Pressure: The Chronicles Of Insanity

The Education Quandary

2011-09-26T15:12:00.000+08:00

Ahhhh... it's been so long since I've last written. I blame O-levels, my really busy first year in Junior College, and tests, exams, more tests, more exams, and so much work up too my eyeball I'll be lucky if I even find time to clip my toenails. Ahem.

Unsavory talk aside, today I have (finally!) something to whinge about. The all-too-popular Singaporean grouse: the education system.

As our overseas friends will know, Singapore has an education parallel to South Korea and China: we depend very much on rote memorising, practice and more regurgitation. If our ministers this year tell you that they will be "placing more emphasis on holistic development", don't listen to them. That is an outright lie phrased in a myraid of different ways, and trust me, every one of those permutations will include "holistic", "framework", "all-rounder" and "nurture individual passions" and whatever educational mumbo-jumbo the Proud Arrogant People (not so proud nor arrogant after this year's iconic watershed election, but I digress) to pacify us commoners.

The maraschino cherry on the ice-cream sundae is, when questioned on the alarming numbers of children having to turn to private tuition to cope with the syllabus/ to stay ahead of the pack, our beloved education minister's response is:

"Oh, we aren't as bad as the Koreans."

Trust me, that's not reassuring at all.

I mean, come on. They have cram schools, which are essentially sort of private tuition centers students attend after school hours in hopes of cramming enough to get into a prestigious university. And entrance to these cram schools, diabolically enough, is based on results. Kind of makes you wonder if there is tuition for getting into a cram school, isn't it?

This reasoning, that "we aren't as bad as the Koreans", is akin to saying "Oh, you know what? The American debt isn't that bad, and our high unemployment rates are actually quite tolerable -- I mean, we aren't as bad as Rwanda/ insert-random-African-country-with-high-poverty-rates!" It really pisses me off. Why compare yourself to someone worse off in an attempt to mollify your ego? How hypocritical authorities are! When they're ahead of the pack, the newspaper headlines will proudly run their achievement for the entire bloody nation to see, but when they are somewhere at the bottom? "Oh, no, actually, that standard is irrelevant! It cannot be applied to this country's context you see, (insert some obscure, twisted tautology reminiscient of Catch-22). At least we aren't as bad as ______."

Sweetie, by pointing out the failures of another, you aren't exactly justifying why you are better. This reasoning is ridiculous, and I do wish to slap everyone who uses this argument.

Today, the Straits Times ran a very interesting article. "Homing in on homework!" goes the caption. The article when on to describe the beleagured students, the frenetic parents, eyebrows furrowed, as they passionately proclaim the multiple horrors of the current syllabus and how today's children have too much homework, blah-blah-blah. Yesterday's article was about parents taking enrichment classes on how to help their younger primary school children in their multiple subjects.

The only thing I remember, with much incredulity, is how a mother recounts her helping her primary two son with his math homework, only for the poor boy to return home in tears as the answer was correct but the method wrong. I imagine she used algebra instead of whatever modelling method schools currently employ.

This is ridiculous. It is MATH, for goodness' sake. There are multiple solutions to a task. So what if I choose to approach a question differently? Must I be wrong? Simply because majority of a population designates an answer as right, it does not make the option right. That option is simply more popular. Why must we follow a specific way to solve problems. If I can obtain a solution from algebra or logarithm or what-have-you (assuming all my steps are perfectly accurate, with no inconsistencies) instead of modelling, am I wrong? Simply dismissing a solution as wrong because it does not follow the standard - THIS is what is wrong with the education system.

You want creative thinkers, yet thinkers who follow the limits and established boundaries. You want out-of-the-box solutions, yet the solution has to meet stated criteria, or follow the path verified as the 'right, true' path. Dear education ministry, please make up your bloody mind. It's like saying you want a painting in red, yet no trace of red must be seen. How can one be creative if every step must follow a regulated process? How can one think differently from the pack and learn to approach a problem from another angle if you inculcate in them from young the merits and rewards of following a rigid guideline?

HOW CAN A METHOD BE WRONG? THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG METHOD, BUT RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS.

ARGHHH THIS REALLY RILES ME UP.

And parents still wonder why their children aren't creative enough, and bosses continue to outsource jobs to foreigners because "Singaporeans tend to be very bureaucratic and follow a rigid, top-down management. They have no independence. Now, Americans, foreigners - THEY are hungry. They are willing to approach the problem from another angle. They have initiative."

When will those happily shaking their feet in ivory-carpeted offices realise that it is not out of a lack of initiative, but rather a problem of 'nurture' that is causing generation after generation of Singaporeans to be so fearful of offending the status quo?

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot and then jabbing it repeatedly with a knife to ensure the wound doesn't heal.

Speaking of creativity, I was talking with my friend a few days ago over lunch in the canteen. Her sister works in a primary school as an art teacher. She told me something unbelievable: that art is taught in an extremely rigid structure. Basically, every week they would be colouring or doing some artwork from an art workbook, and taught the myraid ways of colouring. "Oh, but Authoress," you must no doubt be thinking, "that doesn't sound too bad! In fact, it sounds quite useful!"

Oh, but it is bad.

Every single week when a different colouring style is taught, the students can only colour their picture in that style, nothing else. No doing it differently. No experimenting. Just follow-the-teacher.

It really amazes me, the extent of rigid frameworks has even permeated one of the freest subjects - Art. Art is about the expression of oneself. It has no restraint, you can do whatever you wish and colour how you like. Of course, many art experts will disagree with me, they feel that for good art, it must reach a certain standard or embody a certain quality. But essentially, art is free, it cannot, and should not ever, be regulated. That is why people are still debating whether that display of a latrine is considered art.

What next? First you regulate our expression, then our thinking. Is the government going to go around regulating the way we dress? The way we choose underwear? The way we shower?

"First, ma'am, you should brush your teeth, and the toothbrush should employ a back-forth motion precisely thrice per tooth. Then, you wash your face..."
"But I like to wash my hair, then my body and face, and let the conditioner set while I brush my teeth. It saves time."
"Ma'am! Deviation from the Laws of Normalcy is highly illegal! That's a fine for Subversion and Disrupting Civilian Life and Harmony!"

Speaking of laws, I never understood how on earth they are going to regulate homosexual sex in our penal code. How on earth would they know whether or not you have sex with someone of the same sex? By conducting some nightwatch programme where the police patrol and knock on every single door to check?

I can just imagine this line:
"Excuse me, sir, we are just here to check that no illegal penetration occurs."

How catch-22.

The tuition situation is ludricuous. Let me deconstruct the situation.

1) Parents are unhappy because their children are overworked, and they are unhappy that the schoolwork is "too hard".
2) Therefore, parents send their children for many tuition classes, supplementary classes, extracurricular classes ("to unwind"), and buy a lot of assessment books so their children can come up top. This also explains the power of Popular and its increasing expansion of assesment book aisles, one shelf for every subject at every level, sometimes more. And guidebooks. Let's not forget the prolific 'underground' trade of past-year examination papers.
3) Parents force their children to do these extra homework, adding on to child's burden
4) Children cannot cope, cannot finish schoolwork/try too hard to finish all the work and neglect other key areas of development e.g. ability to do housework. Parents write angry letters to Straits Times mourning children's inabilities and how they are 'spoilt'. But that it irrelevant.
5) Go back to (1).

At the root of the problem is simply an overemphasis on paper credit. Every single year parents nod along solemnly as school principals outline how they are going to develop the child's other skills. Every single year as examinations draw near the speech is quickly forgotten and parents/ teachers pile on more practice papers so the child can stay ahead of the population. What results is that the child gets steadily overworked. Should the child survive, if you're lucky you'll wind up with a prodigy a la Tiger mum's kids, if you are unlucky you'll get another automaton who will be unemployed after graduation from university and have the huge university tuition debt to contend with, while bosses outsource foreigners who are 'hungry' and 'flexible'.

That is your child's future. That is my future. To stay ahead of the curve I'll have to go to a more prestigious university, ideally in the U.S., and then I'll have to borrow to meet the 40,000+ tuition at a reputable university. If I wanna be successful and rich, I'll have to be a doctor, so let's say I study for about a decade. That amounts to 400,000+, excluding travel fees and housing and miscellanous spending like enjoying the big city life of US, going snowboarding and whatever activity I can't do in tropical Singapore, which is the whole point of studying overseas and not in NUS or NTU. Assuming I'll have to get attached to a hospital and be paid peanuts, and steadily work my way up (IF I find employment), I'll bet I'll be fit to retire by the time I pay off my debt and have a somewhat normal semblence of a life.

So don't begrudge your doctors and lawyers. They deserve earning a lot of cash, primarily because most of the cash probably goes towards paying taxes, their infinitely more ginormous education debt, and staying au courant of the latest medical technology. Correct me if I am wrong but that's what I think.

The only way for me to be debt-free by the time I'm in my thirties or fortiesis if I join the flesh trade!

(Note: I'm just joking. Please do not join the flesh trade.)

Man, if life as an angsty teenager sucks so bad, I don't even want to know what life as an adult would be like. I'd give anything to go back to my whiny, whingy days as a secondary school student when life's biggest problems was getting into some prestigious writing program and attempting to prove my worth. In between verbally assaulting anons and acting like an unlikable, snarky smartass with an ego problem, life was so much simpler.

Lessons learn outside of school

2011-02-05T17:54:00.000+08:00

ramblings of an isomniac

2010-12-23T03:03:00.002+08:00

I apologise if some parts of this post do not sound altogether coherent, or are even grammatically incorrect (O! The horror!).

While lying awake in bed with nothing better to do than to reflect on life and life's great problems (tried thinking about determinism and such other great philosophy concepts but I kept getting off track - the more analogies I tried to draw up to understand the concept, the more the concept slips away from me. I swear that the ancients simply enjoy working complex issues into even more complex sentences to torture lesser beings a couple of centuries later. First comes the figuring out of the language, then after the language you gotta figure out what the hell they're talking about... fun, yes, on a lovely afternoon, fanfiction-less, but very much sweat-inducing and sleep-chasing at 3 a.m.). Ahem. It seems that I have managed to meander about the subject without actually coming into contact with the subject matter.

Okay. I was in bed, yeah? Let's return to that. I don't look particularly ravishing in bed or anything, but lemme get to the point. So I was reflecting on my writing and the various ills of my writing attempts recently and my lack of talent and shameless purple prose, then one thing led to another and I thought back on the feedback given to me by various teachers + well-meaning people who have read my work and given me feedback.

The general consensus was that one: my language was complicated. Two: my concepts aren't helping any. Three: My characterisation, or lack thereof, was piss-poor. Technically they did not say the third, but my Arvon tutor more of less implied it, and I do agree with her. The only 'gift' of mine, if it may be termed that way, is my way with imagery, and nowadays I don't even have that.

So now you see the nascent link between my earlier seemingly desultory ramblings of philosophy and my writing.

In short, Good imagery + convoluted writing + near ostensible lack of plot + poor characterisation = purple prose.
Then, the most recent development: cheesy imagery + bad metaphors + nonexistent symbols + putrefying characterisation + no plot at all + no emotion + trying too hard = Stephenie Meyer.

Oh no. I'm turning into her. *rips hair off and screams like a banshee*

Now you know why I am so bloody miserable. Writing was all I had to distinguish myself, a part of my identity. I took pride in it. "I'm a writer, and a failed poet," I would announce proudly to whoever I met. "That's why I'm different. That's why I have crazy ideas and want to try them out. That's why I meander off sometimes and stare at people and their smiles and frowns and bad hairdos. That's why I stay up at unearthly hours in the morning to blabber. That's why I use such odd words to express myself, and have an strange opinions.

You'd think that I would feel right at home with a group of fellow writers. Oddly enough, I didn't. I felt like a nervous thumb sticking perpendicular to a fist, a bump on the road, a curve in a spine. I felt like my lips were melting, or perhaps they were sewn on in thick, controlled stitches like patchwork dolls. In short, I felt even more out of place, even more an oddity, even more useless and undeserving of whatever I've managed to achieve. I have an inferiority complex a mile wide and an ego made of plastic containers bought at the dollar store. At first glance it looks sturdy and perfectly normal, able to withstand normal pressures, then you pour hot water in to sterilize it first before readying it for the cocktail of life there's the smell of melting plastic hooking its fat fingers into your nostrils and the bottle is a little bent, a little warped, never quite the same despite the damn hot water being there for a few seconds.

I have a lot of cause for blame. I know I shouldn't be whining about it like a petulant five-year-old who's denied ice-cream before dinner, because there are people out there with fates worse than mine, like abused spouses and child prostitutes and muzzled whores and the many people out there with relatives in hospitals. People with AIDS or cancer or some other animal disease gnawing at their eyes and voices. I know all this, but sometimes being mature is kinda difficult. Something has got to give.

You know when you're a kid looking at mummy or daddy or watching those movies you'd think how glamorous it would be to be an adult - no supervision, being able to walk to the local cornershop without someone tagging along, earning your own money, voting, marrying, falling in love, buying a car, buying whatever you damn well please. Movies and adults, sadly, don't really show the tedium of being one. The neverending bills and work and more bills and taxes and hungry mouths and a marriage, maybe dying or soaking up shadows of people's insecurities, things people throw in closets and lock them there so they don't have to deal with it now, but eventually they run out of space and everything comes spilling out. No, movies don't show that - even prisoners of afganistan or russian spies, in movies, are still amazingly beautiful and they somehow get their happy ending at one point.

I'm tired I guess. Part of it is physical, because I really should be sleeping but my brain is like this hamster which overdosed on crack and is still hallucinating lovely dreams of purple afternoons. Some of it is borne from frustration - frustration at how stuff you imagine never quite turn out right when you apply it to paper or onto Microsoft Word. Characters which refuse to walk off the plane of your mind and slip into neat rows of characters (pardon the weak pun) and spaces, instead ambling off like a past thought and burying themselves somewhere in the graveyard between subconciousness and forget-ment. Forgetment sounds nicer than forgetfulness and forgetting and forgotten, anyway. It's like the process of forgetting, but past tense since the present is the future's past (I probably sound like an idiot) but less past than 'forgotten', which is a definite. Nevermind. I'm confusing myself too.

Perhaps my age is an advantage. I'm not too sure how many people look back to their teenage days and wish for it, but it's still a pretty crucial growing period. Since I'm in this minty stage I might as well use my perspective to my full advantage and capture the prevalent sentiments of hope, of fear as well as impetuosity of teenagers. I think I know why most of my writing failed. I failed because I did not fully understand the issues I was writing about - huge, life issues like love (bloody difficult to define and capture), hatred and family. Rootedness. Responsibility. Lust. Sure, if I'm a good enough writer I can fake it, but I find myself lacking. I find that the pieces I wrote on a subject matter I've had the opportunity to examine up close and lend my own perspective are actually my most successful, and not those where I tried biting off more than I could chew. Teenage jaws are still in their formation period, I guess. My jaws are too small, I can't bite into the core of the matter, the glistening, golden bead every poet wishes to touch and present in their cushioned stories.

