19 APRIL MONDAY GMT 15:00 SLT 07:00: (RE)VISIT PHUKET WITH KAIDIE AND THE GOOD PIRATE (Kaidie’s Virtual Tourist Notes From Second Life #3)
ABOUT THE GOOD PIRATE aka CHUTHA INDIGO aka CHUTHATIP ACHAVASMIT:
Chuthatip is a town planner at Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) in Thailand joining CASA in University College London as an Mphil/PhD. student in April 2004. She has a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Design from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from VPI & SU, USA and a Professional Master Degree in Geoinformation Systems for Urban Management Application from ITC, the Netherlands. Chuthatip’s GI experience includes: utilising GIS in planning practice such as GIS-based planning methodology, integrating inter-organisation datasets for industrial pollution analysis and application for urban intensity calculation. Her interests are in Planning and Tourism, Digital City, Management of Geographic Information Infrastructure (GII). She is currently working on Urban Information System focusing on tourism in Phuket.
GETTING THERE:
1) You must first have Second Life installed on your computer. 2) Click here. (Location number 183 61 93) 3) Click the orange tab ‘teleport now’ on the popup window. 4) Allow website to open the program on your computer.?? OR 1) In SL, click tab ‘map’ on the lower bar, map window will pop up. 2) Enter or replace location numbers to ‘183 61 93′ 3) Click ‘teleport’. * When you reach there, you have to fly vertically up! Virtual Phuket is floating! To ensure that you get there, there, simply add ‘KAIDIE ABSENT’ and/or ‘CHUTHA INDIGO’ as your friend!
**** BREAKING NEWS: 19 APRIL MAY BE THE LAST DAY OF THE EXISTENCE OF VIRTUAL PHUKET!! SO, PLEASE DO COME BY!!****
A month ago, during Kaidie’s dislocation, she was momentarily located in a Singapore newspaper in Life 1.0 (printed edition) and Life 2.0 (online version), and Life 3.0 (somewhere in between).
The above is reproduced and cropped from Today Online 23 March 2010, Mediacorp, Singapore.
** ERRATUM: Kaidie is not an artist. She is a (re-)searcher for the Meaning of Life 3.0. Now THAT’A a FULLTIME AND NOBLE (pre-)occupation!**
KAIDIE’S HITS/MISSES: IF WE CAN’T/DON’T WANT TO MEET IN THIS LIFE, PERHAPS WE COULD IN OUR NEXT/OTHER LIVES. ASSUMING THAT YOU’D LIKE TO, THAT IS. Same place, same time?
Reprinted from Facebook posts by Meena Mylvaganam, Marta Sofia Pinho Alves and Urbantick/Fabian Neuhaus. Image by Urbantick/Fabian Neuhaus.
UPDATABLE GLOSSARY (ongoing): IMITATIONS OF LIFE
SEEKING DEFINITIONS AND MULTIPLE+ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS! CONTRIBUTE NOW!
VARIATIONS OF LIFE:
* Life:
* This Life:
* Any Life:
* Any difference:
* What life?:
* What, life?:
* Best life:
* ‘Best’ life:
* Best ‘life’:
* Least worst life:
* Meaningful life:
* Less meaningless life:
* Life 1.0 / First Life:
* Life 2.0 / Second Life:
* Life 3.0 / Third Life:
* Turd Life:
* After life:
* After lives:
* Life before this life:
* Non-Life:
* Life after death:
* Life before death:
* Life during death:
* Lives after death:
* Death during life:
* Deaths during life:
* Living death
* Living hell
* Living:
* What living:
* Living thing:
* Living person:
* Running:
* Running for (y)our life:
* Run of (y)our life time:
* Run of (y)our life times:
* Travel:
* Travelling:
* Journey of life:
* Journeys of life:
* Journey of lives:
* Semblance of life:
* Imitation of life:
* Variations of life:
* Pseudo-life:
* Semi-life:
* Quasi-life:
* Life style:
* Way of life:
* Ways of life:
* Existence:
* Non-existence:
* Being:
* Non-being:
* Ontology:
* Life-and-death:
* Lives-and-deaths:
* Hanging on to dear life:
* Dignified death:
* Dignified deaths:
* Life-span:
* Life-spans:
* Fate:
* Fates:
* Destiny:
* Destination:
* Anti-destiny:
* Anti-fate:
* There is no such bloody things as fate/destiny:
* Getting there:
* There there:
* Getting there there:
* Don’t be silly, for there is no there there (Gertrude Stein):
I run, because of you, of course not because of you, in spite of you, with you, with out you, regard less, I run, on and on, like the vapid Energizer bunny who goes on and on, but with blisters and aches, like the other vapid Energizer-bunny of Sisyphus with his endless rocks-and-rolls, in drips and drops, in laps and loops, sometimes limping, more often than not swearing, not in leaps and bounds, often falling, often bruising, often idiotic-looking, often idiotic, period, in turns, by turns, again and again, once more, repeat play, next level, same level, drop level, don't stop, can't stop, won't stop, don't ask me to stop, can't go on, must go on, won't go on, don't go on, go on, go on then, come on, don't talk to me when I'm running, running, even if slowly, even as if walking, even as if crawling, as if dead, even when/especially when panting, panting hard, sometimes holding my breath, some times not breathing, for fun, some times choking, invariably grunting, like an gnat, if gnats grunt, or screeching, like an eel about to be slaughtered, so that I can swallow it with jelly, cold, or heated, because jellied eel is one of my favourite foods in Nondon (along with beetroot and parsnips), and eels as unagi some place else in an other time and space (whether it knows of its parallel existence or not), if eels screech, at all, as if eels screeched, at all, wiping off my sweat, unsure if I felt hot or cold, or hot and cold at the same time, sun shining while temperatures are near zero, violent juxtapositions, the way I like it, run, running, why does one run? Just because. Because running takes me where I can not other wise go, for better or worse, like it or not, take it or leave it. Because it makes me happy. Because it makes me less unhappy. Because why not. Running, because why not. Because why the hell not. For, what else is there to do. What else can I do. For how long should I do it. Assuming that one has to do some thing, that is. Is that? Bad answer. Bad question, that's why. Refine your question. Change your question. What was your question? Was it a question? Did you have a question? Restart (if you so wish to). All over. Again.
