iPods killed the mixtape, I’m pretty sure. Okay, maybe MP3 players in general, but I’m just placing the blame on Apple.

A few years ago I found some old mixtapes I made when I was still at school and university.

Some of them were compiled by accident – a series of songs I’d liked at a particular point in time, recorded from the radio. Not many were ‘clean’ copies : there’s always a voiceover somewhere, which once annoyed me. Now they just capture the spirit of the times.

Others were compiled with care, with thought as to what story it was meant to tell, or whether there was a flow. When I got a few A1s for my SRP, the parental units had to pay up – the deal was RM50 per A1 obtained. Yes, I was trained as a capitalist. I think they were a bit depressed that the sum was nowhere near the RM400 they’d hoped they had to pay out, but still, the amount I secured allowed me to buy an Aiwa radio with not one but TWO cassette decks and a record button. It was homemade mixtape heaven.

The mixtape has, of course, evolved to mix CDs and now playlists. I don’t mind playlists, but with me they tend to grow exponentially. What all mixtapes boil down to, when you’ve stripped all the stories away, are a collection of songs that you want to listen to. A playlist is just a couple of songs I quite like at a particular moment in time, and I want to listen to them frequently enough; not too frequently enough to have it on loop, but at the same time frequently enough to not have to wait more than 45 minutes or so to listen to it again.

So I’ve been making mixtapes again on my playlists. I’ve set a maximum of 17 songs per playlist. Like the number of songs you get on a CD or a tape. I tend to name my playlists chronologically. There’s a lot of ‘Summer 2007′, ‘Spring 2008′ and ‘Winter 2009′. Very original, I know.

If this is going to be a mixtape, then this is the album cover

My latest playlist is a ragamuffin set of songs spanning various emotions. It starts off with some denial of the gravity of things – Ruang Rindu (Letto) & Mrs. Robinson (Simon and Garfunkel)

… which morphs into anger – Mr Brightside (The Killers), Use Somebody (Kings of Leon) & Take a Bow (Rihanna).

Then it goes to acceptance of the realities of things – Piano Man (Billy Joel), I Lied (Telefon Tel Aviv) & Breakeven (The Script);

And just when you feel like the wrists are all but slit, I stick in some hope – Karma Chameleon (Culture Club), Fast Car (Tracy Chapman) & Haven’t Met You Yet (Michael Buble).

In between it all, there is a resounding stadium anthem in Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler) because every mix tape deserves a mega ballad.

I have Fyfe Dangerfield’s version of She’s Always a Woman to remind me it is okay to be who I am, and then there’s Better than Ezra’s A Lifetime, because to me, she sits in the light and combs her hair in her own way – I still miss Zoorek a lot.

A good mixtape, if I may say so myself. But I can’t quite get a title to wrap it up with. Any suggestions?

You know how I like rain, and that it rains quite a lot over here whatever the season? And that there’s nothing better than the smell of rain on grass? Well now I’ve discovered there is. It is the smell of rain water pelting hot tarmac. A slight burning smell, not quite unpleasant but it conjures images of big steam rollers and mile-long roadwork queues. In summer, after a scorcher of a 30-degrees day, the rain sometimes falls and the road sizzles and you get that rain-on-tarmac smell. It’s the smell of home.

I sit in my study and I stare out of the window and I see the train on Platform 5. It is the 2258 to Clacton-on-Sea, going via Colchester Town and Hythe, the two other stations in this town. This is the last train from the station heading that way via this route. There is a girl in a funny hat reading a newspaper. I can see her but she can’t see me. Or rather, she can if she wanted to, but I am more interested in her than she is in me. I wonder where she is going, and if she’s going home.

Discounting the first house I lived in when I first came to Colchester, all other houses were in proximity to a train line. I hit the jackpot when I moved here – smack dab next to the station. I can watch trains go by any time I want to. I wonder if there are particular events in my subconscious that makes me love trains. For some reasons their rattling against the tracks and their screechy brakes calm me down. Even this far away from home they make me feel at home.

I love the concept of home. Probably as much as I love the word cusp. Cusp is an amazing word, it brings with it an aura of expectations of better things to come. Like ‘edge’, except that with edge it can go both ways. Cusp always seem to imply soaring wings and greater heights.

I listened to the now-quite-famous version of Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind) and laughed at the lyrics celebrating all things great about cities and towns that are just on the periphery of more famous sibling cities. In Newport’s case, country capital Cardiff just 15 miles away has absorbed all the attention when it comes to culture and tourism; but as the lyrics of the song goes:

Newport.. /Twinned with Guangxi Province in China / … there’s no province finer. Josie D’Arcy’s from Newport.. / Yes, it’s strange, we didn’t know either … / Thank you Wikipedia!

For those of you who haven’t checked out the video yet..

Am very much a lyrics person when it comes to music, and the wit in this would do Mitch Benn proud ten times over.

There’s something about smaller peripheral towns that scream industry and concrete [okay, this includes Coventry as well even though it's not that small] where it seems like nothing really goes on except the mundanity of life. But beneath the smog there are still things locals celebrate, not because it is of the finest quality, but because it is the defining characteristic that endears it to the hearts of its inhabitants.

Yes, it reminds me of Bandar Baru Bangi. There is a deep sense of irony that comes with celebrating growing up in this town that outsiders don’t quite get. I know I say it is the centre of the universe, much to the annoyance of friends who live in Bangsar. But that’s only because the centre of the universe is a black hole, see…

Heard about the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? Well here’s the Barber Shop at the Centre of the Universe
I told the Kimster today that I was craving for nasi kandar for some reason, and he wondered aloud if it was nasi kandar that I wanted, or was it what nasi kandar represented. After double checking that there indeed was no double entedre associated with nasi kandar, I got thinking about what it meant for me as a Malaysian abroad.

Some mornings I travel to London for a spot of Nasi Lemak MSD, not because I can’t get nasi lemak anywhere else. Heck, all I would really need to do is go to my kitchen if I really wanted some of the red-and-white stuff.

The thing about nasi lemak at the MSD is that it is available all day, but however much I was craving for it, if it was already past 11am when I got to Bayswater, I’d always opt for nasi campur instead. Because it isn’t the nasi lemak that I was craving really, was it? It was what the nasi lemak represented.

Or rather, what a nasi lemak breakfast at a Malaysian canteen, eaten on plastic-sheet covered tables with pictures of Prime Ministers on the wall and Siti Nurhaliza blaring on the radio represented. It represented home.