all my life I wanted to be someone, now I realise I should have been more specific.

eternal love

2005-11-11T19:35:00.000+08:00

i've been rereading the vampire lestat over the past two days having some down time since i'm one of the lucky people that don't take maths. no guys... i'm not deliberately taunting you, my maths sucks to the power of infinity minus one.
but i digress... reading this gorgeous novel i realised that i am even more hopelessly and passionately in love with lestat than i was in sec2. becoz now i really understand his existential angst. to have immortality and crave death... ahh... isn't the irony jus beathtaking?

MERDE.

2005-11-11T19:33:00.000+08:00

FEEL THE PAIN..... (Growllll)

2005-10-31T22:09:00.000+08:00

K this is a quickie...

sighz... jus finished running/jogging/ (mostly) walking 5+km in a clearly futile attempt to appear trimmer for deepavali trw.

sometimes kiddies... a little delusion is good for the soul.

PS: i can jus feel the lactic acid jus accumulating in my leg muscles (urgh... too much bio, ruins all the simple pleasures + pain in life like sex and drugs ... and sex...

PPS: boy am i gonna be disillusioned trw.

Obsession

2005-10-30T12:25:00.000+08:00

Once a upon a time…

It all started with innocent glance;
The attraction was immediate, ineluctable.
There were of course the mandatory cute little butterflies,
fluttering within your stomach.
This soon blossomed into love, and escalating passions.

Oh I have so much love to give!

But unrequited love is not a pretty thing folks.
Your raging passion is cruelly doused
By your Love’s cold indifference.
It then manifests itself as a desperate desire,
To possess him completely,
body and soul…

Creeping up on you like concrete shadows,
Enveloping your mind and heart in the seductive haze
Of an all consuming obsidian obsession,
Possessing insuperable darkness;
Until all you are is a mordant void,
And you finally surrender,
To this overwhelming blackness…

Yes!

You wake up to the coppery tang of blood,
Not yours- strangely enough.
Your eyes focus on his unblinking ones.
You realize that something is not quite right…

That’s better.

His features now twisted into a grotesque smile,
You cuddle comfortably in his not so warm embrace.

And they both lived happily ever after.

Another morbid and macabre piece by yours truly.Well... as you can clearly see I'm a cynic when it comes to love matters. Call me weird but I actually thought this was funny ;)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.

2005-10-30T12:22:00.000+08:00

Well that’s the end of my melancholia (not really, I just felt nauseated reading my previous post) Guess I’ll just have to pull up my socks (shivers violently at the recollection of the horrible Jap fad ) ((then remembers she did it in sec school too and feels nauseated once again)) Ah… well Deepavali (festival of lights, to commemorate the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil blah blah… pukes at the CMEness) is coming in a coupla days and yours truly isn’t feeling festive at all…. In fact I couldn’t care less. (Anything only means something to you if u invest some of urself in it) I didn’t do any spring cleaning, didn’t help bake pastries and didn’t accompany my mom shopping… It’s honestly just another day.

However, come Tuesday I’m still gonna dress up in my new purple clothes (finally capitulated to Mimi’s wheedling, “You MUST wear sth new.” “OK Mimi.” “you have to wear sth grand.” “sigh… OK”) , plaster a smile on my face and grimace inwardly when each and every relative asks that oh so original question, “So how, you prepared for you’re a levels already?” We usually spend the entire day at relatives’ houses, paying respects to my two grandmothers first (Asian filial piety, rmbr kiddies?) No I’m not a hypocrite. There is a sound reason for all this pretence.

This year, my paternal grandmother’s house is my first and last pit stop. I wouldn’t have decided to go at all. Except I have this strange, portentous feeling that this might be her last. It’s sad but she’s had a good long life 82 yrs, no major illnesses, all her kids are successful, all her grankids are exemplary young adults (with the exception of yours truly) and she lived to see her first great granddaughter this year, Baby Trishti. I’m the kind of (often considered as heartless) person who believes that there’s no point crying during their funerals after shunning them in life. (Don’t get me wrong I do believe in the afterlife and the duality of Man) In fact I avoid attending funerals as much as possible. The surrealness of it all… It just throws everything into a sharp and morbid light. (Like I need more things to contemplate right now)

So yeah, this year I’m gonna get all prettied up ( an impossible thing in the best of times), hug my granny’s warm, living body, breathe in deeply her familiar and comforting sandalwood smell, receive this wonderful woman’s blessings and give her the best darn Deepavali possible. (And that is what I call a schmaltzy ending)

PS: Nausea and explicit authorial comments seem to feature prominently in this post. (aren’t the authorial asides incredibly annoying?) ((Heck, blame Eliot))

My Medley

2005-10-29T22:43:00.000+08:00

I’ve got a lot of things racing through my mind now. So I’m just gonna go ahead and gripe and you guys try to keep up if you’re remotely interested. An exercise in stream of consciousness if you will.

