Monday, February 27, 2006
allegretto

i never thought i would get genuinely irritated with a child, but i did. now, i have nothing against slow children, although i like bright children who say witty things that make me laugh. and i tend to be rather fond of the quiet ones who sit there listening quietly with their huge eyes fixed on me. i don't mind the noisy ones either, as long as they make a reasonable amount of sense. but i get really, really irritated with talkative children who don't make sense. i mean, if you want to chatter to me, that's fine, but please chatter with a reasonable amout of intelligence. and do not, ever, try my patience with nonsensical blabbering. urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. as scary as it sounds, i can almost empathize with murderers. and i suddenly remember why i scotch-taped a classmate to her chair and then scotch-taped the chair to the table in p6. she really irritated me. if i'm not wrong, i also taped her mouth shut, and her arms together. i wasn't a very good kid but at least i wasn't nonsensical. and if you think i'm being harsh on the kid, when i say nonsensical i mean nonsensical. you know those ah-lians who talk very loudly and ridiculously on the bus only to be sniggered at by everyone else? imagine that multiplied several times over, and add to that the relative immaturity of a primary school child. good lord i'm an intellectual snob. and an unwarranted one at that, seeing how my grades are anything but stellar. ugh. must be more patient with other people. do unto others..

do you ever get upset or even a little bit sad when people say you aren't the person they knew? it's quite a senseless reaction, really, when it shouldn't make a difference to me. you thought i was cynical and critical then; you think i'm cynical and critical now. the difference is in the degree and forms in which they take. maybe i haven't really lost my romanticism - it's just taken on a new form. i'm becoming horribly afraid that i'll fall in love with some silent, brooding, intense sort of fella, and end up marrying the safe and stable guy in the hopes of being balanced out. hopefully i'll have quiet, well-behaved and intelligent children with deep dark eyes that shine when they smile.

sounds like i'm buying a puppy, hmm.

i will always think of swirling sky-blue satin skirts on a dark blue floor, and black heels tapping lightly across it, heel-toe-slide-hop and a synchronised toss of black hair, when i hear 'allegretto'. i thought you all looked so beautiful together that day.
8:03 PM ; 0 comments

Friday, February 24, 2006
To The Moon And Back - Savage Garden

She's taking her time thinking of the reasons
To justify the hurt inside
Guess she knows from the smiles and the looks in their eyes
Everyone's got a theory about the bitter one
They're saying, Mama never loved her much and
Daddy never keeps in touch
That's why she shies away from human affection
But somewhere in a private place
She packs her bag for outerspace
And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come
And she'll say to him

I would fly to the moon and back
If you'd be..
If you'd be my baby.
Got a ticket for a world where we would belong
So would you be my baby?

She can't remember a time
When she felt needed
If love was red then she was colour blind
All her friends they've been tried for treason
And crimes that were never defined
She's saying, love's like a barren place
And reaching out for human faith
Is like a journey I just don't have a map for
So baby's gonna take a drive and
Push the shift to overdrive
Send a signal that she's hanging all her hopes on the stars
What a pleasant dream
She's saying..
10:28 PM ; 0 comments

Thursday, February 23, 2006
dreams and the dark side of the moon

because my own words don't mean a thing, i'll put up a song that means something to me.


8:22 PM ; 0 comments

Friday, February 17, 2006
daddy daddy oops

all art tends to be a ripoff of some other piece of art, known or unknown. even originality is borrowed.

expected the athena play to be terrible, based on reports by classmates and jan. turned out to be an okay philosophical script marred by pretty bad acting and presentation. people actually nodded off. i'm still not sure if it's because the underlying philosophy wasn't delivered well enough. in any case, the matrix / the village idea isn't too new, which brings me to my point about originality and ripoffs. for that matter, apollo blatantly ripped off chicago to great effect, in my opinion. the only thing i had against apollo was that i prefer my brain clean. aside from the tasteless trashiness, the acting was pretty good and convincing. ares was good on the whole, except for some shaky bits. i especially liked the creepy, tensed bits, because who isn't fascinated by a psycho? like the scene where the janitor is cleaning her knife and there are knives hanging behind her, and the way she handles her knife so lovingly scares the hell out of me. same goes for the scene with the schizo kid and the ensemble. daddy daddy daddy daddy oops daddy oops.. there is something about the usage of a child's game, a child's rhyme. it lends a child-like innocence that really doesn't deserve a place in such darkness. it's so focused, and creepy in its gentleness, its self-absorption, in its childish inability to understand. basically, children's rhymes out of context are freaking scary. maybe because at the back of my mind, something whispers, johnny johnny johnny johnny oops johnny johnny..

