Posts filed under 'Musings'
one - friendship comes cheap these days. in today’s world of volatility, the earning of friendship has become a business transaction with steadily weakening currency and even weaker principles. i ask myself, why do people give a shit? the answer i am repeatedly slapped with is - because giving a shit is politically correct, clever and beneficial. while it may make you puke a little bit in your mouth for now, in the big picture it’s all about the long-term gain. and aren’t the people with the long-term gain the ones who laugh last, the ones with more clout and pull, the ones whose risky investments paid off in the highest returns? yes, very clever and all. but you can keep that last laugh and that little bit of puke in your mouth. you can keep your sweaty money. and you can definitely keep all your flotsam friends. no, don’t scorn us - the ones too foolish to grab and manipulate an opportunity ruthlessly when we see one. don’t sneer or look down upon us. because at the end of it all, we are the ones with principles, and we are the ones with real friends for life.
two - mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. on one side of the coin, this can be viewed as naive ignorance; on the other, it is unrelenting ego. huge egos, i read somewhere, is nature’s compensation for mediocrity. i lend this wise adage my humble agreement. greatness doesn’t need trumpeting, greatness doesn’t require the putting down of other people. it is when one resorts to pitiful tactics like this, it is then that his or her truly unexceptional being is betrayed. what little spark of talent becomes unimpressive in the sharp and unpleasant glare of conceit. our existence is beautifully designed in that everyone recognizes greatness the instance they see it, but the precious potential to become great is sadly diluted by that slice of mediocrity that, with unrelenting ego, knows nothing higher than itself.
three - life sometimes gives us lemonade when we expect lemons. truly, i am the biggest pessimist you will ever find, and my whole life is surrounded by visions of huge lemon trees that threaten to swallow me alive in all their faux yellow splendor. you see, i recently did something and expected to get lots and lots of lemons as a result.. but i was surprisingly greeted by lemonade. tall, icy and sweet. it was the most amazing feeling. explosive. exhilarating. but then i felt bad for my excessively generous pessimism. very very bad. i felt like i didn’t deserve the success, like i’d somehow cheated and won it unfairly. well, to the great big lemon-squeezer in the sky, i want you to know how grateful i am. i have never ever had anything more beautiful than what you gave me. so, thank you. thank you for not giving me lemons.
four - everyone pays a price for their price. i was once let in on a big secret : everyone has a price. it’s true and relevant, and the honesty of that statement climbs and climbs with each passing day. or month. or band. so we have become this nation of commodities, being bought and sold like whores, but happy whores who recognize that this is a mutually beneficial relationship. but are whores ever truly happy? we’re starting to fight and claw at each other. the rookies are quickly sussing out the big guns to play with, in order to climb the brothel ladder a little faster. and quite significantly, the sex just isn’t as good as it used to be. and of course the question remains, are whores ever truly happy?
five - owls dont get any worms even if they are early birds. i used to really like the fact that i could stay up late and study/do work when everyone is asleep and it’s quiet. but now i find that i am a full-fledged insomniac, able to sleep only after staying up for more than 24 hours, and even then it is restless sleep that feels like only 10 minutes. tomorrow i have to go to the doctor for my first ever bottle of sleeping pills. le sigh.
May 17th, 2008
summer is coming. promises of last-minute movie dates, thumb-wrestling matches and pseudo philosophical discussions orbit around my head like moons. my mouth waters as i daydream about these promises, like a child looking longingly at a dripping ice cream cone on a hot day. i want this in a way that we all want our fetishes, how we long for these liberating explosions of light as we crouch in the clandestine pits of our own stomachs. clawing at the walls, yearning, desiring, but always conflicted; always feeling shameful that we were made to fill all the wrong moulds.
i am angry. fleetingly so; the anger thuds in my skull like the strange headaches i’ve been getting lately - a few hard pulses in the upper left corner of my head, and then they’re gone. 5 minutes later it happens again. it’s the same thing with the anger. it comes and it goes. some moments i realize how silly it is to be angry at these things that i cannot control, and then other times i feel like i want to reach out and viciously bend things back into shape with my bare hands. it feels so good to talk about these things with people who understand me and let me talk; people who actually listen instead of raping me over and over again with self-righteous opinions. self-righteousness is something that should be taken and thrown into the pits of hell.. along with high horses, disloyalty and the murderers of Altantuya.
May 12th, 2008
Event Update: there’s going to be a fundraising event happening on the 9th May (Friday. today!) at The Curve, called ‘Rock Up!’ that aims to use music to make a change in the lives of others, featuring performances by talented local artistes like Chelsia Ng, Liang, Furniture, Diplomats of Drum and many more. there’s also going to be a sketch by some prominent local comedians like Harith, Nell Ng and Na’a Murad, as well as a fashion auction. it’s going to be hugeee, and it sounds like a totally happening event! i wish i could go, but i’ll be at PD :( anyone who’s going, let me know how it went ok? especially the sketch! click here for the lineup and more details!.