IN THE METAVERSE, NO ICARUS WILL CRASH. Even if/when I crash, I will be reborn and life goes on. And on. Infinitely. Ad nauseum.
A generation cushioned from the cold by central heating, from the heat by airconditioning, carted in aseptic transports from one identical house or hotel to the another, should feel the need for journeys of mind and body, for pep pills or tranquillisers, or for the cathartic journeys of sex, music and dance. We spend far too much time in shuttered rooms.
– Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969 – 1989 [1]
Travelling is the act of getting from one place to another[2]. There has been a long history of human movement. Motivations vary – people travel out of pleasure, or reasons political , economical and poetic, or out of necessity, for short or long term, due to push or pull factors, and in various modes of transportation as technologies improve and ambitions engorge. Think climate changes, agricultural practices, trade, migration, famines. Think nomads, gypsies, sailors, stateless people and their diasporas. Think political conquests, search for new, virgin territories, untapped resources, ‘discoveries’ of ‘new’ continents like your Americas and Temasek-s[3]. Think of the revolutionary heroes, as writer, romantic and compulsive traveller Chatwin urges, who are ‘not worth a thing until he has been on a good walk. Che Guevara spoke of the “nomadic phase” of the Cuban Revolution. Look what the Long March did for Mao TseTung, or Exodus for Moses.’[4] Think escape and the search for Paradise, by Thelma, Louise, and Gauguin, and the middle-aged European/Australian woman in Bali with the Kuta cowboys, and the modestly-sized Oriental man with the towering platinum-blonde escort. Think religious pilgrimages, rites of passage and existential quests for the meaning of life. Think Romantic, heroic and punishing quests by madmen Fitzcarraldo/Klaus Kinski in the Amazon, and the solo walks from Kiev to Madrid by Werner Herzog himself, as if the very act of a strenuous trek exorcises their demons. Think trade shows, World Expos, and the travelling circus in town. Think Grand Tours to see the world for those with the leisure time (for it did take a bit longer than it would today) and spending power. For those with even more spending power, think travels to outer space, as the guy appropriately named Laliberte did in 2009 – something technologically impossible only years ago, but haunted those rich in imagination for centuries, like George Melies and Arthur C. Clark. Think poetic search for inspirations and new ways of seeing, by Barthes in Japan, and Basho the poet who cured himself of his loneliness by islandhopping in Japan. As Chatwin observes,
travel does not merely broaden the mind. It makes the mind, The raw materials of Proust’s imagination were two walks round the town of Illiers where he spent his family holidays. These walks later became Méséglise and Guermantes Ways in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. [5]
Chatwin notes also that ‘(m)an walked and swam long before he rode or flew. Our human possibilities are best fulfilled on land or sea. Poor Icarus crashed.’[6]. Think Maldives, Goa, Ibiza. Entire cities and towns perform. Today, globalisation and 1-pence early-bird gimmicks from budget airlines gives everyone the opportunity to fly, making travelling a part of contemporary life. We become tourists, take breaks, have getaways, go for vacations, perform public sex on the beach with strangers [7] in the city constructed for public show-and-tell. Think casino-city Macau, Documenta in Kassel once every 5 years, Olympics in London in 2012. Then, there are also those who travel simply because the act of travelling is pleasurable in itself, like ‘the indefatigable Arab wanderer who strolled from Tangier to China and back for the sake of it’ [8].
Some American brain specialists took encephalograh reading of travellers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons trough the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of wellbeing and an active purpose in life. Monotonous surroundings and tedious regular activities wove patterns which produce fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self-disgust and violent reactions.
– Chatwin[9]
[1] Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Uncollected Writings, New edition (Picador, 1997). (pp 100-106)
[2] ‘Travel – Definition of travel noun’, in (Cambridge Dictionary Online: Free English Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2009) [accessed 30 December 2009].
[3] Temasek was the ancient name of Singapore before its ‘founding’ by the British.
[4] Chatwin.
[5] Chatwin.
[6] Chatwin.
[7] John Bingham and Laura Clout, ‘British couple arrested in Dubai over ‘sex on the beach’’, Telegraph.co.uk, 9 July 2008 [accessed 31 December 2009].
[8] Chatwin.
[9] Chatwin.
KAIDIE’S DISLOCATION PROVOKED A WORLDWIDE HUNT (of sorts). (Perhaps Kaidie had been virtually hanging out with Mika, as pixels)
During Kaidie’s absence, the press was (semi-)hot on its heels to help us hunt her down. Here is one of 2 articles published last week that discusses Kaidie’s dislocation and/or Kaidie in general.
P.S. 1: This article talks about Kaidie’s dislocation without mentioning her disappearance in the past month – so it seems that the journalists here ‘get’ Kaidie’s work! (ie, running in the ambiguous, arbitrary, amorphous gap between reality and imagination)! This is one of the few occassions that the press/public media ‘gets’ Kaidie’s work in her current and previous lives! And this is with-out Kaidie having had ANY contact – remote/virtual/actual – with the journalists of this article. Allow me at this point to stroke my chin (like Kaidie in this picture) and go, ‘Hmmm. Interesting…’
P.S. 2: However, contrary to what this article claims, as far as I am aware of, issues of nationality and identity are irrelevant in Kaidie’s cosmology. Kaidie is born with no family/history/background/ethnicity/culture/gender/citizenship/place/country/allegiance. She begins afresh, ground zero. That said, she is (al-most certainly) female, the last time I checked.
P.S. 3: Why is this categorised as ‘alternative art’? What is this alternative to? What on google-earth is ‘dominant art’? What on google-earth is ‘dominant art’ today? Yesterday’s ‘alternative’ is tomorrow’s mainstream. Fast forward, to the era of Kaidie’s Life 4.0 or 41.1, and this will have been considered as old-school and even classical. Unbelieavable isn’t it. Let me stroke my chin again.