I guess it is only when you, as a writer, as a person, understand an issue, then you can properly teach or share your perspective. It wouldn't do to come off as brash and ignorant.

I need sleep.

Nightmare

2010-12-14T15:42:00.002+08:00

I had a nightmare last night.

The term 'nightmare' is quite a misnomer -- it can happen any hour of the day, morning or early afternoon, in between lessons in the creak of gears in your teacher's voice, or hiding under the hoarse throat of the overhead fan as morn turns to noon. Or it could be sneaking under the intangible static under the clouds, that magical moment where night ceases and day begins.

For my nightmare to occur precisely between the time of 0715 to 1345, it pretty much proves that the nightmare in question is of another league. The contents of the nightmare itself, having occurred during normal operational hours of non-lazy humans (i.e. anyone who is not a slob a.k.a.
me, slob extraordinaire) has made it more real than the mumblings of sweat-filled sheets in the dark. Real enough to occur in life itself.

I would say I was never so relieved to wake up, but that would be a lie because I had once dreamt of dying when I was seven and when I woke up I held my breath for as long as I could so I can feel the burn in my lungs and tell myself that I am alive, and not dead but alive in some weird alternate dimension. Besides, dying in sleep has got to be one of the most pathetic, though least painful deaths ever. If I die I hope to be drowned under a sky pouring down torrents of money, (preferably of whatever currency that's the strongest at the moment) or hot gold or chocolate. But I figure I wouldn't be very happy dying that way because for the thing you like to be the cause of your death is probably going to be very traumatic, and I'm going to die with a newly-minted trauma, which is so...I'm rambling again aren't I?

Anyway, let's move on to the contents of the nightmare, shall we?

In my dream those people who had scored extremely well for O-levels had the honour of receiving their results early and having their names announced to the general assembly. The setting was largely informal, but everyone was (oddly enough), attired in p.e. uniforms. I was glancing down my class when the principal, newly bald, went up the cardboard stage that had been set up for this very occasion, it seemed. I remember the setting was moving, like a mirage, sometimes beaming the image of the polluted cchms lake, sometimes of another town square in a foreign land. Anyway, he skipped the speech and went straight into announcing who did well.

I didn't recognise any of the names, or the faces that lit up with joy, but I was still waiting in expectation when the final name was read out to a volley of cheers before all went silent. Then I heard the talking.

"Where're the RP people?"
"No-one from MD or LY was called out..."
"Funny, they did well in prelims didn't they..."

I was swept along in the general confusion when the vice-principal ascended the stage and spoke (in surprisingly good English).

"I know you might be surprised that your favourite candidates' names were not announced. However, contrary to speculation, RP did not do very well. I would once again like to remind you that with hard work, you can displace anyone. Congratulations to candidates who have done well."

Somehow time had fast-forwarded to the day of results collection, and I glanced down at the results slip in my hand...and was shocked at the number of B's I had. Seven.

Then I started panicking, and I woke up in sweat.

Whoever coined the phrase 'woke up in cold sweat' was obviously lying because I was sweating profusely and it was goddamn hot though both the fan and air-con was on, and sometime in my
sleep I had kicked off my blankets.

When I woke up, it was 1400 exactly. My mind was clear, which is a pretty strange phenomenon in itself because normally I would have the brain capacity of an ostrich on cocaine when freshly awoken. I had the misfortune to mentally recap the papers and how badly I did and was almost convinced I was going to do very badly for every paper. Like get a B for English and English Literature, a B for Chemistry and Physics.

Somehow, in writing it down, the nightmare feels more real. I'm honestly terrified. Most of my dreams are quite prophetic, with some coming true in a weird, uncanny way. Like me visiting places I've never gone to and then visiting reality's replica of that place a few years down the road. Or seeing repeats of situations I find in dreams.

Thankfully, so far, all my nightmares of the apocalypse coming in form of trolls and combusting suns haven't come true yet. I'm pretty sure that trolls don't exist. However, considering the number of times I've dreamt of being trapped in an elevator, getting lost in a mall, traversing an unfamiliar road looking for something, I think something bad is going to happen, and soon. These dreams are more likely to happen in real life, but I'm hoping that I won't get trapped in an elevator. The suffocation and claustaphobia and the sudden drop of the elevator when the cables are severed is no fun.

Now you, my friends, know why I 1) really loathe thrill rides and 2) Refuse to enter an elevator on my own.

I hope the other shoe won't drop on my O-level results.

You know, this waiting and anticipation is a form of torture. I remember reading an article last year about an experiment proved that the wait itself is actually more terrifying than the pain.

The experiment went like this: a few victims were chosen. They had the choice to choose between getting an electric shock at any time, or getting a shock at a higher voltage, only that this time they know when it's coming.

Most people (can't remember the exact percentage) chose getting a shock at a higher voltage.

The experiment showed that it is not pain itself that we fear, but the unknown. The wait for an unknown pain. The constant fear and worry and trepedition. On a sidenote, that's how battles are won: keeping the enemy in a constant state of worry and stress. Psychological breakdown.

This is exactly what's happening to me. I am the person sitting in a comfortable armchair with one arm coiled with wires, waiting for the shock. I do not know when it will come, how many seconds exactly to wait. I have to constantly brace myself aginst the shock, and be reluctant to relax because of the fear that the electric shock will come when I'm all self-assured and confident I am safe.

I know I won't fail. I can't fail. No one is stupid enough to fail O-levels.

I'm afraid I can't live up to be what I think I was. My own expectations. My friends'. My family's. Afraid of the string of B's. When I examine it from every angle I am pretty sure of the B, even though my heart if telling me it can't be that bad.

I don't know. Ultimately, hope is a good thing, enabling us to push through and live another day. Giving us a reason to live.

Hope also destroys the perfectly-laid foundations for the walls you've hidden behind to protect yourself from yourself and your ambition.

A while ago, in the thick of exams I was lamenting that there wasn't enough time. Enough time to study, enough time to really memorise and get everything crystal clear like how I envisioned taking my exams in a blaze of knowledge and poise when I was in Secondary One, disappointed with my PSLE aggregate but determined to prove myself once more.

Now, I'm afraid, there's too much time. Too much time for regrets and calculations and artifices where I could've done something better or chosen this option. Too much time before I am proven delightfully wrong in my assumptions that I would do badly or graviously right. Too much time to speculate and open old wounds.

I have my options now. I have to prepare a safety net. A list of colleges that will accept a failure. Or just damn everything to hell and live in the moment before I get bogged down by responsibilities.

Looking back on my post, I realise that seven is a recurring number. Seven is a number of magic, from what I can remember, along with thirteen. Or was it three? No, three is a holy number. 4 is, unaminously, a number of forboding.

Here's to hoping that the recurring sevens in my life spell out a blessing.

Lessons you learn out of school

2010-11-22T16:22:00.002+08:00

Everyone will agree that whilst an education institution is no doubt necessary in our lives to prepare us for our future careers, there are some vital lessons in life one cannot learn in school. Barring the usual overly sentimental responses like love, life and friendship, there is also what I call the Singaporean heel. Our Achilles heel.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Okay, pretend you have hundred bucks. Now you have plenty of things you want to buy, all of which are in the above-thirty-dollar range. The headphones provided along with your brand new music player is uncomfortable and ugly (now the latter is a very valid reason to discard a pair of headphones if you're a girl). You know you need a good pair of headphones for travelling, however, a good pair of headphones would cost you half of your given sum. Browsing through all authorised headphones distributors at your local mall has confirmed this. Dispirited, you go home, only to find the headphones you've been eyeing selling at those unauthorised retail outlets -- for half the price.

What do you do?

Do you:
a) Sod it all and go for the more expensive product available at authorised distributors
Rationale: Authorised distributors are trusted, so you're sure to get a genuine product, plus servicing if needed
b) Look at the packaging - hmm seems okay Yeah lao ban I want one!
c) Give both choices an evil eye and spend the money somewhere else instead (option not available)

I'll make an assumption here that most people would go for option b, especially students with small wallets and an even smaller wad of pocket money. Why? It's cheap, looks similar to the one sold in the store, and hey, more money can be directed elsewhere!

This is what I term as the Singaporean Mentality : The love for all things cheap / bargains.

Now, thrift is a perfectly good trait to have if you're trying to decide between at regular $2 wastepaper basket (if you go to Daiso that is), or a bloody gold one (I wouldn't put it past royals to get one). It is, unfortunately, NOT a good trait to have if you're seriously contemplating totally nixing the plastic wastepaper basket and just piling it on the ground. It is also not a good trait to have when you're deciding between a trusted brand's hair straightener and a cheap, unreliable one, if those reports about straighteners blowing up in people's hands are anything to go by. And it most certainly is a downright awful trait to have if it causes you to buy suspicious electronics for a lower price and then return home, google it, and find that the version you have is yet another cheap knock-off.

Pardon me. Right now I am feeling slightly hostile towards China due to their ignominous, shameless copying and mass manufacturing of fakes. I'm very sorry if you happen to be from China, because while I understand that China does have some reputable companies with high-quality goods, the sheen of China's emerging industries and the glimmer of its reputation is somewhat tarnished by these black sheep.

Though, quite understandably, it is my fault in the first place for buying cheap products.

WHEN WILL I EVER LEARN??????

So yup. If you think my blog is pretty senseless and bimbotic, and that I am a pompous, overbearing git, please at least learn this lesson before discarding whatever I have to say. Don't. Ever. Buy. Cheap. Products. Especially products with prices that are really really different from ones sold at the local authorised seller, like Harvey Norman. You'll live to regret it (Like I am now, the salient thought running through my mind is:OHMIGOD can I still bring this through the airport will they confiscate it at customs for being counterfeit but I thought it was real is that a reasonable defense ARGHH no I don't have aussie $220 to pay the damn fine ohmigod how how how ARGHHHHH I hate bloody china knockoffs!).

Advice before buying electronics:
1) Do your research. Ensure you know exactly how the product looks like, the accompanying accessories, the details such as the thickness of cord, the smoothness of the pads (Is it wrinkled or smooth?), the brightness of colours, the colour of the logo and its placement, the exact shape of the thing.
2) Scope online websites so as to get a rough estimate of the price
3) Check, check and recheck that the product you have corresponds to what you know. Look out for any spelling errors on the logo (e.g. Recently I saw a pair of ELECOOM headphones, and I knew they were fake straightaway as the genuine product is spelt ELECOM.) Also check that the spelling of the logo is exact to the genuine product (e.g. no caps where there shouldn't be caps, no extra dashes) This is what I call the Logo Test.
4) If the product is sold at those small retail shops, ask if you can open the box and see the product. Ensure that the plastic is sealed firmly, with no gaps.
5) Check that the 'L' and 'R' is printed correctly on the ear pieces, it should not be upside down.
6) This is very mean but check whether the object is made in China. Do not buy if 1) the object is sold at a price that is way lower than what is quoted at authorised sellers 2) the quality of the product is suspect 3) accompanying accessories (if there are) and 3) The product has failed the logo test, and the colours are way off, then don't buy it.

Of course there are other things you can check like the packaging, but often I find that unless you're very familiar with the genuine product and its packaging, you can't tell the diff between the real deal and the fake. So the logo test is by far the best way to tell.

Dry Shampoo

2010-11-19T20:43:00.002+08:00

I took yet another plunge and rebonded my hair yesterday. Boy am I ever so relieved to iron those defiant waves back to stick-straight submission! See that, waves? Thou shalt not exist on Chanel's head unless you want to soak in chemicals and ironed like common laundry!

Unfortunately, the salon I frequent recently moved to Millenia Walk. Thank goodness I called them up to enquire about the price, because they would've charged me 300+ without batting an eye. Sodding daylight robbery, I tell you. I'd rather spend those 300 bucks on a new camera (eyeing a canon camera) instead of my hair, however argably important my hair is.

I then went about Marine Parade, trying to find a decent price for my rebonding job. The best price for the L'Oreal extenso one was $170, cut included. No, wait, that was second-best, but I had already booked an appointment there. And the salon staff seemed friendly and honest enough, so I can't very well back out without feeling guilty. Damn. The best price was $140, cut and treatment included at a place called cut and curl.

I spent the next half an hour rationalising that since the charge is too cheap, and the product(s0 themselves are expensive, and adding on utility expenses as well as labour, there is no possible way they would charge peanuts and expect to survive. It's business. They've been operating there for about 5 years, so if they offer such cheap packages, either the product itself is defective or they use normal straightening cream and try to bluff impressionable young people like me who, upon flipping the pages of a glossy Seventeen magazine, suddenly become convinced that wearing expensive perfume to prom is a MUST. There. Rationalisation completed. Guilt alleviated. Wallet now sporting a very large laceration and a jagged wound.

Anyway the whole point of this leading-in story which is much less interesting than how I envisioned it in my head is that I paid bloody $170 for my rebonding job, and it damn well better be well-maintained and awesome. I walked out of the salon, absolutely happy with my straight hair and thinking that, yep, three days will melt away. And the new moon, like a silver bow -

Yes, that was from Midsummer Night's Dream. A totally random and shameless interjection meant to prove that I did study for the Literature exam. Where was I?

Oh, right. The whole lalaland bombz thing, wherein I thought things will go smoothly. Nuh-uh. With my luck, everything goes pear-shaped. Shit I loathe my luck, I wish I could tear it out like a leathery skin and cast it away, preferably into a marine trench where a hapless shark can eat it and become shark's fin soup. No, no, not a shark, sharks are endangered already. What about cancer? Yeah. Cancer can eat my bad luck up and die and this animal disease will no longer be able to claim someone's aunt's life.

It was only Day One after rebonding, and my mum already noticed my oily hair. Ugh. Why can't my hair oils be evenly distributed along the entirety of my mane? I reckon I'll be able to save on frizz-taming serums, leave-in conditiners, treatment masks, conditioners, salon shampoos; the whole gamut and spend the money, instead, on...on... Holy crap I just realised that I spend the most on my hair. On a string of dead cells coated with keratin. My life is so fulfilling. My money is sooo well spent. Can't you feel the sarcasm oozing off every word like snot?

Yeah, my similies definitely need some work.

Since it's only Day One, with two days of oiliness to go, I figured I can't keep sticking to the MyNew-Haircare-Product-Is-Too-Rich excuse. I can't go with the But-I-washed-my-hair-I-just-exercised-a-lot excuse either, because that is a complete bald-faced and blatant lie, since my mum very well knows I haven't exercised a day in my life since the conception of Miss PC and Mr Internet, as well as the very gender-confused Novel.

Thankfully, Mr Google has a solution. Introducing....dry shampoo!

I know. I wasn't familiar with dry shampoo beforehand either, due to preconceived notions of shampoos being all liquid and wash-off, preferably sudsing with loads of lather, zankyou. Heck, I didn't even know it existed until last year, when I was worried of my shampoo being too harsh and stripping the natural oils away. Excessive vanity, thy name is Chanel.

