Monday, January 02, 2006
dreams are made and used and wasted

it is very reluctantly sinking into me that the school year *gasps* begins tomorrow. go hang yourselves, you stupid chirpy morons. i'm characteristically grumpy, my table and desk are in huge messes, i can't find my homework, and i haven't finished some of it anyway. oddly enough i honestly wanted to do my book review but now i can't be bothered to. i mean, i've got a book in mind, i've got my opinions, but i'm lazy to write them down. epitome of laziness.

doesn't it scare you, how you can't just muck about anymore? in primary school, we played and had fun and fought with the boys from the school next door, and sat for our psle. in lower sec, we played and had fun and teased our friends about the boys from the school next door. then came the selection of our subject combinations. i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life, and all i knew was that i didn't want to leave my friends, so i chose triple science. after o's, we had to decide between arts and science. i shocked everyone with my decision. others chose less *coughs* startling paths to walk. and now, here we are. less than a year to a's. the trouble is, we have to more or less decide what we want to do with our lives, so that we can apply for the relevant courses in time. which is when it really and truly struck me that i have absolutely no ambition whatsoever. and that i had better pray really and truly hard.

when i was a kid, i wanted to write. this is not the cue to burst out laughing. i'm serious. i wanted to write. i wrote stories all the time, in a little cloth notebook that my aunt gave me to write in. i think she bribed me with sweets to get me started. i guess that's why i've always favoured notebooks to scribble in. you can slam them shut, lock them up, burn them. by the time i was twelve and my english teacher was telling me to read english in the university, i was convinced that i wanted to be a writer or a poet. someone should have told me that if love doesn't pay the baker, bovine scratology scrawled in little notebooks definitely doesn't. there went my first childhood dream. then i wanted to be a teacher, then a lawyer, then a psychologist, then a therapist, then an air stewardess, then a nun, then a hermit. then my mother asked me to consider teaching. i wanted to be an indian chief. funny thing about experiences is that their effects are inescapable. after going to perth, i decided that i want to see stars and not satelites at night. after volunteering at two different associations, i decided that volunteer work makes me happy. and after working during the holidays a couple of times, i decided that i don't want to work in an office. thus my latest ambition. i want to teach english in a developing country, preferably african or southeast asian.

this is not the cue to laugh. amazingly, when i told my parents over dinner, they didn't shoot me down. there was barely a ripple of interest. their lack of disapproval was very suspicious. please note that they have never approved of most of my unlikelier ambitions, namely that of being an air stewardess (fine, i'm too short, but back then i thought i might grow), nun or indian chief. so i was obviously very disturbed by the calm with which they addressed the issue. even when i told them i would probably die there a spinster. but dry humour aside, i really do want to teach english in a developing country. like vietnam. or cambodia. why not? i could learn their language, their culture. i would see stars at night, and the sky around me. and at the risk of sounding pig-headed.. i want to make a difference. there. i've just blown my own mean-as-hell, uncaring and arrogant cover. darn. but.. i suspect this is another path i'll be walking alone. you girls pretty much left me on my own, when you decided to follow your science-based dreams and i didn't.

i resolve to do my book review, find my school uniform and pack my bag before midnight.
7:28 PM ; 3 comments