Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

I received a Christmas card this morning.

It didn't come with the regular mail for some reason.

That was a bit strange.

It was also strange that it was addressed from my friend techno.

It read: "Hey rob, if you are reading this, that

means I'm dead.

I just want to say thanks.

I'll see you soon.

Go get drunk on me.

Techno."

Techno stypes.

What a guy he was.

He always said he'd never make it to forty.

A year and a half earlier, i was on a plane to China,

I was on my way to see techno.

He was at the military hospital in Guangzhou,

waiting for a new liver.

His father sent me with two clear instructions: One - gotta

get techno to stop drinking, at least long enough

to receive a liver transplant.

And two - get him back home to Vancouver.

Get techno to stop drinking...

That's not gonna be easy.

Cos that's what techno really liked to do...

Was drink.

And smoke.

And fight.

He was in no condition to fight.

He was sick.

He was really sick.

He was crippled from a car accident when he was seventeen,

but that's not how he lost his big toe.

He lost that in a motorbike accident.

Yeah, he was broken alright.

What was he fighting for anyways?

And what was he still doing in China?

I first met techno in the fall of 1978.

My first memory of techno was, we were playing soccer

on this field, and, the ball was coming right to me.

Right when I was about to jump for it, this kid jumped right in

front of me and he jumped higher than

I'd ever seen anybody jump before.

And he chested the ball, sorta trapped it, and then he

kicked it, from about halfway across the field,

and I'm pretty sure he scored....

Another time, there was this sports day at school,

and I remember he casually picked up this ball,

and he chucked it, right across the field.

And I remember going up after him, and thinking 'oh I could do

that', and I chucked the ball as hard as I could, and it only

went halfway across the field.

For the next little while, i went to that school on the

weekends and practised throwing balls, to see if I could throw

it across the field, and i never got anywhere near it.

But I'll tell you one thing.

Techno was fast.

Techno was the fastest human I'd ever seen.

When he ran, he just took off.

There's no way you could ever catch him.

And so there I was, I couldn't really Chuck a ball too far,

and I didn't really play hockey,

and I didn't really play soccer either.

All I did, all the time, was I used to draw.

And that's the one thing i could do that techno couldn't

really do, and so, we became friends after that.

One day techno said, 'hey, do you wanna go shoot some balls

around after school?' And I said 'yeah, ok.' In the middle of us

playing around, techno went berserk, he proceeded to break

about 20 windows at the school.

We were walking home, and we got picked up by a squad car, and I

remember thinking i really didn't like to be

in the back of a squad car.

I looked over, and techno thought it was great.

And that kind of explains the difference

between the two of us.

And we were only like twelve years old, and he used to tell

us these stories about fucking his girlfriend, and I remember I

didn't even have pubic hair yet like that's how young we were.

I guess that's the thing with him, it seemed like he could

always just pull it off.

Whether he was diving off a cliff,

or riding his skateboard through traffic...

It just seemed like he could always just pull it off.

Techno's daredevil heroics were the stuff of legend

to us regular teenagers.

To befriend techno was to board a thrill ride of some sort.

Techno pushed the limits of whatever situation he was in.

The greater the danger, the greater the thrill.

He loved to steal.

Cars, bikes, electronics, he didn't care.

He always had some sort of scam on the go.

And was always covering it with lies.

The stealing eventually got him in trouble with some of the

senior students in high school.

That was bad news.

Then he started stealing from his friends.

Then nobody could trust him.

It was around this time, that techno started hanging around

with a bunch of dickheads wearing alligator shirts with

the collars turned up.

I didn't really care much for these guys, but,

I have to admit, they were getting lots of pussy.

One evening, techno phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to go

to a party at the other end of town, with his dickhead buddies.

I declined.

It was the summer of our graduation.

We were seventeen.

Techno was completely in control, and completely

out of control at the same time.

An emergency crew showed up to the scene of the accident...

And techno was nowhere to be seen.

After some time they found him in a bush...

Fifty yards away from the crash site.

He was busted up pretty good, he nearly lost a leg

and there was some significant brain trauma.

He drifted in and out of consciousness long enough

to wave goodbye to me.

I was on my way to the airport.

I was off to calgary to become a realtor.

Techno had a very long recovery and his

friends gradually stopped visiting.

He'd burned a lot of Bridges right before the accident.

It must've been very lonely sitting in the hospital for the

better part of two years,

wondering where all your friends are.

But recover he did.

His speech was different, slower and slurred, and he had a limp.

I'd come by and visit him whenever I was in town...

This is right around the time he started to drink regularly.

One day techno announced that his

insurance settlement had came in.

This time he wasn't lying.

One and a half million dollars it took the lawyers ten years

to settle his case.

There were many points in techno's life where you could

say, 'this was the beginning of all his troubles', the car

accident was surely one of these points, the day his settlement

came in was another.

