Saturday, April 29, 2006
random thought of the day -

warning: random thoughts usually translate into teenie angst of some sort or other. proceed at your own risk.

white and black are both just differing shades of grey situated at opposite ends of the spectrum.

i don't believe in colours. how do i know that what i see is what you see? i like black and white and grey (maybe because i'm monochromatic, but mainly because i'm boring and i like the starkness of them; they're in your face) and dark rich stark shades of most colours, particularly purple. the point is: what if my purple isn't your purple? hell, what if my black is your white? and we think we understand each other perfectly. my black your white. we could be defining things completely differently and yet thinking that we are operating on a common plane. maybe in your world, everything is two shades lighter and stained rosy. but because i cannot look into your head and see the images that you see, and even if i could, i would still be seeing the same images that i see, i could never be in your world, and you could never be in mine.

existential angst?

i don't believe in many things. i think i believe in love, because i ought to. i'm a christian, i believe in love, that it exists, that it is pure and good and right (refer to 1 corinthians 13 for more details) but i'm not sure it exists for me. i really hope it does, because i try to apply the aforementioned text to my daily relationships (which is why i don't have many, i just can't cope with the emotional load), but it makes it seem like love is a duty. which i guess it is. if there is just one thing that disturbs and upsets me right now, it's that i don't seem to be any less messed up than a non-christian. what kind of a lousy testimony am i, anyway? knowing God's mercy hasn't made me any less cynical, it's just made me see the impossible worthlessness of human life, and i wonder how He can even stand us (but i'm glad he can. really glad). having a relationship with God hasn't made me feel any less alone, for some reason. some people seek religion because they are afraid of what comes after death. i think i sought it because i needed to be filled. and sure, i'm being filled, but how do you fill an abyss? i must be doing something wrong. it seems blasphemous to get a little blue sometimes. all right, not 'a little'. navy, really. there are days that i can't laugh off easily enough to suit me.

man (the race and not the gender. i can't be bothered to make sexist remarks today) is born to be alone. that is the price to pay for individualism. as soon as you define yourself as a separate entity, you are cutting down the bridge that could have allowed someone else into your world, the part of the world you shared. and now we each have our own worlds, we're trapped in our own-little-world bubbles that encircle and protect us as we move around in the bigger outside universe that we still share by default of our human-ness. and from our own little worlds, the universe looks different. we wear different-shaded sunglasses, we speak different languages, but we think we understand each other completely, we smile and nod and say, 'exactly!', but our roses bloom in different colours. loneliness is the human condition.

if i were a busier person, i wouldn't have so much time to think about all these depressing, suicide-inducing thoughts. but i am not a busier person. i miss you a little, but i wonder if you will tire of me. or if you already have, but love me christian-ly too much to show it. i am not an easy person to be friends with.

depressing song of the day: from a distance.
12:49 PM ; 2 comments


i really want to tell you -

closed my eyes at nine and opened them again a few minutes ago, only to discover three hours had flown past. funny thing is, it felt like i had just opened and closed my eyes; all the lights are still switched on, the same song (okay it's on repeat) is still playing, everything feels exactly the same, only the world is three hours into the future. or i'm stuck three hours in the past. feel a little disjointed from everything.

was rather crabby all day. i sincerely hope it's just pms. but it never turns out to be =( maybe i'm just picking up everyone else's pms-y vibes. today was like a second valentines' day - i kept seeing couples. first ms kang and mr koh from secondary school (who must now be refered to as mrs and mr koh. in that order. because i say so.) then jan and her bf (in that order, because that's how i think and talk about them). i think i'm a terrible friend, beyond a certain point i stop pretending to be cheery.

i can't do anything. anything. i'm hopelessly bad at everything. i wish the world would open its jaws and swallow me whole. why do i have the misfortune of being in the washroom when skinny girls are preening and checking out their skinny legs in front of the mirror? it makes me want to sink into the wall or melt into a puddle unnoticed and drag my puddle-y self away. or maybe just stay a puddle forevermore, shapeless and unseen. have people walk through me and splatter pieces of me across the floor, scatter my thoughts and half-formed words. and i'd let them. i feel all pudgy and i hate myself, i hate the world, hate is in my vocabulary today and i hate it that i'm so bloody melodramatic why doesn't someone just kill me since i can't kill myself (and i don't even know why, specifically)?

not living is very different from dying.

having watched the wedding date thrice, i can pretty much recognise all the songs they use in the soundtrack. borrowed su min's ipod because i was saving mine for the bus journey and it was running low on batt. hated all her songs except those from the maroon 5 album. anyway, i think they use the first part of 'secret' from maroon 5 in the bit where she comes in drunk and silently wakes him up, takes him by the hand and slowly seduces him. then they use 'sway' by michael buble for the bit where they learn how to dance the wedding dance. of course there's 'home' by michael buble too but it wasn't in her ipod. and i don't know the titles of the rest offhand. watching anything thrice kind of imprints certain scenes on you. and they're generally the ones with the nice background music. the starting bit of 'secret' made me want to cry, the sound of the guitar was so shudder/chill-inducing and it felt like my heart was being sliced up with every strum-hold movement. and then i remembered mellie playing something like that once.

dying has that lovely, touching note of finality to it. death is the end of the first (rather staid) movement and turning over the page to begin the second, more lyrical one. dying is the playing of those last few bars leading up to it. not living is just the bungling up of a piece that shows no sign of ending. a grade-one rendition of mozart. the half-hearted hitting of notes and smearing of chords. the misreading of key signatures, the smattering of uncaring unfeeling unalive sounds that pile together and collapse under their own weight.
12:16 AM ; 2 comments

