In Transit

i know i can only have this much of good fortune in my life, much less in one week. i know i really shouldnt ask for any more, and be grateful for what i already have. so i’m just sitting here trying to tell myself not to be disappointed or upset in any way at this turn of events today. i am succeeding quite well so far, i think. though it would be very nice to know exactly WHY i keep screwing things up for myself.

on a cheerier note, i absolutely love it when i come back home and find a package/parcel for me. it’s one of the best cures for bad moods and down days, even more effective than takeaway ice cream while watching an excellent movie at home with good movie-company (i swear, this is so hard to come by nowadays), or a good long shower. today, i got The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. from Chi :) i heart you, old man. you brighten up my days so much!

Aira is leaving for NS - the HORROR! - in two days, so yesterday a bunch of us got together to have dinner with her. Jon hijacked it halfway through and turned it into 50% his farewell, since he’s leaving for Vancouver, Canada in about a week. like, for good. it was weird cos everyone was shaking his hand as if they weren’t gonna ever see him again. even i felt quite obliged to take one final photo with him. it’s so strange, he’s exiting our lives as quickly as he entered. hmm. many people come and go, but some will always be particularly outstanding in the archives of my mind.

anyhoo. the last time i posted a meme thing, Alvin thought that the 7 Known Things and 7 Lesser Known Things About Me were scary enough to frighten off all my potential life partners … so, okay, i’m gonna re-do it cos i dont wanna die lonely and unmarried :(

7 Known Things About Me
1. i collect pigs and ducks (of the cotton-stuffed plushie variety)
2. i am an optimistic pessimist who hopes too much and expects too little
3. i dont buy CDs
4. i should never be allowed behind the wheel
5. i write killer surat aduans (complaint letters) ..!
6. i’m really picky when it comes to guys (okay this isnt helping)
7. and i’d make a really good wife :(

7 Lesser Known Things About Me
1. i LOVE shopping for birthday gifts
2. i pay a lot of attention to how i sign my cards and emails and letters. cos different people require different signoffs.
3. i sometimes feel that i treat my friends the way i would raise my children
4. a brilliant and welldone ad campaign can lift my mood immensely
5. i am a relationship packrat. i’ve got boxes and boxes full of mementoes (there are some REALLY strange things in there) from all my past relationships that i let no one look through
6. any productivity comes from me only when my OCDness has been satiated
7. i’ve been in love with someone for 3 years. he doesnt know. if i told him, my best friend would kill me .. :D

****

okay now that that’s done with. let’s move on to the most important part of this post.

DAMIEN RICE. 30th MARCH. SINGAPORE.

WHO WANTS TO GO WITH ME?!?!

i’m dead serious. i dont know why, but i seem to know no Damien Rice fans?? faster faster, tell me you will go with me, and we shall buy our tickets right away! let this not be another Jason Mraz incident, where his tickets sold out in like 2 SECONDS :(

Comments March 18th, 2006

Appreciation

on my way to KLCC to watch V for Vendetta (very good show, btw) today, i was just looking out the window at all the people walking to their destinations on foot. they may have been just strolling down to the 7-11 down the road, or they may have been walking to the bus stand some 500 metres away, i really wouldnt know. it was a fairly hot day, the sun was unrelenting as usual, and the haze problem seemed to be making an unwelcome return. all of a sudden i felt very grateful for being in a car, with air conditioning and nice leather seats. i even had company. and the air i was breathing was lemon-scented, for goodness’ sake.

in an abrupt burst of guilt, i found myself wanting to invite the whole walking world into the car with me. come share my little God-given gift, i wanted to say. or beg. i’m only 17. it suddenly felt very wrong to be sitting down when people much elder than me were standing up. i’m not taking cars for granted again.

Comments March 17th, 2006

12A’s

during the few months i was preparing for SPM, i dont think i was ever more focused or dead-set on anything. for the longest time, all that was on my mind was doing well for SPM. and as the dreaded day loomed nearer, i remember turning down a lot of people for dinners, lunches, movie dates, clubbing, parties, vacations etc, cos “sorry ler, i just really cant afford the time right now”.

in between juggling prom organizing (omg, i still remember the horror) and housechores (housemaid had just left), there seemed almost too little time for me to study. when october arrived, i was already pulling all-nighters at Mt Kiara’s Starbucks, just going through the mountains of reference books and notes that i had yet to touch. i took 2 extra subjects, and that was pure hell cos they were both ‘reading’ subjects, and it’s not like i’m a genius in the other 10, so those months were just fucking taxing and simply downright horrible for me.