Obviously, ever since the Egg Hair Mask Disaster of 2008, the discovery was met with an appropriate volume of disbelief as well as scorn. Ha, dry shampoo? As if! You're not gonna take advantage of a poor wide-eyed, albeit pimply, teenager's trust and turn her lovely tresses into gladiator spikes! Or dandruff! Or hair sludge (Is that possible? If you kow, don't answer that, please. Some things are better left unknown.) Or something of equal horrendous, disastrous, catastrophic, cataclysmic proportions and magnitude!

Well, there is that, those risks...but I was deperate to escape detection since I wasn't supposed to rebond my hair (and amazingly, my parents didn't notice. I had a perfectly good explantion prepared, which includes gesticulation as well as some rather far-fetched theories on the combined abilities of a simple hair dryer and a comb producing straight locks. Rebond? Moi? Non, non. It's mind over matter [herein I insert a charming smile and try to distract them with my green painted nails. Don't arch your eyebrow. I think green is a perfectly respectable colour for nails]).

Oh well. At least I don't have to go out and purchase a bottle - cornmeal (whatever that is), starch, and baby powder will do very well. It's easily obtainable...of no cost...Hm.

At least the hugeass bottle of Johnsons and Johnsons languishing at the back of my closet will get its one silver moment of glory. I'm doing a good deed. Yes, I'm getting pretty adept at lying to myself and rationalising, I know. It's an ability magically acquired during O level year.

The powder is innocent. Is innocuous, sitting calmly in my palm like tufts of icing sugar. I took a breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and hoped for the best while sprinkling the powder liberally over a small section of my fringe. I figured that this way, I can easily do damage control. If it works, I try it out the next day, yippee for non-detection and sayonara head that looks like a BP oil spill. If it doesn't...well, a rather thick fashion magazine told me that grey, apprently, is an 'in' colour as a dye, because it is 'chic', 'unique' (a maybe-euphemism for 'downright awful', right up there with 'repulsive', 'repugnant' and 'odious-but-I'm-too-polite-to-say-so') and...current? I forget the exact words, but I do remember the word 'chic'. Lady Gaga dyed her hair grey. Lady Gaga is considered to influence the fashion industry, and is fashionable, nevermind the numerous tabloids who dismiss her style as kooky or plain weird. So, grey is good. Grey is not so bad. Grey is - HOLY CRAP IT WORKED!

Within seconds the powder separated the clumped-together hair and the hair is dry and smooth once more, feeling clean, although albeit discoloured (i.e. grey). It all falls out better than I could hope for! (Cue fireworks and celebratory chocolate.)

Alright, ladies. So now you know what to do during those three tortuous days of being unable to wash your hair even though your hair is repulsingly oily! Broken down into FOUR easy steps:

1.Simply dump 2-3 tablespoons of your powder of choice (I used baby powder, Google says alternatives include salt [but salt tends to cling to extremely oily hair, so I don't recommend that], cornmeal, oat, flour... ), then massage it into your scalp (and into oily parts of hair, if necessary. I did that to my fringe, and it worked out fine).

2.Comb it through the oily parts, and add more if needed (to make things easier, just add until you can separate individual strands from a clump of oily hair).

3. Afterwards, let it set for about 5-10 minutes. This is to let the powder absorb the oil.

4.Then, turn your head upside down and brush your hair out. Try doing it over a sink, because it can get a little messy. If you wish to be quick, though, you can use a hair dryer to blow the powder away. I can't say for sure when everything is brushed away, but I think if you just keep brushing for two to three minutes, everything will be more or less gone. Don't worry about it building up in your hair -- it's no different from the leave-on conditiners we all put. Just make sure that the grey is no longer visible.

Admittedly, I was initially apprehensive about the powder making me look like I had a case of chronic dandruff, but I'm happy to report that it didn't happen. It worked wonderfully, leaving that section of hair feeling clean and dry, no longer sticking together in clumps like oily hair. It's cheap, good, and excellent for those days when you're too busy to wash your hair, or if your hair is extremely oily and washing once a day just does not suffice. It's not recommended to wash your hair twice a day anyway, since shampoos strip your hair of oils, making it dry and brittle. Trust me on this.

A word of caution, though (and a little common sense) - Don't replace the normal (liquid) shampoo with dry shampoo. Well, I guess you can if you want to, but there's always the hygiene preference factor. Nothing quite beats lather and smelling nice and fresh like you preferred brand of shampoo. I heard that during confinement some expecting mothers use the dry shampoo for about one week and it worked out fine, so I guess the maximum length of time you can use it is one week? No idea, but it sounds quite...unsatisfactory.

Moral of story: Dry shampoo works. It is effective, and its effects are similar to that of shampoo, minus the oil-stripping. It is definitely faster than shampooing and conditioning, a major plus if you're rushing for time. But at the end of the day, I still love my normal L'Oreal shampoo more.

ARGHHH

2010-10-11T19:03:00.002+08:00

Irritated to the max! My irritation could propably act like some changing magnetic field which would induce an electromotive force which drives an induced current around the atmosphere around me, charging it. The air is pratically crackling with my foul temper.

I am never ever fucking gonna sleep without my phone again. Why? Oh, because I just decided to, at 5p.m. today, check my inbox, and bam! 8 messages, one of which was from singyan who informed me that the postponed SS consultation was today. At 11 a.m.

URGH!

To compound matters, the bloody morons who were my dad's assistants apparently felt this huge, pressing need to announce their uber awesome departure and arrivals with a resounding slam of the door. CAN'T PEOPLE JUST CLOSE THE DAMN DOOR SILENTLY? IT'S NOT THAT BLOODY DIFFICULT! Coupled with a faulty bladder which becomes full every 30 minutes or so, we have on hand a slow-moving percussion and bad english, which everyone knows rankles me to no end.

To be fair, it's not so much bad english as it is slurred vowels and syllables with an affected English accent. If you can't speak English, please don't try to make yourself sound better by imitating a faux american accent, it sounds like a cat having a stroke. How difficult is it to properly pronounce, "May I ask if your unit at the SAIL is for SALE?"

In their tongues the contractions and drawn-out vowels sound the same, so it came out as "May I ask if yeur uu-neet at the sehl (sell) is for sehl (sell)?"

How on earth are you, training to be a property agent, going to survive in this world if you butcher property names and slur your pronunciation over the phone, causing your prospective customers to wonder what the bleeding ruddy hell is that obnoxious woman saying??

I think I mentioned bladders earlier on in this post. Everyone knows you're not supposed to flush plastics down the toilet right? Common sense. Large paper towels for drying off your hands is not exception. Toilet paper is completely different from paper towels! God, can't these people use whatever's left floating about the insides of their skull to realise that it they won't try to flush A4-sized paper whole down the loo, then they probably shouldn't try with paper towels?

To prevent the paper towel from choking the pipe, I had to fish it out and throw it in the bin. And then sterilise my hand.

To sum up a rather foul day, my parents decided that today, of all days, was an opportune moment to broach the subject of me opening up. My mother was floating about in her fantasies of having those picture-perfect families with smiling children and whatever those corny commercials show. Everyone knows commercials are out to suck your cash anyway, and they are, more often than not, total blatant lies, especially regarding skincare products.

Well, sorry, mum, but I'm not gonna play along. We're not gonna sit down an dhave a bloody heart-to-heart talk because all that will achieve is rhetorical statements with rigid solutions as you try to enforce your views, and in the end I will have arrived at the conclusion that cuddling with a Nabokov or some philo will do me much better.

SS consultation is tomorrow. DAMNIT. I had totally forgotten and now I will have to plough through skills and content until I seem as if I know what I'm doing and what questions to ask.

Now I am seriously tempted not to sit for the damn exam. Running away seems to be a better solution than being a hero and valiantly struggling through it for the sake of righteousness and principle, because everyone knows that all heroes die. The ones that don't are either a) dictators b) extremely lucky/have loads and loads of power/cash so they have the advantage over their ursupers or c) fairytale.

2010-08-22T13:41:00.002+08:00

Poets are, in fact, lazy people. They crave a quick connection to another's soul without all the awkward get-to-know-you smiles and conversation like stunted creeper vines defacing public walls. They think too much and talk too little and in the end they are miserable, having one-sided imaginary conversations with would-be friends that somehow pan out more interesting than in reality.

I need to get out more.

Fuckitol--the new drug.

2010-08-20T22:15:00.003+08:00

Fuckitol.

Goddamnit, it's been an eternity since I've graced this little white space with the tedium of my life and my bratty rants but this is my space and I need to get rid of this pent up anger accumulating like a vent in my belly so fuck off.

I know I cannot sleep with this anger simmering in my belly and going to sleep pissed off is tempting Insomnia King, as well as his army of delusional, rabid bunnies with jade glow-in-the-dark teeth and mares which holler at night. Whatever. I am starting to question my own sanity.

All right. Social Studies -- also known as propaganda. I am absolutely SICK and TIRED of reading the same old bloody chapters about Stinkapore. Who the fuck bloody cares about the awesomeness of lee kwan yew and his oh-so-perceptive and smart maneuvers and his highfalutin, pompous self-congratulatory passages and achievements glorified within this shitty book?

I know for one I don't give a pink penguin's shivering arse about it. In melting ice because Antarctica is melting due to global warming.

Singapore is one tiny dot but for one tiny dot we sure make loads of noise. Yeah, every single damn page keeps telling students about our astute leaders and their wonderful achievements, elevating us from orang lauts we are at heart to this supposedly first-class state? the way they put it, you'd think that this country is maybe one of the top ten powers in the world and matters a whole lot.

BUT GUESS WHAT SINGAPORE? YOU'RE JUST A PATHETIC, TINY LITTLE VOICE TRYING TO GLORIFY YOURSELF TOO HARD, YOU ARE POEMS ON THE MRT, YOU AR E A THROWAWAY CULTURE AND A DENIGRATE TRYING TO MAKE HIMSELF IMPRESSIVE.

Your GDP per capita is only forty-something in the world. Not bad what, you say.

There are 113 countries ranked.

And we are two places below Malaysia, dunno how many places below Indonesia, and China, the country LKY has secretly despised and in our papers make it seem as if it were a third world country...guess what? Its GDP is IN THE TOP TEN.

In conclusion, we aren't worth a fuck in the world and we're too busy tooting our horn and pretending we are too good for everyone else when in reality we are a bunch of indulgent, complacent idiots with no social graces to speak of whatsoever, myself included.

Is this a love-hate relationship? Certainly, if a foreigner were to abuse Singapore I would defend my country, but I love it enough to recognise its faults. Maybe, just like Urbino Juvenal in Love in the Time of Cholera.

It's really amazing how much is omitted in our textbook. In the secondary four textbook, on globalisation, there is this little section on Venturing Abroad. The suzhou experience and the industrial park was mentioned, and the way they put it, while not exactly wrong :"Many Singaporean firms have set up businesses in the park." It also neglected to mention how the Singaporean delegates were blindsided by the Chinese because an identical industrial park (the Dalian industrial park, I think, correct me if I am wrong) was built RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO IT.
The Suzhou New District (SND) industrial park. As the Suzhou city government had only a minority (35%) stake in the SIP, while they had a major stake in SND, the city government largely ignored the SIP and concentrated on promoting the SND instead.

Oh, and it also neglected to mention the losses made in the first five years. Make your guess. One million? Nuh-uh. Higher.

Oh, it's kinda small, a nominal sum really... just a tiny weeny 90 FUCKING MILL ION US DOLLARS over a period of FIVE years.

Of course, Singapore got her hand roasted chaotah and retreated, settling for a 35% stake in the SIP instead of the original 65%, and the mos facetious thing about this was that a year after the Singapore government conceded defeat, the park made its first profit of 3.8 million.

-.-

That's pretty stupid investing and super suay if you ask me.

In the end, our dear, ambitious supposed-success foray into China ended up being taken over by the Taiwanese. Doesn't this simply showcase to the world our abilities? Wow, Singapore is so successful! Not!

And why haven't I read this in the Propaganda times aside from international news portals?

...

Now, don't get me wrong. I love history. I, in my own way, adore Singapore and have a special place reserved for her always. What I cannot stand is the damn writer tooting Singapore's horn as if she were some fucking goddess, because I know Singapore isn't. I hate fake, insincere, pretentious people. This writer is attempting to make Singapore better than she really is by projecting a sort of illusion over her, all the good but none the bad. It's unnatural. It's robotic. It's lost all the Singapore-ness and the humanity and the soul of this very island. Without flaws, and with a too-seamless government, Singapore seems...almost like an utopia. a 1984-esque utopia.

I still get chills down my back when I see words like 'Public education' and 'YPAP', because it reminds me too much of the reeducation processes and room 101 in 1984. Maybe it's my overactive imagination. Maybe I think too much. I don't know.

But really, would it hurt us to be humble now and then? Just come out with it, say "Okay, to tell the truth Singapore isn't that great...here's what we accomplished, here are our dreams, and here's what we can do better..." instead of OHOHOHOHO LOOK AT ME MAN I AM THE GOD OF AWESOME. MY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM OWNS BRITAIN'S BECAUSE A WELFARE STATE SUCKS.

I don't know if you people have detected this tint of selective lying and the proposed superiority of Singapore in the book. Maybe I'm just paranoid and screwy after reading the damn book front to back and being exhausted.

My conclusion is, never trust politics, which is kinds irrelevant. Oh, and don't piss of LKY because he'll sue the living daylights out of you.

Sometimes I wonder how the foreign students put up with it. I know I would be goddamn irritated if I were forced to take a mandatory subject like this, only filled with communist and socialist policies and forced to memorise and regurgitate every detail and still fail. Hell, I would be expelling spurts of fire from my nostrils and burning effigies of personalities displayed in the book.

What's the point of Social studies anyway? Sure, learning about different government systems is cool and I can totally apply it to my life, I do see the relevance but from the way things are posed in the textbook, it's as if the book are propelling us to the conclusion that there is no other system for Singapore other than the PAP system. They nicely addressed all issues and disgruntlement Singaporeans have towards the PAP within this very book and test us on it for our exams. Like the issue of foreign talent, lauded as 'thieves of rice bowls', amongst other more unsavory names.

the list.

2010-07-01T20:25:00.002+08:00

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read ENTIRELY
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

Here’s my response:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (I. Hate. Austen.)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X (duh)
6 The Bible X (yes, all of it)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens *
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I'm afraid not T.T)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (In progress)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (In progress. Again. Hey, it's a mighty thick book, thick as the dictonary...)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck *
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen (I tried. Really, but I didn't get past page 100 because I fell asleep).
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden X+
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood *
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding *
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel*
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (Ugh).
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (sounds interesting)
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov X++++++ (YES YES OMG YES IN ORGASMIC BLISS NOW)
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville *
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker (In progress since English first period)
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce X (When I was primary four...can't remember much of the storyline)
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath * (Ooh lookie the poet laureate winner!)
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton X (I think so.)
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+ (YESYESYES but the translated verion I'm afraid)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X (Don't ask.)
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Tally: 16 out of the 100. Not bad, really. One for every year of life, if I should live up till a hundred.

kafka on the shore

2010-06-11T15:04:00.002+08:00

It was meant to be balm for the injured ego, but to be honest, this book quite frustrated me.

