My handphone's been on the blink this weekend, I have no idea why. So apart from Saturday night, when I went over to my uncle's for another fun session of "So when are you getting married?" with the relatives (my life as a gameshow, but I'm such a whore for free satay), it's been a quiet two days for me. Not that my phone rings all the time, you understand.

Actually, now that I've mentioned it, I wonder how many people are really aware that I exist - I only have three Friendster contacts, and I could go for a week without a single new entry in my "Received Calls" list. That's the thing with friendship: you have to maintain it. That means calling and meeting people every now and then before people will call you.

Don't call me, I won't call you

I'm usually too lazy to be buggered. I don't like gabbing on the phone. I lack, as I have mentioned before, the contraptions that make frequent socialising possible. So I suppose I don't have friends, really, outside of the four or six I meet weekly and who don't make it a habit to call me. Nor do they expect me to call them. I do, though, have many little clusters of people I know.

This all suits me just fine, because I like hanging out in my place on my own, doing nothing in particular. I like being able to choose when to go out with people. It's always such a drag when someone calls me out of the blue for lunch or coffee when I'd rather be staring into space.

Besides, my living room is coming along quite nicely, such as it is, and it would be a crime not to spend more time wallowing in it. As a committed disciple of Terence Conran from way back when, I absolutely buy into his mantra that you should turn your house into a home that you enjoy living in. So what if I enjoy it

so much I'm loathe to leave it?

My home is a work in progress. With the rejection-of-paradise philosophy I live on, I don't think it'll ever be completed. But, as one would a mother, you can't help but love it despite the flaws. Sometimes I even rush through what I have to do outside just so I could have the pleasure of getting home again.

My living room I have designed to be like a conservatory, taking advantage of the magnificent light that floods into it all day. There's no furniture in it, which is brilliant. I usually end up sprawling on the floor, anyway, so having furniture is

a bit pointless.

Bachelor pad

The room is south-facing, which means you never get the sun in your eyes and it's relatively cool at all times. Too bad it overlooks the overcrowded and overpriced Pantai Hillpark, but that's why the plants are there. The jasmine has been blooming all month and the scent wafts in at night, sometimes, reminding me of my grandmother.

And the pandan kampung is beginning to restore itself, after suffering a bout of fever when I, er, forgot to water it frequently. Apparently, it needs watering twice a day and, although it needs a lot of light, it also needs shade. Because it grows in such a cool environment is why snakes like to lounge under it in the villages.

I still haven't figured out what's wrong with the lanky thing in the corner, though. The leaves seem to be infected with brown dust which could either be fungus or termite and they're yellowing and drooping before their time. That hasn't stopped new leaves from shooting out of the ground at the rate of two a week, though. It's a pretty stupid plant; borderline suicidal, I think.

But that's what fascinates me about plants: they can't help what they do. Make the conditions right and they will simply grow or bloom; they don't seem to have a choice about it.

Like the keladi in my bathroom, for instance. At one point it was manic-depressive almost to the point of going back into the soil, but when I changed it into a bigger pot filled with that, mmm-mmm good, nutritious Japanese soil, it started flinging leaves in all directions with wild abandon. I'm like, what the hey?

Stop putting out all these leaves, you stupid tuber, you'll soon use up all your fertiliser and die. But keladi ears are as thick as their leaves lah, what to do?

Actually, I find all this very sad, because it reminds me of women in the old days. Even forced to marry against their wishes they will still bear children and they will love those children, too, because that's what they do. My God. I cannot imagine what that must be like.

I'm sorry, of course, that there are still women who live like that and think that it's what life is all about. If I had my way I'd castrate half the men on the planet because they don't seem to be very responsible, and then let loose a horny bull on their asses so that they'd know what it feels like.

Anyway. The plants have also more or less taken over the interior space now, it's like living in a garden. The sense of connectedness with nature blunts somewhat the artificiality of the space created by man. If I could find my Tanizaki ("In Praise of Shadows") I'd be able to quote far more eloquent words, since I don't think Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" is really that poetic; if I started quoting from it I think you'd fall asleep.

I like this whole "bringing the outside in" stuff. I have half a mind to create a water feature right in the middle of the living room, complete with fishies. I like fishies; they make me wonder what's the point of it all. I mean, why exist when all you're going to do is go round and round all day with nothing to show for it? Why not just jump out of the bowl and kill yourself? But, like plants, fishies, too, are bound by the laws governing their behaviour, and it teaches me a great lesson about what the world is made of.

Still, when humans do the same things, just going round and round and living their lives on remote, they are just as silly as the plants and the fishies.

But first things first: the raised platform for the balcony needs to go up, and I'd do that as soon as I find out where I can get some decent planks. Yes, I'll be building it myself, and once finished it will be like a kampung verandah where you can sit or lounge about while having coffee and a chat surrounded by candles, as we bitch about the people who live in Pantai Hillpark.

And still I wonder why some people think I'm gay. Hnh.

RUHAYAT X writes, thinks, reads and observes. He's straight.