I have, as gamers like to say, succumbed to the dark side. My PC is now downloading a years’ worth of patches from World of Warcraft.

Justyn Olby will tell me, “I TOLD YOU SO.”

And that’s why I have to blog about it, so I can pre-empt his I-told-you-so-ness by telling it so first, thereby depriving him of first dibs pleasure. Hah!

I suppose I should start from the beginning.

Almost exactly one year ago, Chong bought me a WoW box for my birthday in an attempt to “lure me to the dark side”. I was playing EverQuest 2 at that time, he was playing WoW, and gamers have this incurable tendency to tempt all their friends into playing the games they’re playing.

I installed my birthday present but didn’t activate the account because I didn’t have time for two MMORPGs. And paying for two gaming subscriptions is madness.

So I put it off, waiting for myself to get bored with EQ2 before I started on WoW.

In February this year, I quit EQ2. Not exactly out of boredom, but due to lack of time. Because of that, I didn’t start on WoW, either. I suddenly decided that I had many more important things to do with my life. I decided to quit gaming totally.

Many gamers will find this declaration very familiar.

Many gamers before me have made the very same declaration.

Many, I think, invariably return to the “dark side” after a while.

That’s why every time I tell Justyn that I have quit gaming, he goes, “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.”

Well, Justyn doesn’t give me enough credit. I did quit for five months. (Collecting daily bank interest in Neopets and making buildings and troops in Travian do not count.)

Well, you know, it’s not a game if it’s not MMORPG.

Honestly (and this is addressed to my gamer friends), if someone who only logs in to Neopets once a day to collect bank interest were to say, “I’m a gamer!”, you would die laughing.

SO THERE.

But, of course, Justyn will be pleased to proclaim himself a prophet now that I am back MMORPG-ing.

It was an impulse decision.

There have been one too many traumatising incidents this month. Losing roles, getting crappy roles (worse than not getting any), being embarrassingly bad at auditions (worst of all).

In an attempt to forget the trauma, I have been losing myself in my novels.

This night, as I finished devouring my last book, panic seized me.

I had no more books to escape into. The bad memories always know this and they always find me.

So, my solution: A game. I had to play a game.

I played some Neopets, but that made me feel giddy and restless. I wanted to play an RPG, but one that required no subscription. Just for this week, you know, I needed to kill some monsters and such.

I tried playing a free Flash-based online RPG, some silly game which entertained me for a while but then annoyed me because it started hanging every 10 minutes.

I even considered playing Maple Story.

And that was when I remembered.

I have a dusty box of World of Warcraft sitting in my shelf, still attached with a free one-month subscription (very important since I’m broke).

Wahahaha~!

So I am back to being a gamer.

Maybe only for a month because I don’t think I can afford to continue paying for the subscription after the free month is up.

But I know what Justyn will say to that.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.”

I want to share a little story. Something I will remember perhaps forever.

It was many years ago when I was studying in Australia and it so happened that, one time, after my winter break, I flew back to Australia on my birthday.

It was early in the morning when I arrived and I had to get to work right away. I had to go house hunting.

The last time I left Australia, I had left without an apartment to come back to and my belongings were held at a storage facility. A few of my school mates who were rooming together were kind enough to put me up at their place temporarily, but I didn’t want to impose on their hospitality for too long.

It was a cold, winter morning. I was feeling a little melancholic because I hadn’t managed to get any sleep on the plane, I hated the cold and I hated the feeling of not having a place of my own.

And nobody knew it was my birthday.

Nevertheless, I had work to do. Holding the classifieds in one hand and a street directory in the other, I went on a tram ride.

On the tram, a cute-looking fellow who was standing next to me showed me an address and asked if I knew how to get there.

Quite amazingly, he was also out house hunting and the place he was looking at was quite near my first destination.

I said, “I’m going to that area, too. Why don’t we go together?”

I can’t remember exactly where he hails from, but it’s somewhere in southeastern Europe. Like maybe Romania. He looked kinda exotic, in a way, and he had come to Melbourne to learn how to be a chef.

So we had a nice chat while he accompanied me to my first prospective home (a total slum, it turned out, where everything was rusty and falling apart), after which I accompanied him to his place (not any better).

After that, he asked if I wanted to sit down and have coffee with him.

Now, I was feeling a little bold that morning. Melancholy kind of does that to me. So, of course, I said yes.

It wasn’t that he was good looking. He wasn’t, really. Just kind of cute in a peculiar way. And, of course, there was that cute accent. Not that that had anything to do with anything.

There was a quiet cafe in a quiet petrol kiosk near where we were, so there we went.

And, there, I told him that it was my birthday.

He looked delighted and wished me a happy birthday. Five minutes later, he said, “Will you wait here for me? I’ll be right back.”

He literally ran off and I sat there wondering if I was going to get mugged or kidnapped or raped or who knows what, sititng there alone.

Well, not really, I suppose.

When mystery guy came running back (at this point, we had exchanged life stories but we hadn’t exchanged names), he was holding a stalk of plastic red rose enclosed in a clear cylindrical tube. On the top, a small, white teddy bear was held in place.

It was quite a silly looking gift ensemble, actually. But that’s not the point.

He smiled at me and said, “Happy birthday to you. Sorry, this was all I could find around here.”

