Thursday, October 24, 2024
8:04 a.m. Room at the House
Port Dickson, Malaysia
(1,980 words)
I’m typing on the Asus VivoBook this morning. I’m trying to decide whether I want to bring the Logitech Keyboard with me or not. I definitely want to have it with me. I always want to have it with me. But the question is whether I would use it enough to justify carrying the extra bulk and weight. If I already have this VivoBook, and it is working, then I don’t need another keyboard. But it’s pretty sweet to be able to set up anywhere in any restaurant or cafe with that keyboard and a tablet or phone.
The big story from yesterday was going to the dock and buying my ticket from Indomal Fast Ferry. I went there early in the morning, and I was able to witness a lot of people checking in for the day’s boat and getting ready. I shot some video at the time with a simple Hero 9 rig, and I noted that I often absorb stress from people around me. I wasn’t going anywhere yesterday morning, but I felt stressed out just looking at the people who WERE going. I felt stress on their behalf.
The dock in Port Dickson is quite small, and it isn’t possible for them to process the people inside the building itself. Instead, they put a small table, some chairs, and a weight scale outside in the parking lot and driveway. And all the people gather around that table to check in for the boat and have their luggage weighed. Since it is a boat, and luggage fees are relatively cheap, people tend to maximize what they bring with them. There were a lot of quite large boxes around. I assume people are making a bit of money on the side by bringing items in bulk back to Indonesia to sell.
The official ticket counter for Indomal is still on the inside, however, and I had to lock up my bike and then go inside the building. I had the reservation number on my phone, and they called that up on their computer. I also had to show them my passport and they asked me about my visa. They took a picture of my passport and of my visa. And at that time, I was able to request a VIP ticket. You can’t do that before you actually pay for the ticket. I’m not entirely sure of the price breakdown, but the one-way VIP ticket cost a total of 208 ringgit. That’s about $48 US. I think the upgrade to VIP cost 20 ringgit, which makes the original ticket (plus tax) 188 ringgit. And I will have to pay 20 ringgit for my bicycle, which is something of a bargain. And I will have to pay for my other luggage at a rate of 1 ringgit per kilogram for the first 20 kilograms and 2 ringgit per kilogram above that.
The whole transaction went relatively smoothly other than my usual problem understanding what the ticket clerk was saying. The young woman spoke in what was, for me, a very quiet voice, and I had to keep leaning in closer and closer and asking her to repeat herself. I’ve noticed that most people never raise their voice level when this happens. They continue to speak at low levels even if I practically climb over the counter and turn my head so an ear is pointing directly at them.
With this success, I decided to continue with my list of tasks, and I dropped by the Boston PD print shop to get copies of my passport and visa and flight. I wanted paper copies of all of them. That was a more time-consuming task than I anticipated. The shop just happened to be busy first thing in the morning. Three customers were ahead of me, and all their jobs seemed to be complicated because they took a long time. And then when it was my turn, the owner of the shop suggested (requested) that I send them my documents via WhatsApp rather than giving them to him on a flashdrive. I had the documents all ready to go on a flashdrive. I’d gathered them all together in one clearly-labelled folder, so it would have been easier for me just to hand over the flash drive. But they wanted the documents sent via WhatsApp. The problem with that was that I wasn’t 100% sure where the docs were on my phone. So it took me a long time to find them and send them one by one using WhatsApp. But that’s how I did it.
It’s hard to say where the rest of the day went. I am suffering from a deep level of fatigue recently. I don’t know why. And this fatigue hits regardless of how much sleep I may or may not have gotten. I’m just tired all the time. It’s been hard to focus. And my attention is now being split between so many things. The trip to Sumatra and getting my bicycle ready is clamoring for most of my attention. And when I focus on that, it’s difficult for me to find the energy or clarity to do anything else, such as work on YouTube videos and Patreon, as I had planned to do. I have to admit that it is difficult to summon the energy for YouTube when my last few videos from Vietnam are so supremely unpopular. It’s just embarrassing when I acknowledge to myself just how much time went into making those videos. If you put that many hours into those videos, it’s hard to view them as anything other than failures and a complete waste of time. And with that feeling, it is hard to find energy or motivation to make more videos.