“aiya, SPM only wat… wait till you get to college!”

“hey come on man, i havent seen you in weeks! take a break, it wont kill you.”

“this is the 6th time you’ve blown me off for dinner.”

“are you SURE you dont want to go on a holiday?? you look TOO stressed!!” (said my worried dad 2 weeks before SPM)

“there is no point stressing. you’re smart and you dont need a piece of paper to tell you that.”

“believe me, straight A’s is NOT difficult! please la, i barely studied and i got 10A’s okay?” (su ann says, BULLSHIT!)

and all that was only the tip of the iceberg at the time. it seemed as if everyone just wanted me to stop studying for SPM, like it was so devastating to see someone slave over her books the way i did. but for 2 years i never studied, i’d argue back. it’s about time i put in some effort! i really need to do well.

but why? they would always ask.

because i have something to prove, i would always say.

some were smart enough to get it and leave it at that. the rest would just go, ‘huh?!’ but it’s the truth. all this while, it’s not like i’ve been working towards good results to get scholarships or to get into good colleges or anything. it’s not to be ‘better’ than my batchmates, and it’s not for my own gratification. scholarships i honestly don’t need. good colleges, i mean please, all they ask for are credits (C’s and above), not A’s. i dont have an inferiority complex, so competition among my classmates mean nothing to me. as for my own self-satisfaction — as mentioned in a quote i included above — i really dont need a certificate or a dumb piece of paper to tell me how much i’m worth.

but the thing is, everyone else around me seems to. in high school, in my class, i was always the slacker who never took school seriously. always absent, always arguing with teachers, always not doing homework, not doing projects, or reading fiction in class. the girl who wears skirts two inches too short, the girl who comes to school 5 hours late. those were the tags i was stuck with for so long, and it got to a point where even the new teachers would already know all about me and my ’shenanigans’ even before they entered my class. it was sick, it was prejudiced, and i hated it. i cant begin to count how many posts in societies/clubs and other opportunities i was passed up for, simply cos of my ‘reputation’.

they always thought i was stupid, just some flighty girl who thinks nothing of school. the nicer teachers would say “she’s very smart wan, just lazy”. but it’s fucking bullshit. i’m not lazy, i just know what is worth my time and what isn’t. and i most certainly dont think nothing of school. i just cant help it if i dont LIKE school. you try sitting in a class full of people who dont even begin to understand you or the way you think, and try being chastised by prejudiced teachers day in day out for 5 years straight. you learn to hate school, man, you seriously do. and i was lucky enough to have a mother who didnt actually force me to go to school if i didnt want to, so yes, i was absent for like 3 months (not consecutive) in my senior year of high school cos i hated school that much.

i’ve gone off on a tangent, i think, but the gist of what i want to say is there. just because, you know, i ‘never took school seriously’, schoolmates and teachers alike think the lowest of me. it’s so crappy because i know i’ve got potential, i know i’m a bright student, and shit, i score good grades all the time but do they see that? of course not!

so SPM was like my one last chance to just show them that all their prejudices were unfounded. and you know what, i did it. i fucking did it. i may not have gotten straight A’s (damn you, biology!), but i scored better than 27 of my holier-than-thou classmates who slogged for 5 years and looked down their noses at the rest of the school while they did.

in one particularly bitter exchange with one of my school teachers, she called me ungrateful. my retort to that was, “grateful would be if you people actually did something for me in the first place. i can count on one hand the teachers in this staffroom who actually believe in my capabilities, and you know what, if i ever make it big out there in this world, i’m going to turn around and say, Sekolah Sri Garden was a school that did absolutely nothing for me. it was nothing but an institution that made my high school experience one of the worst times i ever had.”

Comments March 15th, 2006

THE Moments Of My Life, Part 2

i have it now.

The Happiest/Proudest Moment

today. about 11.15am.

Comments March 13th, 2006

THE Moments of My Life

The Happiest
eh, pending. i dont know why but i cant think of one right now.

The Saddest
the day after the one time i ran away from home.