i try so hard to tell you what i think and how i feel, but the words don't come out right, and i stop seeing the point in communication, because in the end you will never see things through my eyes. i've got a new theory. anything that can be held in the palm of your hand for all eternity, cannot be beautiful.

because if even the blue, blue sky is an illusion.. there is nothing on earth worth living for.

i miss resting my head against yours and knowing that you understand me.
11:45 PM ; 0 comments

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
p.s. i love you

i typed a very long post last night about the paradox of valentine's day and suicide rates, but i guess it didn't quite get posted. but that's all right, because i'm fantastically happy right now!! as is obvious, i realise. hmm. anyway i just got home and i have to rush my lit essay soon, so i'll do this quickly.

• joan is so funny. okay maybe she's not that funny, per se, but things get kinda funny when we get together. i was supposed to meet her before her match, and she told me to wait outside macs at b1, ps. only it turned out that macs is at level 1. i didn't know that, so i was going down the escalator to b1, when i heard this yell by my ear and saw the dratted chicken on the escalator going up. when i reached the bottom, i decided to go up because i figured that she might be lazy to come down, so i called her and stepped on the escalator going up. just as she picked up the phone, i spotted her on the escalator coming down, and i started yelling into the phone. when we reached each other, i leaned across the railing and shrieked, 'what do you think this is, a bloody korean drama??' before our escalators separated us again. we found each other eventually, and nothing too exciting happened until she reached behind her back and brought something out proudly, with a 'nah, for you'. it was a beautiful champagne coloured rose. held upside down. let's just say that it wasn't that big a surprise, considering who was holding it. this brings to mind last year when we wanted to shop for jean's present, and she told me to meet her at jurong. there's this huge green space outside the mrt, and i was walking across it to meet her. now, picture this: a girl walking carefully along a narrow dirt path with green grass all around, her file held above her head to shield her from the rain pouring down. someone runs towards her, holding up an umbrella. isn't it like something out of a korean drama? but joan, being joan, had to ruin the one chance i'd ever get to experience such melodrama, by saying, 'what took you so long?' as soon as we were within earshot. apart from the usual lack of sense of occasion, she's a great friend and i've pinned the (pink) badge on my bag. =D
• i love 4e6'04. i met my classmates after school and although there weren't that many of us, seeing how so many are overseas /attached, we had a pretty great time. i laughed so hard my jaws hurt, and i was laughing because i wanted to, because it just felt so great to be sitting there on the grass surrounded by the people i love and who love me, just laughing and laughing and realising how we haven't changed in the most fundamental ways afterall. so maybe we were all tired and sleepy, but we still had a great time hearing jingping tell praveena's story three times using the exact same words and hand gestures. and i loved how high she got every single time she told it, especially when she got to the bit about half the tooth falling out. unfortunately, i'm quite zonked and i really want to hand in my work on time, so.. here i am, at home.
• hwachong was fine too, surprisingly. i felt a bit bad recieving so many gifts, especially those with little notes, because i just gave out obligatory chocolates. i guess i should have tried harder to think of things to say to people. but oh well, that's another day over. by the way, i hate having classes in non-airconditioned classrooms in the afternoon. it is nearly impossible to stay awake.
• i am absolutely determined to hand in my lit essay tomorrow, because i'll have to spend tomorrow preparing for thursday's timed assignment, which i will fail miserably. the trouble is, i don't even know how to start the essay. the question seems so complex and complicated that i don't dare to even think about it. i'm afraid to prove that i'm as stupid as i suspect.

tadah. by the way, in case i didn't say it well enough just now.. to 4e6'04 and the plc03/04.. i love you.

