i was the one you always dreamed of

you were the one i tried to draw

how dare you say it's nothing to me

baby you're the only light i ever saw

i'll make the most of all the sadness

you be a bitch because you can

you'll try to hit me just to hurt me

so you leave me feeling dirty cos you can't understand

my disease.

There are a few kinds of people I respect:
1. People who are brilliant at what they do.
2. People who are brave enough to starve for their art or what they believe in.

Umm...okay at the moment, there are two kinds.

I had a heated argument with my dad again today. What else but politics and ideological differences? In short, he supports the ruling party, I don't. I don't claim to know politics and might even lean towards the apathetic but what I know, I don't like. Anyway, to explain my introduction, my dad told me his friend is nearly 60 and spends his time running errands for the opposition. "What for?" my dad says. But I respect his friend. With what little he has left of life, he is trying to make a difference.

My stand in politics is very simple. I don't know enough but I know despotism. I am not saying anything. But my position is always with the minority. I don't dispute the capability of our ruling party except that I feel they have a part to play in our apathy. They have led us well through a time when our people were perhaps ill-equipped to think for themselves but times are changing. What good is education if it isn't put to use? What good is it, locked away behind the bars of ignorance, sloth and selfishness?

I can't say I support the opposition either. Not because I am afraid to step forward but because I don't have that kind of passion in their manifesto (yet?).

Today, I sat through a Worker's Party youth forum. (Frankly, the argument started because my dad cringed when I told him where I was.) Some of it may have fell short of my expectations, but it was insightful nonetheless. Apparently, unwed mothers are being cheated of their rightful privileges like third month maternity leave, baby bonus and so on. Why do we not question things like that? Apathy. And ignorance. I didn't even know of these policies. I'm ashamed. But then again, isn't AWARE supposed to fight for stuff like that?

I wish I felt the burning passion to fight for policy changes. Wish I believed in something so fiercely I would snatch up the picket signs and shout my voice hoarse. And then cry for the victory. Is there a cure for apathy?

we're all hand-me-downs.

someday they'll find ya small town world on a big town avenue

gonna make you like the way they talk when they're talking to you

gonna make you break out of your shell cos they tell you to

gonna make you like the way they lie better than the truth

they'll tell you everything you wanted someone else to say

they're gonna break your heart

from what i've seen 

you're just one more hand-me-down

cos no one's tried to give what you need

so lay all your troubles down

i am with you now

somebody oughta take you in, try to make you love again

try to make you like the way they feel when they're under your skin

never once do you think that they would lie when they're holding you

then you wonder why they haven't called, when they said they'd call you

you'll start to wonder if you're ever gonna make it by

you'll start to think you were born blind

i'm here for the hard times

the straight to your heart times

when living ain't easy, you can stand up against me

and maybe rely on me

and cry on me yeah

please don't take this seriously.

What would happen if I ran for President of Sheares Hall?

I'd abolish the endless meetings. Have them online with that program we used in NM2220 Media Writing, the one where you hold down a button to speak, one person at a time. I'd keep everything in perspective. Come on, a hall is a hall. For students to live in and be exposed to all the common vices; get attached and break up; screw up their systems and get fat. And through all these, learn that when it comes down to it, your friends, the ones who were there for you when you cried, who made you laugh when you couldn't keep things in perspective, the ones with the ready listening ears, beer and cigarettes, are all that matter. So fuck the administrative nightmares and all the unnecessary politics. The only valid reason for a long meeting should be mass inebriation.

Oh, and finally, a female president. (Notice the first line of our anthem says 'We, sons of Sheares Hall...". No girls? So un-PC.) Quite an entertaining idea, huh? Hilarious, in fact. If I can get down to it, I'd also throw in an election speech worthy of failblog.org!

A few hours in hall and I wanna move out already. I just wanna live alone. Not in hall. In some new place, devoid of memories, free of suppressed emotions and longings. A place where I'm truly by myself. Where I feel placid and independent and strong. Not in hall where I'm weak and struggling but I just can't talk about it. The words get stuck in my heart, bursting, but all that bursts out from me is laughter. The few moments of meaningless, crisp laughter and tough words when I'm around people before returning to my shell, where it's dark and bleeding.

