Posts filed under 'Rants'
i have a huge final paper due in exactly 24 hours, but i felt like i needed to talk about something, so here i am, feeling rampantly candid at this unfortunate time.
when i first moved my private blog to quaintly.net, i was a 17 year old girl who simply had a lot of things to say, and was very lucky to have a space to say it. as i was going on 18, i began to gain traction as a “blogger” and quickly learned what was appropriate and not appropriate in this strange, new world that was thinly populated but widely supervised by some of the most outspoken of society. there was a time when i frantically would say, no no i am not a ‘blogger’, but that quickly became counter-social. so by the time i was 19, i’d found myself quite by accident in a cozy spot of the world wide web, in which people would come to find me and read what meager things i have to say about my life and the world around it. i liked the camaraderie, the growing strength of my fledgling written word, the partaking of alien insights, and other tidbits that i would fortuitously find under this slightly larger canopy of my existence. this was also when i started to make a lot of money from blogging. by 20, i was getting advice on how to manage my blog and turn it into a business opportunity. this silly, pink thing which wasnt even a .com! remember, blog more about certain topics, less about the politics, less of the emo, more of the pictures, you all know the drill.
the truth is, i’d stumbled quite accidentally into this. i was growing up and learning how to find my own voice, yet i had to quickly learn how to accommodate as many people as possible in order to have the most effective voice of all. i know, i know — write for yourself and not for others. but listen to me. that’s not always the case. every now and then you have to write what other people want to read. sometimes writing what other people want to read is also writing for yourself. it’s the blogger’s theoretical win-win situation at its very best example.
my problem was that it wasn’t so easy for me. i knew the formula for becoming a popular female blogger — or even the most popular female blogger — and it’s not a difficult one, but it just wasn’t a place that someone as neurotic as i am could occupy. i worry about everything– what if too many photos of myself made people think i was ditzy? what if an excess of sentimental text bored people? what if i hung out with ‘top bloggers’ and they felt like i was only hanging out with them to get traffic? what if i linked a certain celebrity blogger and he thought i was only doing it to elicit a link back? how do i adhere to the formula without trading too much of my own voice? how does one know what the optimal balance is? why don’t other bloggers have this problem?
i know of very few bloggers who share the same problem as i do, mostly because everyone else takes a firm stand on which side of the fence they belong on, and we don’t. we try very hard to reside in both areas, thinking that a compromise is better than giving up one side, but we — or i — end up being nowhere. we want to maintain some sense of groundedness, but the competition of being a mainstream blogger is one that is so highly engaging. and so very, very sticky. i think most of the top bloggers can attest to how easy it is to get sucked into the contest, and how easy it is to feel like they need to start masquerading in a mainstream performance to gain more traffic or advertorials when their “competitor” or a blogger they “don’t like” starts doing better in those terms.
i’ve always had the philosophy that it is a beautiful thing when people are comfortable in their uniqueness, celebrate their little deviations, and resist conforming to the norm. which is why i am oftentimes sad and very disappointed when i look at what i’ve done with my blog so far. i stumbled into this, found a cozy number of readers in my hands, and had absolutely no fucking clue what to do with them. so for the longest time, i tried to juggle by playing two different tunes to two very different crowds. it was only very recently that i decided to exit the race, and just do what the lazy me likes to do, whatever that may be at the given point in time. putting serious effort into blogging and working hard to maintain an audience is for the pros, really. they are very, very good at what they do, and i can only watch and admire as someone who is not in their league and cannot pretend to be.