Tuesday, April 25, 2006
like toy soldiers

i realise my monday night routine involves going to sleep at 8 and waking up the next morning. well, i woke up at 3 to charge my ipod, but i didn't feel like doing any work, so i went back to repaying my sleep debt/ saving up for future nights.

did not nap today. hahh!!!

just felt that point needed special attention. am smugly pleased with myself. *beams*

it doesn't feel like the a's are this year. if i can't do a question, or can't figure anything out, i just tell myself, it's okay, i'll figure it out in the end.. but the end often comes before the figuring gets done. still have a few more questions of math to do, and i have to prepare for the econs timed assignment if i want to go out tomorrow. was hoping we'd watch ice age 2 (heh) so i could swoon over diego (inter-species relationships are non-existent in my book), but it's okay if you guys want to watch take the lead or anything. i'd use any excuse to meet up, really. i'm even going to wear my contacts since the majority of you can't stand my glasses. and i don't have pe tomorrow! you'd better appreciate my great sacrifices.. haha. i'd grow my hair out for a day too, if you wanted me to, but sadly it can't be done, so live with it.

the s7s presenting for pc today tricked us. rather well, i must add. needless to say, they proved that lit can be (and is?) a whole lot of presumptious bullshit. you're just there, smoking your way through, trying to think of intelligent, rational and coherent answers to something that may or may not have deep significance in the first place. a bit like trying to figure out a quiet person. either she's terribly introspective and complex, as in still waters run deep, or she just has nothing to say. or maybe something in between.

i notice everyone discretely avoiding a certain topic. i derive a mild, morbid sort of amusement from watching other people's reactions. i think of pain as rather personal. the sort of thing you carry close to your heart like a prickly secret that draws blood with every heartbeat. blood is personal. i don't like looking at other people's blood. i'm okay with my own, i've watched it flow into the syringe, and thought calmly about the deep red colour and the way it clung to the sides of the plastic.. but i can't bear looking at other people's blood. it makes me nauseous, like i'm looking at something i shouldn't be looking at, something private and honest. and the frankness, the human-ness and altogether alive-ness makes me wish (unfairly) that they'd just keep it inside, where it belongs. a little bit like pain. only i too, am guilty of spilling my guts out to people who don't need the nauseating burden. funnily enough, while i view raw pain and blood as rather personal, i don't mind playing aunt agony to some people. makes me feel like i'm not just wasting oxygen and contributing to global warming. but blood.. well, i'd never make a great nurse. i'm fine as long as i think of it as red liquid. but as soon as i think of it as belonging inside someone, i feel a bit sick. pain is personal. but not everything that is personal is private, and not everything that ought to be private is personal.

she asked, are you gonna miss her a lot? are you kidding, it feels like my lungs are being pulled out through my gullet. with a rubber hook. hooray, an a* for gory imagery. i'm better at missing people than i am at loving them. a c- for living.

step by step, heart to heart, left right left, we all fall down..
8:09 PM ; 0 comments

Sunday, April 23, 2006
the shape and taste of a goodbye

she's playing the piano downstairs (some new song that sounds an awful lot like a more complicated version of flying free), and it strikes me that pretty soon the only sounds of piano playing echoing in the house might be mine. her msn nick/personal message? 'will they just reject me and be done with and i can go overseas happily'. of course i want her to go. she's wasted her, as i've told her many times. if she has the brains and the drive, why not? but my father doesn't want her to go, so she has to somehow get rejected by them, or end up rejecting them. my life is measured by the holes left in it by the people who leave, and the fresh positions they acquire upon return. what used to be a solid, perfect square is now a sprawling mass of uneven holes dotting uncertain additions. sure, i've learnt to deal with the going-home of people like aunty imelda (the maid who was with us for 10 years, and was a mothersisterfriend to me. i cried for weeks before and after she left, making my form teacher in sec3 wonder if i was unstable, and causing some classmates to despise my weakness), but that doesn't make it any less lonely here. i'm almost certain she'll leave. as someone asked the other day, who would get which clothes? our clothes and shoes and bags are practically interchangable now. i'd miss her G2000 black pants that make me (us?) look like i (we?) have long legs. that yellow dress-top i haven't had the chance to borrow yet. i'd miss her borrowing my stuff, and asking if this matches with that, the way i'd burrow through my closet to find an outfit that would look great on her. helping her choose clothes for a night out.

okay chris wants me to call her. now. something about her sermon today applying to me. i get the feeling it's about how change-resistant i am.
8:13 PM ; 0 comments

Saturday, April 22, 2006
and they say, all's fair in love and war

i got my hair cut. i've always had this trouble of going to a salon, getting my hair cut, and then not being able to figure out how the hairdresser did it. okay i know everyone is going to throw something (not too sharp, please) at my head because they all think my hair keeps getting shorter, but i can't help my little obsessions. jan's the only person who thinks my short hair is fine, but then again she sees me everyday, so maybe she's gotten used to it. i think i'll grow it back after a's. the pained look on the faces of the ex-pls and my ex-classmates is starting to get to me.