P.S. 4: I am sure Kaidie does not mind charity donations from the readers of the article and this blog for her quest. After all, this has been classified as ‘alternative’, has it not.
P.S. 5: Perhaps Kaidie has not just been continuing her quest for the Meaning of Life 3.0 in Second Life (as we have just established) all this while when she was missing, but cavorting with the not-undelicious Mika and his bubblegum in some storage space as ones and zeroes some where. No wonder she had disappeared! That said, there is clearly a very serious size-compatibility technical issue here: Kaidie’s face alone is the size of Mika’s entire folded-body-on-a-sofa. Tsk tsk tsk! Kaidie should run more loopy loops to shrink into near-no-thing-ness, or drink some magic potion (which we hope is calorie-free) or drink the magic potions while running. Being smaller+lighter+baggage-free, just as being identity/allegiance/race/etc-free, enables her to be dis-located easier any time she needs/wants to. Travelling light is one of the most important rules (along with having good stamina for this multiple-ultra-marathon of transmigration, and endurance – in enduring oneself) for the traveller – more so if you are running. Perhaps Mika knows where/what/when the Meaning of Life 3.0 is? An other chin-stroking time.
Reprinted from CNN Go 23 March 2010. 
THANK YOU for attending Kaidie’s gig last Monday. She has resurfaced – right behind my back, as KAIDIE ABSENT in Second Life. Now that she is re-located, shouldn’t I leave?
Music by Philip Tan.
Thank you very much indeed for attending Kaidie’s gig at Off The Shelf at the Slade School of Dine Art last Monday. Blind and nearly-blind dates are always thrilling, so it was nice meeting some of you in Life 1.0 for the first time. Do note that I mean ‘nice’ in the most ambiguous, generic manner. I am sure you would agree that meetings/encounters in Life 1.0 (offline, face-to-face, material world), Life 2.0 (online, imagination, internal world) and in between – Life 3.0 – are all equally valuable and meaningful (if they are meaningful at all) – for Third-Lifers, who are restless travellers on the move, this is about the only way(s) to meet, ie, halfway, or half of the half, of half of the half of the half, and so on. The notions of eternity, forever-ness and everlasting-ness are but romantic mythologies; a Third-Lifer necessarily runs/travels/migrates/transmigrates alone, and seeks/creates fulfillment in every single moment, however transient. During each of these temporary encounters, the Third-Lifer finds/invents her own drama/climax/closures, and locks them up as happy memories (even if she forgets, they will remain safe and happy, happily ever after). And moves on. (If anything else is forever/eternal/everlasting at all, it is one’s Sisyphean cycle of births-deaths-rebirths-repeated-death-looped-fast-forward-press-play-rewind-press-play-re-press-play-again-in-different-speeds). Lest you think this is a cynical worldview, I suspect that the contrary is true – that Kaidie is yet the most idealistic and romantic of us all. Which was why the invention of a Life 3.0-mixed-reality-goggles (as if life itself is not complicated enough?), as self-delusional and naive as Don Quixote on his grand(iose) quest.
Regardless.
I was hoping that Kaidie, who had been missing for nearly 1 month, would stop running about/away, and return to Life 1.0 for her gigs. She did- briefly – on 14 March, during her 10km charity run for Medecins Sans Frontieres. Fearing that she would not turn up, I had begun the race (for, someone had to answer to her sponsors!). However, halfway through the run, Kaidie appeared. And was she hostile, as she kept trying to trip me and outrun me! Whatever she had eaten while she was away must have been really good, as she was much faster than me, and soon ran past me. The snapshot on the left at the bottom of this post captures that moment that the two of us, Kaidie and Kailives, are locked in a fierce battle, in the same spatio-temporal dimension. But like before, she ran off, and could not be relocated.
On 22 March, I was hoping that Kaidie would turn up for her own gig at the Slade. I went on stage to do what had to be done, hoping that she would join me at some point. And she did. Not in broad daylight, as it was nearly 22:00hrs, but right behind my back! This photograph on the right shows myself speaking in the foreground, in front if the audience, and Kaidie behind me, in the form of video pixels. It was a black-and-white video (see above) of her in the metaverse, the world-within-world of Second Life. There, she is called ‘Kaidie Absent’.
One would have thought that this is the grand moment of cathartic clarification, of disentanglement and denouement, where all loose ends of this long-running tedious (melo)drama are tied together. But this being (Kaidie’s) life, gosh/no/never/dream on/fat chance/what are you talking about/get out of here. And, this being Kaidie’s life, there are now even more questions than the number of hair in your nostrils (when did you last tabulate the results in your Excel sheets?). Some of the ones sticking out include:
Has Kaidie been in Second Life all this while? Isn’t that too easy! Was it The Good Pirate who kidnapped her there? Was it the Good Pirate who kept the promise of releasing Kaidie for the charity run? What does the Good Pirate want? What is the ransom? After the run, did Kaidie return to SL? Where in SL is she? What is she doing? Where is she visiting? Who is she meeting? Are they like her Life 1.0 brief encounters, or briefer still? Is Kaidie on the ‘Always Run’ motion mode in there? Does she have blisters in SL? She looks like she’s enjoying flying, but does she get (e)motion sickness from flying, like she did on the day that we first met? Has she found the obscure object of her 1000-day quest, the Meaning of Life 3.0? (Must she find The Meaning Of Life 2.0 [?] before that?) Did Kaidie upload the video on her Youtube channel herself? If so, does this mean that she is coming back, to communicate with us, to run her own Facebook account and other Web 2.0 accounts?
If she comes back, shouldn’t I go? Surely I was just Kaidie’s temporary stand-in in Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 outside of the world-within-world of SL while she was in there. Surely I should not figure in the logic of the world of Life 3.0, for the whole point is that Kaidie runs to-and-fro between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0, and that Life 3.0 is an in-between and even transcendent spatio-temporal dimension. Surely only Kaidie should be the real deal, our first guinea pig for the theory of Life 3.0. (Unless, of course, when Kaidie needs a helping hand – Kaidie did dis-locate a part of her body. I am also an avid reader of her blog, so I would have been disappointed if it was not updated. As Kaidie’s firm Facebook Friend, it is right that I help her keep up appearances.)