Oh god the biggest examination of my life are in abt 10 days time and what am I doin? I’m posting on my stupid blog which nobody reads anyway… oh shit I’m screwed. Everybody else is pretty much prepared. Must miraculously squeeze 2 years of work into my teeny brain asap. I’ve never felt so frightened and insecure as I now. Every night just before I finally fall into blessed sleep and pray and pray that i’ll never wake up. Unfortunately I do every single day. And oftentimes find my pillows damp and taste the salty traces of my tears. Oh god oh god please help me I cant let my whole family down.

Oh gosh despite being totally unprepared for the imminent exams I cant help thinking of escaping all this drudgery and fantasizing abt all the neat things I’ll try once I do. Driving license, purple mini with orange stripes. Not so new car smell. Lotsa books, the alchemist, ayn rand maya angelou…. Sleeping… ahhh blessed sleep! staring at the ceiling knowing I really have nothing better to do. Dreaming thinking contemplating. Dreaming...

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Henry David Thoreau

Nocturnal Reveries

2005-10-29T22:06:00.000+08:00

I bolt up from sleep
In the dead of the night
A reprieve from these inescapable nightmares
I feel an overwhelming sense of ennui wash over
My heaving body;
Choking me,
Drowning me…

The silver glint of the blade:
So alluring, mirroring this thin precipice of life I
cling onto- while staring
into the obsidian abyss below…

I take the plunge.

Slash- clean, surgical.

I watch my élan vital leave me rather dispassionately.

It doesn’t hurt that much.

But then again, how could a person who has been numb
for so many years feel any pain?

My flesh and blood I give you.
Please accept this sacrifice Thanatos:
Mon sang et siens.

In the end,
That’s all we are:

Flesh and blood;

To be consumed by our insatiable madness.

Seriously, cudn think of anything else to post. Well atleast now you know that I'm not all sunshine and light... I repeat, I'm just an ordinary girl teetering over the brink of insanity.

Movies, Movies, Movies...

2005-09-29T11:30:00.000+08:00

During the past 3 days I've watched 2 movies in a feeble attempt to drown my prelim sorrows. The Brothers Grimm and The Corpse Bride were my choice picks.

The Brothers Grimm was brilliant altough they cud have been a little more subtle when trying to squeeze all the fairytales in, though I liked their torture chamber which showed all the devices that the Grimms' really invented. Tres clever. Heath Ledger was so hunky! Must be the specs! (for those of you who dont' know this already, I have erm... interesting taste in men) Anyway, the not so fairytale ending was a bit of a let down. Guess i'm a sucker for happy endings afterall.

I've been dying (pardon my pun) to watch The Corpse Bride since I heard about the film. Say it with me: Johnny Depp! I'm also a fan of Tim Burton's work, I really think he's an eccentric genius. Anybody who has read his book The Melancholy Tale of the Oyster Boy will realise that it is a product of a truly disturbed mind. The movie was a tad prosaic for my liking though the animation was intersting and the score was truly haunting and fantastic. I was discussing the movie with my friend. You know, about how the dead looked so very much about the living. I was wondering whether Burton was trying to make a statement that death was not very different from life and that all our desires and dreams remain unaltered... Then I realised I was thinking too much and I should just enjoy the movie for what it is: mindless entertainment.

2005-09-25T19:14:00.001+08:00

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child?

This is something the parents in my family never paused to contemplate. They just went ahead and disciplined (i.e. hit) us Every. Single. Time. Consequently, I spent a good deal of my childhood trying to find ingenious places to hide the cane or feather duster. However most of the time, Mimi was more ingenious and improvises. A long time ago I was disillusioned of how the perfect parents were supposed to act.

"It is a universal part of the human condition that we must heal wounds from our past. The illusion of perfect parents must eventually give way to the realities of who our parents are as concrete individuals. Their limitations invariably become our own, in one way or another, and their struggles with identity and self-esteem become the stumbling blocks that we find in our own lives. This is the human condition.”