8:40 PM ; 4 comments

Monday, February 13, 2006
the paradox of suicide and valentine's day

i'm convinced that more suicides happen around valentine's day than any other day in february. of course, it can't compete with the other festive occasions, but the sudden spike in depression should be rather noticable. i am, of course, grousing about the irritating abundance of over-priced pink and red balloons and roses. not to mention chocolates and teddy bears. i have absolutely nothing whatsoever against valentine's as a celebration of love. as a low-down marketing strategy to leech the consumer dollar, however, i am disgusted by it. jewelry shops sell their diamonds with taglines that suggest that love can be bought. that the thickness of the wad of cash you hand over signifies your deep and intense romantic attraction to the person you hope to impress. and it doesn't just stop at romance. it has become an obligation to present our peers with token gifts on valentine's day, as if we don't know what else to do with our money, and can't afford to buy cheap chocolates for ourselves. in an attempt to avoid being accused of meaness (in every sense of the word) and being a party-pooper, i caved in and bought a bag of mini m&m thingies to give to my girl classmates tomorrow. no point in being antagonistic over what others think is a trivial matter right? okay it's not really a moral issue so i won't pursue it. i'd rather meet my sec4 class in a happy mood and enjoy the evening with them. anyway back to my point about suicides. yes. i realise i digress a lot. the whole love-is-in-the-air-can-you-feel-the-love-tonight romance melodrama seriously makes hardcore singles want to hurl. really. after conducting a poll (okay it was really just siti and me), i have concluded that valentine's day is an especially hard day for single girls to endure, even when surrounded by friends, because they have to put up with an entire day at school of pink balloons and red roses and giggles and batting eyelids. it stops being romantic after the fifth or so chocolate, and starts getting ridiculous at the third or so over-priced teddy. basically there is the paradox of suicide and valentine's day that fascinates me. how a festival that is supposed to celebrate love can be so much less and still cause people to be pushed over the brink. how people can be willing to give up something as real as life for something as transient as the world's false candycane love. love can't be bought, so why do you keep trying to sell it?

okay, so i'm a cheapskate single who didn't spend much on her friends either. but hey when you see what i've made for you, you'll appreciate the sheer hard work that went into it. and it wasn't exactly painless either. i ramble. sorry.

my sister just came into say that her chem rep must be the only person on earth who types 'ms ho, i'm dying :)'. must say that i've often been guilty of adding smiley faces or 'haha's just to show that i'm not suicidal. just a note: i would never, ever commit suicide. regardless of how much i joke about it or seem to be considering it seriously, i will never be sad enough to face the fires of hell.
9:04 PM ; 2 comments

Saturday, February 11, 2006
wax and other matters

wax fascinates me. you can do anything with it, almost. shave away at it slowly until it falls in tiny curls at your feet. grind it into powder with the heel of your hand. heat it up and mould it into any shape you want it to be. pour melted wax of different colours together and watch them swirl and fade into a different shade. dip your finger into it and watch the clear liquid dry into an opaque film on your skin. yes, wax is fascinating.

and it fascinates me further, how you behave like it. i watch you allow yourself to be melted and poured into an empty vessel that defines your new shape. you are happy enough, malleable, in another's hands. the excess wax is scraped off and thrown away if it cannot be recycled.

i dreamt you died and i screamed at you for leaving me behind. i remember clutching your fast-cooling hand and digging my nails into my own palms. how quickly the dead leave us, and leave us with nothing but craters in our hearts. i crawled into the hospital bed next to you, and held you close, but you didn't return. i woke up with wetness by my eyes and curses on my lips. it was then that i realised (again) how things are so different now. we used to run to each other shrieking and hugging after a weekend apart. those exuberant hugs have since been replaced by cool, reserved greetings that never go beyond a smile and a 'how are you?', as if we didn't miss each other so much it made us cry. is this what it means to grow up? why don't we ever hold each other anymore? i don't want to hug you on your deathbed, regretting that i never held you while you could feel it. but i guess now that we're older, we're more cautious about being seen as anything but straight. you ought to be, anyway. i don't have to. i just need a really good cuddle right now. wish you were here. but you stupid prat, you're probably off somewhere having fun and not thinking about me at all. i get this feeling i'm about to be accused of being morbid, angsty and melodramatic. to hell with all of that. i don't know why we're all so fundamentally afraid of being seen as angsty. i agree with nietzche on one point: it is better to be miserable and wise than contented and stupid.
8:24 PM ; 0 comments