And that's when Jennifer entered the scene.

She was a damn drunk.

When she was done with him he too would be a damn drunk.

Techno was a funny millionaire.

He dressed and acted like a skid.

He smoked dog ends off the street.

His drink of choice was pear cider.

Techno asked me to be the best man at his wedding.

I refused.

His wife poured spaghetti on his head and burned his eyelids

with cigarette butts.

I'm not sure where this happens on the timeline, but one day

techno was riding his motorbike.

As he was looking back to merge onto the highway,

he ran into the merge sign.

The sign clipped the toe pedal right off his motorbike

and took his big toe right along with it.

This would add an even more pronounced limp

to his walk...

More time passed.

One day I went out to the bay where he lived to visit him.

I pulled over.

As he bent down to lean into the window I noticed he had

a really yellow complexion.

Apparently, he was given bad blood from the hospital

and contracted hepatitis c.

He would eventually sue the hospital for

another 600 thousand dollars.

By this time techno was very rich.

He always had an odd assortment of hangers-on available

to do odd jobs for him.

There was Freddy the freeloader, dump truck, Teddy two fingers,

and dogbreath...

This guy was a piece of work.

Most of them were crackheads.

Techno could stay up for days on end,

Polish off dozens of pear cider in one sitting.

He'd get drunk and get on the horn, and call everyone he knew

and invite them to parties at his buddy's warehouse.

He claimed celebrities would be in attendance,

like that douchebag from nickelback.

No-one I ever knew went to these parties.

Techno knew his days were numbered.

He carried on as if he just didn't care.

According to him, he had been right on the edge.

He wanted to live.

He loved life in fact, he just had so much pain.

Pain in his legs, he said the hep c was terribly painful,

he was always vomiting.

He loved to drink, and claimed this was the only thing

that relieved his pain.

The combination of drinking and the hep c wore out his liver,

in pretty short order.

The Canadian transplant society refused to put him on

the ten year waiting list for a new liver

unless he stopped drinking.

In ten years he'd be dead anyways.

Catch-22.

Later...

I was in China.

I received an email from techno's mother saying that he

too was in China, and perhaps I could go see him?

As it turned out, he wasn't far away from where I was.

He was there with his second wife.

What was techno doing in China?

Techno met Vince in some unlikely place

in Vancouver, in a pub.

Vince was in the business of organising transplant services

for those in need.

Techno was on his last legs.

These services did not come cheap however...

A quarter of a million dollars up front.

He promised that techno would be back home

in six weeks with a new liver.

We met him at the white swan restaurant in Guangzhou.

He didn't look too good.

He was totally sketched out.

I found it strange at dinner when techno ordered a cocktail,

that it met no resistance from his wife.

They both assured me that his old liver was shot anyways,

and that he'd be receiving a new one soon.

That all seemed perfectly logical to me,

and I also ordered a cocktail.

It was a perfectly festive evening...Techno's drinking soon

erupted into utter chaos, just like it always did.

He was making things more difficult, in spite of us all

there trying to help him.

We left secure in the knowledge that techno would soon be back

home with a new liver.

Months passed...

I got word techno was still in China, still waiting for a

liver, except now the situation had spun

completely out of control.

His wife left him there by himself,

he started drinking again.

It really didn't look like techno

was gonna make it home alive.

I met with techno's father, we cooked up this plan to try to

get techno back home one way or the other.

I phoned him up and I said 'look, I'm gonna come out there

and we're gonna try and get you back home again,'

and all he said was

'well hurry the fuck up.'

I really didn't want to go back to China...

So there I am on the airplane.

I could see the sprawling mass of Guangzhou

appear out of the haze.

And as the plane approached the runway, the real work

was just about to begin.

I passed through customs and entered

the main concourse of the airport.

There was a little girl there named flora,

holding my name on a card.

We exchanged greetings and she went off to look for techno.

After a while techno appeared.

He shook my hand.

His expression was something like 'thanks for coming here

man', mine was 'now let's get you the fuck outta here.'

back at the military hospital, I met dr Lee.

He explained to me that it was imperative that

techno quit drinking.

The sooner he quit, the sooner he was able to receive a new

liver, it was that simple.

And also, if I could get rid of that damn cat in his room.

I turned to techno...

'Ok, where is it?'

he knew exactly what I was talking about.

He produced a bottle of baijo, he was mixing it with gatorade.

'All of it' I said.

It took a while, but eventually he gathered up all his various

stashes of liquor hidden around his room.

Satisfied, I dumped it all out in the toilet,

he didn't like that very much.

On the way out I grabbed the cat and released it in the courtyard

in the rear of the building.

And then I checked into the hotel next to the hospital.

I set up my computer and scanner and got busy on my second book.

The next day I went to go visit techno in his room.

He was in the middle of his daily routine.