life is settling into this mundane, easy routine that i don't really want to break. schoolwork, piano, relationships.. God. some days other people's fears frighten me. all right, fine, try as i might to both deny it and squash it like an ant, i can't seem to help letting what other people think affect me. how sickening. i'm really just another loser on the road. but then again nobody lives in a vacuum (like how mrs ang says that nobody writes in a vacuum, hmm) and it would be pretty pointless to be antagonistic just for the sake of being antagonistic. my point being that the way people go, 'wow i can't believe your parents would let you do that' when i tell them i plan to take two years off before uni, makes me reconsider and second-guess myself. i honestly don't see the harm in taking two years off. it's not like i'll be leeching off my parents - i plan to relief teach for the experience, and i'll live off my salary. plus i need the extra time to go on a few mission trips without being rushed into a decision. besides, if i do change my mind about my career choice, i still wouldn't enter a particularly competitive industry simply because i'd hate it. i'd rather marry the love of my life (ha. ha.) and raise a housefull of fat little babies. i'm not doing this just because i don't want to be conventional. or because i'm not afraid of doing it. i'm doing it because it makes sense, given my high tendency towards (and capacity for) regret and overly idealistic and romantic notions. i'm giving myself a chance to opt out of a service i may not have been destined for.

suddenly remember what yesterday's compre was about. feminism. i'm convinced that passage b was a joke. it's got to be, i cannot believe that anyone would honestly have such ridiculously bigoted views in this day and age. and i pretty much said so in my aq (bigoted being the exact word, along with 'unjustified accusations', etc). that must have been my most reactionary and emotive (hence least subtle and controlled?) aq to date, including the one we did on the casino issue. it was even more horrifying to hear a classmate saying that she doesn't support feminism because although she wants equality in the workplace, she wants to exploit her position (i am paraphrasing, i think her exact words were 'make use of') as the 'weaker' sex in relationships. i was shocked into exploding into a rant (i honestly didn't think any girl/woman/person of sane mind would think like that) and she literally took a step backwards. personally, i can't imagine projecting myself as some vulnerable girl/ wide-eyed damsel in distress to be rescued and coddled. maybe because i am (stubbornly?) convinced of my own ability to slay my own dragons, thank you very much. while i am not really anti-romance (love makes the world go 'round, hooray), i am anti-fluff. i don't want to be the weaker one, but i don't have to be the stronger one - the thought of some clingy, emotionally-overdependent wimp is nauseating. why can't we be equal partners in a mature, intelligent relationship grounded in a shared relationship with God? mutual respect, intellectual compatability, similar interests (music, books, ideas) and tastes, with enough differences to prevent monotony, appeal far more to me than empty cliches. i have nothing against candy bars and dying vegetation, if given out of a genuine appreciation of my personality and a wish to express it in convetional terms. but if i sense that it is given out of a condescending hope to sweep an emotionally vulnerable and weak-willed girl off her feet (like: 'hmm, maybe these dozen roses will please her into ignoring my ill-treatment of the waiter), i will most certainly mutilate the gift and toss it back in his face. we fight for the right to be taken seriously in the workplace; why are women still willing to be thought of as the weaker sex in relationships? sure, you can 'exploit' your position - but at what cost, to your self-respect, the relationship itself (what kind of relationship is grounded on selfish exploitation) and the future generations you might spawn?

maybe i have too much (unjustified) self-respect.
9:30 PM ; 0 comments

Friday, April 21, 2006
of being hideous and other excuses

i don't remember much about today except that siti came, and screamed, 'mello, why did you cut your hair??' it would not have been very startling except that i haven't -really- cut my hair in a while. just the odd trim on tuesdays when i wake up hating myself. besides, i've had short hair since january, so she must have seen me at least twice so far. people seem to keep forgetting that i actually want to look bad. even nanz, who sees me around once a week, is constantly bugging me to grow it back. well, it's really too bad, i told myself i'd have short hair this year at least, so short hair it is. nonetheless, it's quite depressing to have your friends stare at you in horror. i was so grumpy that i came home and ate a lot of rubbish and feel even worse now. i shall go to the salon tomorrow and do something - anything - to my hair. it's quite the automatic response to horrified looks. although i never ever like how i look after a haircut. and now everyone is going to scream at me because they all think my hair is too short already, but i'm obsessed with cutting and cutting, cutting it off, cutting it away from me, cutting. i just want to cut cut cut it all away, watch the little pieces of me fall on the floor and get swept away.

actually, i only get bothered about my hair when it bothers people. i mean, out of sight, out of mind.. just that it's in their faces. so if people don't keep telling me how bad i look, i won't feel the need to keep doing something to it. because even if i want to look bad, i'm still a girl, i don't like being told that i look awful. and besides, i didn't use to look all that great, it was just a different look.

you are fascinating as a concept; something to be picked apart and laid bare, the elements neatly classified and examined, cause and effect carefully noted down and categorised. as a person, you are like a perfume; quickly applied to someone else's skin, you wear off your sweet top notes easily within the hour, leaving only the muted, musky base at the end of the day that diffuses lazily through my consciousness and etches itself as a memory on the haphazard blackboard of my brain.
7:25 PM ; 0 comments

Thursday, April 20, 2006
smileysmiley my prettybaby

some days i suspect that i'm delusional. other days i know i am. it's gotten to the point where i don't know what i am anymore, which part of me is what i am and which part i wear like a robe. there's the kick i get from saying shocking things that i (maybe) don't mean. it's just too frightening to take yourself seriously. in case other people do, too. it's easier to deny yourself. for the record, i'm not really violent.. it's just my way of talking. it kinda comes with the caustic voice. i keep saying something in the hope of it coming true, and i know you're all smiling indulgently at my stubborness, but hey, it's coming true.. sort of.

it isn't so much the object itself, but the idea of the object. not so much who the person is, but what. right here, right now, anyway. in your context.