I'm begging for a clean slate.

shame on me.

My obsession with cleanliness and stamina for cleaning was put to the test on Thursday when I opened the door to my new room. They conflicted. I watched helpless at the appalling condition of my room and seriously contemplated quitting hall. After spending close to 2 hours mopping every inch of the table and the wall and floor around it with an excess of dettol until my hands burnt from the alkali, I conceded defeat.

So being the genius I am, I delegated. Help was only a phone call away and that was settled in less than 3 minutes. I called a cleaning agency and hired someone to do the job. Easy-peasy, right? Until Friday, when the cleaning lady arrived.

My heart plopped into my stomach when I saw her. Thin and wide-eyed, speaking in clear, halting English. She told me later she's 60. And we settled for a conversation in Mandarin. She was cheerful and eager and friendly and helpful. And she was worriedly apologetic about being late. But my voice took a low, tired personality. In my head, I was thinking, "Fuck, I suck. I'm making an old lady clean my room." My conscience was eating me up but I didn't know what to do. How could I send her home? She got caught in a traffic jam and mistakenly alighted 2 stops earlier to get here. What will her agent say to her? And worse, would I be undermining her and insulting her ability?

And what is wrong with this world?! Why are old ladies coming out to work? Where are their children? I want a robust young man to clean my room! Not a sweet and frail old lady!

She was keen to get down to work. And I couldn't watch. Besides, the 'genius' was clever enough to have only 35 bucks in her wallet. "Off you go," she said, "enjoy yourself!" I wanted to duck into the first church I see and confess to the nice priest and do all the Hail Mary's he'll want me to do. Even though my published religion is Buddhism and I don't know what Hail Mary's are.

And this is nothing compared to when I returned 2 hours later. She had removed and cleaned all the drawers and even the side table with rollers and laid them out to dry outside the room. Excuse me while I dig a hole to bury my face. She had cleaned every surface in my room. And she looked happy while the sweat glistened on her forehead.

We started talking as I walked her out and waited for her bus. Life lessons, they're conducted at times and places least expected. She told me she had cleaned my room as if it were her own house or her own daughter's room in hall. She has a daughter, by the way, who had graduated with Honours in Economics and Geography and had also stayed in hall. She cleans because she likes to, on top of her day job as an accounts clerk. She told me about the importance of putting your heart in everything you do and striving for that kind of perfection because it will give you meaning and happiness in your actions.

"What if you find that life has no meaning? Then where's the point in putting your heart in?" I asked.

"Then you have to ask yourself why you think that life has no meaning. Is it because studying is tough? Think about it this way. You're studying now so that you'll get a job you like in future. Many people drag themselves to work, thinking only of the paycheck at the end of the month. But a job is more than that. Because you are doing your job well, your boss brings in more profit, he hires more people, and these people get to support their family and do more stuff with the money. You make people happy this way."

Her outlook on life is so simple and pure. I cannot help but marvel at her innocence. She's 60. She can easily be cynical and bitter and say that she's seen the worst of people and of the world. Yet, she finds joy in living her life for others. She smiles when someone gives his seat up for her on the bus, just as warmly as she smiles when she gives her own seat up for others. Yes, she does that, when she has the full privilege of having the seat for herself.

"So are you saying that making others happy is the key to our own happiness and possibly the meaning of our lives?" I pressed.

Nothing new. We hear crazed evangelists advocating this as often as they proclaim all who do not follow Christ burn in hell.

"Isn't it? Doesn't your heart warm when you see someone happy because of what you did?"

Maybe. Maybe the answer was there all along. We just cannot conceive how our lives can be made by making others'. Maybe when we've been down the path of 'living for myself' for too long and still contentment evades us, it's time for a change.

lazy ways.

I'm gonna be frivolous today.

My fingernails are protruding at least 0.8cm. For some time now, they've been clean and unpainted because weeks ago, I cut them really short and now that they're long and witch-like, I've been too lazy to get down to painting them.