But enough already. When will Kaidie return to write this blog herself?
Dear Friends of Kaidie, wouldn’t you be so kind as to go locate ‘Kaidie Absent’ in Second Life? Talk to her. Ask her to come back. Coax her to leave her kidnapper. Remind her that Second Life is not the only life, that there is First Life as well as her Third.
She knows it.
DAY 101: LOCATED: 2D REPRESENTATION OF ONE OF KAIDIE’S 4D MAPS FOR HER TRAVELS IN METAMULTIVERSES. CAN/SHALL/SHOULD WE USE THIS TO GO THERE THERE WITH KAIDIE?
Did Kaidie use this map to run to Second Life? What is the orientation? What scale are we looking at? Does this map take us there there? What are the hotspots? Where are the in-between areas within the in-between areas? Are there no-go zones? What/where/when are the zones of conflict and contact? If we use this map (in whichever way we deem fit), can we finally locate Kaidie and ask her why she had run away for the past 20 days? Does Kaidie have 'frequent traveller miles' for her restless running about?
3.0, 2.0. 1.0! READY, GET SET, GO! RUN FOR (Y)OUR LIVES! Kaidie’s 8-minute fullblast at Off the Shelf event, 22 March. Fasten your seatbelts. Or not, for the full impact.
*Curated by: Dr Sharon Morris and Mr Jon Thomson. *Presented by: the Slade Word/Image Forum *Time: 22 March 2010, 18:00-22.30pm. *Place: Wilkins North and South Cloisters plus the Old Refectory. Slade School of Dine Art, University College Nondon, Nondon, WC1E 6BT, UK.
KAIDIE COMES ON 21:00-ish, SOUTH CLOISTERS
Life 3.0 is an amorphous spatio-temporal dimension that Kaidie creates by running restlessly to and fro Life 1.0 (physical world/offline), and Life 2.0 (imagination/online). More than 2 weeks ago, Kaidie dislocated a part of her body after a run at her favourite Regents Fark, and thereafter, could not be located altogether! Where on googleearth has she run off to? We are hoping that Kaidie will turn up for this performance, in which she is scheduled to talk about her Life 3.0, which is theoretically the best of both worlds. In which case, why had she run away? So, will (her) theory triumph? Or is this precisely an instance of the failure of her theoretical proposition? If Kaidie does not turn up, would Kailives stand-in instead, as she did for her talk at the Nondon College of Communication? Or, will Kaidie run back in time, and tell us where she has been all this while? Will (Kaidie’s) theory (of Life 3.0) live happily ever after with (her) practice (of her life)? Your guess is as good as mine.
Where has Kaidie been all this while? After the run, where did Kaidie go? Latest conspiracy theory: LUCY SUSPECTS THAT KAIDIE HAS TRANS-MIGRATED (or hitchhiked) TO AN ONLINE NAPLES AND OTHER GREENER PASTURES.
Guest post by Lucy Natarajan
TO KAIDIE’S SPONSORS FOR THE MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES RUN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH INDEED! from all of us.
Dear Joy, Kian Chow, Jon, Miss Nim, Kal, Horst, Wee San, Chutha, Sarah, Omar and Chin Hwee,
How are you? We hope you had a good weekend.
1. We would like to say THANK YOU very much indeed for having made a generous contribution to Kaidie’s participation in the Friends of Medecins Sans Frontieres charity race. Thanks to you, in a matter of only 2 weeks, £110 was collected under Kaidie’s name.
2. Because of your financial blackmail, Kaidie had sworn to ‘not let you down’, ‘do her very best’, ‘keep going’ till she ‘drops dead’, ‘reach the finishing line while thinking of you for 10km’, and so on.
3. However, all that promised, much has happened in the last 10 days, that has left us a little baffled. Kaidie had a tumble while practising her run all-too-eagerly, and subsequently, suddenly disappeared, 1 week prior to the race. There had been several conflciting reports of her being thereafter, in and across Lives 3.0, 2.0, and 1.0. There had even been suggesions that she had ‘moved on’ to Lives 4.0 or 43.2. At the meantime, Kailives has emerged, to keep up appearances in Kaidie’s absence.
4. Whilst we were wondering/pondering which space-time dimensions restless Kaidie has relocated or transmigrated, we also found a map of Kaidie’s very own version of the run route, which left us worried if Kaidie would ever complete the stipulated 10km! To add to the cacaphony of signals, we received a note from a ‘Good Pirate’ on the very morning of 14 March, hinting in a somewhat coded manner that Kaidie would be ‘released’ for the run.
5. Today, we received a set of photographs from Cadam, Dadam, and Eadam (THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH INDEED!) The 3 Nondoners were taking a walk in Regents Fark and caught the race. “I whipped up my phone to take photos of the runners because I was so irritated that they blocked the roads and spoiled my Sunday walk,” Cadam cries furiously. Dadam adds, “But I recall Kailives’ plea for help to locate Kaidie, and knowing Kaidie’s shapeshifting talents, I took pictures of the Banana Man and the Naked Man in the run, thinking that either – or both – might be Kaidie in disguise”. “I was looking out for a 3-month old crawling,” Eadam says.
6. Examining the photographs, we ask: Who is this out-of-focus many-headed person? Is this Kaidie or Kailives? Or both of them in the same space-time? What did they say to each other on their reunification? Or did they distribute the workload and did 5km each? And which route(s) did they take? The official Friends of Medecins Sans Frontieres run route, or the one Kaidie had drawn out? Did Kaidie/Kailives complete the run, or did they disappoint you, their sponsors?
7. Keen to find out nothing but the truths, we went back to Regents Fark this morning and combed through the area. After several seconds, we found a shoe tag 264 near the ducks’ pond, and Kaidie’s certificate near the giraffes’ dwelling! Then, squatting at Kaidie’s email, we were also sent a set of timings of the run, telling us that a ‘Kaidie Nondon’, aka ‘264’, has completed the run at 53 minutes 20 seconds, which translates at an approximate 11.3kmh. Out of the 82 girls who ran the 10km race, Kaidie ranks 16.