i get a little frightened that i'm a little self-destructive. i've always had a tendency to be attracted to people with destructive/ violent behaviour. someone who would grab me by the wrist so hard i'd bruise. who would leave blueblack fingerprints on the pulse of my soul. someone with a hidden coiled tension about to spring, coiled like the drawing in of oneself and knotted loosely like the holding of a breath. i'm not afraid to die. i'm only afraid of living, or not living, or maybe both. if living is the loving of (and fighting against) and the struggling to find that something, someone. so paradoxical. maybe all i really see in such people is a fevered intensity, a needlepoint worth of conflicting emotions and a charming complexity. who taught you that this is what you wanted?

it would please you to know that i am re-sorting myself out. it appears to be an on-going process that is likely to be repeated for the rest of my life, until i'm so sick of alternating between trying to figure myself out, and deluding myself about the bits i can't accept, that i go crazy and join and nudist colony. (in reality, this translates into me pretending to be relatively normal..)

but i do know what is living. i know what it has to be. i know it all theoratically, everything is bound by theories and philosphies and sealed with theology. but sometimes being rational isn't enough, you've got to feel it, breathe it, be it. 'as the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs after You'.. random thought: why is the first half of the sentence in old english and the second half in modern?
8:31 PM ; 0 comments

Wednesday, April 19, 2006
and feelings of aggression are the absence of the love-drug in your veins

ugh today is a sleepysleepy yawny day. just woke up, but i guess it doesn't count as sleeping because i had to keep replying messages. we didn't have napfa. i'm just trying to postpone the inevitable huh. brain's in a fog. i feel really dazed these days (hey that rhymed! sort of..) and now i sound really ditzy. damn. manning the booth turned into a semi-shouting match where we competed to give away the booklets. being hungry all day leads to overeating when food is finally available. i've single-handedly proven that diet tip right. will have to liaise with the v&rs in my school as to how friday is going to work out.. i realise the only time i interact with anyone outside of my extremely tiny social circle is when i need to borrow zinc plates. siti, please be grateful. wait, you already are. =) i love it when i feel like i'm actually being of some use to other people. just had dinner. shall attribute my tiredness to the state of panic i was in for 45 minutes today when our lit teacher let us make fools of ourselves, despite knowing full well that we hadn't prepared. she pretty much exposed us as the slack and incoherent idiots we are. smart, but cruel. ugh math hwk math hwk ugh. i hate afternoon pe even more than i hate morning pe because i resent staying back just to pretend to exercise in the humid heat. the pretense is only slightly better than the actual exercising, because at least that way i won't be too tired for piano. nobody can believe that i play my theme song at least once a day. why not? it makes perfect sense, it's my theme song.
9:31 PM ; 0 comments

Tuesday, April 18, 2006
but i know i've gotta give it a try

i don't want to do napfa. =( if i were to list all my many various physical shortcomings, i would get depressed, so let's just leave it as that.

got home yesterday, bathed, ate, played the piano and went to sleep - all by 830. yayness. but i had to get up 3am to do my essay on angels in america. was interrupted somewhere around 11 plus by a call from bev - when i woke up, i thought i had dreamed it all, the whole conversation, the sleepy giggling and the way neither of us wanted to put down the phone. i'm pretty sure i still sleeptalk. but if i say anything, it isn't true.

desperately making plans for the future so that the present won't seem so hopeless. the young dream about the future; the old look back on the past. and somewhere in between, we're supposed to live our present. there's that song that goes, 'youth is wasted on the young'. maybe, but maybe not. we can't resist dreaming, that's for sure. incidentally, i decided today that i want two sets of twins! identical would be cute, but fraternal would be fine too. and i'll name them darrell and darren, and louis and louise. darrell can be either a girl or a boy (in which case identical twins would be cute), but louise will have to be a girl. or a boy-baby will get stuck with the name louise, and he'll grow up confused and tortured. louis, by the way, will be pronounced 'lou-ie' because i think it sounds cuter, it's all little-boy (louielouielouie see what i mean? versus lou-is) and angelic-sounding. and i've always had a weakness for the letters 'd' and 'j', just that i can't think of nice matching 'j' names, and anyway i don't want three sets of twins. so, tadah! four kids sounds like an awful lot, but they can't beat the football team that we've decided siti will have. =D

i don't want to do napfa =(
7:49 PM ; 0 comments

Sunday, April 16, 2006
and i'm never gonna tell you everything that i've gotta tell you

we watched tristan and isolde, and ice age 2 the other day. tristan and isolde, frankly, sucked. as jean said, forbidden love's all about the angst, violence, and (to paraphrase her) making out. i think i've become cynical. once upon a time, forbidden love was tragic and romantic. now it's just laughable. half the time i wanted to yell at isolde to stop throwing herself at him. the movie puts me off love. honestly. couples shouldn't watch this together. they might get so traumatised by the idea of love and duty that they might just break up. hur hur. i say, go with duty. 'tis cruel to be kind.. anyway it was really boring. i would have been more sympathetic if they'd had even a sprinkling of witty lines.. but no, of course not, sappy crap will have to be sappy crap. incidentally the young tristan is extremely adorable, with his serious, concentrating little frown and mop of curly blonde hair. having been accused of being paedophilic just this morning, i'll refrain from further discussion of the young tristan.