however, the effect of playing two tunes with one instrument has its lasting effects and these are sometimes irreversible, especially when it matters. even when it doesn’t matter, they can be irreversible too. i occasionally talk to my friends about a particular category of readers, which i don’t quite have a name for, but describe more or less in terms of- “when i first met her, she pretended that she didn’t know about my blog, but come on“. at the risk of sounding vainglorious, this does actually happen, and quite often too, because it is a necessary effect of the two tune, one instrument thing. i’ve met many, many people who pretended to not have ever heard of me or “oh i probably read your blog once a year or something”, but then i’d later find out from their friends or some other serendipitous source that she or he has been reading my blog for a long time, or reads my blog often enough to know about some things s/he alleged to not know. these things are easily proven, of course, and just as easy to fish out of an unsuspecting pretender who’s unaware that other people can pretend too. i am often asked if i get creeped out by people who approach me saying that they are fans of my blog, but i can firmly say that i love the honesty and friendliness of such people. i am so touched by their warmth. the people i do get creeped out most by, actually, are the aforementioned ones who prefer pretending to my face that they don’t read my blog.
i know the few reasons why it happens. sometimes they’re shy and it’s a personal choice to not want to appear like they’re taking an interest in a complete stranger’s life. this i take no issue with, and fully respect the decision of. but sometimes — and these are the creepy ones — there are those who simply don’t want to acknowledge to me, others, or their selves that they spend any time reading this insipid, self-centered blog of a 21 year old girl’s life, whether daily, weekly, once a year, or having accidentally clicked on my link once. sometimes i think it’s funny (”waiiiiit, oh my godddd, you mean youuuuuu are pinkpau?”), but most of the time, the dishonesty and the two-facedness sincerely scares me when i do find out about it. i start wondering if i really want to be friends with someone who reads about my life and my opinions, but asks me questions and engages in conversations with me as if they didn’t already know my thoughts and answers on these issues. or worse, if they’d also been going around proclaiming things like how a pink blog of a 21 year old is just too shallow! for their refined tastes!
a big reason of why this blog is still pink is because i’ve simply been too lazy to change the layout, but a tantamount reason is because i’m not particularly bothered to sustain the interests of people who hurriedly remove themselves from a blog just because it is a shade of color that they associate with things that are ‘beneath’ them. of course, not all the creepy ones have a pink aversion, but a significant portion do. it’s sad, but there’s not much i want to do about it. i’m sure there are many black and white blogs out there to read. in fact, i had an ex boyfriend who complained to his best friend that he thought my blog was … what were the words … moronic, pink, stupid. when i found out, he had a million excuses about how it was all simply an exhibition of male pride, but seriously, fuck that. if he couldn’t deal with a little color flush and some emotional writing, then that’s fine, don’t — but why hound me for the rest of the relationship over how i never blog about him?
likewise, random people who pretend that they’ve never heard my blog, and moreover, enjoy so much the crumbly judgment they find themselves so capable of passing about people they barely know — it’s fine if you don’t find my blog suited to your eggbox constraints of what a blog should be. but please, save me the big smiles and the faux friendliness. what, really, do you know about me? and what is this attempted interaction really about? you must need a favour. it shames me too that you once upon a time accidentally clicked on my unsuspecting link.
this has veered off into a somewhat angry direction. apologies- i’ve digressed. what was my point? that we live in a strange world where people lift so many assumptions over their heads. i was talking to a friend earlier about how easy it is to misconstrue a person’s entire constitution, especially with this very human habit of trusting in self-constructed truths. a tip: dream a little, live a little– not everything or everyone can be so neatly defined and understood, especially with faculties as imperfect and incomplete as ours.
and a tip to myself: dream a little, live a little– not everything or everyone can be so neatly defined and understood, especially with faculties as imperfect and incomplete as yours.
to the folks who have been reading for however long, people who have so graciously taken the time to write me comments and emails, and have come up to say hi even if it was in the middle of a meal or in the midst of a large education forum, and people who have been so kind to tell me they read my blog every now and then, i thank you muchly. an equally huge thank you to the people who hate the colour pink, but still find the tenacity to keep reading! (especially you men reading from the office, who write in so politely to request a color change– your emails make me giggle so! color change hopefully soon, when i become less lazy).
each time i log onto my quaintly dashboard, i am excited to write because there are people who think that the simple things i have to say about life and the world are worth the crucial currency of their time and interest. time and interest taken in something is such an honour for that something, so i thank you. how do i properly thank you? :)
December 13th, 2009
i had a veritably brutal midterm yesterday . it was the kind where you stare at the question and vaguely understand what concept you’re supposed to apply, but don’t exactly know where to start or what you’re really supposed to show, and before you know it, given time is up and you’ve barely answered two thirds of the exam. when i left the exam room, i felt like i wanted to die. i studied so hard for this exam, and i was (somewhat) confident that i would be okay on it.