This is true, we inevitably become our parents. The horror! The horror!
Sometimes, I am truly grateful for this kind of harsh discipline. But most of the time, I feel trapped in family full of NUTJOBS. Yes, madness definitely runs in the family (thankfully I managed to outrun it) ((wipe that smirk off your faces!)) and has since enabled my relations to think of more um… original ways of punishment. Last Saturday was one instance of ‘ingenuity’.

My uncle found out that my 10 year old cousin had been forging his signature on several badly done test papers. ( I know! What is the world coming to? 10 yrs old!) Moving on, this is what transpired.

Friday night:

My uncle: “Did forge my signature?” ( very loudly)

Cousin: “Nooooooooo…”

My uncle: “How many times?” ( loudly)

Cousin: “Nooooo Pa, I neverrrrrr….”

My uncle: “ Where’s the cane?” (quieter and more ominously)

Well, you can guess what happened next.

Saturday morning:

9 ish:

My uncle is on a mission to save his son’s soul. He calls a police friend and requests a favour.

10 ish:
Policemen call the house and ask for my cousin. He answers the phone and already he is scared shitless. My uncle duly brings him down to the police station as part of the plan.

11 ish:
A policeman brings my cousin into another room and castigates him, after which he brings the already shaking boy to the holding cell and makes him touch the bars to reinforce his threat of imprisoning him the next time he repeats his offence.

12 ish:
My uncle thanks the policeman and both of them share a hearty parent to parent talk about how horrible kids are nowadays while congratulating themselves on their sheer brilliance and imaginativeness.

My uncle then walks back to the car where the still petrified boy is waiting in terror.

Thoughts running through my uncle’s mind?

“Lesson learnt.”

“Mission accomplished.”

Cost of this “mission”: $10 (for the petrol to and fro)

Cost of my cousin’s future visits to the psychologist: $5000

Value of lesson learnt: Priceless.

Well I don’t know what your take on this is, but I fully approve (nods head sententiously). Parenting is a grueling job. Raising good children is even more demanding. So I guess it all boils down to whether the ends justify the means no?

“One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes these to put in the place of the ones who die so there will be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups, he just makes babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching them to walk and talk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and fathers. I think it works out pretty good.”

Well I do too.

2005-09-25T17:56:00.000+08:00

I like to surround myself with crazy people, people who make me laugh by doing or saying inane things. Last night, my friend was expounding some of her more popular theories, all of which are entirely nonsensical but utterly risible. So here a few them of the top of my head that you (hopefully) find as absurd as I do.

Grand Theory Number 1: RAPPER 50 CENT IS IMPOTENT (Erectile Dysfunction)

Background: We’ve all seen voluptuous Black hotties ‘shakin that thang’ far too much in each and every video of his and most of his songs revolve around sex.

Reasoning: All his suppressed sexual desires and frustrations are manifested in the gyrating bodies he can never truly experience.

Truth: How the heck am I supposed to know?

Grand Theory Number 2: EXTREME *SCRAPPINESS IS ACTUALLY ATTRACTIVE (to certain people)

Background: Personal experience

Reasoning: When a person is really bad looking (we’re talking paper bag ugly), his looks don’t matter anymore and you can start appreciating his other qualities and ultimately end up being more attracted to him than you would have been if he was gorgeous to start with.

Truth: Hmm… there IS some truth to this. But not in this case.
*Scrap people are people who are not usually perceived as good looking.

There are many more colourful theories involving yeast, oil and follicles that I would love to elaborate on but she’ll kill me if I reveal these more sordid products of her “genius”

To Love, Honour and Cherish… Right.

2005-09-24T17:56:00.000+08:00

Don’t those vows just warm the cockles of your heart? I was contemplating posting about Katrina but I decided to write about something a little closer to home and to my heart. Marriage is supposed to be holy, sacrosanct, an institution that binds two people together indissolubly. In this sacred bond, both parties unwaveringly care for and protect each other. Sadly, this is seldom true or more accurately, it’s mostly bullshit.

Two weeks ago, Mimi (yes, I call my mom Mimi) and I we were having one of our little mother-daughter talks when she shared with me something very disturbing. One of her friends, a mother of two, was being physically and verbally abused by her husband on a regular basis. Now, I have seen her husband, he looks like a gentleman and I’ve seen them together, they look like two people very much in love. That shows how much I know. I was shocked. How could he bear to strike the mother of his sons, one 3 and the other about 3months old?