He was sitting on the side of his bed

vomiting into a trash bin.

Flora was there, fussing with his hair and

straightening out his shirt.

I busied myself with something.

I noticed the cat had somehow returned to the room.

I removed it again.

Techno was hooked up to an intravenous drip for

the rest of the morning.

We watched an episode of Seinfeld...

I'm not sure what was in that drip, but it surely kept him

alive all these months.

Techno rarely got going until mid-afternoon, and then we would

set out on our little adventure.

This was usually something simple like going for lunch.

He had the hospital address written on a piece of paper and

set in plastic.

This was tied around his neck with a piece of string.

It said something like: 'If you find me, please return me to

'dot dot dot'.' Simple but effective.

He had a collection of business cards from local restaurants

he'd show to taxi drivers.

On this particular day, we were going to the German restaurant.

He of course immediately ordered a cocktail,

which I had to confiscate.

I always felt like a fuckin cop when I was with that guy.

It was normal for him to shut down for a while after lunch.

This he did with much discomfort.

After about an hour he'd bum a smoke of some poor Chinese

fellow and then we would get back to the hospital and he'd go

for a nap back in his room and I'd continue working on my book

back at the hotel.

At night I'd come by for another generous dose of Seinfeld.

This routine would repeat itself like clockwork.

A week later my wife arrived, thank god.

I was already going nuts.

Back at the hospital, i continued to remove the cat from

techno's room every day, 'what the fuck.' Techno didn't know

what was going on either.

I brought techno food every morning.

He'd look at it and grimace and say something like 'ah I can't

eat that kind of lettuce' or 'i can't eat bananas without

sprinkles on it' or something retarded like that.

And so it went...

First it was Seinfeld, then friends, then we discovered

my name is Earl.

Other than that, there wasn't much to mark

the passing of time.

Techno had his good days, and his bad days.

He'd looked forward to a special meal for days.

Techno's immune system was so low, a piece of fish that was

slightly off or some other funky food would put him down

for a week or two.

That was sad when techno got sick like that.

One day we were in his room watching TV and he got up and

hobbled to the bathroom with the iv pole.

When he got out he said 'look, i dragged the iv pole to the

bathroom and I wasn't even hooked up to it.' We laughed

until we cried.

I think we were cracking up.

Just then the door opened and a hand dropped the cat

back in the room.

Things were getting tense back in Vancouver.

Techno and his father were having a

bitter dispute about money.

I saw techno cry that day, I'd never seen that before.

Thank god flora was there to put her arm around him, cos I didn't

know what the hell to do.

I was making great progress with my book.

I had no distractions in China.

Sometimes techno would come and visit me in the hotel room.

After a while he'd say something like

'i gotta go take my pill' or 'i gotta go get something from my

room.' I'd give him about five minutes and then

I'd go chasing after him.

I hated being a cop, but i was actually pretty good at it.

It wasn't hard to figure out what techno was up to.

God.

And then more time passed.

Except now, it was the three of us.

Three foreigners in China.

We each brought something to the table, but techno was the

undisputed leader cos he had the hospital address tied

around his neck.

Without that, we'd all be sunk.

Occasionally a liver would come in that matched techno's blood

type, we were careful not to get our hopes up.

We weren't supposed to know this but, the sad truth was techno

was waiting for a liver from some guy on death row.

I asked techno what he thought about some poor fellow dying

so that he could live.

'I don't care.' Techno's favourite answer.

Eventually a liver did come in.

A real quality one too.

Apparently, a fellow in his early twenties was about to be

executed and he had the same blood type as techno.

We couldn't help but get our hopes up this time.

Everything happened really quickly after that.

Techno was prepped for surgery in the morning and then we

wheeled him to the other building where they perform the

transplant surgeries.

I remember looking at a pile of rubbish in the corner of the

elevator and thinking how filthy this hospital was.

I'd never seen techno so scared.

The transplant ward had flickery lights and holes in the ceiling,

and then they wheeled him off through the double doors

and he was gone.

Kung and I walked back to the hotel.

That dumb cat darted out in front of us on the way back.

We were called back to return to the hospital.

Dr Lee wanted to show us techno's old liver

for some reason.

This infamous liver that's been the source of so much grief, I

had to take a look at it.

A couple of days later we saw techno in the isolation ward.

He was behind glass with some other patients.

He had tubes running down his mouth and he was hooked up to

all sorts of machines.

After a few more days, he had moved into his own room.

We had to wear hospital gowns,

masks to avoid him getting an infection.

He jumped out of bed and shook my hand, he was clearly pleased.

And then he went over to the TV and started adjusting

the angle on it.

The nurses were chasing him around the room.

He must've been high on drugs or something cos he sure regretted

doing that later.

Rejection was a big issue at this time.

It was amazing to see the transformation in him,

and it happened so quickly as well.