plus i had extra time to study for it. the midterm was supposed to be two days ago, i.e a full day before i actually took it, but on the morning of the exam in the midst of some last-minute cramming, i got the worst panic attack i’ve ever gotten. it came while i was doing a practice test, and i realized that i couldnt remember anything that i’d been studying. that truly frightened me, so i closed my eyes and randomly picked a question. i couldnt answer that one either, or the next five questions i randomly picked after that. so i tried to go over my notes, but nothing was sticking in my head. i felt like a sieve — a very confused, scared and jittery sieve. two days ago i’d gone to a doctor for muscle pains, and he took a look at me and asked when did i last sleep. i said not for about 32 hours, and he nagged me about it despite protests that i was going through midterms. he gave me some pills, and i made him promise me that these were non-drowsy pills. i asked all the nurses outside to verify that these pills wouldnt induce sleepiness, because i had to stay up all night to study. i swear i felt like a complete lunatic, being so obsessed about drowsy or non-drowsiness.
so on the morning of the exam, i panicked, and realized that i just could not take the exam. i cried for about two hours because i felt so disappointed with myself, partially for being so stupid and partially for being this affected by exams, grades and percentage points. i’ve never been like this before coming here for school, most definitely not in high school and definitely not when i arrived here in my first semester. i used to be all about colorful skirts, beads, good fiction, moscato and jazz, lazy afternoons, baking brownies and forcing people to eat them — now all i care about is getting a 4.0 GPA. i feel so grounded in this world that i can actually feel the discomfort in my blood, yet i keep telling myself that this is only temporary, and once i finish this assignment, i’ll chill out for a bit. but of course the exams, papers and assignments just dont stop coming.
i ended up going to my professor’s office in tears, and cried and begged him to let me take the exam tomorrow. he said yes, but made me promise that i would go for counseling. counseling — that’s really what it’s come to. so i took the exam a full day later. right before he gave me the exam, he told me that several people had already emailed him to ask if they could drop the course because they think they failed the exam, and that i shouldn’t worry if i find the exam difficult, because there will most likely be a huge curve in the grading. he was right- i did find the exam bloody difficult. i was so buzzed from caffeine and taurine that accessing information in the correct pockets of my brain was becoming hard. for a long 20 point question, one of the intermediate steps was to find the directional derivative, and i was stunned for a moment that i couldnt remember the step because it was a very easy method. it was like yesterday morning all over again. so i had to abandon the question and lose about 12 points. the security guard at my building saw how sad i was after the exam, so he gave me a short talk on how one day i’ll see that exams are just one small thing in our lifetimes. i couldnt really respond with more than a half-hearted smile.
i fell asleep for about 12 hours after that. i woke up and the first thing i thought about was the math exam. suddenly i could remember all the stuff i’d forgotten, and i realized that i knew how to answer every question that i’d left blank, including the directional derivative, and the continuity problems, and especially the epsilon delta limits. it was like… putting on contact lens. that wet and clear feeling. but omfg. despite that, i woke up and felt so good. so what if i flunked an exam? so what if i behaved like a complete lunatic in front of my professor? it’s just an exam. i’m pretty shit at math anyway. my best friend used to jokingly say that my utter inability to do math was not a bad thing, but a blessing, because all these smart math guys would want to help me with my homework, and that’s how i’m going to find my soulmate one day. :)
that’s what’s important. soulmates. best friends. the fluffy Michael Learns to Rock songs that i’m listening to right now. the Joshua Radin concert that i’m going to this week. the irony in the fact that i typed Radian instead of Radin just now. that my roommate Piglet will be coming back from her field trip in an hour, and we’re going to be having Chipotle for lunch together in our suite, and i’ll get to hear all her hilarious drunken stories from last night, and how someone peed in our bathtub during our suite party a few nights ago. right now i am so happy.
