the video of one clip, but the audio of the other... So I decided to go just with what I got n tried to combine the two... Well, there was much left to be desired with the results but hopefully its not too noticeable... Aside from that, I was really happy with my "Zoom-Out to the Upper Atmosphere" effect I did... I'm a bit gob-smacked though at how long it took me to do... I mean it took me like 1 whole day, working on only something which only gave me 4 seconds of footage.... Well, at the very least I saved the effect as a preset so i'll get to recycle it for something else later...
Well as I said I submitted my video last thursday, two days before the submission date.. I'm still waiting for the confirmation e-mail saying tht my video has been approved n I hope I get it soon... I can't take the suspense, it killing me!! Lol! Anyway, here's the end result, enjoy, n pls do comment....
Regards,
Nik
Well, I spen all night last night coming up with the concept and script and I was going to shoot the video today, but when I woke up this morning i found a monster zit just above my lip... It figures, arg!!! So instead of taking footage, which I guess I'll have to do tomorrow, I went and did the score for the music and recorder the voice over... I thought the music score would take the most time, it didn't, it was relatively easy, the tune sounds a bit like theme song of the movie Snatch, you know, kinda funky and fast. Anyway, what ate up most of today was doing the voice over... I kept having to rewrite the script because the v/o was over-running the 60 second max. In the end, I chopped up half the script and spoke real fast. It kinda works with the music though. Anyway, I'll be working on the visual effects in After Effects tonight, so after i record the actual footage tomorrow i'll just need to plonk in the effects and to the final post pro in Final Cut... Well I guess, I'm not that far behind my schedule... Once it's done, I'll post it on the reefjob's site n heck I'll even post it on youtube... Still have 5 days to go... Nik, over and out...
I just came across a website today touting the Best Job in the World... Apparently, the Queensland Tourism Board is looking for a spokesperson to blog and video blog about how wonderful the Great Barrier Reef is... So they plan to send their spokesperson to live on one of the many islands on or along the reef for six months and make them do adventury fun stuff AND pay them a bundle of cash to do so (AUS$150k).. All any potential spokespersons have to do is sign up and send in a 60 second video stating why they should be selected and what they know about the reef... Then sometime next month, the Tourism Board will hold n online vote where the public will select 11 people who will be sent to Australia for the final interview then the successful candidate will start their 6 months on the island in July... I think this an excellent idea and am definitely going to sign up for it.. You see, I've been thinking long and hard about what I want to do with my life and have decided to go down the route of getting more involved in green conservation, however as I don't have any experience as a campaigner its a bit hard to get into it as a career. I think this'll give me an excellent platform to start of from as more people would be reading what I have to say and this will give me an excellent avenue to express my views on the environment and our place in it... I got 6 days before applications close to do my video so am planning to use my day off tomorrow to prepare the vid.. Please, please, please vote for me next month and I'll owe you all big time!!! Once I post my video I'll make a link on my blog to it so that all u guys can see it... Anyway, signing out n take care n wish me luck!!!
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Last Emperor of China Abdicates
Hsian-T'ung, the last emperor of China, is forced to abdicate following Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution. A provisional government was established in his place, ending 267 years of Manchu rule in China and 2,000 years of imperial rule. The former emperor, only six years old, was allowed to keep up his residence in Beijing's Forbidden City, and he took the name of Henry Pu Yi.
You know, I've been thinking... The bulk of my problems of late seem to stem mostly from my inability to say "no" and my ingrained tendency to try and make other people happy, usually at the cost of my own happiness. I notice I get placed in weird situations where I really don't care about what the outcome is but I'm there because those two problems I have stated above... I don't know how many boring-ass events I've had to attend because I couldn't say no... Or sometimes I've been pressured into making potentially life changing decisions when I really felt deep down inside that it was irrelevant... Worst of all, there have been times when I've been forced into situations where I've had to do things which went against my beliefs, morals or conscience...
My opinion is that, its ok to make people happy, but you have to make sure that the decision you made is something you can live with afterwards. Not being able to say no to people more or less means you'll be handing over the reins to somebody else to run your life for you. It's your life so you have to take full responsibility for it, if you just float through life letting people make you're decisions for you, you would never be in control of your own life ever...
For most people, finding the gall to stand up and go "na-ah, not gonna.." to others just doesn't come naturally. Most of us are brought up in atmosphere where conformity is key to survival. growing up your parents tell you what to do, when you you're old enough to go to school then it's your teacher and classmates, then your boss, then your spouse, et hoc genus omne. At every point in your life, someone has something to say about what you should be doing, what you are doing and how you are doing it. The onus is on you though, to decide whether you want to take their point of view into consideration.