ice age 2, on the other hand, was extremely enjoyable. maybe because i've harboured a not-so secret crush on diego for years. wahaha. who wouldn't? the way he stalks around all scowly and growly, with all his sardonic little comments, making fun of everything and everyone, and appearing to be extremely cynical and cold, while hiding a sincere though gruff affection for his friends.. i like it that he's a little untamed, a little wild and fierce and ready to attack, but pretty observant, unlike that clueless sid.. sigh, i really do like diego. yes i know he's a cartoon animal, but i like his character, happy? i don't care, i shall go on liking diego, it makes me happy. oh, but i hated how the writers sold out and made the mammoth fall in love with another mammoth. one of the things i liked best about ice age was that it was one of the few movies around that had no romance. what's wrong with just having three bachelors wander around like a circus act?? hmph. but i mean to watch it again. =D =D =D

hy came to church. i forgot i had a parent-teacher meeting for junior ss, so i had to ask to be excused. not that i have much to say anyway, and it's not like they'll really listen to my feedback - i'm not even eighteen, what do i know about kids, especially theirs? but yeah bumped into one of my students in the fellowship hall, and he very sweetly waved at me, so i asked his mother if she was attending. she wasn't, so i assumed most parents wouldn't anyway. and i got accused of being paedophilic because i waved and smiled at him, and asked if he enjoyed the lesson today (since i'm not teaching this month wahaha). really. if i'm nice, i'm paedo. if i'm not, i'm cold. life is hard. but yeah, we left for lunch after that. she says the sermon was okay; i didn't really think it was all that fantastic, but okay. and i realise i don't focus much on revelations. maybe i should. but it's a little too mind-boggling and i see it as less important to me right now.. i'm trying to focus more on applying His teachings correctly in my life, instead of trying to predict how the world's gonna end, since it's going to end the way it's meant to anyway; whether or not i really delve deep into it isn't really going to make a difference.. is it?

met rach downstairs - she'd just had a haircut, so she came up with me and we watched the wedding date. third time i'm watching it. seems that whenever i ask someone to choose something to watch, they always choose the wedding date, and avoid a very long engagement like the plague. why?? i want to watch a very long engagement. shall wait for a day when my sister's feeling up to watching a french movie. she claims they're disturbing. disturbing is good. it should disturb you out of your comfort zone and force you to think. chickflicks are only feel-good mechanisms. they're for days when you need a happy ending. but i still like that bit when they're cruising down the street, etc etc, while all out of love plays.. that scene just makes me want to bawl, i don't know why. bawl and bang my head against the wall. 'four weddings and a funeral' has such a nice ring to it.

sometimes i wish i weren't in arts. i feel stupid doing math. and i feel stupid doing lit. like this incoherent babbling idiot who can't see what's right in front of her face, can't make sense of it, can't see any significance in any rock on the road, can't understand emotions, can't comprehend the complexity of human mind, can't - love.
5:42 PM ; 5 comments

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
every note you play

my ears ache for silence. this must be one of the few days that i'm not playing any music on the computer. i guess all the impressive drumming at the water polo match is still ringing a little in my head. incidentally, hwachong won (yay for them? us?), some of us had secret sympatheties for the rj goalkeeper (who looked so very touchingly woebegone, cradling the ball at the end of the match) and we were extremely amused by this hysterical chinese high kid in front of us, who turned out to be from the c div team (he was really small-sized so we thought he was someone's brother). but all these matches meant that there were very few people in school, and i never saw so few people walk past the canteen in three hours. after a while i got too tired to even smile and make eye contact with those who did (it makes them feel obliged to stop, which is when you spring forward with your booklets and little hearts) and we all just sat there, slowly melting into one gloomy lump in the sweltering heat. i hate the word 'balmy'. people are always going on about the 'balmy breeze' in the tropics. well if we're in the tropics (geog is a distant memory of 4 years ago), the lilting alliteration really just translates into a stifling, draining, unbearable humidity blown about on warm, wet air. ughhh.

got up this morning, looked in the mirror and hated myself. so i took up a pair of scissors and snipped away at my hair, because my fringe is still too short to attack. the trouble is, cutting your own hair is extremely difficult, given the angle, and now the two sides don't match. but no one's pointed it out to me yet (maybe because i'll either laugh it off, the way i laugh off the holes in my shirt, or flick what's left of it and make some hopefully-smart remark), and i don't particularly care since i'm not the one who has to put up with looking at my uneven hair. i'm hoping mari can somehow salvage it when she comes back from being chickenpoxy. then again, if i'd decided to just attack my hair this morning, i must have known, subconsciously at least, that i would be destroying how i look. so maybe this is what i want. is it? i ought to know for sure why i do the things i do.

i haven't talked to her in ages. what, four or five months? or more? so much for primary school best friends who wrote to each other regularly through most of secondary school. somehow adjusting in sec school was a lot easier. maybe if i hadn't started out hating everything and everyone.. well too late for that now. maybe it's because i wasn't happy in pri school to begin with. ugh all these might-have-beens drive me crazy sometimes. i just happened to think of her at the match today, wondering if she was there too, on the other side. is she in council? i remember her running for it, but i don't remember much after that. they say sec school friends are the ones you keep, because by the time you reach jc and beyond, you've turned too much inwards and away from others, you stop trusting and reaching out.. but sec school days fit so neatly between childish oblivion and selfishness, and grown-up willful oblivion and selfishness. depressing thought of the day: in life, nothing is certain except death and taxes. now, who said that?
9:22 PM ; 0 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006
like a spanish guitar

just woke up. don't even know why i'm so tired. was really dazed during the lit presentation, i have this feeling i came off as really incoherent and ditzy. damn. then again, i probably am. another one tomorrow and no one knows the question. double damn. then again, with things being as they are these days (go to school, sleep, rush homework and various projects) i hardly have time to think too much.

i can't wait for friday!!! and sat!!

got a msg from my math tutor (during math, how coincidental) that she can't tutor me anymore, and i had to reply straight away so she wouldn't feel bad. this makes the second day i've had to msg in math, i hope i don't get kicked out of class and back into the lecture system. my math teacher looks at me like she knows me. she probably does. she looks really familiar, like one of those people you remember from your childhood. and she smiles at my mother like she knows a secret. on another person, i would consider that a smirk.