i’ve also just broken up with this guy that i’ve been seeing for awhile. yesterday we had a really long and angsty conversation about how we’ve been doing since we broke up. it’s a long and convoluted story, but i was just finding it hard to be happy. the point though, is that i’m on my way to being happier as i slowly peel away all of the rahula that i’ve inadvertently found myself so wrapped in. as i woke up this morning and quietly answered that 20 point question in my head (and then wrote that one-line post below), it occurred to me that all i had needed was just some sleep. if i had stuck to my guns and continued being the utterly lazy person that i am, i would have partied over the weekend, and all of the sleep from the hangovers would have helped me more in my exam than four straight days of forcing into my head stuff that i already was familiar with. but no… i just had to try and be hardworking, pretend that i’m someone i’m not, and end up screwing things up for myself :)
i’m not saying that it’s not good to be hardworking. it’s just that people exist in such different ways, and sometimes forcing a change is just so futile and possibly damaging. one of my high school classmates told me the other day how he thought i’d changed so much from the person who used to have a 40% attendance rate in school, and who would walk into class halfway into the school day, happily wearing pink scrunchies and a uniform skirt that was 4 inches shorter than what it should be. he also told me that he was talking to another of our classmates, and how she simply didnt believe that i’ve become so intense about my academics since i got here. i rolled my eyes, and said, yeah, she never has anything nice to say about me. but he shook his head and said — ‘no, right after that she said “but then su ann is the type of person who doesnt have to study hard to get good grades”‘.
i think once upon a time that was true. but then i got here, this wretched university, where everyone was top of their class, valedictorian of their high school, wants to take graduate or PhD level classes, is aiming for summer internships at the biggest and baddest firms — and no one ever stops to help. we were all so used to being the best and the most talented, but now that we’re here and everyone is just as good or even better, we get scared and start clawing our way hard to be ahead of the curve. it’s so exhausting. i liked it at first because it was challenging, but now i detest it because it’s changed me into someone i cant even recognize. it’s changed me into someone who went to see a doctor for muscle pains not because she couldnt sleep properly, or that she was worried about her health — but because it was affecting her ability to write fast for a time-constrained exam. i dont want to worry about where i am relative to everyone else. i dont want to feel suicidal after every exam. i dont want to have the answer key to problem sets, but refuse to copy it because i ‘want to learn things the right way’. i want to be lazy hazy and rainy. i want to flake off and borderline flunk out college. i want to major in something that has no ‘market value’. i wanna take advantage of this amazing city! and see everything! i wanna fly to london on a whim. i want to go to pittsburgh. there are so many things to do and so little time. do perfect scores in problem sets answer any real questions in life?
right now, i’m excited for Chipotle lunch! and the holy grail of all happiness, for me, at this point in time, is a Mac-compatible version of The Sims 3. :)))))))
from Nottingham, during a very popsicle, long flowy skirt, grocery shopping period of my life:
November 14th, 2009
so this was supposed to be a very special post about museums, chance encounters, an endless cycle of winning and then losing, and birthdays. it was going to be about birthdays. but then i didn’t write it because i didn’t have time, and i was exhausted and nervous. do you know how nervous i was? i was positively shaking as i walked down the twisting and turning hall, juggling a balancing act of walking slowly but quickly enough, keeping the fear out of my face and removing the quiver from the forced conversation i was having. then i heard the bellow, and i thought, yup, i made the wrong choice. but trundling on, right, because what’s done is done? anyway the point is, i was tired and really scared. so i didn’t write it. i thought i would write it now, upon coming home, because i would have time, and i’d be feeling so much better after a nap. but no, now i’ve decided that i won’t write it at all, because it is likely to end up lame, bitchy, stupid, and above all, moronic. at the Tate four months ago, i met someone judgmental. i met someone more puerile than anyone i have ever known. i met someone who can’t look beyond his own superficiality and can only see the world in black and white. so as i sit here now, i am exhausted and scared. the past four months have drained the life out of me. i find it so strange that i can no longer look happy in photographs and that i have to force the smile into my eyes now. what have i done? truly, what have i done? constantly, i tell myself that i should never judge books by their covers, but increasingly, i find that my visceral reactions are always the most accurate. i can’t be someone i’m not. i can’t be so pretentious. i can’t say stupid things like, “i like thunderstorms because they have character.” i can’t apologize for having said, “… and shit like that.” i just cannot. what do i now? i feel like a hypocrite. i want to swallow everything. all the time traveling… i want to swallow it all.