Friday, February 10, 2006
watermark

i realise i've adopted a habit that is disgraceful and unhealthy in equal parts.

i sleep too much. at the wrong time. i snack on whatever i can find when i reach home, then plop off to sleep without even taking off my contacts. when i wake up, usually around 8 plus, i have to pluck my very dry contacts out of my eyes painfully. and then eat dinner. i haven't obeyed the doctor's instructions regarding diet yet. i'm still too used to eating what i want to, when i want to. ahhh, food.

wild rice came to school today. i have opinions that i won't post here. check elsewhere another time. but the session after the play felt a lot like a pc lesson.

am currently reading 'twilight of the idols / the anti-christ' by friedrich nietzche. the introduction says they were written during the last sane year of his life. i beg to differ - his wild accusations lead me to conclude that he was more than slightly insane when writing the books. i am also deeply offended by his portrayal of Christ as a man, when history clearly states that he died and rose again - can a man do that? but i guess i can't draw any cohesive conclusion until i have finished both books. his self-contradictory claims combined with his 'utterly unfair attacks on individuals' -as quoted from the blurb- slow down my reading. stopping to argue with myself is quite confusing, and if it weren't for my faith, i would very probably sink into depression and throw myself against the wall or something equally dramatic, such is the horrid blackness of the human nature. i can see why my parents said philosophy is not for the easily swayed. i cannot imagine tackling enquiries into human nature and life, without a grounding of some sort. no wonder he went mad.

incidentally, i am accused every gp lesson of being a crazy rightist by huiying. then again, she's the power-hungry leftist who aspires to be a dictator. i'll have to think up arguments to support my cause, since it has become apparent that i really am a crazy rightist, as seen from my answer to today's aq question. we sit in a row, as if embodying the political scale, conservative to liberal. poor sumin gets stuck in the middle and has to put up with our arguing over her head. it's even worse when we sit together - i can hear her clearly then, instead of odd mumblings about prudes. i'm quite sure she didn't mean prunes.

my i-group is going to st. luke's tomorrow. i have no idea who are my i-group members. or even who's the group leader. hooray for me, i'm the postergirl for friendliness. but i can push a wheelchair, if that helps. even if i can't speak any dialect and people want to punch my lights out when they see me.

watermark is an incredibly painful song. the notes fall, uncontrolled, like raindrops dripping off a railing, swelling to fullness before free-falling and hitting the ground, disappearing, lost in the puddle slowly growing. they fall off your fingers, a question hanging thickly in the air, a doubt, an absurd desire to hold back your words, each note a letter. you try to grab them back, hide them behind an air of nonchalence, but the sound is a free-for-all, come-and-get-it commodity. so you press each key lightly, almost reluctantly, trying in measured naunces to express yourself without giving too much away. and at the back of my mind, i'll always see those droplets welling up and dripping down like slow tears, a strange physical attraction to the ground - gravity.
8:31 PM ; 0 comments

Tuesday, February 07, 2006
moi lolita

just woke up. listening to moi lolita. the lyrics are actually quite disturbing, but i like the song.

went to the doctor's today. he put a scope up my nose and down my throat and it hurt so much i was fighting back tears, trying to breathe. but at least i got to see the inside of my nasal passage all the way down before i die. apparently my nose and throat are sensitive. fantastic. add this to my multiple health conditions, and i hope i won't have children who'll inherit both my flawed personality and my flawed body. so now i can't eat anything sour/spicy/oily [read: nice] after 4 pm, and no food 4 hours before bed. i was like, are you mad?? most of my eating gets done just before bed! and i'm peranakan, i eat chilli and oily food the way vegetarians eat veg. bleaugh. i can't imagine dinner from now on. but thank goodness the doctor's a church friend.. consultation alone is 80-150 bucks, can you imagine that? well he's a specialist. plus the scope.. thank goodnesshe waived the fee for those. when i saw the price list, my mother had to pick my jaw up from the floor. but we still had to pay for the medication, of course. but still, phew. i hope one of my good friends becomes a specialist in ear/nose/mouth surgery or neurosurgery or something. it's that or i'll never visit a doctor again when i'm grown up.