'smirk' is such a smirky word. that ironic little twist of the lips, the corner creasing slightly, that knowing, superior look.. i rather like smirks. they make you wonder what the hell the person's smirking at, what they're thinking of, although sometimes you just want to bash that person's face in. i don't think i can handle mockery this week. not til friday..

incidentally, something hilarious happened in school today. and people wonder why i'm deaf. shall go off to worry about tomorrow's presentation and get my math done. oh, and glue more hearts. i had an allergic reaction to them last night. i think it's rachel zeng's house's dust. the school dust doesn't make me itch. ugh head feels like it's being split apart with a particularly blunt axe.
7:44 PM ; 0 comments

Monday, April 10, 2006


having suddenly become very insecure about being thought of as unstable (although i wonder why i care about what you think), or even worse, badly emo, i have decided to be conventional and post like this:

today was a good day. i didn't get scolded by any teacher. the econs lecturer's nasal voice makes me lose focus too easily to know what is going on in money and prices. i realised i have forgotten all i never knew about atomic structures during gp. i didn't go for com serve because i didn't want to risk carrying dormant chicken pox viruses along with me. meant to watch gattaca, but as it turns out, we don't subscribe to starworld. i'm a little upset because i really love gattaca. and now hy and i are discussing angels in america (albiet a little late) for tomorrow's presentation. and i just realised my other lit group hasn't prepared for our presentation on wed. wow whee. still have to glue safety pins to little furry red hearts. hooray for school life! i'm meeting jean and jan on fri, and nanz on sat. this week can't get any better =) =) =)

except my internet keeps getting disconnected and i think it's driving everyone (including me) crazy
9:35 PM ; 0 comments

Sunday, April 09, 2006


i suddenly miss you so much. isn't it ridiculous? i'm missing you. i'm missing you. but i always pretend not to. i never call just to say i love you. i always have to find something to say, because i don't want to waste your time. you aren't even gone yet. maybe you're asleep. maybe it's the music. for your heart only, performed by the bandari orchestra. maybe. i just find it hard to verbalise what i think and how i really feel. it sounds stupid you know, hanging in the air. it's the sort of thing you never tell the person in question, because who needs your emotional insecurities? i never tell you when you make me sad, when you're the reason i cry.

you know i'm going to miss you, that maybe i already do, but you don't know how much. i'm not an easygoing person, i don't do anything in moderation. i don't want to make things harder for you. i'm losing you, but you're losing everything and everyone. you don't need to handle my angst on top of yours. i don't mean to appear cold. but words only go so far.

when did we stop holding hands? we used to hold hands all the time. link arms. rest our heads on each other's shoulders. i feel very cold and very lonely. and as stiff and unresponsive as a straw scarecrow.

i wish you'd tell her, so it won't feel as if i'm trying to hold the fort all by myself. so i won't keep returning to that building feeling hollow, won't keep looking at her and wondering what she'll do when she hears.. she shouldn't have to be the last to know. she does care, even if she doesn't really show it. but i suppose she'd hold everything inside as usual. i didn't react at first. too stunned, maybe. i didn't realise what it all meant until i woke up the next morning. and now i'm starting to count the days. and what happens after this? what do i do? how do i live? who's going to come over and bake brownies with me when i'm down? who'll talk to my parents for me when i do badly? whose house will i stay over at and feel completely at ease in? who the hell do i turn to, when everyone's going away?

i wish i were stronger. more supportive. i'm not unsupportive. i'm just still trying to grapple with the fact that life is about losing. it's starting to look as if all i have to do is love someone to lose her. i don't even have to walk away. life takes them all away, somewhere out of reach, and we lose what we had. where's the point in fighting against it, fighting to keep something as intangible as a mist? it's slipping out of our fingers, and i wish, i honestly wish i could do something about it. even if i were to call, what would i say? i've said all i mean to say to you. what would i do, sob down the line? it isn't fair to you.

you hurt me once, with the things you said. i called someone when i finally couldn't take it, and all i could do was sob. i swore i wouldn't do it again. i'm strong enough on my own. good girls don't cry, bad girls don't die. i can do this. life can't break me anymore.

i transfer my agony in careful flicks of my wrist, onto the shedding black. the silver emerges, unscathed. life is what you make of it. i'm going to be strong. nothing's going to get me down. and even if the boogeymen come.. they won't scare me, they can't break me. loneliness is the human condition. i don't think i have much left to lose anymore. everyone has either gone, or is going, or will go. maybe one day i'll leave too, when the emptiness becomes too much to bear. emptiness in a familiar place is all the worse for its strangeness amidst familiarity.

but, oh God, how i miss you already.
11:08 PM ; 0 comments


with my head on the phone

just watched 'the wedding date'. i love the bit where they play the chorus of all out of love as the car cruises down the road. somehow i'm reminded of us, the plc 03/04. not that we ever got drunk or drove around late at night wearing miniskirts and kneehighsocks. but the sheer exhilaration, and the screaming and laughing like there's no one who'll get us for making noise.. remember the day we got promoted? and we ran screaming in the rain (literally) all the way to serene centre, soaked to the bone and dripping rainwater in the toilet? why do i get the feeling i'll still be talking about this twenty years down the road? it's already been three years. whoa i feel so old.