April 26th, 2009
i went back to my high school today with 5 other classmates to give a motivational talk to the upper secondary students. even though it was an extremely last minute arrangement, it was also easy and fun, so we agreed enthusiastically to do it. three of us spoke off the cuff: darren spoke about aims and goals, kezanne on how grades are not everything.. and me.. i spoke about how we should never let anyone – be it the school, our teachers or our classmates – put us down simply because we are different.
darren and kezanne gave great speeches, but i feel the need to clarify what i said today. i started my speech by saying that when i was in high school, i would probably not have been attending this very assembly because i would not even be present in school anyway. it’s a pretty known fact that i didnt have the best attendance in school, simply because i didnt LIKE being in school. school bored me and i felt like i just was not made to be in this environment at all.
this attitude got me a lot of flak from teachers, and it was also something that i fell deeper and deeper into as my high school years went on. i remember how sometime in form 4, i had the strongest contempt for teachers and students alike because i thought they were all so narrow minded, rigid and self-important.
like how i was once accused of cheating in an exam by a new teacher because she was ‘warned’ about me and was very surprised that i got good grades for her paper, which i studied my heart out for. another time, i wasn’t allowed to run for student council president even though i got the popular vote. i also had this CF president who liked to remind me how undisciplined or ungodlike i was. countless times i was told to my face how i’d be the one person who would pull my class average down, flunk SPM, that my parents should be ashamed for bringing me up wrongly, or that i should try to be more like my classmates.
i was in the top class every year, where everyone was mostly studious and meek. most of them could and would not flout rules, and a handful had a kind of condescending attitude towards those that did, as if the fact that they attended school day in day out made them so much better and smarter than those who didnt, or the fact that they followed rules diligently meant that they were somehow more superior and learned beings. my class also had a bit of this ‘every man for himself’ kind of thing going on. one time i had this huge screaming fight with this teacher who was making all sorts of rude and uncalled for remarks about me in the classroom as if i wasn’t even there, and when i spoke up to defend myself, none of my friends stood up for me or even dared to look up from their desks even though i was crying and crying. this same teacher later picked on another girl from another class by repeatedly pushing her head, and immediately half of that classroom stood up to defend the girl. so cool, isnt it? that’s what friends are for. i dont think that kind of vibe existed in my classroom back then, and i’m so glad that things are very much different now that we’ve grown up and allowed our friendship to develop in an unstifled and competition-free zone.
high school was a very lonely and angry time for me; many times i felt so terribly discouraged by all the comments, refusal of opportunities and just that really shitty feeling that people didnt place any hope or belief in me. you can say that i probably deserved this kind of treatment, but my logic was that i was harming no one, and that my skipping of school or not doing homework was not THAT big of an issue anyway. besides, i got good grades. i was pleasant, friendly, nice. i had lots of friends. i was involved in and knowledgeable about things outside of the classroom. i wrote and debated well. i organized lots of events and fundraisers for the school. all these things, to me, more than make up for sucky attendance. success is more than being a drone.
and it is important to me that other students know that. i have a really strong sense of determination and also many good friends who always knew how to get me back up on my feet, which despite the odds, eventually resulted in my success and happy ending in high school. but not everyone could be so lucky. discouragement is a big, serious thing that should not ever be flung around carelessly; i know this because i still have all the hurt and anger inside me that are scars of carelessly-flung discouragement. it is important to me that other students know that they dont have to be like their classmates simply because herd mentality dictates so, and that grades are not the only measure of success in high school.