trial run for x-c tomorrow. i volunteered to be an official, yay! hahaha. but i've promised to walk with marian if no one else goes.

actually, the concept behind lolita scares me. it's unnatural.
8:52 PM ; 0 comments

Monday, February 06, 2006
0 + 8 = 8

am rather tired. got home from the mcyc a while ago. i rather like comm serve, hmm. almost got lost trying to look for the block, but found it eventually. mari has terrible map reading skills. and she doesn't read signboards. when we got to the student care centre, she was assigned this little boy, and i was told to help a little girl with her english. when we were done, we took turns colouring the fish on her worksheet. haha lame but who cares, i haven't coloured in years and she insisted we take turns. i looked up after a while and noticed mari struggling to teach the little boy math. well she'd been struggling for the last hour, but she looked murderous then, so i decided to go over and ask if she needed help. turned out the boy is quite weak in math, and has some sort of problem concentrating to boot. i made him sit on the other side of the table, facing the wall, so he wouldn't get distracted by the kids playing on the floor, and tried to get him to come to the conclusion that [blank] + 8 = 8. at first i thought he had an eyesight problem. really. doesn't 8 look like 8? but i wanted him to think of the answer himself so i didn't ask if the two figures looked alike. finally i handed him 8 pens and asked him to count them for me. at least he can count. he said there were eight. so i told him i was going to add the magic number of pens, and made him cover his eyes while i pretended to shuffle around with more pens. when he opened his eyes again, i handed him the same pens and asked him to count them again. he had to recount them because he couldn't believe it was the same number.

yup the highlight of my day was getting a 7-year-old boy to calculate that 0 + 8 = 8. when i related the event to my mother just now, she laughed and said i have the makings of a teacher. i know no one believes it, but trust me when i say that i am more patient with kids. it's the bigoted, coarse and intellectually-deficient people my age who try my patience. for some reason, it's harder to tolerate people who look like they should function the way you do. bad mel, bad. love thy enemies as thyself; love is patient, love is kind..

i guess i prefer teaching the slower kids. there's more personal satisfaction in helping someone who does need your help. i mean chatty kids are fine, but my chattiness kinda fades away when i have to explain myself all the time. i have to learn how to simplify my teaching language. apparently 9-year-olds don't know the meaning of 'definite', 'context', 'absolute' etc. which reminds me, i have to start preparing for the bible story on sunday.. it's unnerving teaching the class when one of the assistants is a middle-aged woman and i'm only seventeen!

school is great, school is fine, it's anything but my life.
8:46 PM ; 2 comments

Thursday, February 02, 2006
ninety minutes

i've just finished my pc essay, and i'm feeling terribly happy. sense of fulfilment? maybe. it's the high that others get from running a mile. i don't really care whether i pass or fail (although i do, of course, hope to pass), but it just feels pretty darned good to have finished an essay from start to finish in an hour and a half. nice thing about lit is that you don't know when you've gone wrong. it's not like math, where you can get stuck for fortyfive minutes before getting pissed off and kicking the dustbin over. or maybe it's just me and my temper. which i am really trying to improve on. really. did anyone hear me say anything mean today? okay maybe only once to candy, about her pink hair-tie, but i really couldn't help it, i'd held my tongue for so long. which reminds me, i need to get a new pencil. using the silly pink powerpuff girls one that serene and liz gave me last year is nothing short of ridiculous. it's scratchy, too light and makes everyone laugh.

i once went out looking for someone who didn't exist anymore, only to be sorely disappointed. but it reminded me that that's how life really is. and i told myself that i must never look for anyone anymore, because we're all like tiny kites being flown in the sky - the only thing that holds you to me, and me to you, is God who holds our strings in His hand. if we meet again, then well and good. if not, i'll see you in heaven. but i wouldn't know your name. so why pretend, when you will always be alone?
9:20 PM ; 0 comments