Journal

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday, and we spent the evening at hers. Robin had cooked some delicious food, and my cousin Tony and his wife and two kids came to join us. I had a lot of fun even though most of our time we spent just talking about our screwed up family. Sometimes it’s important to talk to someone who’s been in the thick of it, you know? Yesterday, I suddenly realised that there’s so much drama that Robin was spared because the family had collapsed in on itself under the weight of the building tension, hostility and fueds by the time he was old enough to realise what was going on. (And that’s a good thing.) Anyway, I had fun. It was also good to hear Jody enjoyed her surprise this morning. I hope you have fun at Outdoor Stereo this Saturday, Jo. :)

.: Last Night
Last night I had dinner with Frank and he came up with a great spot to go and eat, at Meerzicht along the Nieuwe Meer, so we could enjoy the water and the sun while we ate. Had some really interesting conversations, a decent steak, and more testosterone laced manly hilarity than I’ve had in a while. Afterwards, I spent some time putzing around in my apartment, with the windows wide open, enjoying the evening air and listening to all the gossip coming from downstairs at L’Affiche. I a great evening, if I do say so myself.

.: Phone Stuff
Some time ago I got a new iPhone 3Gs and cancelled my other subscription and requested they change my number over to my new subscription. Turns out I forgot I had committed to this subscription for another year and it runs out in December. This means that I can’t cancel my subscription, but what I can do is pay off my subscription and terminate the contract prematurely. This’ll cost me four months of subscription fee. At first I thought “why should I?” when all it nets me is that I don’t get to use the minutes on that subscription, but now, a couple of weeks down the line, I hardly use my old phone (and subscription minutes) anyway, and that thing is just dead weight in my pocket. And everyone knows how much I hate dead weight… So yeah, I’m contemplating just getting it over with. I’ll call them on monday to see how to go about getting it cancelled, and how to go about retaining my number and transferring it to my new subscription.

.: Remembrance
A little over a week ago, it was the a year since my mother passed away. My brother, sister and I spent the day together, mourning our loss and remembering what a great mother she was. I realised that I have never really told anyone everything about those last 35 hours. I guess the only one that got the full story is Gina, but besides her I haven’t told anyone. Not only are they tough memories to put into words, but I also notice that hardly anyone is really interested in knowing. I’ve got mixed feelings about that revelation; on the one hand I understand it completely, because it wasn’t pretty, but on the other hand I would’ve expected there to be some morbid fascination by some about those last hours. I guess that’s just how I work. When I am fascinated by something, I want to know everything about it, never content to just get the important basics.

You might be tempted to think that I’m a bit bitter about it – that I had expected there to be more questions and more interested. And to be honest, I did have moments where I was a little baffled about why not more questions were asked, but now I realise that when it comes to remembering someone, everyone always settles on the memory that’s most significant for them. They don’t want to be distracted from that particular memory or lose their focus, especially when that distraction is an ugly one. It’s interesting, because the memory of my mother was, for a long time, those last few moments of us in the hospital, but slowly that memory is changing to the mother she was; when she still had hair, and was the energetic beauty that most people knew her as. That’s also the reason why I was so shocked to find those last pictures I took of her, because I hardly even recognised her. I’m glad that in my mind the cancer didn’t come to define her, or take over the memory I had of her. Much better – and prettier! – that way.

.: MMA – Fedor
Oh, and by the way, how much does it suck that Fedor Emelianenko didn’t get signed with the UFC after Affliction fell apart!? Jesus, that stings! Reportedly he was offered a 30 million dollar contract, for six fights – that’s five million dollars per fight, which is insane – a cut of the PPV revenue, he could do Combat Sambo whenever he desired, and he could sport whichever sponsors he wanted.

But the demand for M-1 Global, who has Fedor under contract, to co-promote the fights with the UFC was non-negotiable; the UFC wouldn’t budge.