sometimes i hate going to school. same old rooms, same old faces, even the same old sounds. and i don't care for any of them. i remember i never used to want to skip school or even leave early because i didn't want to miss out on a single minute with my friends. never skipped a guides meeting, or a plc one for that matter. cos well it wasn't really a cca meeting to me, it was more like an excuse to be with my friends. is that how school life should be? where you go to school even if you have a test, because recesstime is worth it? i never used to skip school on thursdays and fridays, because those were lit days, the days i looked forward to all week long. i loved lit. now it scares me, because i don't feel anything. i don't connect with any passage, i'm completely numb and slow and it feels like i'm in a constant fog, completely unable to express myself coherently and accurately. i just want to stab myself and die, thinking about it. sometimes i wonder.. do christians who commit suicide really go to hell?

incidentally, my father mentioned that he might recommend me to a missionary friend of theirs in vietnam. she set up a school in a city there, and he thought i might want to go over next year. i don't know what i'd do there, observe and do simple tasks? i can't possibly master a language well enough in a matter of months to do admin work. sounds good anyway. even though i'd prefer a village to a city. not too keen on pollution, it affects my breathing. something to look forward to? sometimes i'm scared that i'm just another incurable romantic, searching desperately to make sense of her life, only to realise that she never had one to begin with. i know the song goes 'sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see', but what if the very thing you're looking for is the one thing that simply doesn't exist? ughhh.

just remembered what van and i were saying the other day.. if we were to live together, we'd never decide on anything. what sort of house to buy, the district, which dog to adopt, who to get which room, what to cook for dinner, what sort of pasta to buy.. maybe 'uh, anything, i'm okay' isn't such a fantastic response after all. we waste so much time being wishywashy. but nobody really wants to be too imposing. maybe it's a girl thing.

i love and hate most mainstream books and films for the same reason. they have conclusions. and these conclusions are generally quite predictable. the heroine ends up with the hero. or some other guy. but she tends to end up with someone, whereupon they live happily ever after. novelists and screenwriters shouldn't propagate this ridiculous notion. it just doesn't happen. okay, maybe only one in a million. or a thousand. or maybe a hundred. but it isn't the only way to have a decent ending. sure, it's a feel-good way to conclude the whole episode, but population stats alone prove that there will always be someone without a happy ending. chickflicks and chicklit are so predictable. no matter how successful the woman is, she can't be complete without finding her other half. what if she doesn't need another half? what if she is already complete? even classics, for goodness' sake. we are a people obsessed with love. and i hate to admit that i'm a chief culprit. being so paradoxical isn't fun. loving it or hating it, you still can't get rid of it.
9:31 PM ; 0 comments

Saturday, April 08, 2006
so tell me this

it isn't that we'll stop being friends, or we won't keep in touch, or anything like that. that isn't what bothers me. what bothers me is losing what we have right now. i'll miss the way things are, i'll miss us, i'll miss you the way you are, right here and right now. the you i know. the you before you grow older and wiser and more cynical. it isn't that i won't love the new yous. it's just that the way you are right now is perfect to me, and i don't want to believe that we aren't going to grow up together, that we'll have to do our growing separately. this is the 12th year i've known you. we've only had a worthwhile friendship for the last 5 1/2, but it feels like you've always been there. i'm scared to grow up by myself. i'm scared there won't be any sensible person by my side, keeping me rooted to God. i'm scared i won't know how to love myself. i'll have to keep making friends with you, over and over again, as we change and grow. not in the gradual, unnoticable way that we do, staying side by side, but in awkward leaps and bounds, when we meet face to face after months and years apart, and realise that phonecalls and emails only cover so much distance. you'll find new friends. get used to new weather. shop at different stores, eat different food, drink tea in a different way. would i have found someone by the time we meet again? would i even be here still? i know that i won't be. the i i am now, this half-changing hybrid of child and grownup. i hate angsting. i want to stab myself and fade away. i wish i were invisible. blend into the background, go unnoticed, let you walk right through me and never feel a thing. it seems that all i have to do is love someone to lose her. i've become so paranoid. chris was just the first of many. or maybe it's just a more obvious losing. we would have lost each other anyway, the individuals we used to be. i imagine with my rose-tinted glasses that i used to be happy. but then it's all comparative, isn't it?

the air-con is leaking behind me. i find the sound of droplets hitting the water surface very soothing. my mother looked at me like i was crazy when i said that. an identical look appeared on her face when i said that painting helps me to focus my thoughts. it's too overwhelming to just let the thoughts flood your mind, uncontrolled. i can channel them better when i'm doing something with my hands, imagine them flowing like paint down the brush, marking the white cardboard. irreversibly. on second thoughts, that's kinda scary.

i remember that red door and handle from my childhood. how is it that i hate it so much now?
8:07 PM ; 0 comments

Wednesday, April 05, 2006
sweet the sting

i think i sleep too much in a conscious effort to forget everything.

my new math teacher asked if i'm very stressed. i said that it's my natural expression. which is quite true. people are always asking if i'm okay. does it matter whether i am or not? i have to be. i'm just not a very cheery-looking person. i just didn't realise it until mari sketched me last year while i was staring into space. then when i saw it, i wanted to die, because i looked so impossibly sad. what's wrong with being sad anyway? some people just want to be happy. others know that it's an impossible state. there's no such thing as 'just being happy'. there will always be the bitter drop in your cup, and someone raining on your parade.

i'll be seeing everyone tomorrow. =) the one thought that keeps me going..
10:58 PM ; 4 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006
left right left, we all fall down

i feel i have a confession to make. a terrible one. is this why catholics confess? because it feels good to get it off their chests, feels good to share the burden? i'm not really sure i should impose my burden on someone else. we all have our own loads to carry. how do you apologise for wrongs committed years ago, wrongs that you hope have been forgotten? i've been hiding in oblivion, but that's just escapism. because i am sorry now, even if i weren't, and it feels too late to make amends.