8. Suffice to say that we are relieved. So Kaidie/Kailives/either/or/neither/nor/both did not take your money and run off, but did run to the finishing line. Amorphous and reality-flexible as she is, she still has some old-fashioned virtues of sticking to her promises.
9. However, we do not know where they have next run off to. Wherever they are now, they must have gone in a hurry, for they had left the shoe tag and certificate behind (perhaps deliberately, as she did her glove).
10. If you are reading this, Kaidie/Kailives, please use the dustbin the next time.
Dear Sponsors, we do apologise for having to step in and speak on Kaidie’s behalf, but we wish to say THANK YOU once again, for making this generous donation for a worthy cause. It was a tiny gesture on Kaidie’s part (and she might have distributed her workload with Kailives anyways), but your donation helps people to get the medical attention that they need . Please do not forget to continue to support the work of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (while we clean up Kaidie’s acts).
With much gratitude,
From all of us.
BREAKING NEWS: LOCATED: Kaidie’s ‘plan of attack’ for Sunday’s run. KAIDIE’S SPONSORS, I hope she does NOT run/crawl THIS route!!
I HAVE TO SHARE THIS WITH YOU! I have just found this while sifting through Kaidie’s laptop, which comes in the folder named ‘Plan Of Attack for MSF Run’. Immediately, this sent a sharp, deep chill down my spine – instead of the official running route outlined by the Friends of the Medecins Sans Frontieres for this Sunday’s run, Kaidie was going to run in all the in-between spaces in between the route drawn out, as well as running in between other runners, on top of making several detours to visit her friends at the zoo and the pond (Kaidie’s even packed her swimming togs! AND GOGGLES!), as well as running on and on, looped, until the Fark closes. We know that Kaidie is a non-linear in-betweener and that she is a restless traveller of lives and across lives, blahblahblah, but this is just a little bit too much, for she will NEVER reach the finishing line. And how is she going to report to her sponsors?? KAIDIE, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, I’M TELLING YOU THAT I AM DESTROYING THIS MAP SO THAT YOU CAN’T USE THIS ON SUNDAY! … But I don’t trust you – maybe I should do the run instead? … But your shoes are way too tiny for me… I am not convinced why I should get blisters and runners toes on your behalf, Kaidie.
CAN YOU FILL KAIDIE’S modestly-sized SHOES? If your screen is 15″, this is the EXACT size of Kaidie’s feet. Go on, stick your feet up at your shiny screen.
I located 2 of the 3 pairs of running shoes of Kaidie's. One is half a size larger/smaller than the other, so you have no excuses for not filling any one up.
Running route courtesy of Friends of MSF Charity Run 2010.
Kaidie has been missing for more than 1 week. If she were alive, she would turn 3 months old tomorrow (12 March 2010). If she comes back on time and joins this Sunday’s charity run at Regents Fark, she would also be the youngest participant at 3 months 2 days. Given this tender age, it is only natural that she crawls the 10km, as she warns her kind sponsors and you, her Dear Readers repeatedly.
Having hacked into her travel blog and other online accounts, I am now methodically rummaging through her things in her Life 1.0, in her flat in Nondon. Yes I am no more voyeuristic than you are, but yes I do it with class and panache. Indeed Kaidie does not disappoint! I managed to find something SCANDALOUS, and took a picture with my camera. Take a good look at the image – one pair of shoes is HALF A SIZE BIGGER/SMALLER THAN THE OTHER!!! Now, what could that mean? Are they BOTH Kaidie’s? Or, perhaps Kaidie only owns ONE pair. IN WHICH CASE, THE INEVITABLE QUESTION IS, WHO OWNS THE OTHER PAIR?… … Well, certainly not ME, Kailives! Maybe there is YET an other person BETWEEN us???
Hardcore in-betweeners as Kaidie and I are, that would be quite a crowd, wouldn’t it. I suspect that Kaidie is simply living up her Life 3.0 mantra, of being so consistently inconsistent that even her feet sizes are uneven.
Any how. We still have not solved the problem of having to face the impending race for the Medecins Sans Frontieres this Sunday with NO Kaidie. Having raised £110 in a matter of 2 weeks for the run from the kind souls (THANK YOU, KAIDIE’S ANGELIC SPONSORS!), Kaidie, or SOMEONE has to run (or crawl). I am still awaiting for any of you to step in to fill Kaidie’s small shoes. It is only 10km (see route attached), with an oh-so-lovely Back-To-Bloody-Winter-Before-Nondon-Has-The-Decency-To-Make-Up-Its-Bloody-Mind-To-Turn-Spring-BECAUSE-IT-IS-ALREADY-MARCH single-digit temperature. Add to that rain too, according to different weather reports. I can be your pacer/sidekick/cheerleader. Any of us would be better than our foul-tempered Kaidie, who will run it while swearing at the rain/cold/sweat/grass/RegentsFarkDucks, etc.
But what’s temporary discomfort compared to much agony that others have to endure without medical help. Support the run. This would be Kaidie’s perfect birthday gift.
PERHAPS KAIDIE HAS FALLEN INTO THE GAP AT ANGEL TUBE STATION AND MOVED ON (or had her body dragged by the tube). TO KEEP UP APPEARANCES, I WILL HAVE TO BE HER STAND-IN FOR NOW.
It is nearly Spring as we speak. Thank you all so much for your help in trying to locate Kaidie. Many of you have offered advice or condolences. Some of you also offer to pray for me. I do appreciate your concerns. Since Kaidie’s sudden disappearance last week, not only have I had to hack into this gawdawful travel blog that soooooooooooooooooo many of you have complained of its user-unfriendliness and un-navigibility, I have had to hack into her Facebook and Twitter accounts as well, to appeal for any tipoffs from her friends, ie, you, you and you at the back, and yes, you at the back of the back of the front of the back.