So what does Fedor and M-1 do? They hook up with Strikeforce! The UFC offers better pay, better fights, better exposure, etc. etc. etc. What does Strikeforce offer? Co-promotion, and that’s it! They can’t pay as well, nor can they offer the exciting fights. Sure, Brett Rogers is an interesting fight, though Rogers has absolutely no personality, so it’s hard to sell him, and it certainly isn’t going to make Fedor more popular in the U.S. And sure, Werdum is there, whom the American fans also don’t know. Overeem is the current heavy weight champ, but American fans also don’t know his name. Sure, in a few years they’ll all have had the exposure to make them household names, probably, but right now it seems such a moot point to fight these guys.

M-1 wants to keep Fedor in their stable, I get that. And they probably want to get their name out on the American MMA market by co-promoting a big Fedor fight. But letting him fight good, but unknown fighters isn’t going to accomplish that. Ugh! Let him fight Couture, Minotauro, Mir – all of whom he’ll maul and rip to pieces. Then let him fight and destroy Lesnar. By that point his name will be so big in the U.S. that M-1’s name will be huge, too, even though they weren’t co-promoters. They can then set up their own promotions and eventually get Fedor back in their shows.

I just don’t get it. I really don’t understand what’s behind this.

I guess it’s been a while since I’ve written about what’s going on. I’ve also fallen shamefully behind with my film reviews. I thought I’d try and get back into the swing of things by writing a small post here. Currently, my time is spent…

Hanging out.
Gaming.
BJJ.
Transit.
Preparing apartment.

Yes, I’m preparing my apartment for Sonia’s arrival. Sonia’s the girl Moulsari found to live in our apartment for the coming two months while Moulsari is in Mexico visiting her parents. Luckily, our landlords were friendly enough to allow us to sublet the place, trusting us to find a trustworthy person to live there and allowing us to unburden our finances in Moulsari’s absence.

Besides all this, I’ve been very happy with the gaming we’ve been doing the last two weeks, and I’ve been getting rather disappointed with the decidedly lazy and unreliable way my brother’s been behaving lately. Honey and vinegar-blah-blah-blah, but something tells me that regardless of that wise notion, I’m about to lose my tolerant, kind streak.

Tomorrow I’m having an all-day course in different, advanced structures in .NET, which I’m looking forward to. Have to be there early, so I’m going to go and catch some shut-eye.

I haven’t been sleeping very well lately, and it’s starting to wear me down a bit. The upcoming 29th will signify that it’s been exactly a year since my mother passed away in Italy, and it leaves me rather emotional. On top of that, someone close by just lost her father a day ago, and getting to see the grief up close has opened up some of my own wounds, leaving me to wonder how much progress I actually made over the last year. Less than expected, obviously. I find myself chasing down the sorrow, trying to confront it in order to deal with it and get it out of my way, rather than let it live on the periphery of my consciousness, waiting of a moment to ambush me when I least expect it. It creeps up on me in the morning, in that fraction of a second between me waking up and me opening my eyes and getting out of bed. That moment right before I remember that my mother and father are dead. And so I chase it, listening to their favourite music, eating their favourite meals, doing the things they liked doing, just to feel close to them. I don’t need to look far to achieve that for either; I need to just look in the mirror to feel close to my father, and my mother was such a large part of my life that I can just close my eyes and be there, with her. Anywhere, really, but I go back to Italy with her, and I’m pushing her wheelchair up the hill. She’s suggesting that she can walk a little bit so as not to burden me, and I am sweating from the strain, smiling, and I decide to run a little faster and push a little harder. I go back to the hospital room where she passed away, where we’re sitting together in the dark singing the same childhood lullabies she sang to me when I was young, because it’s the only thing that I can think of that distracts her from her delirium induced panic. She can’t even form all the words she’s so frightened and confused, but she latches on to it, latches on to me, and we make it through another hour together.

See, there’s the beast. It’s not hard to chase it down. :`(