Now, I have been accused of being a feminist and a lady with balls of steel by certain people. As it happens, I have previously researched wife abuse as part of my feminist activities, but a person can know all the statistics and still not truly understand the issue. Wife abuse often begins during pregnancy, when the woman is most vulnerable. Despite declamations that men and women now have equal social standing why are the figures for wife abuse ridiculously high? Why hasn’t this trend plummeted since women have now gained so much power and men have subjugated like subservient dogs? Because this isn’t true, not yet anyway and this is precisely why we need feminists, people. It’s to protect weaker, vulnerable women and their basic human rights, not to emasculate men.

Several theories are being examined by practitioners and researchers. The three most prominent theories at this time are:

1.The social learning theory, which suggests that abusive men learn to express their anger in violent ways from experience in their families of origin and are supported in doing so by societal attitudes. Research indicates that a high number of men who abuse their partners witnessed their fathers abuse their mothers or were victims themselves. ( the vicious circle of life)

2.The feminist theory, based on the belief that male oppression of women is fundamental in society, which suggests that men abuse women to maintain control and power in the family. Practitioners working in treatment programs with abusive men report that a high number of their clients believe they have the right and responsibility to control their female partners and use violence and threats of violence to do so. (damn misogynists!)

3.The psychological theory, which suggests that abusive men have character and personality factors which account for their abusive behaviour. Practitioners and researchers report that most men who abuse their partners have common characteristics. (surprise, surprise)

Once the first incident of violence is tolerated and the fear has been instilled in the woman, the stage is set for a pattern of violence to become established. As time goes on, the violence commonly becomes more severe and more frequent. A complex combination of factors traps many women in abusive relationships. Some of these factors include personal and societal conventions about families and women's stereotypical responsibilities, a perceived lack of ability and/or resources to cope independently, and a demonstrated lack of support by some persons and institutions outside the family.

1 in 10 women have suffered some kind of abuse and it takes them, on average , up to 7 years to report this. This too is true in Mimi’s friend’s case. Nobody was the wiser because most of the bruises were on her torso and could be easily covered up. However one night, in a drunken stupor, her husband made a grave mistake. That SOB punched her squarely on the face. Things came to a head the next day when she had to go to her parent’s house as part of her weekly routine. Her Dad immediately noticed the disfiguring contusion on her daughter’s face and boy did he get pissed. What father can stand to see his baby girl hurt? He lost no time in confronting the SOB and chewing his ass out, threatening to call the police if he dared hit his daughter again. I saw her when the bruise was still fresh too. It broke my heart when entering my house; she anxiously scanned my face for any signs that I had spotted and guessed the story behind that painfully obvious bruise. I pretended too. I complimented her on her top while wondering how many bruises that probably hid. And the whole time during the visit, she surreptitiously kept arranging her hair over her bruise which only made her look all the more pitiful.

Last I heard, the SOB has stopped. So everything is just fine and dandy right now, but how do you live with man whose only restraint is a threat, whose every touch you instinctively flinch from, just in case.

My best friend were discussing spouse abuse and what we would do if it ever happened to us. And of course yours truly vehemently replied “I’ll punch him right back and divorce him faster than he could say ‘ow’!” Well a few days ago, I chanced upon some even more painful news. Now, Mimi has a very loud voice which could be attributed to 28 years of teaching unruly kiddies and I must admit I ignominiously overheard her phone conversation with my aunt. This was an even bigger shocker. My aunt and uncle, though both in their early forties, have always been a very ‘happening’ and youthful couple. They go pubbing weekly and still ‘date’ regularly despite having three children all under the age of 12. an exemplary marriage right?

Well I found out that my aunt has been abused by her husband verbally, physically and emotionally for a long, long time. This is one of my closest aunts, she is like a third mother to me, (the second being my godmother) and when I heard this, a sickening sense of reality came crashing down on me. All my bravado seemed so facile and fatuous to me now. You see, if I’m a fire cracker, then my aunt’s da bomb. She has always defended her rights (rather explosively I might add) and has never been the type to back down form a fight. Hey, I bet she could even take on her husband if she really wanted. If this truculent woman herself can allow her self to be victimized in this way, what about other more demure women? What about me? What would I really do if it ever came down to this? All my bluster is absolutely ridiculous and inefficacious when it comes down to the nitty gritty.