——-
i got something really cool in my email the other day :) the writer of this letter asked if i could post his writing here on my blog, and i said i would. it’s pasted below.
there are a lot of mean people in my life, guys and girls alike. they pick fights with me for no reason, disagree with everything i say, tease me, jokingly sing praises about people i cant stand, call me evil names, scare me, say hurtful things, and seem to not care about my feelings at all. the person who wrote this letter is one of them.
when i first met him, we were colleagues for a few months. he didnt bother talking to me at all during the first few days of my job, and whenever i tried to make small talk he would just grunt at me in response. i remember thinking to myself, what a jerk!, especially when he said something like “your name is so hard to remember. can i just call you oi?”, to which i retorted, “for the millionth time, my name is Su Ann!”. then he just went out onto the balcony for a smoke.
but here we are now, months later, and he’s just emailed me something that he originally wrote for his own blog. but i hijacked it and now i get to put it up on MY blog! hehe. here it is.
Singapore, August 9th, 2007.
There was this place where most people came to purchase a little happiness. Some, with their banknotes. Some, with their redeemed tickets. Some, don’t bother to pay at all.
It was in this building with many floors when i first met her eyes, when i first shook her hand, when i first knew her name. Su Ann. I thought it was a beautiful name. She thought i was with a better company. Her boyfriend thought otherwise.
“Hi, im Firdauz, i used to work for the other blog advertising network,” I liked to mention this a lot, kinda a bad habit i had. “Hi, im Su Ann, you’ve done the right thing Firdauz, ahh.. no worries, you’re with a better company now,” She liked to give a warm quilt to a frozen fella like me. It was comforting and i liked it. “Now why would you say something like that, you didn’t know if it was for true!” Her boyfriend liked intellectual arguments backed up with solid facts and valid evidence, to destroy the fairy tales of 2 and 2 can make to 5. But of course they were adorable.
We didn’t talk that much that time, although i wanted to. Perhaps because in real life, i wasn’t much of a chatterbox. Lacking in humor, in love with ipod, loved the people but failed to prove. My life was a tragedy, a comedy to others. Su Ann’s life was all sunshine and she shared it with others, with all the people who needed some laughter to bend their mundane, linear yellow-lined lives. She did it with her writings, she did it with her hands, she did it with her heart, with her soul, with her eyes, with her sweet little smile. She did it to everyone. She did it to anyone.
I was a thief who stole one of God’s best creations. Secretly admiring her passion to make this world a better place. I had never given her roses, had never given her flowers or any plant. She had never failed to pick up my calls, had never failed to reply my texts. Even if they were sent at odd hours, 5am in the morning, she replied them right away, half-awake, full heartedly.
Of course i loved her, of course she loved me, it was mutual, but it wasn’t sexual neither it was romantic. I wasn’t her best friend, she had her own. She wasn’t my best friend, although i had none. Good friends were what we were. Sharing stories during lunches, gossips over the phone, fake tears mostly mine, genuine laughter mostly hers.
Su Ann’s sincerity wasn’t a lie, her honesty wasn’t fabricated when she made those 400 lips smiling and happily cheering in an event which she organized. My intention was questioned by many, i didn’t come to her party. I never came to any party she invited me to. I lived in my own world, she lived in a world which had more purposes than mine, shared, socialized, gallons of happy drinks and a number of sunny cupcakes.
“Ahhh.. the joy of being a jerk,” To deny and to pretend, was what i really good at. I called her “frog”, she never laughed. I called her a name she didn’t like, she never rebuked. She called me Firdy, i never said it was cute. “Ahhh.. the joy of being a jerk,” I told her that her favorite Bisou’s cupcakes were not delicious at all. I made a sour face, told her their chocolate cakes were better. She never listened, never agreed, never pitied that sour face i made.
That evening, in the city of lion, August 9th, i was one of those people who purchased myself that little happiness and didn’t bother to pay at all. It was in that building with many floors, i found a little thing called substance, which later made my 2+2=5.
Firdy is one of those special people in my life whom i’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with :) he may be very very mean, but he’s such a great guy and a good friend, and i am thankful for that day in Vivo City, Singapore, where we met and shook hands for the first time.