By 'frustrated', I don't mean that the style was complicated or the language completely foreign, in itself the language is uncomplicated and easy to read. In terms of style, it is certainly lighter than Lolita or The Scarlet Letter -- there's less difficulty with a lot of complicated imagery and old english. However, I don't know whether this is due to the clunky translation of the original but the prose just reads...weird.

I'm not much of a dialogue fan, heck, I'm not good at critiquing dialogues chiefly because I can't write dialogues myself and know absolutely nothing about the art of dialogue-writing ( should such a thing exist) but being the opinionated little bitch I am, I just have to launch this polemic.

Most of the dialogue in Kafka on The Shore (up to the point I've read page 197) seems stilted, almost forced to me, kinda like those lessons in the Lit room where Mr Ahmad would ask our opinions on a poem: "How do you think the metaphors in the poem contributes to the message of the poem? Class?" and everyone keeps surprisingly quiet, until a few students decide to sacrifice themselves and stop the pointless silence. But that's not the point. The point is, the whole book is filled with such discussions: Oshima, the librarian cum informal guardian of Kafka would ask him his opinion of something - be it Schubert's music or a book entitled The Miner or dear old Franz Kafka himself whose works have tormented many literature students, past and present; and Kafka (not Franz) would give a analysis/reply and they'll go back and forth, contemplating on the meaning of life love existence perfection .

Yes, I know at thi spoint I sound like a loquacious little girl with a vacuous mind and too-large mouth, and I have nothing to say to defend myself. This is, after all, my observations from my first reading.

My next peeve: what the heck is with all the description of food? Murakami goes to such length to inform us of what Kafka eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, how he prepares it (thank God Kafka prepares regular toast and eats out often, and he can't cook something as complicated as creme brulee). Is this really absolutely necessary? How is this useful to the reader? I get the feelin I'm supposed to be appreciating his work now and trust me, I am trying to find out why his prose is considered 'spectacular'. Some reviews I've read of this book are filed with nothing but praise of Murakami's genius, and how the attention to food is supposed to represent some sort of contrast: the contrast between the magic realism of the book (now this part I get, magic realism) and the mundane ordinariness of life, keeping the fairytale myth down-to-earth and very modern, but come on! Do you honestly have to delineate exactly what Kafka does every single bloody moment of his life, from doing morning exercises to reading a book, from what he eats in the morning when he wakes up ("open a box of crackers and have a few with cheese" and later "Back at the cabin I cook ham and eggs in the frying pan, make some toast using a metal net and heat milk in a small pan to wash down my meal." -page 179.) Is there some special significance in the food? Is it some sort of symbol?

I wonder how the critics would explain away Kafka's devotion and obsession with washing his genitilia, masturbating (occasionally) and examining his penis.

And those passages weren't exactly implied, or made into beautiful prose-poetry like in Lolita where if you didn't have a very dirty mind, you wouldn't get what the heck Humbert Humbert was doing when he describes the moment of ecstacy and fondling Lolita. Oh no, these passages read more like soft porn, straight to the point, but happily it wasn't very detailed, not as detailed as those romantic novellas I discovered in my mum's cupboard the other time and had the misfortune to read.

So this book was supposed to be a modern retelling of the Oedipus myth. Fine. The Oedipus myth was one of fate and sexual alliances. So maybe that could account for the overt sexual displays in the book. So he feels sexual desire for his mother and his sister. But -reverting back to my original stance- you don't really have to describe how you wash that damn appendage, how it feels, its colour right! God! I felt like such a pervert reading those lines!

Maybe, all in all, I'm just not used to the Japanese way of storytelling. After years of exposure to english literature by english writers, I suppose I'm more or less too used to their way of expression and style. The English way of telling stories is more subtle, and characters do not express their feelings or pour out or their emotions at the drop of the hat, unlike Japanese characters. It's more implicit in English novels. Even in Frankenstein, a decidedly dark and passionate novel, where there were quite a few passages of 'confessions' -such as the little tete a tete between monster and creator, the feelings were more or less implied, hidden in the litany of words and exchanges and actions.

ugh. Have a headache.

You may say I'm immature, but the one thing that really disconcerted me is the repeated mentions of his penis.

Shall try to finish the book and see if my perception of it has changed.

FUCK MAN, IT'S HOT.

2010-05-29T21:08:00.003+08:00

These bloody positively beastly nights and boiling days are making me feel like a menopausing woman! Which is so not supposed to happen, considering I am a perfectly fine, hormonal, zit-outbreak prone, dopey-eyed, air-con obssessed teenage girl supposedly mad with teenage hormones!

I'd much rather feel the heat of being in the same room as a sexually appealing member of the opposite sex than the stupid cancer causing bane of my life SMIRKING to see us all lesser beings quiver and bitch under its heat. Add that on to Additional Mathematics which seems vey determined to give me an automatic migraine exactly fifteen minutes within sight, and piles of holiday homeworl, and you've got on your hands a perfect Singapore cocktail.

Man, I don't know what those foreigners are even thinking when they want to come all the way over from a land where there is free air con october to january for this stupid ball of gas hao-lianly shooting its beams to deface on pefectly content people minding their business! What the heck is the appeal of this sun and this eternal summer? What the heck is the appeal of Singapore? All day long we are surrounded by bad ads, bad drama serials (take a good, long look at channel 8), bad standards of english and chinese and this pathetic farce we call Singlish. But anyway, back to the kns weather.

Is this supposed to be a sort of hint of Mother Nature to stop us in our trakcs before we reach for the air-con remote control? Well, guess what mother nature. It, sure as the number of white hairs I'll have come October, isn't working! The more you heat up, the more we'll toggle the damn button as it gets us off. And beepp. beep. I've lowered it by 5 degrees!

Heck, now I couldn't even sleep unless I have both the fan and air-conditoner on at the same time, with teh air-con working at 19 degrees. WITHOUT BLANKETS. Then half an hour later I get cold and slip under then, five minutes later it's like a bloody facial treatment to extract blackheads, and I'm out, steaming like a char siew pau on that old-fashioned wicker basket-thing they have in dim sums.

It's like having perennial malaria, minus the awesome temperature of 39 degrees celcius and an MC.

If this keeps up I'm gonna go buy a bikini so I can sleep comfortably without sweating like a pig and debating whether to turn off the fan or pull off the thin blanket or lower the temperature of the air conditoner. Or bedtter yet, sleep in the nude. The only problem with the latter is clothing arrangements when that Bane To All Women's Existence comes by.

I WANT TO MOVE TO ANTARTICA AND FREEZE TO DEATH ARGH HOT HOT HOT HOTHOTHOTHOT

To help me remember

2010-05-23T20:49:00.002+08:00

Biology.

Once upon a time, there was a mischievous phosphate group who had nothing to do aside from random collisions in the cytoplasm. After filing down its sharp edges, and bumbling along indolently, he saw the vain sugar group rolling towards him.

Phosphates, for some reason, don't like sugar groups. So Mister phosphate stuck his chemical-bond-thingy leg out and tried to trip the sugar group.

Unfortunately, the sugar group, being excessively narcissistic, thought Mister phosphate was trying to seduce her with his sexy leg. She clung onto his leg, to Phosphate's disgust. Multiple attempts to shake off the clingy and whiny sugar group PHAILED, for miss sugar only persisted in her attempts to massage Mister's phosphate's leg with her flat chest.

A blinding light filled the sol state sky and the base was created. Now the bisexual base, being the horny sex-deprived angular thing (he?she?it?) is, thought miss sugar and Mr phosphate was having some really hot hentai sex, so he/she/it sauntered over and sodomised miss sugar.

This resulted in the formation of a S&M-obsessed nucleotide, which has been since torturing innocent Biology students by forcing them to remember its structure for the Biology exams or face the horrors of the-land-of-no-A1s. The end.

----------

There is no point to this post except to help me remember the structure of the nucleotide. It's scientifically proven that one can remember better where sex, random facts and colours are involved, so here goes.

Vengeful

2010-04-04T20:21:00.002+08:00

It's official.

Bugs are vengeful.

As was proven by a particularly huge, stubborn fly with dull wings. When it kept flying above my monitor screen, probably looking for directions, being a nice, kindly lady I am, I threw the street directory at it. After all, living in Singapore, the bug has a 99% chancee of being literate.

Feeling immeasureably offended at being so rudely welcomed by a torpeding Street Directory, it probably imprinted my face, bathed in the soft light of the monitor screen into the deep, black recesses of its buggy heart.

Following the saying, 'all brawn and no brain', it flew around me, probably trying to demonstrate its strength by rustling its wings threateningly near my ear. No luck. I waved it off with an annoyed "Fuck off lah."

Offended at being ignored so, it upped its plan to phase two of gaining revenged on the Human: it flew straight at me. In a move worthy of martial arts flick, I whacked it away with a swish of my long, silky hair (the horse tail technique!). Sure enough, it flew away. But it wasn't discouraged for long.

It flew around me in dizzying circles, probably trying to bug (haha, unfunny pun) me to death, before deciding to land on my table. Really pissed off, I swept it off the desk, found a nice, huge red ring file, and brought it down to the confused, stunned thing, fluttering its wings nervously.

The last thing it probably saw was a bold colour with a solid feel, squeezing the life and blinding it.

BAM.

I lifted the file up and peered at it. Hm. Looks kinda squashed. Oh well, wouldn't hurt to hit once more, just in case.

WHAM.

It looks kinda alive...of well let's do it again! For annoying me, you stupid shallowest thickskin o that barren sort!

BAM BAM BAM BAM.

By then, its former slim, angular body is now reduced to a porridge of buggy innards and the powdery stuff bugs have under their wings.

*

The moral of the story is to never attack a hormonal teenage girl with heavy files or textbooks within reach. And to never annoy said girl, or you'll end up as a pile of buggy ashes under the wheels of my office chair.

Commonwealth headaches and essays

2010-04-04T19:03:00.002+08:00

Somehow, the necessary duty has dragged on from March to the start of a spanking new April, and it is on this rather wet and dull grey evening I sit here nursing an essay and writing a headache.

Wait, that was wrong somehow. I'll get back to it later.

How the heck am I supposed to write a 1200 word story? So far I've been doing vignettes, and I'm not sure how far I can go without my normal style (I doubt the judges will appreciate a metaphor-laden story full of complicated sentence structure and complicated ideas).

Here are the terrible ten:

1. What technological invention(s) would most improve life in your community?

I'm thinking a strap-on rich humanoid boy/girlfriend. Comes with ATM (limitless cash withdrawals), sex (if necessary), an AK-47 (for shooting stray Edwards and fangirls on the loose) as well as numerous other downloadable applications, all available on the iPartner server.

2. The mad scientist.

Ah. This one...so full of possibilities it's giving me a headache. I could have him go mad with ambition, I could have her as a lonely girl wanting to have companionship, but unable to, only busying herelf in her lab to fill up the loneliness, I could have a person who's in stasis for one thousand years, then go about his business partially decomposed...hey this could be interesting, if Hitler had been able to make use of Science and put a stasis thingy over himself...

3. What positive steps can you or I start to take to tackle climate change?

I could stop thinking about this question. This saves the environment five packs of instant coffee, ten hours of electrical power (on the net), innumerable candy wrappers and junk food, as well as less soap being washed down a forgotten canal in dunnowhere, in case there's a leak in drainage and the chemicals poison our groundwater.

Whatever. Refer to geography textbook.

4. The day the computer started misbehaving.

... it turned into the male version of Lolita and we started having flirtarious banters, as well as kinky _ _ _

I bet you were thinking sex, you pervert.

5. "Science never solves a problem without creating ten more." (George Bernard Shaw)

Isn't this the guy who created the nuclear bomb?

Change 'Science' to 'religion', and you've got a 10,000 worder coming right up on Disney Channel. *Merry chime plays*

6. An adventure in space.

LET'S HAVE CRAZY MASS MURDERERS IN SPACE AND DEAD BODIES FLOATING AROUND!

Since there's no gravity, no hmidity or pathogens, I guess those carcasses wouldn't decompose...Hmm I wonder what will happen to the blood? Is it possible to bleed to death there? Would your blood float?

EPIC AWESOME IMAGE MAN.

7. What is knowledge? Who owns it? How can it best be taught or transmitted?

Rowena Ravenclaw FTW! Taught through diffision of knowledge particles through the partially permeable membrane, where it combines reversibly with haemoglobin to form knohaemoglobin. The heart will transport knohaemoglobin to knowledge-starved parts of the brain. At this stage, knohaemoglobain will then diffuse from the blood into the brain, and by thus, by association with smart people, we become smart.

8. A 'eureka' moment.

WHOOPIE I FOUND MY E MATH ASSIGNMENTS! *files it in happily*

9. Is your generation wiser than your grandparents' generation?

What an impertinent question.

10. Welcome to my Utopia!

No one speaks Chinese, religion is a myth, Chinese currency is
f
a
l
l
i
n
g

and Physics and Additional Mathematics are non-examinable subjects! (applauds)

Writers get premium status in society, and luck shines on only ME! YAY MEMEMEMEMEME

In my utopia people who annoy me will be sent to gas chambers.

puppets

2010-03-14T21:52:00.002+08:00

What pious little puppets we are, dancing to this god, this church.

What pious little marionettes we are, singing in off-key choirs, praising to a greedy god whose existence remains disputed.

What pious little blind men we are, giving and giving till we have nothing left on our backs, to an organisation that guilt-trips us -- Jesus died for you you know, God sent his only son down to as a sacrifice for your unworthy white ass, so shouldn't you give everything you are to him? Yes, now give everything, your virginity if necessary to procreate sons like the daughters of Lot. A god who loves you unconditionally, who cares for your wellbeing requires this of you, even if you have to bed over backwards to the point that your spine threatens to slice through your ribcage like a striped orange, halved.

They call it faith for a reason. Blind faith. Faith in something so motherfucking unreliable. Yeah, I bet those churchgoers who attended church every sunday didn't expect to have get involved in a car accident right outside the church-- where gos is supposedly protecting all of them.

Where is this god, I ask you? Where? In this bible, ravings by madmen? These outdated, sexist and inhumane ravings some of us stick to so ardently, like it is their life?

I call that an unhealthy obsession.

Every sunday I have to attend this one hour of drudgery, wasting my TIME, my YOUTH and EFFORT/HOURS AWAKE in a god I don't believe in. Free will? HA. The slaves in To Kill A Mockingbird had more free will, I bet. "You go to church and get confirmed or you're out of this house!"