Most of the rest of the day was spent fiddling with my bicycle and gear packing. I had to fix and fine tune some camera mounting rigs. And I was going through my gear and trying to decide what to pack and what to leave behind. I don’t think I mentioned it but the bulk of the previous day was spent doing laundry. I rode my bike to a Laundry Hub outlet out towards Lukut about four kilometers away. I washed all my clothing, including my bed sheets and towels and pillow cases. It was a fine experience but not without its quirks. This laundromat has signs at every entrance asking you to remove your shoes, and all the customers obey. However, they were also doing construction, and there were three workers there with drills and grinders and other heavy duty tools ripping out some metal awnings. And they were sending dirt and rust and brick and metal all over the place. They were working right above the various doors, so lots of this stuff came flying inside.
When I first got there, I was so focused on the laundry that I forgot about the no shoes policy, and I went inside still wearing my sandals. It wasn’t until other customers arrived and I saw that they were barefoot that I remembered the policy. And then for a while I resisted taking off my sandals. The no-shoes policy always kind of bugs me because I know the rule is there to save the business owners money. If customers don’t wear shoes, then they don’t have to pay for someone to clean as often. And I sort of resent that they have a policy that inconveniences me so that they can make more profit. But I eventually succumbed to peer pressure and removed my sandals, and I was just careful walking around to make sure I didn’t step on anything that would cut or dirty my feet excessively.
While I was working on packing yesterday, I cued up a movie on my tablet. A while back, I had downloaded a film called “The Substance.” I’d heard it was a kind of horror movie, and I’d heard that it was good, though shocking. To be honest, I didn’t really pay much attention. I normally lock in a movie or TV show and watch it with all my attention. But this time, I was just watching with half of my brain. Yet, I can’t say that I was impressed. If the movie impressed me, I probably would have been drawn into the story. But I wasn’t at all. The movie was definitely shocking in a body horror kind of way. But I guess I’m not impressed by that in general. Anybody can be gross, can’t they? This movie clearly wanted to and intended to be as gross and awful and horrifying as they possibly could. The theme of the movie was how far people will go to maintain youthful beauty. And the plot was essentially the same as stories like “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. The picture aged while Dorian Gray did not. And in “The Substance” the same mechanism was at work except the substance created a second body. And this new body would remain young and beautiful while the other body, your original one, would age faster.
I didn’t find the story to be that original. It was really gross and graphic, but not original. The idea that people resist growing older and go to great lengths to remain looking young is not exactly groundbreaking. And I didn’t find the characters to be interesting, either. Plus, I knew exactly what was going to happen in the story in advance. The only new thing they brought to the table was the extreme grossness of the proceedings. And that isn’t enough to keep me entertained. The whole thing was weird. I assumed the star would be some kind of world famous actress. But as far as I can tell, she was simply an aerobics instructor. She was a Jane Fonda type on a fitness TV show. I’m not sure why we were supposed to care about this person. Perhaps she was a famous actress before that. We were treated to a long sequence of her star being placed in Hollywood, but they didn’t spend any time on that. They focused on her career as an aerobics instructor.
The other odd thing was that for the substance to work, only one body could be awake and conscious at the same time. Therefore, even though the substance created a copy of this woman’s body, the two bodies could never interact and talk with each other. And I was never clear if the woman’s entire consciousness transferred back and forth between them. The person in the young body seemed to be completely different from the person in the old body. The movie played out a bit like that TV show Severance where one person was split into two people and they don’t know each other or have any memories of what the other person did or was doing. And therefore, even though they were the same person, they can become enemies.
In the end, the grossness and body horror just went on and on and on, and I got bored. It’s true that they managed to raise the stakes far beyond what you would think was possible. Each time the movie visually reached a level of grossness that you thought was the most it could ever achieve, it would find another gear and go even farther. And I suppose that is an accomplishment, but it didn’t do anything for me.
Well, I should stop babbling this morning. Today is the final day for packing. KY is coming this afternoon, and when he gets here, I have to be ready to hand over the luggage that will be remaining behind. I have to work hard today to get everything done. I’m not actually leaving tomorrow, but I have to pack as if I was.