May 9th, 2008
one of those mornings again, where i haven’t slept all night cos i just can’t. i have to be out in 2 hours anyway for a breakfast meet, so i figure i may as well just stay up.
i’ve just been thinking so much. about things that shouldn’t be making me angry but are. about things that i should be doing but haven’t. like sending in my college decision, for instance. is it so hard to just send in a ‘yes, i will be attending your esteemed institution in the coming fall and i look forward to it’? it is. all these letters keep coming in the mail from the deans of the schools, the presidents of this and that association, alumni and current students. it’s very overwhelming. in three months i’m going to pack my bags and i will be gone. how did everyone else before me do it? with bravery. i always thought i was brave but apparently i am not. the thought of that escalator at KLIA is making my heart clench. after so many teary farewells of friends leaving to pursue their studies or careers all across the world.. it will finally be my turn. i slogged through the most horrid and excruciating college applications and exams to leave behind everything that i know and love? i did. 4 years is a damn long time and America is damn far away. i keep telling myself it will be worth it - that my family will still think of me, and that my friends won’t forget me, and that Martian will wait for me.
i watched The Black Dahlia on tv earlier with a pint of NZN Chocolate Ecstasy. it was a calming two hours that really gave me the peace of mind i needed. everyone else was sleeping. it’s the first night in a very, very long time that i’ve spent in my own living room, eating using a spoon from my home. i don’t spend enough time at home. even my last 3 months in the country are littered with travel plans. my dad and i are still not speaking from the argument we had a few days ago. Martian and i are still on the outs. i’m still bickering with my brothers. i still haven’t seen Jovann in a really long time, and only just got to meet up with Ivan yesterday. is this really how i want to spend my remaining minutes with my loved ones?
haih donno lah why am i so emo again. there’s always summer, right?
i am 19 going on 20. i am now at the age that once upon a time, i could only peer at from one end of a very very long telescope. when i was 13, i knew this guy who was 19 going on 20. we got along very well and i eventually developed feelings for him. i don’t know if he ever liked me back, but we spent hours and hours talking on the phone into the early hours of the morning, and we were always making plans to see each other. back then, i always wondered why someone so much older than me would want to spend so much time with a 13 year old. many nights i lay in bed trying to put myself in the mindframe of a a 19-year-old-going-on-20, trying to understand how someone of that age would think, how someone of that age would fall in love.
when i was 13 years old, 19 going on 20 felt so far away. a million light years. an entire secondary school experience between now and then. people of that age felt so adult and smart and mature. now i am here, at this age that i used to ponder so much about, but i don’t feel very adult, smart or mature. in fact, i feel so young and scared. i feel so much more immature compared to that guy i knew, who always seemed to know the right things to do at the right time. we met when i lost my mobile phone and he helped me look for it. would i now help a 13 year old kid who lost her mobile phone? would i want to be her friend?
so many things have happened since then, when waimin used to ice skate and i used to go to church. it makes my head spin just thinking about everything in between. 7 years of excruciatingly long wonderment. but you know, it feels like i slept through it all. one blink and i am here. i remember one particular night when i was 13 and i wished to be 19 going on 20 when i wake up in the morning.
well. here i finally am.
April 21st, 2008
on many levels i am angry. but on the most basic level, and the one closest to my heart, i am wistful. wistful over everything that has transpired be it good or bad, and wistful over what could have been. like my red curtains, and the lanterns i was going to hang from the ceiling in the middle of the room: things that never happened because like everything else, my wishes just weren’t communicated rightly or taken seriously enough.
what went wrong all boils down to communication and respect. lack of. i remember how i felt when i walked in and saw the grey curtains and how my heart just stopped and spilled all over the wooden floor. what is the word i am looking for? dismissed. a word so often used against me, but always ejaculated with a conviction that smells suspiciously like hypocrisy. irony. the most important things become forgotten and shoveled beneath layer after layer, mound after mound of flimsy defenses and self-righteous pride. how can you say you love someone when you are so much more in love with yourself?
pebbles in shoes come to mind. i have forgotten how to speak, i have forgotten how to be happy. reprieves come often enough, but i’m taken away from them by the call of duty and guilt, mixed together into a love potion. nothing complements each other, nothing feels perfect; it’s always either or, compromise, win some lose some. we give in all at the wrong times, and so we collapse together, recklessly and without any tenderness.
i feel deprived. starved, somehow. repressed. oppressed. sad. lonely. disappointed. furious. cold. contemptuous. on one hand, what was i thinking? on the other hand, there were all those laughs and all those mornings - those sweet mornings with the kisses and the cologne and the space invading. brushing teeth. making fun. siew long pau. pooch. the airport express. cold cinemas. you see? you see what i’m doing? why am i doing this? this is so fucking irrelevant. and you know what else? Ocean’s Thirteen was fucking balls anyway.
April 13th, 2008
Previous Posts