I guess it becomes really complicated when children are thrown into the equation. They were my belligerent aunt’s weakness; they are every woman’s weakness. What men fail to realize is that their strength, (physical or otherwise) is merely an accident arising from the weakness of others. This being the case, they should protect the weak, not abuse them.

What God has joined together, no man can throw asunder. But some men certainly do try.

2005-09-23T19:21:00.000+08:00

I walk down the street.There is a hole.I don't see it.I fall in.It isn't my fault.It takes a very long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.There is still a deep hole.I pretend not to see it.I fall in.I pretend it's still not my fault.It takes a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.There is still the same deep hole.I see it.I fall in anyway.It's a habit.I get out quicker this time.
I walk down the same street.There is a deep hole.I see it.I walk around it.I don't fall in.
I walk down a different street.

Portia Nelson

I thought this was pretty relevant for the first post. It's simple but not simplistic. I've lost count of the number of times I've fallen into shit holes I cant get out of, or atleast, make a clean escape from.

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." -- Albert Einstein

2005-09-21T16:35:00.000+08:00

This quote was the inspiration for this poem. I initially wanted to title my blog after the poem but alas! It was already taken. It was written in the wee hours of the morning, under a deadline. The veranda was so quiet, I could hear the buzzing in my own ears and the air so still, I could almost feel my thoughts clinging to me, diaphanous yet at once substantial. Funny, really, how preternatural silence
and torpor can educe poetry.

Raison D'être

The reason for being

LIFE,
Is no enigma,
It’s the simple things:
Love, truth and karma.
A friend’s warm embrace
A butterfly’s shaky first flight
Moonbeams caressing bare skin
Ice cream smears on noses and chins
Giggling madly till your tummy really hurts
The morbid fascination over a kaleidoscopic bruise
The funny way peoples’ eyes crinkle when they smile
Singing spontaneously and mostly out of tune
That first kiss (both real and imagined)
Dappled sunlight on a child’s hair
Torrential rains and searing heat
Your parents’ sound advice
Fantastical dreams, hopes,
Prayers and greatness.
Memento mori;
LIVE.

Well, feel free it critique it. I've always loved poetry but that doesn't mean I'm any good at it.

Stupidity Is Doing Things The Same Way But Expecting Different Results aka lessons learnt from prelims 2005

2005-09-19T13:44:00.000+08:00

I've arrived at a shocking conclusion. I am stupid.

If you know me at all, then you'll know i'm a world-class slacker. I put my heart and soul into everything i'm INTERESTED in or if people are relying on me. But now I realise the person I consistently disappoint (my parents excluded) is myself. Throughout my primary and secondary school years, everything just seemed to fall place. I studied very little and perfunctorily and I seriously have to thank God for getting me through my major exams. When I got retained in J1, it was a mammoth shocker for me. But rather than the wakeup call it was supposed to be, it was merely that: a shock, intense but short-lived. My grades and attitude towards school didn't improve very much. I continued to pon school (with amazing regularity i might add) and firmly remained in most of my teachers' bad books.

Why? All I can come up with are excuses that will only insult your intelligence. I realise that things are not like what they were before, the workload is much more immense and demanding and therefore requires a longer prep time. Last min prep does not work. It has been tried and tested by yours truly during promos, ct1, ct3 n now the prelims; to disastrous results. I've graduated from 'burning the midnight oil' to pulling overnighters, to no effect; if anything, it just made things worse. NJC's tests are admittedly harder that some other schools' but even that is an invalid excuse. An Epsilon Semi Minus MORON should be able to pass if he studied hard enough. Countless people have extolled the virtues of consistency. Folks, I know consistency is the key. Maybe I could blame it on perfectionism. You see, I'm an all or nothing person; which is why one week my room appears impeccably neat and the next , you have to wade though piles of junk just to enter it. I feel that homework should only be done after reading through and understanding your notes (and possibly your textbook). However, this is an extremely unlikely senario, partly because of the insane school hours and mostly because of my sheer laziness. Hence most of my homework never gets done and the key to consistency is safely lost. Gosh, i felt my IQ drop 50 points just typing that out(grins apologetically).

But I digress. I repeated the same stupid mistake for prelims wile hoping to use those results to procure and SPH Journalistic internship during the Dec hols. So i've basically screwed up my chances (smiles wryly). Anyway come what may, I still believe that everything happens for a reason. I just hope that this time, the lesson gets through to my thick skull because frankly, with the A levels looming over my head, I don't think that I have many more chances to learn from this painful lesson. And I really don't want to take that chance either.