Monkeyrockworld

Yikes, time has been sliding under my feet quite fast lately… it’s been A LONG time since I had one month pass between blog posts. Quite a shame, but hey, I’ve been busy with a number of things. Let me summarize all of them here, and give you an update on the steamy life this side of the Equator for Mr. Monkey.

Let’s start with the most important accomplishment:

A NEW BIRTHDAY, CLOCKING AT 3 YEARS
On October 9th, 2010, it’s been 3 full years I left Italy. Usually I would have written a quite nosy post in Italian, complaining on Italian people and exalting my life here in South East Asia. Not this year. And not because the birthday passed by unobserved (it is indeed a very great accomplishment for myself) but because I just don’t know. Things have been quite hectic lately, with a lot of stress put on myself. In short, in 2007 I thought aiming at a 3 years overseas stay would have been quite far sighted, but I still decided to give me this time slot to check out the world, work a bit, and whatever else. Will I manage to be out of Italy for so long, that’s what I kept asking myself. Now I’m here in the midst of a million things, and I can ask myself: “Will you be fucking finished within the next 3 years?”. The answer, I don’t know. But it feels good to be here, and Europe is not greatly missed, not even a single day. What is actually true is, I am waiting to get on the road again, for an extended period of time. Yep, I haven’t changed a bit, I’m sorry everyone.

A JOURNALIST? YOU ARE KIDDING, MAN
As I turned 30 years old, something happened. It makes more sense to write, now. About the same things, yes: all things travel, Asian and blogging. Blogging blogging blogging. For someone else. I’m still far from saying I made a career out of it, but I recently started a weekly contribution with Chinese travel site ChinaAdventure Blog and slowly joined the ranks of prestigious Italian press agency China Files as a South East Asian contributor. Not bad. Especially when some of these writing jobs actually pay…. but it’s a long way to the top, as AC/DC were saying, so I’m proud but I keep a low profile which is always best.

HEAVY METAL DAZE (with a lot of THRASHCORE thrown in as well)
You probably know I was a guitarist in a great hardcore punk band, and worked a lot with great, dead label Scarey Records. All of these endeavors got me deep and down into the dirty rock and roll business, which eventually came back to kick my ass once again. Some things are impossible to get rid of in life No, I am not playing music here because as I never wrote but I will write now, Malaysian musicians are a bunch of sissies, and the Malaysian music scene is a piece of crap. Yes, they have tons of black metal, thrash and hardcore bands, but with such a government and being forced to play shows in practice rooms (super sad, my friends), it is impossible to breed musicians with guts, balls and attitude. So, fuck them all, or most of them. My attempts to get a band going in Penang have been castrated from the start.
So, no guitar, but entrepreneurship and website craftmanship, and here I am behind the wheel at Cruz del Sur Music and FOAD Records web departments. And most times, there is always a lot of work involved, so blame them as well, if my blogs are not punctual twice a week as usual. I’ll try to improve, promise.

WORK, FUTURE AND OTHER RANDOM SITUATIONS
I reckon I never wrote it in a post, but here I am in Penang, Malaysia pursuing a MA degree in Linguistics. More insight: I am researching on the learning strategies that Mainland Chinese students use when studying English in Malaysia. Yeah sounds like a bad joke isn’t it? But it is true, and it’s taking the joy of living out of me. Trying to get by, since it is very hard to work in Malaysia as a non-resident, I do what I can. This is also part of the reason why the blog had a 1 month hiatus, and I am very sorry about that. I just finally got a new, faster desktop computer, and a firewire port so that I will soon be able to acquire tons of great video footage from older trips, such as the Myanmar one, with a lot of never before seen Monkey Adventure footage, and some other great surprises… until then, be happy, because I am not gone, I am here to stay and I am just busier than before… or maybe it is just the time that, once you reach 30, starts spinning faster. Goddamnit!