I love painted nails. They're an endless source of eye candy and great for pretending to be occupied when you're sitting around idly. Though arguably, they make a girl look insipid. I have to allude to my all-time favourite book now: Lazy ways to make a living by Abigail Bosanko. Maybe I should write a review for this book except I can't really articulate my love for it. I've read it at least 28 times. When I'm sad, or happy, or nostalgic or just because. Why? I find myself in the female protagonist. Maybe it's all narcissism. But when you're lost and you don't know who you are anymore, it's so comforting to find a constant. Rose Budleigh and I are so similar in our foibles that each time I feel alone in the world, I only have to turn to her and it's like a sharing between sisters.

But I digress. Rose is an accomplished chess player with a passion for painted nails as well. And she declares that seeing her painted nails poised over the chess board gives her a psychological advantage that no male players can achieve. It is amusing but Bosanko says it so earnestly.

Since I'm idling anyway, I'll evaluate all the ways we are similar. From memory. She reads when she's upset. Rose has read Jane Eyre many, many times. She calls it comfort reading. And she carries a book wherever she goes. She also fidgets when she's upset. I don't know if I do but nobody should ever hand me a piece of paper if it's important because you won't wanna have it back when I'm through with it.

Rose struggles a lot inside but it comes out comically to the world. Somehow, people are amused by her problems because of the way she seems and the way she seems to take them. It appears all airy and fluffy to everyone else but she cries behind closed doors and does things like write 'help!' with her mascara on a piece of toilet paper and stuff it into an empty bottle of wine she just finished. Whimsical but heartbreaking.

She is really clumsy; she is actually able to trip over empty floors. Rose is a romantic and she's gullible. But sometimes, she doesn't let on because...it's not all that funny to her. She's a hedonist. She'll spend her last dollars on a good bottle of wine that she'll drink by candlelight in the bathtub. Ok, that is…I think I'm a little more practical than that. And more of a worrier.

She doesn't really know what she wants. She thinks she has all these shiny principles but she's easily swayed and enticed by dolce far niente. Especially if it involves a clever suave arrogant man suffering from wealth ennui – Jamie Cameron – learned and full of vice, caring and presumptuous, with a weakness for her and quotes dramatic poetry, sprawled in his rose garden after a throwing a wild party, when she leaves him. And when she falls, she falls hard. Then she starts losing all her strategy. Not that she has much of that in the first place.

Look! I've succeeded in writing about nothing at all.

Book Review: P.S. I love you

P.S. I love you (the film) made me cry buckets and I really enjoyed it but having read the book, I think I prefer the book's storyline. I wasn't too impressed with her writing style, but Cecelia Ahern did manage to make me cry at crucial points. And she had a way of tugging at your heartstrings with the letters that Gerry wrote. What I really love about it, other than the letters of course, is the very believable process of Holly letting go of her dead husband.

When I first started reading, I thought the dialogues were too lame and far too haphazard. Much as I understood her passages, it didn't read like a book. But then I found that if I just skimmed through and got the gist of the sentences instead of reading the prose, it irritated me less. Maybe I've read one too many books that require readers to plough through each word painstakingly. Most writers would appreciate that, I thought, because much care is put into choosing the perfect words. But with her, the words just spill out like pixels forming an image. If you focus on the words too much, your attention is taken from the scenes she paints. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble but it's just, she paints detailed pictures, you just have to let the words flow past you without grabbing at them until the end image is constructed. If not, you'll lose a few pixels.

Gerry is amazing. Allow me to revel in his fictitious posthumous glory. The part where he plans his wife's holiday when he’s weak and the only one in on the plot was brave and selfless. And he asked for a sea view for an extra 30 euros! It is in these little details she describes casually that you see how deep his love for Holly runs. Also, she doesn't give an implausible overdose of saccharine romance. It isn't perfect. Gerry gets impossible sometimes. And Holly has her moments. But love isn't about perfection. It is about loving someone when they're the least lovable. And I think Ahern perfected that imperfection. Almost, anyway.