Then I received Claudia’s message, which set my small brain churning at breakneck – sorry I mean breakmind- speed. Like Scottie trying to bring all the shattered fragments that makes up (his and only his notion of) ‘Madeleine’ together, I try to retrace the cookie and doughnut and pastry trails that Kaidie has left behind all this while, in the past 80 days. Recall for instance, Kaidie’s urge for us to not mind the gap but plunge into the digital rabbit hole. Remember also how bloody clumsy she is, having fallen 1) off the treadmill 2) on her butt and on her knees while in Heidiland, and 3) head over heals in the matter of 2.5 months. She has also often talked about having a decisive voice when it comes to the matters of her own birth and death, the journey(s) in between and her loopy Sisyphean cycles of transmigration (of Life 3.0, 4.0, 42.78 and so on). Hence, at this point in time, I will have to draw the in-conclusion that Kaidie has travelled the shortcut to Dignitas, and dived into the gap between the platform and the train, and at Angel Station for added poetry (instead of, say, ‘Crouch End’ or ‘Hanger Lane’, though ‘Highgate’ and ‘All Saints’ sound awfully elegant as well), paying homage to the Japanese preference for plunging at the Chuo Line at the beginning of the cheery Spring Season, the same time that cherry blossoms start to peek, as a signifier of a new beginning, free of space, time, space-time, mind, body and soul. This sounds romantic and even heroic, sure, but trust me, Kaidie’s expiry will be/is anything but – not when your corpse is dislocated all over and covered with dirty tube soot and tube commuters’ spits and throwaway shredded Evening Standards and stale dirty kebab-made-of-kidney-and-intestines-and-other-crouch-ends.
All that said, the above is merely a hypothesis. Kaidie might well be still be alive (of sorts, if that is what she is capable of doing), as she has been spotted by Chutha and Michael hanging out in Second Life.
Well, what—ever! (Go on, irritate the hell out of Kaidie and say this in your best, like, valspeak accent please. Yes, like, like that.)
With less than 12 hours to Kaidie’s scheduled lecture at the Nondon College of Communication, and not having any of you to step in to take the place of her avatar (WHY THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH, ROYAL READERS OF KAIDIE’S TRAVEL BLOG), I have had to step in to be her stand-in. I have found her script for the lecture and am practising it as we speak. Just to continue to keep up appearances, I am also having to step into her small (running) shoes for her charity run for the Medecins Sans Frontieres this Sunday, and to conduct her ‘live’ reading on 22 March in a Slade School of Dine Art event. (Unless, of course, she turns up at the time being).
In response to Wmartens88 who asks me who I am: Well, you know me. You read about me in her blog on 12.12.2009, the day she was born. I met her in East Nondon, after visiting the Sophie Calle show, while I was walking the Janet Cardiff audio tour. She had come tumbling down from the skies, her face full of her own puke, having suffered from airsickness from hovering in the skies with her giant cheapskate plastic wings stapled to her shoulders. We became Facebook friends from that day.
My dear Wmartens88, my name is not Kaidie. I am quite different from her. My name is Kailives. How do you do? Have we met?
Dislocating Kaidie: ONE OF KAIDIE’S GLOVES FOUND AT ST PANCREAS STATION! AND OTHER SIGHTINGS. HAVE YOU SPOTTED KAIDIE IN THE PAST 3 DAYS?
Kaidie has been missing since 3 March. Referring to the Nondon A-Z, I scoured around Nondon in my kickscooter tracing some of Kaidie’s hangouts such as Regents Fark, Pings Pross, Lupus Street and Faker Street.
Finally, at the St Pancreas Station, I spotted one of Kaidie’s gloves on the ground. Which sets off a loopy chain of questions:
Where could Kaidie be? Why has she disappeared? Has her fall at Fuston Road made her take a reality check and decide to transform herself into thin air? Have her wound cuts become infested with onionringworms and ticks and moulds and ingrown toenails that her body became eaten away by the new foreign invaders and she was left to die young at DAY 80? What has she fallen head-over-heels with, that has imprisoned her heart (has she got any?) and soul (does she have one?) and physical being? Has she been mugged/kidnapped/murdered/raped/mutilated/slashed/burnt/crashed/hacked into, and had her dislocated limbs strewn all over the Hackney marshes and mixed with the stuffs that are to go into the Olympics Stadium, or has her supersized brain with multiple plugins shredded into pieces by the vultures encircling this sceptred isle? Has she become disoriented from her oh-so-anti-linear derives? Has she lost her bearings after the batteries of her GPS Garmin Etrex went flat? Kaidie’s Facebook wall is a wall of silence- is it because she has hit the wall? Or banged her head against it? Has she gone into hiding? What is she hiding from? Has she found the object of her quest, the Meaning of Life 3.0, and spontaneously combusted in the Holy Mother of All Climaxes? Has she hit jackpot of g-spots of ‘THE truth about what in the bloody world this is all bloody about’, and choked herself to death in her self-congratulatory pants/sighs/porksqueals of orgasmic delight? Are the satellites able to detect Kaidie’s whereabouts? Where has she gone? Has she left Nondon? Has Nondon the metropolis devoured and crippled her? Has Kaidie died (and become just ‘Kai’)? Has she given up her impossible quest? Has she chickened out? Has she concluded the experiment with what she had already known, that is, that there is no such thing as ‘A/The Meaning of Life’ (3.0, 2.0, 1.0, or 4.0, or 44.3 etc, for that matter). Has she been sucked into the offline world of Life 1.0, or that of the online metaverses in Life 2.0, and stopped travelling to-&-fro in the chaosmos of Life 3.0? Is she still in the amorphous space-time of Life 3.0 at all, or has she shapeshifted into an earthly avatar in Life 1.o, or an e-Orlando in Life 2.0? Has she given up Life 3.0, given her extreme impatience ? How can we continue with this? Shall we conclude and wind up the experiment of Kaidie’s Life 3.0 already, more than 900 days ahead of schedule? (Whoo-hoo! I punch my fists in the air.)
And of course, not to forget other pertinent questions such as: Where is Kaidie’s other glove? What can one do with 1 glove? Can you hear the sound of 1 hand clapping? Can you swear the hound of 1 glove slapping? Did Kaidie deliberately leave 1 glove behind? Is it a Hansel-&-Gretel cookie trail?