And what happens if you decide to stay home and study because one hour of your precious time is taken up? Oh, suddenly you become the equal of Mas Selamat, a philanderer, a unfilial serpent to your parent's breast! You don't want to spend time with your family! You can very well study during the March holidays! You go online doing unproductive things the whole day, instead of studying!

Peace be with you! What a useless, hypocritical sentiment! Just because I don't want to be another of you motherfucken religious zealots (probably puritans who regard sex as a necessary evil) you have to drag my parents and their parenting techniques into it! And you're a pastor!

What is it with pastors who constantly put their foot in their holier-than-thou mouths?

Another reason why I hate the church as a community: while some of them are understanding, nice people who don't aggressively push their religion like credit-card dealers or the auntie at the neighbourhood salon who tells you to buy her super expensive shampoo, the rest are assholes who think that as long as you don't believe in God, even if you're as kindly as Saint Theresa, it's a one-way ticket to hell.

Besides, Saint Theresa isn't as pure as you think she is. She had a wet dream about the archangel, for goodness' sake. Yeah, the whole bullwash about fiery spears...they're just pretty platitude for sexual fantasies.

Get down to reality, people! You're human. You're the same as us disgusting creatures who tread the same earth as you do, not believing in God. You have the same desires and dreams and ambitions and your nature is the same. Deny that, and you're simply trying to live in an idealistic world.

And you know what happens to people who try to create their own utopia?

War, death and sickness. Bloodshed of children and women and brave men. Torture. Just look at communism and other political systems that try to establish a 'right' to the 'wrong' they see. Look at the jihad. Look at the crusades. So, you think god is so important huh, to the point of just finding a scapegoat to express your superiority? Welcome to the Al-qaeda! You'll fit right in...except that you'll have to believe in the extremist Islam faith.

When the apocalypse comes, God ain't gonna protect you. The church is an architectural building by humans you know? Even with this so-called sanctity, itll come crashing down on you're holier-than-thou mouths.

And I'll be the one laughing through blood, through the piles of rubble as you cry for a god that isn't there.

Church is a supreme waste of my time, time I cannot afford to lose, especially since I don't believe in their pompous rituals of the God. I won't claim I have experience over their heartstring-tugging journey of rediscovering faith. I just don't feel it.

SO shut up and let me study.

headache

2010-03-07T17:45:00.003+08:00

I have a headache, I told her, bringing my bird-bone hands to try wipe away my sleepless-stained eyes, despite my mental note 15 seconds ago not to do it 'cos it will make the rings worse. Darker. And then I'll be a perfect ambassador of PandaPeopleUnited.

Don't know if there's such a group out there, but hey, there should be one. I'll join in a quater of a heartbeat.

Persevere, she says, as she swings the door shut. Smartass. I wanted to finger her--

Wait, that came out wrong.

I wanted to point my middle finger at her. Much better. I do not want to think about sex and m little sister together. EWWW EPIC NO I SHOULDN'T HAVE WRITTEN THAT DOWN OKAY PHYSICS OHM'S LAW.

But shit, I'm tired from facebooking even though I SHOULD be studying (yes clicking a mouse takes substantial effort and brain power. I am a zombie!), emo-ing over my degenerating writing to lift up the blessed digit.

Fact of life: younger siblings are forever annoying.

I love BBC

2010-03-05T21:08:00.002+08:00

The impulse to listen to BBC in order to strengthen my English pronunciation paid off.

Lookie at this gem:

One of Pope Benedict's ceremonial ushers and a member of an elite choir in St Peter's Basilica have been implicated in a gay prostitution ring, in the latest sexual scandal to taint the Vatican.

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/912534-vatican-staffer-implicated-gay-prostitution-ring.html#ixzz0hJ6esyE6

I went wut, then LOL'd.

OOHLALA SCANDALOUS~~~

What a farce. All these pious people. Heh. I bet that usher was the most God and Jesus and Thou-shalt-not person his friends and kin knew, but he still engaged in this promotion of...deviant practices.

Please note that I wholly support homosexuals if they love each other very much (that's the idealist talking), but I'm speaking within the usage of Christian English.

Statues don't talk. Apparitions that look like Jesus or Mary or my mom regularly appear in sandwiches, all you need is a spoon to shape the burnt area and a healthy amount of imagination.

If Jesus was real, he'll be rolling about in his tomb, except that he's supposedly ressurected, so I guess he's dissolving in a mist of self-pity.

Then again, the Vatican never really had a history filled with beautiful, chaste virgins and kindly sages. The original text used to be in the original languages of Latin and Greek? It was gradually translated to other languages at that time, particularly Latin, the 'scholars' language'. From regular CHinese-English translations we know that the translations can never substitute the meaning of the original text. But that's not my point. My point was that the bibles were translated into Latin Vulgate,"The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures."This was because only the priests were educated to understand Latin, and this gave the church ultimate power… a power to rule without question… a power to deceive… a power to extort money from the masses. Nobody could question their “Biblical” teachings, because few people other than priests could read Latin. The church capitalized on this forced-ignorance through the 1,000 year period from 400 AD to 1,400 AD knows as the “Dark and Middle Ages”.

The church taught the ignorant masses, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the troubled soul from Purgatory springs!” Pope Leo the Tenth showed his true feelings when he said, “The fable of Christ has been quite profitable to us!”

Isn't this so holy and benevolent, so full of good deeds? This sacred institution where the weak are protected! Ooh delicious irony.

Okay, this gives me three names to choose from for my religious name. Hitler, Adolf or Leo the tenth. Okay, maybe without 'the tenth'.

I wonder how the catechists would responbd. Probably try to deny this ever happened or brush it off, saying the past is the past and then moving on to glorify that arse in the sky.

Whatever. I'll rather do something more productive, like counting the number of hairs I have on my head.

DEADLINES AHHHH

2010-02-12T20:55:00.002+08:00

I hate deadlines with a passion that rivals my hatred for church, A Math, Chinese and Physics combined.

Anyway AHH I AM PANICKING THE DEADLINE IS 26 FEBRUARY 2010 FOR CAP MENTORSHIP SUBMISSIONS NO SUBMISSIONS = NO PARTICIPATION CERTIFICATE HOW AH AHHHHHHHH

And what is this progress report? My mentor and I only met up ONCE. Yup, ONCE. The other time we tried, he apparently forgot all about us poor students. Till today (since early December), he's been online AND NOT COMMENTING ON OUR NEW WORKS.

Lesson learnt: mentorship is not all it is hyped up to be.

Frankly, I don't think I learnt much, except to be careful with mized metaphors. Oh, and the joys of having someone treat you to a free Starbucks drink.

What the heck.

I didn't learn shit about characterisation and style. I didn't learn anything I hoped ot learn like varying voices or creating belieavable characters. All I got for my time and two hundred dollars is fifteen pathetic minutes with my barely-there 'mentor', who casually flicked through my story I spent TWO HOURS PORING OVER, NON-INCLUSIVE OF EDITING, RE-EDITING AND QUALITY CONTROL and told me to be careful of mixed metaphors and language.

What. The. -----

Sheesh. I think Mrs Pereira is way moree helpful than my mentor whose presence lingers like drawn perfume in a still room. At least I can rely on her to give my ego a boost, and improve my writing (even if it is from a more mechanical point of view), as opposed to my supposedly more-artistic, understanding bulwark of support that is my mentor.

Frustrated. Tired.

Why the HELL did I even apply???!

Oh, right. To get published in the EOTW, even for a few pages (but I am afraid I can't get in
because my writing sucks platypus shit)

AHHHHH PANIC AH HOW AH I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING ON THE DAMN THEME YET.

WHAT THE HECK IS THE THEME ANYWAY.

I AM SO FRUSTRATED AND PISSED. Yes I am still pissed off about that bloody sales assistant with bad attitude. But I don't want to talk about it because there's this insanely huge block in my head again, no thanks A MATH.

It's proven. Men are assholes.

2010-02-06T21:59:00.002+08:00

In select literature, anyway.

If the title got you livid with fury and positively panting with anger, ready to volley back a stream of insults ranging from hokkien (chao cheebye!) all the way to French (Merde!), well, it certainly served its function and gotten your attention, hadn't it?

Take A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The emperor/king/potentate/(insert whatever glorious mandate of heaven title here) was apparently cheated on by his first wife, so now he decides to marry a new virgin girl every day, and send her to be beheaded the next day.

I wonder how their population fared, with such a king. No doubt it must be an aging population like Singapore, and the equation: emperor marries vigin girls + chastity the most important thing in a girl + men without wives = no wives to marry cos emperor beheads them = no sex = no procreation of children = population rate goes down.

Well, it's supposed to be a story, but I'll go on anyhoo because it pleases me to do so. Shut up about Mr Darcy, he was a right old asshole from the start, I don't care if his intentions are pure. Go to your crappy rom-com movies and stop whining, romantics.

So anyway, where was I? Ah yes, declining population rate. Mr emperor has killed three thousand women by the time he was introduced to the heroine, Scheherazade. (Damn, her name is hard to spell).

Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her first story. The night whiled away, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, as dawn was breaking. So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night.

The above paragraph was copied from Wikipedia because my palms are sweating from gosh knows what and I didn't feel like typing, aside from bitching. Okay, so Scheherazade continues this pattern for a thousand and one nights, whereupon her stories run out and guess what? The king spares her life.

No, I'm not incredulous about this. I am merely incredulous about...

Did I mention that the dear olde king fell in love with her and she had borne him THREE sons?

This is impossible in itself, based on logic. Let's do the Math:

1001 / (365 1/4) = 2.7405 years

He spends two years listening to her, and BAM! He decides he's in love with her, although previously he has not demonstrated the same patience with other girls, being the lustful arse he is?

Three sons, right?

Gestation period: 9 months.

9*3 = 27 months
Total number of months he's known her for: 2.7405 * 12 = 32.88706 months.
Assuming he has sex with her immediately after she gives birth, 32.88706 - 27 = 5.8870 months.
So he lounges about for 5 months, hurt and abused just to listen to her stories at night? Previously he took VIRGIN girls (hmm I wonder what for, why not behead them immediately? Perhaps to take advantage of the wedding night?) and beheaded them the next day, and assuming he's a loose, lustful arse who gets it on with a girl for 3000 nights (8.21 years! Enough to form a permanent habit!) he drops everything for her during the five months when he is deprived of what he is used to?

The stories better be hellaluva interesting.

Supposedly he listens to a thousand and one stories, one each night. What about the days Scheherazade has to give birth? I doubt surgery or numbing medicine was available those days. And during the act? A more realistic depiction, instead of him eagerly listening to the stories like an attention-starved boy would be "Damn it, woman! I'm trying to have sex here and all you do is jabber on! Shut up about the damn stories for once!"

Either he's an insensitive prick, or has terrible technique;or she has excellent control. Not to squirm or scream or moan (well, there has to be a reason why people have sex right? Because it probably feels good. Just like how people take drugs. Because it feels good) and continuing her story in a well-measured voice.

I supposed after giving birth one would be tired as hell. She still has the energy to continue the story? Wow. Zhen pei fu.

My point is, the stories are unrealistic. There.

Yes. The title has no relation at all to the topic at hand. Boo hoo for those who are looking for an argument.

FUCK IT ALL

2010-02-05T15:36:00.002+08:00

Can't somebody cry in peace or lick her wounds without the god all fucking up???

Wanted to hide my sobs under loud music and guess what? The stupid, useless hunk of plastic, metal and LED lights decides with its miniscule brain or lack thereof that the time is ripe for it to fuck up. Despite me pressing on the buttons repeatedly, swinging the joystick this way and that, all ths stupid phone could come up with as a punchline was 'Closing applications...'

The stupid memory card slot slipped out. TAMADE!

I scotch taped it and threatened to drop it into the nearby fishpond, a lovely ten metres of flight if it refused to listen to me. Needless to say, apparently phones, having a very clean vocabulary which does not consist of a potpurri of Chinese, Hokkien and Olde English swear words, did not understand the sentiment I was trying to express.

It died on me. IT HAD THE MOTHERFUCKING TEMERITY TO DIE ON ME, A VERY PISSED OFF, CRYING, HORMONAL TEENAGE GIRL WHO NEARLY CRACKED THE SCREEN WITH HER CLENCHED FIST.

Smartphone? Ha! More like Stupid #!#!@%^! phone.

Shit, why on earth did I ever choose to buy this useless hunk of metal and plastic that hangs up suddenly between calls, dies mid-sms, laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags for all of eternity loading the music page, insisting that 'memory full. Please close some applications' and consumes electricity like an African man at a all-you-can-eat buffet?

USELESS. ALL IS USELESS.

Then I thought my ipod would be in perfect working order since I hadn't touched it since Monday, but NOOOOO. It had low batt as well, probably because my wallet was digging into the play button, activating it. I had either forgotten to turn on the 'switch off keypad use' little clicky thing, or God is trying to be funny and fuck around with his human playtoy.

Yes, I don't believe in God, but heck it's good to always have an invisible force to be the scapegoat. SCREW YOU YOU INVISIBLE SO CALLED OMNIPOTENT AND OMNIBENEVOLENT EXCUSE OF VACCUM UP THERE, I HOPE ONE DAY YOUR DELUSIONS WILL SEND YOU TOPPLING FROM YOUR THRONE AND THAT MAYBE YOUR POWERS WILL FAIL THAT VERY DAY, YOU'LL LAND VERY PAINFULLY IN CAMBODIA WHERE THE LANDMINES ARE AND DIE.

Anyway, when to my rage I couldn't turn the ipod on, I spent a good 15 minutes looking for the motherfucking USB cable, half-blinded by my tears, now slowly turning into exasperation and fury. Slammed doors, cupboards, and hugged my frustration into my doggy plushie (which didn't help). When I finally found it in a shopping bag by the side of my desk, I think I howled with rage, then forced the cable in. When one is in anger, one has no patience to figure out which end should be correctly plugged in. One needs immediate gratification.

Much like sex, I suppose.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT PISSED ME OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE?

On the bus I realised that the statement, "Writers are megalomaniacs with low self-esteem" is true.

Now let me tell you a story about a sparrow and a crow.

Shaken from her comfortable perch of confidence an enjoyment of her craft by a most hideous upstart crow, coming cawing into Singapore and driving all the resident birds out. Flying higher above the others, as if challenging them, as if all that matters is winning and winning alone.

Now, long ago there is a sparrow, though small in stature, very loud in chirruping and her passion for flight. She flew high above the others, particularly in English lands, and was constantly assured that she had talent. She was treasured. She had spent years perfecting the flight, sweat, blood and tears all contributing to the somewhat-success she now enjoys.

Now this upstart crow wanders into her territory, and nevertheless, miss sparrow wasn't amused. Within a span of two months the upstart crow and his noxious accent and cawing had flown higher than the others in her pack, he was just below her. Previously, this upstart crow monopolised Chinese lands and flew perfect mathematics-rounded curves and used science to propel him further. She didn't mind...until the crow began to nudge into her land, climbing up, slowly and steadily.