you have come to be associated with the various things in my room, the various sounds and smells of my life. i think of you when i'm sipping hot jasmine tea, when i open a fresh packet of ruffles, even when i pull on the light-blue silk shirt i never wear anymore. and nightworld. i thought it was romantic to be madly in love with your enemy. the angst of not being able to touch the one thing you can't live without. maybe if romeo and juliet hadn't been so young and ridiculously melodramatic, if they'd been stronger and wittier and had fought against their inevitable love more, we'd have sympathized more with them. as it is now, they're the epitome of pathetic behaviour and the laughingstock of all jaded youth. pity. i haven't taken a neo-print since early last year. never thought i'd outgrow them. thank goodness i have. they seem so self-conscious and vain and pointless now.

i think oboes sound like ducks.
8:48 PM ; 0 comments

Sunday, April 02, 2006
(send in the clowns) don't bother, they're already here

sometimes i want to tell you how i feel, but i don't know how to put it across exactly how i feel it, so i try to form words out of it, and they spill out of my mouth like so many marbles, clattering and conscious. it isn't that you won't understand - okay, maybe it is - but i'm not sure you'll understand it in my context, which is what really matters..

i was feeling so frustrated and emotional this morning that i took up a pair of scissors and grabbing a lock of fringe, snipped it off. after which i realised that one section was now too short, so i had to attempt to salvage it. mari helped me trim my hair on friday in school, but she does it much better than me, so now i have a tuft of too-short fringe on my face. not that i really mind - out of sight, out of mind.

i have to go for com serve alone tomorrow again. i told myself to be strong, not to need anyone.. to be independent and hold my head up high.. but sometimes, a little company's nice, you know? i hate the weekends sometimes. i was sitting in the mrt, leaning my head back against the side of the train, when i noticed all these couples canoodling around me. i suddenly became very resentful of my comparatively cold and unyielding pillow, and tried to doze off to avoid unpleasant thoughts about my near future as an old crochety spinster. i think i prefer the bus. i feel less exposed on it. i can slide down the seat and hide behind whoever's in front of me. plus the seats are squishier.

by the way, doubt was okay. wasn't too bad, wasn't that great. a bit draggy. and not through-provoking enough. if i stop talking about something after 20 mins, it's about a c-grade piece of work. oh, and the person sitting in front of me was so tall (i mean his hair was), that every time the actors sat down, i couldn't see anything. maybe that's why i found it a bit draggy. i didn't want to keep shifting in my seat, so i just listened to the dialogue whenever they were sitting down.

they're playing your song on the radio. i don't know how i know since i don't listen to the radio, but every now and then, i get to thinking about you, and hmm, right now would be the perfect time to punch you into next week.

so detached. i don't like it when you cry noisily. except i do, sometimes. but not in front of people. i wish you wouldn't sob in front of me. it has this distancing effect on me. i findmyself taking a step backwards and watching us as if from above. emotions shouldn't be so raw. misery shouldn't be so uncontrolled. you're supposed to be strong, you have to be strong. grown-ups lie so much. they pretend that everything's okay, even when the ceiling's falling down around their ears. because they have to. that's how things should be. i want you to pretend. i want you to assume a facade of calm control, because i shouldn't have to be the cold, detached and entirely unmovable one. i shouldn't have to be the one dishing out spoonfuls of carefully doctored emotion like painkillers. because i lie too. like any other grown-up, i lie to the kids when i have to. when they're scared and so am i, i put on a calm and assured front, i gather them up into my arms and promise that everything will be okay. empty promises, because inside i'm freaking out too. i don't want to be brave and strong all the time, why don't you take a turn? i keep saying i'm okay, i have to be okay, everything is gonna be all right. we keep so much to ourselves, and cry alone when the demons in our minds torment us. i've never wanted to be me. pity i wasn't given the choice. but you don't want to be you either. nobody wants to be themselves, we all want something better, something greater, something.. else. sometimes love seems like too great a risk to take. if i don't love you, you can't hurt me, it's as simple (and hateful) as that.

i wish you'd come back. i wish you wouldn't go. i wish you hadn't gone. there are no stars in the sky. maybe such is life. and maybe if i hold my breath long enough, i'll wish myself into oblivion.
8:40 PM ; 5 comments

Saturday, April 01, 2006
raining on my own parade

called chris. i now have 4 hours left in my calling card. shall refrain from calling tomorrow. or maybe jan and i could call together when we meet. i don't think they've heard each others' voices in over a year. my mother walked in when i was on the phone. she always seems to suspect me of being involved in some secret relationship or other. it doesn't help that chris and i were always physically close. the older we grow, the more alone we become.

incidentally, i prefer chopin to mozart, particularly his waltzes. the rubartos are so expressive. or maybe i just prefer romantic to classical music in general, now that i think about it. hmm.

ever get scared of growing up and growing old? i'm not so much afraid of changing, than i am of not changing. i don't want to be this way for always, it's very tiring. besides, what if i look back and think, it could have been better, i could have been someone else better and nicer and sweeter and hell, more normal. more logical, more rational, calmer, stronger, more stable. but i can't seem to stablise myself. other people seem to drift along the river of life so calmly, so acceptingly, while i thrash about wildly and fight against everything until i'm tired enough to let go and just drown. but what if you're all lying through your teeth too? all this existentialism is getting to me, i'm going to eat twelve mars snack bars in a row.
9:02 PM ; 0 comments