Frankly speaking, given that she is merely an object of experiment, we would not much care if Kaidie is dead/alive, but it just seems slightly irresponsible of her to simply evaporate, given that this month, Kaidie has also been scheduled to appear in several events. The first one comes up in a couple of days, on Tuesday 9 March 11:30am at Nondon College of Communication, and on Sunday 14 March, Kaidie is supposed to run for Medecins Sans Frontieres at Regents Fark. I have also been informed that during Kaidie’s absence, there has been a fresh donation by ‘Miss Nim’ for Kaidie’s run. (On Kaidie’s behalf, THANK YOU MISS NIM!!)
At the meantime, Kaidie is nowhere to be found, yet. There has been sightings here and there. Some are cryptic, others seem plausible. Like a Rashomon conundrum, can any of these be verified? Who is telling the truth(s)? Can we conjure up Kaidie’s dead ghost to enlighten (or scare) us? Have you spotted Kaidie in Nondon in the past 3 days? Have you spotted Kaidie outside of Nondon in the past 3 days? Any other clues? Write in and help find the missing person please! There will be a mystery reward.
Now I am slightly flummoxed – what if we cannot find Kaidie in time? Must I exercise executive power and cancel all events? Or, should/must I find someone to impersonate her, as if nothing has happened? Would YOU like to take over Kaidie’s avatar, for a change? Wanna swop? Shall we barter trade or play chess at the beach?
KAIDIE, DISLOCATED.
Where on google-earth might Kaidie be? 2 days ago Kaidie reported that she ‘fell head over heals at Fuston Road’ and that it ‘transformed’ her. She shared some image of some dislocated part of her body with some injury of some sorts. We – by that I mean you and I – have not heard from her since. I have had to hack into her site and ask you: would you know where Kaidie might be? Have you seen Kaidie in Nondon?
ANALYSIS OF MY 155.0km PATHETIC RUN-WALK IN COMPENSATION FOR MY 1550km NONDON-ZURICH-NONDON FLIGHT. (But don’t you dare scoff – better SOME effort than NO THING [?])!
I am presenting you, my Dear Readers, THE official one and only scientific philosophical analysis of my Nondon-Zurich trip last month. I had promised to run/walk/crawl/jump/swim 155.0km as a pathetic gesture to pay for my 1550km Nondon – Zurich – Nondon flight.
So finally I have recovered from my jetlag (there is a 1 hour time difference between London and Switzerland, for those of you who did not know). After a few nights of 12 hours of sleep, (thus is the luxury of Life 3.0) I was recharged and sat down to tabulate my results.
The chart in the centre is my own documentation of my journeys. I began working towards fulfilling my goal from 22 January, and 15 days later, I completed the given task. A few points to note:
– All distances are estimations (based on previous timings, ‘measurements’ [using my fine fingers’ widths] of distances based on paper maps).
– As distance (and endurance) is the aim, timing is not taken into consideration. (In any case, my pace is alwaaaaayyyyys sloooowwwwwwwwwwwwww – but some are slower than sloooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.)
– For any given session, distances must be more than 5km to be taken into account. Anything less will be ignored (and laughed at).
What surrounds this chart are maps generated by Mini, my Garmin foretrex 201 GPS, which I borrowed from CASA and Urbantick (whom I suspect owns a large stash of other Minis, Mediums and Majors, given his quite interesting experiments in the field.) Detailed versions of these maps can be found on my page on GPSies. The thicker lines in blue are my tracks as documented by Mini. (Information geeks who find pleasure from creating/looking at different patterns from words and numbers will derive some joy from sites like these. However, I like to believe that I maintain a critical distance [pun intended]).
Not harbouring any gadget-fetishism whatsoever (oh puh-leaazzee, dah-ling, I am an au-naturale artificial being! Tsk tsk.), one of the points that intrigues me at this point is the difference between my representation and Mini’s, ie, one that is (supposedly) subjective (based on memory and temperaments of fingers), arbitrary (based on [highly-educated, ahem] estimations) and analogue, vs one that is (supposedly) scientific, accurate, objective and digital.
This difference/gap/slippage is the space-time where/when Kaidie exists/lives.
KAIDIE INTERVIEWED ON WINTERTHUR RADIO STADTFILTER ABOUT (HER) LIFE 3.0 (26 January 2010)
Click here to listen to my interview with Ms Susan Krausse of the Radio Statfilter Winterthur, Switzerland on 26 January, during my 3rdlifer-in-residency at the Villa Straeuli, for your listening pleasure (sic). Since we are moving back in time temporarily, let us indulge and enjoy this wallpaper of a friend I met in Heidiland. (By the way, the following is a blatant self-promotion, but since this is my site, I am more than allowed. Here I go/come: if you wish to view the entirety of the film I made there called Kaidie In Heidiland / Heidi In Kaidieland, come to my performance-lecture at the London College of Communication 10am Tuesday 9 March. This will be Kaidie’s first Life 1.0 performance in Nondon. It will be extra-ordinary.)
DAY 72: THE KAPUTT HAPPINESS PLUGIN 3.0.
The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.
– Chris Marker, Sans Soleil, 1982 Argos Film.
Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? Are you happy now? Will you stay happy? How do you know? Do you know if you are happy? Do you think you are happy? How are you certain? How certain are you? How do you measure it? What is the duration of your happiness? Is it intermittent? Does it flicker? How long does it stay? Was it invited? Was it nice? Was it difficult to upload it? Were there any errors? Did your laptop crash? Which version of the plugin have you got? What are the reviews? Has it been updated? When was it created? Is it still relevant? Is it obsolete? Is it of importance? Does it work? Is it working? Is one enough? How many do you have per day? Is it permanently switched on? Does it come on at will? Is there waiting time? Is there downtime? What is the cost? What is the price you pay? Is it open source? How long does it last? Does it last? What is a good duration for you? Do you prefer a short intense kick-in or a slow-burning diluted long-drawn one? Are you a sprinter or an endurance runner? Or do you like fartleks? Will the plugin survive? Will you survive? What is its size? Is it light? Is it easy to attach? Are you attached to it? Are you able to detach yourself from it? Are you sure? Are you in control? Is is large? Is it a comfortable fit? Is it measurable? What are the units? How many bytes? How many kilobytes? How many gigabytes? How many terabytes? Does it fit in your hardware? Do you need an external drive for this? Have you remembered to back it up in 3 different locations lest you lose it? Is it weightless? Is it a burden? Is is immeasurable? Is it small? Is it portable? Is it laughably tiny? Is it obscure? Do you even know if it’s there? Does it even know if it was you it was looking for? What if it wasn’t? So what? What if it was? How often do you put it on? Is it automatic? Is it an automatic upgrade? Are you sure it is safe to download it? What makes you happy? How does it smell? What is its colour? Is it mixed with black? Is it black? What shade of black? How does it taste? Does it have an aftertaste? How does it feel? Rough? Nice? Same? New? Different? Does the same-ness comfort you? Does the familiarity make you happy? Does the new-ness excite you? Does the difference enhance your happiness? After it is used does it still make you happy? Do you discard it? What is the source of happiness? Does it matter? Where is it located? Is it in Nondon? Where in Nondon? How do I get there? What time should I get there? How many km does it take? How long does it take for me to walk there? How long does it take for me to swim there? Can I reach there in the next 928 days? Can I get specific directions from google map? Can my Mini, my GPS foretrex trackking system, map it down nicely? Can Mini see it? Can Mini feel it? Are the satellite signals obscured? Are there satellite signals when it kicks in? Is the plugin in conflict with other plugins? Must I deactivate others to get this running? What is the name of your happiness plugin? Is it Mini? Is it Major? Is it Many? Is it Few? Is it One? Is it Only? Is it Some? Is it the one and only? Do you believe in permanence? Do you believe in non-permanence? How do you hold on to permanence? How do you hold on to impermanence? What is left after the filtration process? What do you leave behind in the throwaway culture? What do you throwaway? What do you re-use? Why is the rusty bit on your pencil case or purse acceptable? Why is that speck of doubt on your beard unacceptable? Why do you smile? Do you smile because you are happy? Do you smile because you are not happy? Do you smile only when you are happy? Do you smile only when you are not happy? Do you have different grades of smiles? Do you laugh? Do you bend over backwards with laughter in happiness? Do you snigger? Don’t you snigger? Do you want snickers at sainsburys which cost 5 for a pound? Do you scoff at other people’s happiness? Do you show teeth when you smile when you are happy? Do you cover your mouth when you laugh when you are happy? When you smile when you are not happy, is it the same smile? When you laugh when you are not happy, is it the same laughter? Do you laugh when you are happy and nervous? Do you laugh when your happiness plugin works? Do you laugh when you happiness plugin is kaputt? Do you smile when you happiness plugin kicks in? Do you smile when you happiness plugin fails? Do you grin? How do you grin? Do you smile to yourself? Why? What are you thinking of when you smile to yourself? What triggers off that smile? Do you rate it? Do you rate your level of happiness? How would you rate your level of happiness now? How would you rate your level of happiness in general? Are you happy with your score? Do you want to improve? How happy do you want to be? Would you know when you get there? Do you know the concept of enough? Do you have low expectations? Do you have low expectations because you adjust your expectations? Do you learn from your experiences? Do you list your happiness? Do you have a list of happiness? Do you, like Sei Shonagon, have a list of things that quicken the heart? Does you heart quicken when you are happy? Does you heart slow down when you are happy? Do you have a heart? Do you have a strong heart? Do you have a weak heart? Does your heart quicken when you are not happy? Is the pursuit of happiness important? Do you pursue happiness? How do you pursue happiness? Does happiness court you? How do you flirt? Does happiness take the lead? Do you step back? Do you lunge forward? How hard do you want it? Do you let go? Who is aggressive? Who plays passive? What is the courtship process like? Who wins? Who plays hard to get? Who is the obscure object of desire? How do you let go? How do you score? How do you get it? How do you know that you get it? Do you actively pursue it? Is there effort? Is the effort worth it? Is the result worth the effort? How do you measure your success? Do you do well? Do you do well easily? Do you do well by practice? Is it difficult to get there? How do I get there? How do I get there there? Why did it go kaputt? When did it go kaputt? When will it go kaputt? When does it die? When does it expire? Can I repair it? Can I resuscitate it? Can I get a new one? What do I do with the kaputt one? Where can I recycle it? What is its material? Does it burn? Is it combustable? Is it volatile? Is it infectious? Where can I dispose of it safely? Why do you want to be happy? Is it important to be happy? Why is it important to be happy? Why should one be happy? Do you make happiness plugins? How much does it cost? Do you take credit cards? Is there an extra charge? Do you take debit cards? But my debit card is kaputt because some one used it to buy his happiness in my name. Do you accept cash? What currency? Can I round up the figures? Can I have a discount please? I want to buy several as backups. Can I buy in bulk? Is there a special discount for bulk purchasing? Will it arrive overnight? What time? Must I stay at home to wait for delivery? When is it shipped? Is it insured? Is it bubble-wrapped? Can I poke the bubbles of the bubble wrap? Are they large or normal bubbles? I like the large bubbles as they make a nicer sound when I jump on them. Can you wrap them in 2 layers please? Just in case the first layer gets burst? How many plugins must I use for it to kick in? Do you fight happiness? Do you fight non-happiness? How do you fight non-happiness? Do you have enough storage space for happiness? Do you have any storage place for happiness? What is the wait for the next one? What is the average wait for it? Where is the button to press? How do I know if the wait is over? How long does it take for me to doggypaddle from here to the other side? How long does it take for me to run there? How long will I run before I get run over by a Nondon driver? How long will I run before I get run down? What is the signal opposite? What is an opposite signal? Opposite to what? What is opposite to happiness? Where is the signal opposite? When is the signal opposite? Are the signals in conflict? How can I help? Where do I stand? Are they talking to each other? Are they in cahoots against me? Who can come on my side to fight them? What do I need to fight them? How can I win this battle? How can I cross with care? Shall I cross? How much longer must I wait?