Alright, I did say her words seem to spill out but occasionally she hits the bull's eye and a quotable quote spills out. In his first letter, Gerry wrote: "...you made my life. (...) But I am just a chapter in your life..." That made my heart turn over.

I saved the best for last. Unlike other cheesy romances, Holly doesn't get her new prince and live happily ever after. And the bestest thing is, Ahern was angling towards the reverse for almost three quarter of the book. Actually, I would have been alright with it. (Though I was going: "One year?") I mean, if Holly and Daniel were to get together. Just one year after the love of her life died. You almost think it's going to end like all the others. But it doesn't. She does give a hint of a future with Rob the guy Holly met in the supermarket though. So, anyway, I'm glad Ahern didn't presume to fool her readers with a crap ending that Holly finds a new love after all that honest misery and grieving she describes.

If I may add something, I like the way she developed the Richard character too. Instead of just breathing life into Holly and Daniel and a few others and attempt to prop the story with some cardboard figures. Richard's side story touched me. Bit like an uncredited dark horse by the side of the stage.

So there! My first review. Phew! I'm not much of a critic but figured I need to diversify if a future in writing is my hope.

exiled.

Are we too old for idealism? Or is the world too pragmatic? Why do adults scoff at youthful pursuits of grandiose?

My parents look at me like I'm a nut in dire need of psychiatric help every time I happen to mention something - anything that hints of my dreams or ideologies or philosophies. Any attempt to rationalize things invariably warrants a heated argument about pragmatism and "why can't I be normal like everybody else?"

I happen to like to be weird.

I cannot help but wonder if life would be different were I born to a family of kinks and liberal insouciance. A family where my laughter and my songs will not die in the arid lifelessness of the air.

Even that is not easy to imagine. I've reached a point in my character development where I'm stuck. I'm an in-between. I'm not practical enough to fit into the prosaic and neither am I imaginative enough to thrive in the radical. Here, my fear of mediocrity mounts.

I have grand dreams. But my inadequacy impedes them. And it depresses me to no end. I can drop these dreams, leave them to people more equipped to accomplish great things. If, at the end of my life, I've achieved even a small fraction of my dreams, that would be enough. But I wonder, when the time comes, whether I would still have the courage to set forth. Whether years of monotony have quenched my thirst and subdued my spirit. Do I still have that wanderlust, a voice steadfast enough not only to speak for myself but also for the people who can't themselves, and the hands robust enough to better lives?

But I am selfish. I wonder if because of this, God will not grant me enough strength. All these dreams grow out of a self-serving agenda to bury myself in other people’s problems because my own monsters are too hard to face. My desperate desire to find myself by losing myself first.

I want to leave. Just the primitive flight instinct.

template for a man.

I've always had a thing for the darker side. Prince Charming on a white horse really doesn't interest me. I'd rather hold out for the one in a suit the color of midnight atop a dark horse. The one who doesn't smile. The one with that enigmatic look. And smoldering dark eyes.

Like Batman.

Spiderman may be cute with all his schoolboy awkwardness. Superman...isn't in the running. Wolverine, with all his manliness, might have some issues. Cyclops is deliciously suave. But no hero steals my heart like Batman.

I love his noble impetus to protect. His struggling ambition to save the world. How he stubbornly believes in goodness even through his tribulations. I love his scars. I love how he isn't bright and shiny anymore. How he's beaten, but not broken. His quiet strength and formidable spirit. His disregard for what people see him as. How he is everything a man should be and so much more.

He is also, unfortunately, fictitious.

that forgotten tingle.

Why do we sometimes care so much for a person that every single time we think he's sad, our hearts crack? But what if we don't feel happy either when we think he's happy?

How can a cynic be a romantic as well? The combination is odd and fatal.

Oh! It must be the weather! I miss the heady feeling of newfound love. The quickening of your heartbeat when you hear the beep of your mobile. The soft smile that stays on your lips all day long. The bounce in your step. The boundless good humour. And the wonderful feeling that nothing bad can come your way.