honestly? i dont think that the head prefect or the assistant head prefect or the student council president or all the prefects in my class or all the teachers pets are in any way better, smarter or more accomplished human beings than me. i dont think it’s right that people are made to feel that they are lesser than others. i dont think it’s right to allow arrogance to fester in these supposed ‘top students’, nor do i think it’s right that these ‘top students’ strengths and goals should be imposed on other people. i do, however, think that we are all equal people who are all awesome, but awesome people who are diverse and are good at and enjoy doing different things.
i love my teachers and my classmates, and i think my classmates are some of the most brilliant people i have ever met, but.. i cant be expected to be just like them. i was not born to be. in fact, i like how i turned out. i like that i got 12A’s in SPM and i like that i was a warm, popular, active, well-liked and open-minded person both in high school and college. i like that i am going to Columbia University in two months’ time. i like that i have a bright future ahead of me, that i have people in my life who love me unconditionally, that i have this blog where people who read me are so kind and reach out to me with such encouraging feedback whenever i face problems. i like that i have had the beautiful blessing of my family, best friends and my boyfriends who know me inside out and have been with me through thick and thin. and all this… after how i went through all those years in high school being told that i had an attitude problem, that i would never succeed in anything i do, that i was just not as good as my classmates, that i was an epic failure.
my life and all that i have achieved with it is not a failure. so i skipped school. so i wore my skirt short and wore a pink scrunchie to school. so i stood up for myself even if it meant raising my voice at a teacher. so i broke rules. but so what? :) at the end of the day, i am still not this failure that they thought i was and would be. ‘they’, by the way, are not and will never be the ones who decide what my success and failures are.
my message during my talk today was essentially this: that we are all different, and we should not be discouraged by people who try to bring us down for it. i know my school has this culture of suppressing radical creativity and individuality, and it makes me sad to think that every year, there are students like me who are graduating with half of their spunk and verve ironed flat out of them.
i think i delivered my talk very poorly today, because the audience seemed to get the impression that i was encouraging truancy and that the gist was “you can succeed even by not attending school”. well, it’s not. if you think that is my point, then you have missed it entirely. that is of course my fault, because i winged my speech with entirely no preparation and i was angry when i was speaking. sigh. so, to anyone reading this who was there for my talk, i hope you understand that i’m not telling you to be like me or that i’m giving a sort of stamp of approval on my own behavior. i’m sure that with this long supplement, you guys are intelligent and mature enough to see now what i meant to say this afternoon.
i’m also tired of people giving me that ATTITUDE = 100 thing. i mean, yeah, it’s a very cute attention-grabber for motivational seminars and all that, but it is neither a fundamental principle of existence nor the best benchmark of human qualities. besides, we all have different perceptions of what a good attitude is, so dont come and tell me that your idea of a good attitude should be mine and everyone else’s. attitude, contrary to the popular belief of motivational seminar attendees, is not everything. no one decides what ‘everything’ is.
haih. am i being ranty. sorry :( i just felt so uncomfortable after that talk that i just really needed to clear this up.
okay lah so serious already, must lighten the mood abit. i shall show you some pictures of Ben and Freddy rolling around in the sand at Perhentian.
#1 roll
#2 roll
#3 roll
#4 someone’s been reading the kama sutra!
#5 wheelbarrow hahaha
i heart Ben and Fred cos they’re never too afraid to have fun.. they are the coolest :) and here is one of my favorite Perhentian pictures – the guys holding up their pants after peeing in the sea! :
July 1st, 2008
i first started blogging 7 years ago. in 2001, when i was a fiery little bookworm in Form 1 who had too many opinions and too little time to let everything out, i started my first ever blog at Geocities.com, using Blogger, the blogging tool that would later spawn the almighty Blogspot.com. i had all of 10 readers then, and it was great because these were my best and closest friends at the time. geocities.com/pinkpau.. haha. good times.