First his eyeballs became white,

and then his thinking became clear again.

Before the surgery it seemed like he was always bogged down.

It was an awesome thing to watch.

But, he still couldn't leave his room.

He had beaten the odds.

One day I was in his room, he was sleeping.

He was chewing, and putting handfuls of air

in his mouth and chewing.

He woke up and said 'ah man, i was having this great dream

about food.' I asked him on another occasion 'what does it

feel like to have a new liver?' He said 'it feels, it feels like

somebody removed a frozen lasagne out of my chest and

replaced it with another frozen lasagne.' Now it was time to

plan the exit strategy, but first we had to

pay off the hospital.

For some reason the hospital only took cash.

Techno's father had to organise a massive

western union transfer.

It was a big fuck up.

Western union didn't wanna transfer that much money.

It took all day, but in the end we had a big bag full of

one hundred renminbi notes.

It was a stack of notes over two feet long.

Me and two little Asian girls were my backup.

We returned to techno's room.

First we wanted to take a look at the piles of money,

I could see techno's eyes light up.

For a moment I had second thoughts about leaving all that

money in his room.

The next day was another split second timing day.

I had to collect the money from techno's room.

He was barking orders and being rude to everyone, I stopped

talking to him for a few hours.

I had plenty of other stuff I had to do.

First I had to go pay off dr Lee,

then I had to rush over and pay the hospital.

Everything went perfectly smooth, except one of the stacks

of bills was short a one hundred renminbi note.

I made the difference with my own money, then I rushed back.

Dr Lee had to explain how all the anti-rejection drugs had to

be taken, all of which was in mandarin.

Then I had to rush back and collect techno, who was having a

smoke by the lobby.

He had a surgical mask pulled down, he was wearing his black

cowboy hat and his white suit, which was two sizes too big.

I told him about the missing note and he said 'yeah I know,

cos I took it.'

long pause...

I was steaming.

'Let me get this straight, you stole a hundred renminbi,

of your own money?' Grabbed his cigarette, snuffed

it out on the ground and then we headed to the airport.

First I had to see kung off, and then techno and I had to

get a plane to Hong Kong.

And this is where the story gets really fucked up.

I'd over-stayed my visa by a couple months,

that's a big deal in China.

This caused all sorts of alarm bells to start ringing.

Then they took us to a holding room,

we were about to miss our connecting flight

there was no way techno was not going home on that flight,

so I turned to him and I said 'you go, and I'll meet you

in Hong Kong.' And that's the second time I saw fear

in techno's eyes.

He nodded and then I had this image in my head of him limping

away from me towards the gate.

Meanwhile, back in the holding office another guy showed up.

He said he needed money, he made a space between his fingers

about an inch and a half deep.

Hell, I had a wad about 50 inches deep the day before.

He had someone escort me to a couple of atms and they

shook me down for about seven hundred us dollars.

He was actually a pretty nice guy.

I was about one hour behind techno.

This is the first time techno was unsupervised

since he arrived in China.

We were too close to home to blow it now.

I arrived in Hong Kong and immediately scanned every bar

and smoking room all the way to the gate.

I finally caught up to him at gate one hundred and something.

He didn't look so good.

In fact, he never really looked good again after that.

He walked all the way from gate five.

I don't know why he didn't get a wheelchair.

At one point he sat down on a bench that said 'wet paint.'

he had black marks going across the back of his white suit.

We boarded the flight to Vancouver.

He had a business class ticket and I was in coach,

what the fuck?

I could see the top of his cowboy hat through the curtains.

I called the flight attendant aside and I said 'my friend

cannot drink under any circumstances.

He's also very persuasive, so don't be fooled.'

I was totally acting like a cop again.

And at one point, techno came back to coach

and sat next to me on the flight.

He seemed so calm and happy to be going home.

I hadn't seen techno this happy for a long time.

With all the commotion happening that day,

I can't remember if he took his anti-rejection pills.

He was supposed to take them twice.

This next part of the story is a little hard to tell.

It seemed like we had finally got home after this huge ordeal,

and I handed techno off to his folks.

I sorta thought I needed some time away from techno

for a while.

That night, techno made a turn for the worse, and went into

pure rejection mode, and began to turn yellow again.

He was rushed to the Vancouver general hospital.

Over the course of time his situation went

from bad to worse.

I couldn't believe it when I heard the news

that techno had died.

Techno was convinced that nothing could kill him.

The truth is, is that by this time, there really wasn't much

keeping techno alive.

His ashes were gonna be distributed out at the cliff

where he used to dive off of at lighthouse park.

His father said a few words and distributed his ashes.

Just then a big gust of wind came and picked up that big

cloud of ash and blew it towards this group that was about a

hundred yards downwind from us, and they completely got dusted

with techno's ashes.

And his dad said, kinda comically,

'son, even in death you're still giving me troubles.'