Six years. Six years of sweat, blood and tears, now dissipating into nothing by a young upstart crow who had, within two months, done what she struggled to in 3 years. She felt trapped. She wanted out.

This upstart crow wanted war. He will get war.

-----

I absolutely DESPISE people who just get ahead because they have to, and not because they love the subject or language.

Think about it. It's not wrong to want to establish yourself, but know your place. Don't do things that might mislead others into thinking you passionately invested in a subject, when all you want to do is beat the rest. There is somebody who spend and devoted all her time to growing and maturing and accepting parinful criticism. What about you? You, a stranger to the field of expertise, want to challenge someone more experienced? You, who want ot override this person, this person who loves the subject to bits, just becaus eyou want ot be the best?

Screw you. Go back to whence you come from. I hope you remain throughout your life alone, miserable and surrounded by material wealth and academic accomplishments, with a successful career but finding no joy in life. I hope you become one of those people whose words reflect those of a poet but whose hearts are empty. The type of person I absolutely DESPISE. Nobody wants you here, jutting into our lives. Competition is one thing but doing it just to spite someone or 'be the best', for the sole purpose of elevating your ego and depriving someone who is truly passionate about the subject opportunities is DESPICABLE.

I would rather converse with a primary one student who loves my subject rather than spend one minute in your insufferable presence.

I think people from my class will know what or who or whatever situation I am talking about, aye?

No, if you are reading this and think it's directed at you, don't. Because sometimes we humans are suspicious creatures who assume too much and overguess from an overly emotional blog post. Yes I am mean-spirited and bitchy and everything else horrible, an immature bitch who cannot handle failure. So what? This is who I am. This may or may not be directed at real life persons, it may be a response to a situation or to a book. Who knows? Only I. You know nothing, and do not make assumptions about my character. I do not entertain questions about this, unless we are closely acquainted.

If you think I have no reason to be pissed, you can go take a jump into the lake or spend two years with crows by your side. Annoying creatures who caw and ruin your otherwise perfect Singaporean streets, eat their own shit (saw a crow doing that in the backyard the other day, I know not what to say), splattering everywhere, spreading diseases and germs and polluting our pristine skylines. PESTS that deserve to be shot.

On religion

2010-01-29T22:40:00.002+08:00

I like these titles. Reminiscent of chinese textbooks and philosophical essays.

So anyway, m dad and I trashed it out verbally, we settled on an agreement -- basically I'll do whatever he says until I turn 21. How sweet it is, breaking the chains and graphite-sketched boundaries of childhood or adolescence!

Well somehow it involves going to church and cathehism and being confirmed and all that shit, as well as "not bringing embarassment to the family" because I didn't go for confirmation camp last year due to CAP (the best five days of my life, and not because of religious reasons, but rather because I heart writing and we ate, breathed and slept poetry all day long).

What I found hilariously funny was that the priest personally pointed me out to my poor cathehist teachers and asked why I didn't go. Obviously, they weren't too happy at being arrowed, and the little chain of vendettas expanded and swelled. Like Buddha's teaching about a poison arrow hitting a man, who wouldn't let the physician medicate him until he found out the caste, name, poison and so on and so forth. In the end, the man died before even getting the answers to his questions.

To be honest, though no religion is perfect, I think Buddhism makes a helluva more sense in its texts.

My dad also told me to exercise more, instead of getting endorphins stuck to my arse, not that I'm fat or anything. Well, I might as well do so, maybe running to release all the pent up stress and anger I've been channeling into prose.

Okay, so confirmation is basically another wonderful aweinspiring promise we have to make to God and say we're all part of his lovely brethen and would serve him until the earth persishes or something along those lines. Wonderful. Assimilation into a group of people I don't believe in or share any common interest in, (and in this case, assimilation equates announcing to the whole wide fucken world that you believe in that church's particular interpretation of who and what God is. I won't say God is a who, because a mighty force cannot be contained in a physical body. I'm saying what, as it dehumanises him both positively and negatively. I would explain it all but I'll never finish writing this post).

If I am confirmed at the end of June (right on my O's year too, wonderful isn't it?), then it means I have to pretend I accept this belief for, what, *counts* 5 years?!!!!

OH FUCK.

5 years is half a decade wasted. 5 years is one-third of my age now. Five years to waste away like a corpse.

And in the end I suppose when I turn 21 I would no longer be who I was in the beginning. I changed a lot throughout the years, maturing, growing distrustful of people, learning to fake-smile, smirk, changed from a girly girl to a slightly unconventional one, but all along I kept the one thing I felt defined me the most: My ability to keep a sincere promise.

Looks like I have to break that soon. Oh well. Breaking holy promises, commence!

Oh wait. I just realised something. 'Sincere'. Goodness gracious, I do love language. Hail language! My confirmation 'promise' is jsut empty words if I don't mean what I say or believe in it. The priests can flail about in indignation and wave documents certifying I am Catholic-- it doesn't matter because 1) I didn't mean the promises, and never fulfilled it, and hence I am not a 'true' Catholic and 2) Words only are significant if we attach meaning to it. If we don't and just treat them like mere alphabets and sounds, just 'lip service', then it has no meaning, therefore I cannot be accountable for it. The whole 'free will' thing, and the faith comes to bite Faith back in its ass. Delicious irony. I think, for the sake of pissing a few priests off, I shall stay and pretend I am a good Catholic, before wrenching tehir hearts apart when I skip out of church happily at age 21, throwing a convenient middle finger to it, who never supported me thus far.

If God exists and I am damned to eternal hell for being a wolf in sheep's clothing and thinking poisonous thoughts about religion during prayers and whatnot, I'll tell him that it was daddy dearest' idea.

The priest wants to convert me? Hmm. This should prove interesting, very interesting indeed.

Too bad Border's was out of 'God Delusion' and 'Letters to a Christian Nation'. Shall request these as birthday gifts. To balance it all out (I'll say it is good to expand one's horizons and see what people have to say about religion) I'll get them to buy some religious book that I would accept with (fake) smiles and tears of immense gratitude, which I would throw in my bookshelf, unwrapped, and proceed to forget I even had the book.

Since my passive resistance has proven futile, I shall begin Operation: Piss the Priest off enough to make him give up on me. Frankly, I don't really care how I do it or if the damned family name is besmirched forever in human memory (there's too much emphasis placed on names anyway...who the heck still remembers who discovered atoms or electrons, aside from students taking Science and scientists? Not many I'd bet.) Happily, I still have 'The Brothers Karamazov'. Shall figure out how to read that infamous passage of the cardinal killing Jesus and being an asswipe in general out loud.

I shall do my best to be the most irritating student ever seen in the vernated halls of The Holy Family Church. HAHAHAHAHA. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE A 9-SUBJECT STUDENT WHO COMPETES WITH PRCS. I can ask so many questions, and place loads of doubt...ooh, Maybe I can ask the teacher's opinion on the Spanish Inquistion and Hitler.

Speaking of my all-time favourite war hero/villian, I am really serious about my religious name being Hitler. Or Adolf. Or Salazar, but the sad, sad thing is, he's not a saint, although Salazar of portugal was a dictator, a priest and rabidly anti-communist. Did he support facism? Can't remember.

Ooh, the bible is so interesting to pick apart and analyse. So many cases of human rights abuse, slavery, anti-feminist ideals, and blood and murder and violence in general. A lovely, lovely book more on the Awesome Glory of God instead of his good deeds (I wonder if historians have done a reliability test on the bible? I highly doubt it is accurate, considering that there is plenty of room for exaggeration and etc.)

I realise I am probably gonna piss off a lot of good Christians and Catholics here, who might jump the chance of suing me for promoting ill will and tension amongst Singaporeans by spreading discord through lambasting religion, but oh well. I didn't condemn the religion, I just stated my views, you're welcome to have your own (: Dictators are terrible. Promote humanism!

Okay, maybe it would be a stretch to say I don't belive in God, but the term 'God' is quite confusing. In language 'God' is a powerful, omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent superbeing that seems too good to be true, but then again we humans are restrained by our patheticness. Hence the current God=Allah debacle in Malaysia. I say I believe in a greater force, (which can be interepreted as me saying I believe in God), but I don't. I don't believe in other people's intepretations of what the divine and who God is, I believe in my own interpretation of what God is. Make sense? What I am disagreeing with is the church and its corrupt congregation, its attempts to potray themselves as being the Chosen People and all pious and highhanded-- face it dudes, no matter how great your god is, this is the power of God. You cannot confuse his/her power with your own. In reality, in society, we are equal, in a parallel dimension of faith and belief and stuff maybe you're elevate beyond us, I don't know. But don't pretend to be perfect.

Another contradiction. God is supposed to love children because of their innate goodness and innocence and stuff, but this doesn't make sense because children don't know if there is a god or not if they weren't told by your parents. If, as an infant, you had this sudden great epiphany that 'Holy mother fuck, there is a God, and he loves us! I'll be a devout Christian all my life!" you're either lying or a poster boy for the church. Whichever, because I doubt infant can think beyond primal instincts like sleep, hunger, anger and etc. Hence, if God condemns the heretics and those who don't belive in him, why does he not condemn the children? WHy does he love them still? Because of the goodness? Yet, perfectly good people who don't believe in god are still regarded as sinners. WHy is that so? Bias? Favouritism?

You could say, "Dudette, He's God. He can't be explained by us," but, well, you might as well say "The Earth was created by a crowd of squirrels who attained enlightenment from dunnowhere and they preside over humanity and control wheter you go to heaven or hell. They sparke in the sun -- which was created from their farts." This is an acceptable reason for creation, because, obviously since these are divine, magical squirrels, their behaviour and bodily secretions are beyond our puny minds and therefore we cannot rationalise it. Funny. God might've been created through our need to explain and rationalise everything, yet now it itself is impeding rationalisation. The Greek gods were created from this need -- right now in your Science paper when the examiner asks you why the sun rises and sets, you don't answer, "It because this fella in a golden chariot rides across the sky everyday, and by the way you cannot give me zero because that will show you're insulting my belief in my religion."

Religions can be discredited and cast away, they are after all all about the human mind. Master religion and you can unlock the secrets of the human mind.

So interesting. If I become a psychologist in the future, I think I would like to try and psychoanalyse God for fun. It is, after all, always interesting to try and rationalise something complex.

Let me cap this post off with the list of things I want to do when I turn 21:
1) Drink alcohol.
2) Make changes to my IC, particularly the 'religion' field.
3) Sashay out of church.
4) Write an antigod poem.
5) Buy or rent an apartment, and get the hell out of there.
6) Can't think of any yet.

Things I gotta do before I turn 21:

1) Amass a collection of pagan accessories and wear them to church.
2) Or wear the rosary and say it's for fashion. Nothing insults a priest more than insensitivity to religious objects. It could backfire badly though, with me being seen as a convert due to their labour and 'the mercy of God'.
3) I. Need. More. Black.
4) See if I can somehow worm in a funeral dress to confirmation.

this is everything

2010-01-14T18:08:00.003+08:00

This is everything I know about God. He was never there for me, but if he was there for you, you're blessed.

By =westernwoods on dA.

There is a God. I have seen him snap the necks
Of children and inspect their hollow remains.
Pushing past the sinews, there is nothing there.
No prayers clogging the arteries, stopping the rush
Of blood, a blackened jet.
Their mouths had not yet learnt how to
Form 'hail mary's'. Tongues twisted at the sound.
The syllables choke.

There is no use lying to a child who when asking
For God, finds only silence.

He is not interested in them. The purity sickens.
There's a boredom in innocence that causes him
To turn away. His eyes are better fixed on those
Who can praise him. The shallow whore who never
Thought her life would take this path. Legs opening
To receive the golden coins that her greed is attracted to.
The eternal magpie offerers up her soul, asks for
Deliverance, and God, being the greediest of all, basks
In her devotion.

This is worth listening to. Each prayer a pearl that he counts.
His own personal rosary. Saved this one, heard another.
He doesn't think about the thousands who don't know where to
Put their faith.

Children suffer eternally for their silence.
God suffers none for his.

---------

Got into a big fight with my parents, and father made me promise to attend church eery sunday until I'm twenty-one.

If this is the type of God people worship, if these are the type of people worshipping God, I don't think I want this God.

"As she is mine, I may dispose of her..." Never thought it'd happen to me. Never thought how powerless I actually am (no legal recourse for teenagers in this oh so conservative Singapore or laws giving teens the right to choose their own religion). So basically it's just four years.

Had to happen on my O level year, didn't it? All shitty things happen to me right before a major exam. What next? I suppose I'll be paralysed from waist down right before my University exams?

I can't wait to grow up and tear off these restraints. Even if I make a mistake it is my mistake and making bad decisions is better than being lead about your nose by people who talk condescendingly to you, as if you are a emotionally unstable five-year old.

Being older doesn't give you the right to walk all over me, faggot. You are human too, you make mistakes, and don't pretend to be otherwise because that is simply pathetic, reminiscent of the Ozymadias poem by Shelley.

I couldn't pay attention in class today, kept zoning out due to repressed anger. Funny isn't it? Politics everywhere: at home, in school, in the world outside. I could pretend I am dumb and stupid because it would make life a whole lot easier. People do get bullied at work and abused, it's life. Never expected the power plays to come into my own home.

When a person avoids Home, you know something is seriously wrong there.

I am just so...irate! The only other time I remember getting this emotionally worked up was THAT year, and I refuse to write about it on such a public platform.

Now I'd like to think that I am normally placid and wouldn't really curse people, but at that point of time, when ________ grabbed me and tried to shove me down the stairs and I have a fear of falling down the stairs for some odd reason, nearly lost my balance, I watched ____ trip over one step before getting to me and at that point, I wished fervently his foot will slip off all too tenderly, so delicately and ______flailing arms will scrabble uselessly by the banister and off he tumbles, down, down, preferably breaking spines. I've heard that Diabetes Mellitus prevents wounds from healing quickly, so it would buy me time if _______ bleeds all over the floor. I hope by some fortunate incident --- spine will twist into his cranium and eyeballs would slide out, breathless, from their orbits.

No no I can't get angry. Emotion is weakness.

If they think that by forcing me to go to chuirch and leaving me trapped will make me love God, they're wrong. Don't they know that a trapped rat would do anything to get free, even biting off its limbs?

I hate this God. God cannot be physical, if he is omnipotent he cannot be constrained in one body.

I belive in a greater force but not this farce, not this sophistry, not this idol which sparked wars and crusades and deranged people.

See, I know this murderer, and he was the most Jesus person I've ever met. Seems that the whole Jesus and God crap didn't stop him from murdering.

Meanwhile, I shall try to calm down and not burn any churches, for some innocent Malay group will be blamed, and people will die, and as a poet I cannot condone such acts.

But you know what, dearest?