I feel that since you only have one life (well, even if you believe in reincarnation or an after-life or whatever floats your boat, the only thing you can be 100% certain off is the life your living now) you have to make sure you enjoy it as much as you can, and living at the beck and call of everyone else is not going to allow you to do so. The average life span is only 70yrs guy, 75 for girls, some places its even less then that, and to be honest, that's actually not that long so you gotta make sure that you are happy with the life your leading because you've only got one chance. Mind you, there are many ways find joy in life, it could be children, it could be career, traveling, it's whatever you find important to you that gives you piece of mind and puts a smile on your face. I feel that its important the you be strong enough to say no when it has to be said, your time is precious and you afford to be giving it away willy-nilly...
I'm not sure if I told you all, but over the holidays I went travelling around in California, a seriously beautiful state if I don't say so myself... I had a wonderful time when I was there, me and my folks rented a car and drove all over the state... We went from L.A. to Oakhurst, then up to Sacremento and San Francisco... Then finally down the Golden Route along the coast back to L.A. I took some especially splendid pics when i was there and had an absolute ball of a time... I have nothing but good things to say about California, honestly, nothing but good things. If I ever were to migrate to the US it would so that I could stay in good 'ole Cali.
An interesting thing happened to me when i was there though, something which I feel I should bring up. This happened to me while I was boading the plane, flying back to Boston and I would have to say was one of the more embarassing moments in my life, somehting I wouldn't want to experience again and ordinarily would like to allocate the memory to some distant area in my brain, far away from where my regular thoughts usually flow. If it wasn't for the obvious ha-ha factor, I would never have brought it up in my blog. My opinion is that if you can look at a bad experience and find the humour in it, then it means that you've learned something and have grown as an individual, thus me wanting to share this experience with you, my dear blog-ee...
The story is like this, after just about an hour of waiting to board my flight, my seating section was finally called for boarding, as usual my seat was right at the back of the plane. I have no idea why, but whenever I fly, they usually place me there. Maybe there is some ariline regulation governing single male travellers, but that's usually where i get placed. Anyway, i joined the queue and proceeded to slowly plod the way onto the plane. Prior to this, I had a very interesting conversation with a mom and her son. Aparently her kid was flying to Boston to study in some expensive high school. Why anyone would want to go through high school in Boston when they're from L.A. is beyond me. I would have done High School in Cali THEN go for college n Boston... Makes more sense, the chicks are hotter in L.A. Actually, I never really understood how that kid's mom could have gotten past customs into the waiting area, I mean ya its a local flight but you still need a ticket to get into the area and his mom wasn't flying anywhere, anyway I digress.
So I'm in this line see, and finally i get to go onto the plane. I was pure joy for me to finally get onto the plane. It meant I didn't need to wait anymore, I was just so much more closer to getting into the air and flying off into the sunset straight back home. Yes, I had a wonderful holiday but I was more than ready to go back and sleep in my own bed and not have to share it with my brother, two weeks I was with the folks, two weeks I was sleeping in the same bed as my little bro. Little is an understatement, he outweighs me and is at least 4 inches taller, but I love the big lug all the same. Anyway, so I'm in this line, eager to get home, looking forward to the fact that I don't have to worry about acidentally cuddling my sibling in my sleep and I finally board the plane.
When I got on board, there was the usual "good afternoon sir", "Thank you for flying with us today" et cetera crap from the flight attendants. One even helpfully told me that my seat which was D-28 was just behind the 27th row, next to seat C, which I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to work it out for myself seeing that the plane is more a less cylinder with a linear seating arrangement. Anyway, I had just gotten into the plane, got greeted at, told 'useful information' and turned the right corner that you always have to do boarding a plane and enter that little corridor, just before the seats, in between the toilet and what i guess was a utility cupboard. This small little space, was about 3 feet across so just enough space for one individual to go through, after this space it led straight into the first class section of the plane and into the business class then yours truly's ecnmoy class. As I entered it one of the 1st class passengers got up from his seat which was right infront of the passage an stood smack infront of me.
This bloke was just a bit taller then my 5 foot 9 but sure as hell, he outweighed me by at least 100 lbs. I mean, the guy was a ball, he wore suspender because it'd be too uncomfortable for him to wear a belt. Rotund, didn't even begin to explain his body shape. If he was any larger, he'd have his own satelites, hell Earth would be his twin planet. Anyway, Lumpy here wanted to go north when everyone was going south, meaning that as I entered that very tight space I just mentioned to you, he decided to try and squeeze past me. Ordinarily, I would think I would have just been pushed to the side by his bulk and gotten slightly flattened and he would have been able to squirm past me. Unbeknown to him and unfortunately for me, the bag I was carrying was one of those travellers back-packs, meaning it was on my back and had a hell of a lot of clothing in it. As he attempted to squeeze past me I tried to tell him, "Excuse me sir, but there's just not enough room for you, me and my bag so please let me get past first." but all I got to say was, "Er no sir hold on, please let met errkkkk -uunnnff*" as he tried to squirm his massively massive bulk past me, he just flipped me to one side facing him and jammed my back-pack into the wall. When he felt resistance he pushed even harder, thus wedging us completely into that 3 foot space and pushed all the air out of my lungs in the process.