When can I see the pair of eyes that will jolt my heart when we lock gaze? When can I hear the voice that will cause the colour to creep up my cheeks unsuspectingly? When can I feel the touch that will send a frisson of surprise through my being? When?

Must I forget first?

harvard commencement speech.

This has got to be the most insightful, pleasant and entertaining speech I've seen.
http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

Thanks for the link, Tong!

we worship power and money.

I don't have any more patience for this. Supercilious trash talking that makes shit sense.

My friend recently got accused of stealing at the place she interns. Details I will not reveal here but suffice to say, her principles and values are impeccable. Furthermore, she is so stubborn that even the most barefaced temptation cannot make her waver, so there's no chance in hell she'll even come close to taking something that is not hers.

But this got me thinking. And it got me in one of my shit pissed moods about this fucking corrupt world and really, I spent the whole day getting pissed at random strangers who were performing stupid ridiculous antics.

I'll get to my point before Dean gnaws out his fingernails waiting for my drama to start.

There is no fucking justice in the world. Justice is the sort of fairytale they feed us in NE class when we were fucking children. Oh gosh remember Ah Cai the policeman or some shit? (Is that his name?) I used to love reading those. I thought those blue guys were heroes. I adored them.

Okay, but this is not a personal attack.

Just try to imagine if my friend's parents were some top dogs in some hugeass corporation. The same discipline master who was libelously maligning her would be falling all over her whole family's feet, kissing all the way up to their asses and obsequiously apologizing for his oversight and misjudgment. (She's interning at some sort of institute.) By the way, he said things like 'I know you stole it, so admit it before we call the cops and they'll perform a lie detector test on you' and like 'so you study psychology...then you know all the ways to read people's minds and words' and 'I see that you're wearing a very short denim skirt'.

What. The. Fuck. That lie detector can't sense shit right? I'd be scared to death if that thing were assessing my innocence. My mind would be all over the place, wringing itself with thoughts like 'is my heart beating too fast', 'are my pores flaring' and yada yada. I'd probably be the most guilty person alive. And please. You're working in an institute and you don't know what they teach at tertiary psych. Don't walk out and tell people that. Oh, I love his last comment. If I were sitting in that room being questioned, I'd be saying in my head: "Are you thinking I'm sexy? I know, right? This skirt so says I'm a whore who won't pay a cent for something I can take from others." Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be flippant enough to say it out loud in that situation.

Anyway, my point is this. If you have power and bathe in shitloads of money, you win. If you're poor and helpless, you go to jail, bad boy!

i. need. to. sing.
the toilet should be sound-proofed.

the shove into adulthood.

At Jian Kuan's Commencement last night, Adeline and I were questioning the use of the word commencement for this ceremony. "Don't they usually call it Convocation?" she said. I certainly think convocation sounds more prestigious.

Yet, commencement is aptly used here. Other than 'a ceremony at which academic degrees and diplomas are conferred', commencement means 'A beginning; a start'.

Last night, I saw hundreds of fresh graduates in their gowns at the UCC. The University probably tires of this. Rounds and rounds of graduation ceremonies year after year. And it's sad because to each of these graduates, this day holds so much anticipation and trepidation. The defining moment that we have been working towards all our young life, the culmination of our academic pursuits. Everything boils down to the day we receive our scrolls. And nobody else actually cares enough.

Society may have its own markers for adulthood. We might have at times, made bravado attempts to take on our world as tough-speaking adults and perhaps also just as frequently, have cowered back behind the shields of our status as students. But the day we're being handed our scrolls, we would no longer have that privilege of pleading ignorance. Henceforth, we would be judged to possess the faculty of reason; we would have to take full responsibility for our deeds. We would be adults and no one will take any excuse from us.

If we're poor, it would be our own fault. If we're suffering, it would be our own fault. And if we fall, no one's going to coddle us and say, "stand up, child, be brave".

On that day, we're on our own. On that day, the rest of our life would commence.

P.S. It's such an anti-climax to that chilling conclusion but I wanna add that girls look way better than guys in that gown! 'Cos we get to show just a bit of ankles on that sexy pair of stilettoes! So hot!