I won't wish you death. Death is too easy for you. I hope that you can no longer know the distinctions between your nightmares and reality, that the phanthoms of past would haunt your every waking hour, echoing by your ear; I hope you wake up crying in the night from a dream you can't remember, I hope you experience half the loneliness I did in THAT year or the near self-abandonment, and this time I hope you will never heal from the experience, so you know how it feels like in my shoes for one moment.

Nobody knows me except myself, I am laconic and I keep secrets pressed in my throat blossoming like bitter flowers.

Funny isn't it?

Those of you wondering why teenagers tend to confide in their friends their problems, I kind of discovered the answer yesterday. Because when life is shit you want a listener and not a preacher or a problem solver. Matters of the heart is best solved by oneself.

And parents distance themselves. I bet five million dollars that my parents don't know my favourite colour, much less the authors I appreciate. You may say it's superficial, but in poetry, this is representative of something bigger. A symbol. How can you claim you know a person, or care about said person, fi you can't even nail down their likes or dislikes? How can you characterise such a person? So what if they can remember my blood group and NRIC number? The computer does too, so does my doctor, but they don't love me, do they?

You know what? I'll end this angsty venting with one quote:

He, like everyone else, could not hear me when I did speak; and so I refuse to
speak now, a decision that has become involuntary—perhaps I have forgotten how
to speak, how to move, how to feel alive.

Even speaking, no one heard
me.

A poet, a storyteller whose voice is unheard. An irony in itself, considering that storytellers and their stories are meant to be heard and performed and played.

Irony. The stuff of life.

School

2010-01-03T20:15:00.002+08:00

Oh no, school starts tomorrow!

Darn. And just as I've gotten back the flow of poetic inspiration. Now I have to go lock it up in some dark, dingy corner of my mind and really start studying.

The sad, awful truth about memorisation is that though it gets you good grades in subjects such as Biology and Geography, it sneaks into your creativity and murders your Muse in cold blood.

So hello, bad poetry and migraines induced by A Math! When I write next time it would be about the various components of the human eye and not prose. Sob.

And the whole lonely-in-public places thing is gonna start all over again. I think I am a misanthrope.

Too bleached and blah to form whole sentences here. Bye.

Ill tidings

2010-01-01T22:12:00.003+08:00

And just on New Year's too. Perfect.

I know there's this newly minted resolution on remembering my roots and not looking down on people who have bad English but this just takes the damn cake.

One thing I dislike about Singapore -- its rigidity and the people's unwillingness to be flexible. Even if you encounter a problem with the system (let's jsut say...edulearn?), and have a query to ask, the teachers just brush you off, saying that you could have clarified before the deadline.

Well, the system was up and running merrily I wouldn't have needed to ask you, right? And what if I had received the fateful SMS 2 days after the deadline? Gone means gone, no matter the circumstances?

The bloody admin even had the gall to wish me a "Happy New Year"! #@$%! Even if it's well-intentioned, it's extremely nerve-grating! (thanks xfa!)

EURGH.

Okay, it's just one component out of five. I'll just have to memorise my gong han well and aim for full marks to save the first CA component. Whatever, I'm doomed to bad marks in Chinese, so what does it matter?

...........

I shall not spectaculate on what type of person the 'problem solver' is because of this unfortunate incident, because it is rude and one should not make assumptions or insult another just by appearances alone. Personal attack is low, and only low-lives do that. If I have to insult someone I want to be coolheaded and logical, not a spitting Medusa with nothing better to do than, say, stalk tagboards and forums. (Cyber attacks/trolls/flames are really beneath one with good upbringing, ne?)

Another to add to my new year resolutions: Do not personally attack anyone this year!

Eighteen is an odd number

2009-12-29T20:21:00.002+08:00

Eighteen is an odd number --the title for the anthology all lovely arvon peeps (inclusive or the great chocolate-swallowing moi) are going to be part of!

So...

If you want to improve your grades for English,
If you want to expand your vocabulary,
If you want to see examples of exemplary writing by youths in Singapore, offering new insights in this cosmopolitical City of a Million Stories,
If you want to see how I write (because the stuff I'm gonna submit is going to be better than my school compositions, I promise),

This is your chance.

Furthermore, we claim no profit! All proceeds go to paying the publishers and the Straits Times Pocket Money Fund, where needy children await. So, what more could you ask for? Not only do you get entertaining stories to read at your leisure, insightful poetry to savour under the soft ashen eyes of the moon, you can also do a good deed (Because karma is a bitch, so all Good Samaritans out there, it's worth it to help a poor, impoverished kid who sits hungry in the classroom during recess trying to silence his/her stomach by reciting the multiplication table backwards)!

No, I will not and cannot offer sneak peeks this time, so you'll have to buy it to check it out. Containing a variety of flavours, from eighteen different writers, poets, souls -- from romantic to the-stalker-down-the-bushes, enjoy a miasma of voices all with a single purpose, different souls coming together to express themselves.

It's not very expensive either -- Stella tells me it's going to sell at $10-$20 (Maybe less?). Hey! Publishing is an expensive process, you know, especially for young upstarts like us who are still depending on daddy and mommy's pocket money!

So, people-who-want-to-know-what's-so-great-about-my-command-of-english or people who want to get into CAP, this is a great chance to expand your horizons and see what people manage to get into CAP. You can roughly polish up your skills and to write that way.

So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with me : larmes-en-cristal@hotmail.com to place your order because it's being done to-order.

----------

[But goddamn, that means I actually have to start writing. Shitz. And just when I had a great idea for the theme floating around in my head]

I hate it

2009-12-29T15:07:00.002+08:00

I hate it when people hear me speak English/Chinese and assume I am from China.

The other day when I was asking directions to the motherfucking Arts House (goddamn it it was so difficult to find it virtually in the middle of nowhere and WHY THE HECK DO SINGAPOREANS NOT KNOW WHERE IT IS and when I tried reading the map I ended up in the completely opposite direction but that's not pertinent).

So, I went, "Excuse me, could you give me directions to the arts house or exit B? I'm kind of lost here..."

And the idiotic Chinese, donation-squeezing guy in polo shirt goes, "Are you local? From China ah?"

Me: (smile is strained) Yes, I am Singaporean, I am Chinese, but I'm not from China.

He: Orrrrh... You don't sound very local, that's why...

Me: (minni kaboom of temper going off in head, but somehow miraculously retaining polite but harassed smile) So can you point me the direction of the arts house?

----

This isn't the first time. The last time I went to the hairdressers', and tried to direct in Chinese the hairstyle I wanted, the lady goes,

"Oh, are you from China?" (In Chinese)
"Ah...no..."

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

What the heck do I look very Chinese?! I am absolutely certain that I do not speak like someone from China (especially in Chinese...all Chinese emperors of the past and liguistic masters would have been turning in their graves), nor do I remotely sound like them when panicking (in english). Oh no! Does that mean I speak (gasp of horror) pidgin English/sound like an American?

*faints*

NUUUUUUUUU

I feel my position on hating Chinese is very precarious in my school, where the top pupil is a PRC. I can't even comment on their political system for fear of offending one of them and then ending up in a grisly murder as a victim of the ancient Chinese torture/getting into an argument in Chinese where I would be unable to understand or retort. Darn. It's one thing when you go around saying,"ARGGHH I HATE CHINESE LESSONS" and another when you go around exclaiming "SHIT The chinese government is still communist isn't it? That's pretty twisted....did you know that communism across Asia and Europe killed the more people than victims from WWI and WWII combined? (or was that the rape of nanjing?)"

Scary.

You get the shivers after reading 1984 and realising the full extent of communism (from socialism). I had shivers for days and couldn't read The Straits Times reports concerning PAP, because I kept thinking, "Big Brother is WATCHING you. He's gonna throw you in jail if you dissent." eeep.

There's a commentrator in my head!

2009-12-26T11:36:00.002+08:00

The fucken asshole!

Okay wait

I shall not be angry at mentors/teachers/people in general.
I shall not be angry at mentors/teachers/people in general.
I shall not be angry at mentors/teachers/people in general.

Maybe if I say it enough times the mantra would prove true and I will be as calm as a bird on a tree branch with no cats in sight.

*fumes*

Not working.

I suppose the earlier Chinese tuition had exacerbated my foul mood from being woken up at the ungodly hour of 8 (after sleeping at around 3 - 3:30 am due to MOTHERFUCKING INSOMNIA). Roar! I hate, despise, absolutely loathe Chinese, and I've made no secrets about that.

In fact, my (rather morbid and wry) mind had carolled: "A car accident under my Christmas tree~" Stop backing away from me. Would it help if I insist on my innocence that it does not apply to any tutors?

Screw Chinese. Screw stupid descriptive passages in Chinese. Screw stupid after-reading questions that ask you to identify weird terms in Chinese, screw personification and metaphors in Chinese. Screw Chinese! I hate the stupid chengyu and ciyu and suyu and whatever metaphors they use to talk about some stupid mountainside house in the middle of nowhere. God, is the author some sort of social reject? Who in their right mind would want to live up in a mountain, view or no view? Kind of reminds me of Wuthering Heights, but even Wuthering Heights was more accessible.

And who the fuck cares how many times you describe the same stupid house with the same stupid tree in a variety of ways, in daylight and in darkness, from near and from far? Where is the literary merit in this over descriptive crap? Where are the characters? Where is the psychology, the moral lesson, the themes and other plot?

Without a plot, this so-called story is crap. Pure purple prose, over embellished with loads of glittery phrases like a (fake) ring of the resident taitai.

The author must have nothing better to do. But then again I cannot assume this because you cannot judge an entire anthology by a single story. Fine, the stupid passage in chinese is far beyond what I can ever hope to achieve with my weak grasp of Chinese, but I must maintain that it is boring. However, I'd rather it be this, than some self-serving, boot-licking essay on why we must respect our elders/be obedient or we'll burn in hell, or something to that effect.

What I hated more than the passage was reading the passage out loud. I don't speak Chinese frequently, in fact, never if I must. My mother tongue has grown strange and mouldy in my tongue. I really hate having to pronounce every syllable clearly (or attempt to, at this point I really pity my tutor because my pronunciation is just a level beyond Awful). But you know what's worse than this? Attempting to concentrate on reading the blardy passage when there is a running commentary in your head in English. That's right, my head is a football match, riddled with disparaging comments like, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" "Damned tongue, damned words!" and "This is a waste of my time, absolutely pointless! Man, I bet if I pulled out Frankenstein and started reading it my tutor will be gobsmacked because I sound like an idiot right now in Chinese," as well as the usual vein of "Screw Chinese. GAH China. Screw Chinese. GODDAMNIT THE TEXTBOOK IS MOCKING ME. IT'S SMIRKING AT ME!"

Yes, I do think like that in between pictographs of indiscernible characters (to me they all look the same).

In the first lesson there was something about neon lights (ni hong deng), and the tutor wanted me to construct a sentence with it. In my mind, English:

The neon lights of the brothel called out invitingly to passing men, willing to satiate their midnight ardour.

Sadly, I didn't know what 'brothel' was in Chinese, fortunately for my tutor (I suppose). At least my inefficiency in the language has stopped me from letting my mouth run loose. She'll be shocked by what a dirty mind I have (but cleaner than most in Arvon and CAP, I'd wager. Never in my entire school life have I written something on necrophilia for school compositions). You should hear the conversation us three mentees had that day, which nevertheless involved nipples ("He should lick the left and not the right first because the left has symbolism") and ("man, he should cut her oelvis, because it'll be awesome to see his tool poking out") and discussions on whether maggots provide the necessary stimuli needed to get a man off.

You don't need to know.

Yes, the quotes are excerpts. We aren't as innocent as you think. I bet QiYu, if she were there, would be shaking her head and going on about how inappropriate and 'not good' it is for our supposedly young, inoccent, naive minds.

---------

Christmas yesterday was swell though. I received an ipod! Very very happy. And $50 from a miscellanous aunt, which I am so going to use to buy Invitation to a Beheading! But no, I shall have self-restraint and finish Frankenstein before buying more.

Writing journey

2009-12-21T18:32:00.002+08:00

Life is a journey. So is writing. I have neglected this little part of me, this part that started off like a beautiful accident, my pretty child conceived without contraceptives.

I realise I owe a lot of my success or writing maturity or this so-called talent to a lot of people.

Xinyi, I am staring at you.

To be honest I had never intended to start writing at all, until I met this plump girl in primary six. She looked angelic, very cherubic -- her eyes and long hair lent her a sort of childish innocence shoujo mangakas scrabble about in their too-romanticised minds and Neverland hearts to come up with. We ended up sitting together (again an unintended accident, people who I thought were my friends in primary five had grouped together and I knew no one and by chance there was a seat empty, right next to her).

I laugh now when I think about how naive, how foolish I was. As always in our formative years of puberty, the events of that year will always remain etched in my mind and has formed some part of who I am today. No, not just writing. My fear of betrayal. My misandry and reclusiveness. My inability to trust others wholly, and my hatred of Chinese.

Fine, the last one happened a long time ago, but I shall not reveal it here because I am embarrassed about leaving so much of my personal history on this crumb of the Internet. Call this my confession, my midnight comfort, my escape into the arms of a stranger, a parisian whore in silent films and cigarette incense. (Holy crap this is getting real angsty and arty-farty).

Back then, I had been plagued with the most insane case of acne ( it looked like the Chernobyl incident had somehow stretched across years to mutate my forehead into an arid wasteland riddled with pus. Yuck), a condition that has somehow abated (thank you, body wash...DON'T LISTEN TO WHAT MAGAZINES TELL YOU. SCREW FACIAL WASH).

Well that year was miserable and lonely indeed, and I had never anticipated exams more. I had admired my seatmate (in a purely platonic way), and thought her anime-style drawings and compositions and poetry impressive. I thought I would never surpass her in language, and had placed her on a pedestal in my young mind.

I had continued to worship her as a literary genius, and that impression continued for the majority of my secondary one year, where I tried to imitate her style as closely as possible.

But

I had discovered Shakespeare, and Nabokov, as well as CAP.

Somewhere along the line this friend -or acquaintance, as she insists on calling herself...till this day I have not managed to unravel her psyche in my fuzzy memories of her- had crowned Twilight as 'the greatest/marvellous work by Stephenie Meyer'.

Now, reading back, I wince. Then I shake my head and tut. But back then...ah, I think I would have believed her and been another mindless zombie to the legions of scary, obsessive, necrophilia-supporting sissy-vampire-crazy fangirls.

Except that necrophilia is much cooler and more disturbing. Can you imagine fucking a dead body, so cold and wet and slimy with decay hanging as your aprohsidiac(sp? Mr learn-to-spell can you check this one out? Thanks a lot!) and the maggots crawling and writhing around your penis? (No idea if it's possible for girls to have sex with a dead body because a dead man cannot sustain an erection hard enough fro penetration right? So says the Bio textbook.) YAY NECROPHILIA. Ahem. I seem to have gone off tangent. Now back to the topic...