And wasn’t that the sweetest thing ever. I was so touched, but not totally yet.

After that, we walked to the tram stop, about to go our separate ways. I thought he would ask for my number. Or at least my name.

He didn’t.

And that, of all things, touched me most of all.

Because, out in the middle of the cold nowhere, something romantic happened to me with no strings attached.

When my tram came, mystery guy waved goodbye to me and said, “Good luck for everything,” and that was the last I ever saw of him.

It’s Friday again. Too fast.

It seems like only yesterday when I wrote my last blog and thought to myself, “It’s Friday again. Too fast.”

And then here is the weekend again, barely have I recovered from the tragic passing away of the last week.

I don’t like it when time flies like the wind and fruit flies like bananas because flies are one of life’s greatest annoyances.

Every day, I get the feeling that I’m going to die before I fulfill all my life’s desires.

And time just speeds along without a care, without consideration for the fact that I haven’t done all the things I have to do.

I am sad, too.

I didn’t want to blog about it because sad blogs are stupid and I don’t like to invite sympathy.

But I just read a short story in which the protagonist decides to write about a true event which has haunted him for over eight decades. He finally writes it at his deathbed because he believes writing can give him freedom.

He says, “What you write down sometimes leaves you forever, like old photographs left in the bright sun, fading to nothing but white. I pray for that sort of release.”

(That’s from a short story called “The Man in the Black Suit” by Stephen King.)

When I read that, it felt like Mr King himself was advising me to “get it off my chest”.

So here I am blogging, while waiting for my dinner to digest so I will have room for the chocolate rum balls I bought last night.

I lost a big movie role because I’m too compatible with the male actor.

The role is not big big, but it’s bigger than the previous two I had. It’s a main cast character, I believe.

I am not inconsolable, of course. I have a spare heart of titanium lying around in one of my intestines. I put it on over my regular stupid weak tender heart whenever I am faced with rejection. Every bullet of pain ricochets off it without so much as leaving a mark and I laugh manically at pithy attempts to crumble my soul.

I invoke my silver lining mantra. Every dark cloud has a silver lining. I’m not bothered by failures because I know something better will come along out of every loss.

I invoke sour grapes. It’s not, like, a perfect role, anyway. Not going to cause millions to adore me and worship me, so why bother?

But I am sad, indignant, because of the way in which I lost the role.

It was down to two actresses. The male actor who is to play the husband had already been cast and the director had both actresses come in to read with the male actor to see who looks better paired up with him.

Better, I am to find out later, is very subjective.

At the reading, I found out that I know that actor. In fact, I just acted in a short film opposite him. I thought that gave me a pretty good chance to snag the role.

I even did a good reading and I know the director liked my performance.

I went through an asthmatic, hyperventilating two weeks waiting for the good news phone call.

It didn’t come.

The only good news is that my heart is now an expert at beating very fast every time the phone rings.

Not exactly a very useful skill that I will call upon many times in my life, but you never know. Actors have to be skillful at everything you can imagine and everything you can’t.

I finally found out that I didn’t get the role because I was too compatible with the male actor. We looked too good together. At the audition, in between reads, we were joking around with each other and having a good time.

In the movie, the husband and wife are supposed to be in constant conflict and the director wants a certain awkwardness to show up.

I didn’t get the role because I know the actor and I am not awkward with him.

Such a bitter pill to swallow.

Worse than the vile Chinese concoction I take for sore throats.

I don’t blame anyone. I am in full support of the director’s method of casting and directing, which is to find the actor who, in real life, most resembles the character in the story, so the film can look totally natural and realistic.

He is of the school which believes in subtlely more than acting acting, and I totally dig that. Not that I don’t dig the other schools, but I believe different techniques, different styles, work for different people, different projects.

I am sad because I had looked forward to playing this role and I thought I had a great chance of getting it. It is not every day a big movie role appears up for grabs in Singapore. In the rare occasion that a movie is going to be made in Singapore, they always cast famous people first and the rest of us plebians get to be icing sugar and parsley.

But I am not disabled by the unhappiness which is, at best, intermittent. I can still function with zest. I look forward to getting an even better role than the one I just lost.

And that is why time is going too fast for me.

I need to get a good role before I’m 95 and hallucinating on my deathbed.

I’m hogging the casting lists every day, refreshing pages every three seconds, waiting, waiting, waiting for a to-die-for role which profile I fit, which is actually open for audition.

In the meantime, I have simple joys to contend myself with.

The Goonfather bought me a new keyboard yesterday. It is such a joy to type on. The keys are OH, SO, cottony soft and ghostly silent. It’s the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000, which is also anti-spillage, and with which I am immensely pleased.

I have a role in another short film which I think is going to be a lot of fun. We’re all getting costumes from an actual costume shop because it’s sort of a theme thing. That is so way ultra cool. We have a rehearsal tomorrow and I so enjoy going to rehearsals, even if it’s on a Saturday night and we’re not paid for it.

I just bought four books by my favourite authors and I’m devouring them like a starved puppy devours his favourite bacon-flavoured chewing strip.

Life is good.

And now, one of life’s greatest pleasures, one of my most wicked indulgences, beckon me.

Chocolate rum balls (from Subway Niche) and a good novel, in bed.