i remember changing URLs a few times because i was so paranoid that other people were reading my blog. i had a lot of rants on my blog, you see, and these rants could be read by any of the people i wrote about. this was a time when i was 100% honest about my feelings in my blog because it was being read only by my closest friends anyway, who would give the best advice and already knew me inside out. i eventually settled on pinkskyes.tripod.com and decided to never move again, but i still wasn’t completely open to the idea of a public blog. in a way, i dont think i ever really decided to go public; somewhere along the line i just slipped into the acceptance that we can never really hide ourselves on the internet.
in pinkskyes, i blogged with absolutely no refrain. i had something like 400 readers a day then, and i just blogged whatever i wanted to. if i was happy, i’d talk at length about exactly what was making me happy. if i was angry, you could expect a long and detailed rant about the specific people and incidents that were involved. i had a few short posts every day; whenever i felt like saying something on my blog, i’d blog, even if it was just 2 sentences long.
then in January 2006, i got my domain and moved here to quaintly.net, using Wordpress, entirely set up by Booha and Alvin the Puppy because i am technologically impaired like that. this was when i made the first step into the public blogging arena, and i started to be really careful with what i had to say because i was getting linked everywhere and hearing from lots of acquaintances and totally unexpected people about how they ’stumbled upon my blog’. haih that can be very scary, as i’m sure most bloggers would realize.
then i actually started attending blog meets, something i’d always avoided because i never really wanted to get involved with – and was almost scared of – the Malaysian ‘blogosphere’ as they put it then, and still put it now. my first bloggers meet ever was in early 2006 – a very small one put together by the cast of The Homecoming which i’d watched and loved. that was where i met Zona and TV Smith, and i remember Fireangel with her screwdrivers and Kimberlycun and Shaolin Tiger not showing up because they forgot about the meet.
that was my first ever real encounter with bloggers, and i guess being amongst them helped me come out of my private-blogging shell a little bit. in my pinkskyes days, i watched how bloggers attacked each other openly over the smallest things, i watched the whole Xiaxue vs Malaysia drama, i heard of this PPS thing and how it was the ‘who’s who’ of the blogosphere, and many more things like that. the ‘blogosphere’ just seemed like such a vicious place to be, and the whole idea of a huge blogging community was just very foreign to me. after 5 years of blogging privately, i felt like a country girl being thrown into the city – a little bit dazed, a little bit scared, a little bit self-conscious.
i’ve grown to become extremely comfortable in the blogosphere now, so comfortable that it’s strange when i think about how it’s only been 2.5 years since i was initiated into the scene. that’s only one third of my entire blogging life. i still write what i want to, albeit not as wholly as i’d like to.. and i’m a lot more censored and refrained than i used to be.
and you know, that is the biggest peeve that i have with myself – the fact that my blogging has become so vague and secretive over the years, and that i can’t always write what i want to, because my blog is now very very public. since quaintly.net, i dont think i have ever ranted or hinted at my displeasure at any one person without said person eventually reading about it. with a public blog, i’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to keep all the super personal stuff away because not doing so entails all sorts of problems like people getting their feelings hurt, blog wars, boycotting, snubbing, sabotage, gossip, and many more.
and that’s why all the stuff you read on my blog are these happy things that fall short of addressing the heart of what i REALLY want to talk about. the closest i can ever come to writing about these taboo things are my emo Musings and Unsent Letters posts, but even those i have to heavily cloak in confusing vagueness and lock the comments, so that people dont really understand or know the details of what i’m talking about.
there are really a lot of things i wish i could blog about, like in my pinkskyes days, because i want to just let it out and let my friends read it and at the same time get their feedback in my comments box. but of course such things come with repercussions, and so i can’t and don’t want to blog about these things anymore. sigh.
like yesterday, Martian and i had this big fight in Gardens. i thought he was being so unfair and unreasonable, and i wanted to blog both our sides of the story and ask everyone if it was wrong for me to have gotten angry. but then i can’t, because these are things better solved between the both of us instead of aired out in the open.
and i want to blog about this person whom i know, who is perhaps the most ungrateful and disgustingly two-faced person i’ve ever met. long story short, i’ve backed her up and supported her many a time when she needed it, but never a word of thanks. instead, what she does is totally backstab me. but i can’t blog about it because she’s a good friend’s girlfriend. and they both read my blog.