So, we were stuck. He was confused, I was dazed from lack of oxygen, the flight attendants were shocked. There we stood, jammed at the entrance, no way for me to move as he tried with all his might to wedge us even more firmly into the plane. I was flabergasted, confused, I did not know what to do. Never in all my years of flying have I ever had to figure out how to unsquish myself from between a toilet and a hippopotamus. It took the flight attendants 10 minutes to figure out how to seperate me from the toilet and the ox. Take-off was actually delayed because of what was happening in the cabin, I mean the co-pilot came out to see what was going on. I never felt more helpless in my life. Honest to god, I though they were going to rub us in butter and try to seperate us, we were really, really jammed together.
It took the co-pilot and three flight attendants to seperate us. Mr Co-pilot and madame head flight attendant pulling my back-pack which was attached to me, and another two flight attendants pulling on godzilla's left arm. When we were seperated, everyone in the first class section broke out in applause. All i could do was smile, and go well, life can suck at times and quitely and quickly went to my seat. Moral of the story is this, don't be a dick, wait for everyone else to be seated then get up and go do whatever it is you wanted to do. I mean come on, you can't even use the toilet when the planes on the ground, where the hell else did you want to go?
"Panic is simply the inability to control your imagination."Niklas Albakri...
*Fed up of quoting other people, so decided to quote myself! :-p
February 6, 1952The first "Don't Walk" sign was installed in New York City.
The other day, my housemate rapped on my door the quick but quite stuccato knock of a person who really wants to get your attention but in a way that's both urgent but polite. When I opened the door he had a bewildered look of a person, who thinks something really bad is happening, somewhere and maybe if he just panicked just a wee bit, it might help.
"Niklas, do you smell that?"
Seeing that I just got up and it was rather early in the morning and my brain is the type that takes two cups of coffee and something short of a mild heart-attack before it really kicks into the higher gears, I kind of just mumbled a "huh what? I dunnowatutalkinbout.."
"Serious, Niklas, do you smell that? I think I smell chlorine." at this point he more or less dragged me out of my room a proceeded to physically point my nose in various directions to see if I could ascertain the scent that was causing him to worry so. Now seeing that he's a rather big man who out-weighs me by a hundred pounds and that I had only just woken up, I kind of just acquiesed and allowed him to waive me around like some sort of rag-doll living gas detector.
Eventually, enough brain cells got into gear to allow me some command of my olfactory senses, and I thought, "Why yes, I do smell chlorine." This thought triggered a memory of a history class a attended years ago concerning World War I and how chlorine gas was sometimes used in the bombs meant to seriously screw up soldiers. This was enough to kick start some more brain cells to recognise that maybe this situation was pretty urgent and required more than morning-zombie-me to resolve.
This was when things really kicked into gear, suddenly me and my house mate began to scoure the house looking for the source of this ominous pong. We checked in the kitchen, up the stairs, all over the place. We even went into the basement with flash light. All the while I couldn't help wonder, why chlorine? What on earth is in our house leaking chlorine gas?
After much searching and panicked stumbling about, we ascertained the scent was strongest just outside my bedroom in front of the bathroom door, which coincidentally was right above the furnace. So we thought, oh my god, maybe its the furnace? If so, then why didn't we smell the chlorine in the basement where the furnace was? So my house-mate Mike whipped out his cell-phone with the idea of calling our land-lord to ask his advice. As the dial tone on Mike's cell ringed, my other house-mate Robyn came out his bedroom, all groggy-eyed and pissed off the all the commotion we were making as he had just came back from working the night shift at post office and was trying to get some much needed sleep.
"Hey guys can you please pipe down a little, I'm trying to sleep!" he grunted at us in his own special pissed off way.
"Robyn, can't you smell that? We got a gas leak!" Both me and Mike chimed at Robyn.
"Gas leak, are you serious? I can't smell anything?" Robyn replied.
A bit take n aback by his non-chalance I responded angrily, "What do you mean you can't smell anything? Can you smell all that chlorine?".
Robyn first looked puzzled, then slowly he started to laugh. His laugh built up from a slow giggle to an out-right, all out, breathless guffaw.
Confused I asked him what's so funny? He then finally answered my question, hiccuping between laughs, that he had cleaned the toilet earlier that morning with bleach. Without saying a word I went back to my room and went back to sleep....
P.S. Furnaces don't run on chlorine...