The Most Afraid
April 2000, when my grandmother got a stroke and as a result had the left side of her body paralysed. my grandmother is like the best friend i never had, and she’s been by my side since the day i was born. we were really close, she lived with me and most nights we would lie in bed just talking the hours away. i remember when i got the news of her stroke, i was in school and i was just really really scared because no one knew if she was going to make it through the night. that night i went to visit her in the hospital, and i just couldnt take the sight of her wearing an oxygen mask, with tubes attached to her arms, a feeding tube up her nose and down her throat. it was just such a horrific sight and i wanted to puke. the first thing she said when she woke up and saw me was my name. then she said “we should have gone to have porridge together yesterday. see, now we will never have that chance again”. she thought she was going to die. and frankly, so did i.

The Angriest
let me tell you a story of this jerk ex-boyfriend i used to have! before we started dating, he had this girlfriend whom he was in an LDR with. yet at the same time, he had feelings for me. so one time while we were hanging out, he actually kissed me. so okay, very awkward lah kan. after the customary few days of avoiding the incident, we decided to talk about it properly. he was like, oh i kissed you cos i have feelings for you, and i have wanted to break up with my girlfriend for a long time already, just didnt know how, blablabla, give me some time, blablabla. so like a naive fool, of course i believed that. about a month later, i was feeling increasingly uncomfortable and grossed out, and i made him pick, so as to stop wasting our time. he later told me he had broke up with his girlfriend, and from her blog it clearly looked to be like that. BUT here’s the twist!!!!! you know what the idiot told her? “hey honey, can you please remove all traces of me from your blog, because my mother found your blog and she’s not happy about the relationship!”

wahlauweh. i tell you ah, the assholes i associate myself with. anyway i later went on to have a 2 year relationship with him. yea i know, what the hell was i thinking, right?

The Most Thankfully Surprised
yesterday!!!!!!!! i’m still reeling from the shock.

The Most Tulan (Annoyed)
August 2005. i was supposed to represent my school in this interschool public speaking competition, but a few days before the competition, i find out that it is to be postponed to 2 weeks ahead. sooo, that made the competition clash with my student exchange trip to Corea. since the latter was already set in stone, i had no choice but to withdraw from the competition and give my place to this junior. i was extremely extremely upset, because this competition meant a lot to me in ways i cannot explain to anyone who wasnt there in 2004. i was later told by my teacher that my replacement couldnt write her own speech, so she was to take mine (titled Differences and Diversity, one that i was very proud of), and present it as her own.

needless to say i wasnt exactly VERY happy about that, already being sore about the fact that i couldnt be there, and instead had to go to Corea with a bunch of people that i wanted to slap in the face. well anyway SOMEONE told my teacher that i wouldnt like having my speech taken (to this day i dont know who it was, i’m guessing it’s a schoolmate who reads my blog) so before i left he told me that the girl would write her own speech. i later find out he lied, and she went ahead and presented my speech anyway. Aira emailed me the second day i was in Corea to let me know the girl won 2nd place at the competition. wah! i was tulan like nothing else. then when i went back to school, that bloody ingrate never even had the courtesy to say ‘thank you for the speech’!

The Most Regretted
making out with that idiot at Atmosphere. and that other idiot also. ohmyGAWD. alcohol or none, still very, very, VERY stupid decisions. i believe that the closing down of Atmosphere is divine intervention towards the purpose of me not repeating this very dumb, very inebriated mistake.

The Most Stressed
the first few weeks of November. cramming in some serious last-minute studying for SPM whilst handling prom organizing aint no joke. i was so crabby and irritable all the time, and focusing on anything besides those two things was really really hard. i think i almost died.

The Most Self-Satisfied
losing the Taylors Debate to SMKDJ. haha i know it sounds really weird, to be self satisfied after losing, but i honestly WAS, cos we were better than them. and it felt good, despite the loss.

The Most Embarassing
seriously, nothing beats the time my acceptance speech when i went onstage to recieve my award during prom. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! and no i’m not telling you what i said.

The Most Shocked
my first kiss with my 2nd boyfriend. it happened in a bus, of all places. i was like, omg, this is so not happening. hey actually come to think of it, my first kiss with my 4th boyfriend was pretty shocking too.

The Most Confused
this time last year when i wasnt sure whether i was being lied to. the truth didnt exactly matter, but i just WANTED TO KNOW!!! anyway turns out i wasnt being lied to. hahaha. i love how things arent always what they seem.

The Most Excited
RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPM RESULTS ARE OUT TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

please do wish me all the best :( i will soooooooo need it!

Comments March 12th, 2006