and i want to blog about this long feud i’ve had with someone. yeah i just want to blog about it and let everyone know what kind of a person she really is, and all the things she’s done to me and my friends. i want to clear the rumour that i apparently ‘hate her for no reason’, because there are a million and one skanky things she’s said and done that no one knows of, but that *I* know of and have firsthand experience of. but i can’t, because it’s someone’s reputation at stake, and of course no matter how angry i am this is something that i should not do.
and i want to blog about this blogger who made an attack on Kimberlycun and me on her blog, basically saying that we were spouting atrocities at this forum we were invited to speak at. i am confused because i have no idea which part of our speech troubled her, or why ANYONE would even have an issue with what we said, because it wasn’t like we were saying anything remotely controversial. so i emailed her about it, but she just brushed me off by saying it wasn’t personal, because one of her friends even shares the same opinion as us. (huh?) so i’d really like to blog about it and get everyone’s opinion on this supposedly ‘atrocious topic, but no.. i can’t blog about it because there are other parties involved who would probably hijack the subject and use it against us. long story.
and i want to blog about Bottega Girl. but i can’t. because i want to try to like her even if she doesnt like me. i NEED to try to like her.
and i want to blog about so many more things, but i can’t, because at the end of the day, given all the reasons and circumstances, i dont want to. it’s a good tradeoff, but one that has resulted in a blog that is a mere shadow of the honest blog i used to have. some days i dont mind it, because after all it’s just a lot of rants that i’m leaving out… but other days i think that these rants are such an important part of me. and it makes me sad that i have to hide these things.
haih. but that’s why i have friends to rant to :) good, concerned, awesome friends who are the best listeners and who can prolly name all the above ‘can’t-blog-about’ people a few paragraphs up there in a heartbeat. i love you guys. you people are my rebirthed pinkskyes.
to the people who have been reading me since day one, or a few years ago, or last year, or somewhere in between.. thank you for reading me, even if i’m not as drahmah and rant-y as i used to be. yeah yeah i know you guys like to read all the angry rants about specific people, gossip and blogger drama, but i hope you understand that i can’t always write about such things :P because there will always be hurt feelings and ruined friendships and unnecessary animosity. and that’s really just not my cup of tea.
but i really want to try to become more like my honest pinkskyes self again. i want to go back to being able to blog about anything at all, to not calculate every single move and repercussion.. because i think i owe it to myself to worry less and to be more honest. so.. when i do start becoming rant-y again, please dont judge me ok? :) i can be angry. i can be upset. i can be sad. i hope that when i choose to display all these emotions and open them up for public commentary, you guys will be kind in your responses and know that you are dealing with a person who has feelings too.
i was telling someone that when i leave for the US and become detached from the local blogosphere, i know that my blogging will change because that’s when i will start writing for myself again. you can ask any top blogger we have.. do you write for yourself or for an audience? you’ll never get a straight answer but the truth is, they probably havent written purely for themselves ever since they became famous. in our blogosphere, it’s all about the traffic and the money and the throngs of fans and the popularity competition. it’s a sad sad sad thing, but that’s what the culture is like. there are days that i look forward to leaving for the US, because that’s when i’ll be out of this blogger rat race, and i can focus on what is truly important – myself, my writing, and the people who will still be standing by me and sticking around to read what i have to say :)
i know that there are people out there who love the traffic and the money that traffic begets, people who want to be top bloggers and all that. but i’m not one of them. getting where i am was so accidental and lucky. haha i still remember the first ever plug that Kenny Sia gave me. i didnt know him then, and when i woke up and saw the huge traffic jump, i got so scared and wrote him a really long email begging him to remove the post. haha. so funny. in fact, i just looked up the email and i’m laughing now as i’m reading it. sigh the irony. maybe one day i’ll put up the email and we can all laugh at it together :)
haih this post is so long. definitely a lot longer than i intended for it to be. but it is the most cathartic thing that i have written in a long, long, long time.
May 26th, 2008
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