So where was I? Ah yes, the infamous work, Twilight, bane of my life, curse of my bookshelf! Even if I am an atheist, I am thanking God that I didn't wholeheartedly believe her and fangirl over the book. I am thanking God I have this wonderful subject called English Literature. I am thanking God for letting me meet Mr Davamoni. It's true -- success is 10% talent, 30% hard work and 60% luck. Without meeting Mr Davamoni on that fateful day where he made us pen that introductory piece and me writing that god-awful angsty poem I would never have tried getting into CAP, would never have failed, would never have worked harder to defy the Gods and learnt more about the art I was increasingly falling in love with, would never have achieved A1 for lit and choose to take it as a subject for streaming. If not for Mr Davamoni's encouragement, or rather, "Please hand in your portfolio to me next year. I expect to see it.", I would never have grudgingly collated my work, never have submitted it, and never gotten into CAP, then mentorship, then Avron, or even got a chance to get my poem published in an anthology, which means a lot to me.

People always ask me how I got my English to be so 'powerful', to be so fluent in it. I smile and say that the words just come out. That I love the language. I may have been lying.

I was not always good at English. I think I hated it at one point, completely abhorred doing stupid compositions about boys who stupidly get stuck in the elevator or something. The same old boring thing. But, if not for meeting her, if not for admiring this person, if not for wanting to be her and imitating her poetry, I wouldn't have been where I am today.

I owe you a lot. Thank you.

Thank you for letting me read your poems on that rainy day, where the water was like agar-agar, rolling off the turrets of the roof in knotted ropes.

Thank you for giving me a glimpse into the artistic mind, pondering, searching for words, in the drawings and unfinished poems scribbled between lines of your composition pad, at the corner of your chinese textbook (because now I find myself doing the same thing).

Thank you for being so patient with me, for introducing me to so many new words, for letting me read your compositions.

Thank you for teaching me to see the world in other ways, that princes and princesses Disneyfied weren't always so perfect, that the world isn't perfect.

Thank you for making -no, forcing- my to see that the villain also has a story to tell. That everyone has stories in this metropolis of 5 million, maybe more, maybe less.

Thank you for letting me learn, for being my inspiration in the beginning, for letting me see the wonders of Art and the meaning in lines. For showing me that words aren't just a skill but also a long-suffering metaphor, a beauty, an emotion from the heart.

Thank you also, for being there for me when I was choosing poems for my first -but failed- portfolio.

Thank you for introducing me to dA.

I am truly grateful, even if I can't exactly call you 'friend', even if my jokes weren't funny then, but I thought you should know that I am your Judas, because I didn't really stand up for you when others call you 'scary' and 'weird'. I am a hypocrite, and yadda yadda. I'm a screwed up human with unresolved issues. So are you.

We weren't really close but I still admired you at some point, as the totem of my childhood, into the shaky adolescent years, with my insufferable pride and superiority. I love poetry and prose now, and would never part with it, even for the world. Call it youthful idealism, but I need a moment to pretend to be foolish, to do stupid things and still be able to get away with it. I'm not yet ready to escape my sanctuary, my utopia of words into the demanding world where success is so narrow, so defined by awards and achievements, and chances only come once.

Somewhere along my journey I have taken one shaky step past your position, and I don't know if you're proud of me, or jealous, because that one day we blocked each other on MSN - me out of pride, you out of disgust (when you found out I had been reading Shakespeare for fun instead of manga). Maybe you're still in your Neverland, and I had long grown too jaded with pretty words without meaning, and am searching for something new, something better. This isn't good, I know at this rate I will never be satisfied. Yet I cannot stop, because if I grow lenient others will surpass me. Success is indeed a double edged sword.

How are you today? Do you still write love stories about vampires and hide in the fractals of your imagination? We are the same, all writers are the same, we are megalomaniacs with low self-esteem, dodging and hiding from the world, pretending we know better and dispensing advice like sages past our time.

But somehow, though blood, sweat, tears, chocolate and insomnia, I had miraculously surpassed her...without realising it. I had moved on.
Earlier I said I might have been lying about loving the language. It's a white lie, I do love the language now and thus make it my life's mission to know everything about it like a lover does, but this all began with a need to prove and validate my self-esteem. My journey wasn't smooth, I faced a lot of obstacles from my parents, ("You'll never get into CAP. Do you think you're good enough? Don't waste your time." -- Father) and sweat (learning, memorising vocabulary, reading voraciously and struggling to comprehend Shakespeare, trying to understand why he was so great), as well as tears (defeat. Disappointment. I didn't get in. I'm worthless. Scribbled poems with bad rhyming schemes by the side of my lit paper when I first failed Clay Marble.). The courage to start over, to write more, to learn from mistakes and ask for concrit, to be better, to learn to laugh at my mistakes and accept even the most scathing criticism. To stop my brain from exploding when I tried to understand Shakespeare's metaphors, and struggle from falling asleep when I encountered Jane Austen (Today she still bugs me. I know why I am supposed to love her but I can't bring myself to like her characters. UGH.). It took me a lot of passion, a lot of hard work and belief. You can say that it took half of my life away.

So, don't look down on language. Don't think it's so easy to be so fluent. That's why I get pissed off when SOMEONE surpasses me in English in just 6 months. I may look like I put very little effort into English, btu bear in mind, my journey took years. It's not fair that my years of sweat, blood and tears become futile with some upstart stealing my glory in a few months of sweat. Fuck you.

I understand everyone at CAP also had similar journeys to mine. My friends, those I talked to at Avron told me that they found their getting into the programme unexpected as they had previously failed English. We put in hard work and effort to better ourselves. We fight struggles everyday, against reason. I will not accept defeat unless you too have been working extremely hard in your writing journey, and sincerely love English. I refuse to lose my first place in the language, or getting higher grades than me if they do it just for the grade, just for that A1 to pretty up their report cards. I don't care whether you're from America or Antarctica or China or Korea (or from some distal galaxy), if you don't love the subject and score better than me, fuck you. Life's fucking unfair.

I love English. I love writing. I love reading, and Kafka, and nearly all the literary geniuses, even if I don't really understand why they are so great now. I love my proofreaders, my friends, select teachers (because I will always be indebted to them). I love dA, and I will always remember my humble beginnings, my roots. However, I will still maintain my stand that I wrote better at sec one. (inside joke between Hari, Sheena and I). I don't recall making that many grammatical errors, even if about 90% of it was purple prose.

Edifice buildings...*snicker*

This is a letter to myself, to that person (who shall remain unnamed because if she ever finds my blog, damn, will it be awkward) and a reminder that somewhere in the month of December, year 2009, there is a little girl, maybe not-so-little girl, who wrote passionately and emotionally. Who penned her dreams and gratitude. In case some day I might be washed away in the tides of Success and Pursuit and Money, as well as Influence and Politics. I want the internet to remember this, even if someday I dismiss it as childish ramblings of a tween.

To childhood. To dreams. To 'Holy shit Twilight stinks! But it's an ego boost, especially when you feel your writing stinks!'

Holycrap this became a speech o.o But finally ahh that felt good. I think I finally got into the writing mode!

Finally a very big ILU to all my friends at Chungcheng! And long-lost tribes of associates from TNS! I may finally be able to face my demons, and proclaim a very loud 'fuck you' to backstabbers. Maybe curse them to having weird fetishes/bad complexions...because OH NO A PIMPLE ON MY NOSE ARGGGHHH IT'S THE ARMAGEDDON! NUUUUUU!

*cackles evilly* Because to a teenage girl, a clear complexion is everything. BWAHAHAHAHA

YAY WRITER CHANEL IS BACK TO KICK YOUR ASS. HAHA INCEST NECROPHILIA HOMOPHOBES DEATH THE STRANGE HERE I COME.

Oh noes! Foiled by my A Math TYS! ARGHHH HOW HOW HOW.

So sad

2009-12-18T20:02:00.001+08:00

Sometimes I wonder if all children are really that naive.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl's dress taken from under a neighbor's Christmas tree.

The child's mother, 21-year-old April Wright, told WTVC-TV that the boy "wants to go to jail because that's where his daddy is."

Wright said she and the boy's father are going though a divorce.

2009-12-08T20:30:00.002+08:00

I hate Chinese with a passion.

The deadline for online submission is on Thursday and I just can't bring myself to listen to News In Class and do the kou shi stuff. It's an ingrained reaction in me that whenever I see a block of chinese text, my brain is going on permanent hibernation mode and won't return unless I manage to sneak Jane Eyre under the table, or scribble inanely bad poetry on the margins.

Do you think writer's block is an excuse for laziness or a true inspirationblock?

If the apocalypse is coming I hope that the satellites can record every single moment. It might be a sort of history-making moment for future generations of humanoids whose creation is questionable. The view must be pretty nice up there, with cyclones, hurricanes and great floods (fires too) doing their jobs and extinguishing life. Then one by one on the other side of the Earth away from the sun streetlights would sweep close like a child's eyelids in anticipation of sleep. The world is sleeping. The world is dying.

Maybe in the new world abiogenesis might be the key word in Science textbooks.

Or perhaps there would be such great scientific advancements that scientists have found planets whose composition is very close to Earth's and everyone can board these huge, silver rockets and embark on a journey of lightyears to the New World. Then poor folk whose economies are still struggling, like Africa, will be unable to purchase that lifesaving seat on the rocket and hence will be left behind to deal with our shit while we have to start all over again on another planet like cavemen. Then industrialisation, government, and the whole process will repeat itself all over again until we've destroyed nearly the entire planet before we realise we're well and truly screwed.

If the apocalypse comes

Never mind. This train of thought is too depressing.

I have decided, since life is so short and precious, why bother living up to others' expectations? These people can go screw themselves, bitter, nitpicky people with no lives and no strength in themselves to pursue their own goals. Hence they set their expectations on others. Why shall I fulfill your dreams? Why shall I believe in religion if I don't / haven't experienced these miracles?(if you have, good for you since God has touched your life, be blessed and happy, if you haven't, why wait around? Just move on!) Why must I bend over myself to be whoever you want me to be? I'm not saying this as a teenager: I'm saying this because there are many people in the world who are continually being dissatisfied with themselves and comparing themselves to others. There are people who go, "Why aren't I skinny enough? Am I not good enough? I have to be better, I must be better and show ____!" It's entirely obvious and people say teenagers are angsty. I do not pretend I know everything in this world, but from what I already see and in my naive, immature eyes (for in immaturity lies a sort of innocence always praised in books), the world is pretty twisted and there's nothing we can do but try our best to survive.

Here is my new year resolution in advance: I will be who I want to be, and I will strive towards my own goals without being moved by the pressures of others. I will remember my humble beginnings and will not scoff at people with poor spelling/grammar, however tempted I am to insult them, laugh at them or even tell them things like "learn to spell!" because they are trying their best. Exceptions are made for those who are contented to make mistakes over and over, or when I am in a foul enough mood with a sharp weapon nearby (because insults in head is better than carving it in blood).

On the bright side, I did manage to fulfill one of my new year resolutions last year. I think it is be nice...or wait, that's not it. The iron rule is 'Be nice to everybody...except to people who do not deserve it." Or something along those lines.

Ooo next year is O levels year...I can't wait for the afters! Finally free from Chinese and A Math! My lighter is quivering in anticipation of devouring the textbooks and adding to global warming...well just a little won't hurt. I mean religions have been burning loads of paper money, candle wicks, incense (the spa kind and others), cigarettes and offerings, so how can a textbook hurt? Before someone attacks me on my religious insensitivity, or how this is not funny, I am simply recording down my observations and thoughts. Even if free speech does not belong in this country.

One more thing to note: I am very accomplished at identifying a specific noxious gas, none other than ammonia. That is the one useful educational aspect about rebonding. I can now identify it anywhere, after inhaling the fumes and feeling my eyes water and sting. So girls, if you want to go for hair rebonding and your parents say it's a waste of cash, tell them that you're going for real-life Chemistry practical on identifying gases. It's a very important chapter. *nods gravely*

Despite it being my third time I never fail to be amazed at the smoke/steam off my hair after the flat iron is place on it. It reminds me of bee hoon...dark bee hoon steaming in clear water. I bet I have chased away your appetite with an iron frying wok after all that talk about ammonia, bee hoon and hair. Can you imagine eating a plate of bee hoon, the heat grazing your face, then you smell a huge burst of ammonia making your eyes water and your lungs scream and the wonderful, appetizing meal becomes a mass of dark hair? If you weren't grossed out before, I think you are now, especially if you have a very hyperactive imagination.

Strawberry seeds taste like strawberry. Not exactly, maybe a more earthly flavour...can anyone imagine eating seedless straeberries? The skin would be smooth and red, but would a strawberry still be a strawberry without the seeds on the surface? How would it taste like?

I wonder how strawberry porridge will taste like. In France (I read this somewhere a long time a ago) it is customary for the wedded couple to eat porridge made of a deluge of things, including strawberry because it is the fruit of love, due to its heart like shape. Maybe the people then haven't eaten Korean strawberries before, because however I squint (my eyesight is deplorable), it looks phallic and tubular, not heart-shaped, to me. I had my doubts eating it at first but I never regretted my decision. American strawberries (and really, strawberries from New Zealand and Egypt, I won't say the world because I've only eaten strawberries form these coountries) all have heart-shaped strawberries though.

Maybe it will taste nothing like the fruit. My mum once made apple soup (clear soup and boiled apples, the kind you buy from Fairprice), and it tasted weird, all sweet and distinctly herbal. I'm not a fan of herbal soups, so I poked at it dubiously with my fork. Same thing with papaya soup and watermelon skin (yeah, the red watermelon you eat. The normal ones). I don't know where my mother gets these ideas for soups -- I probably sound ungrateful here, but it's true. I had the runs and suffered through it at the unearthly hour of 2 a.m. in the morning but she claims it's detoxifying. I doubt that, because if that were to cause such a powerful digestive reaction, it has to be toxic. I'm blaming the strange watermelon skin soup I had for dinner, and not the french fries at Macdonald's the week before.

So far, traditional medicine hasn't helpe me in any way. The insomnia soup my mum makes me drink (otherwise known as the papaya soup) only made it worse. I found that not doing anything to mess my body up was most effective. Actually, anything TCM that tries to deal with my insomia doesn't work. I don't dare to try malay or indian ones because I can't read the ingredients and at least if it's chinese I know what I am ingesting. It's all about control.

Tired now from non-stop blabbering...tomorrow I must force myself to watch the chinese news programme even if I die from boredom or I can't make out the words! Goddarnit why can't they print out News In Class like they did for English? It would make my learning Chiense easier!

I'm a 'higher' chiense student hating chiense and failing chinese. Bah. Goes to show how 'elite' we are. All this categorisation.

FUCK.

2009-12-05T15:07:00.002+08:00

Stupid annoying blogger is taking forever to load and holy mother of all mothers I am pissed off.

WHOEVER WHO DIPS HER HAND IN THE SACRED, CONSECRATED CANDY STASH IS DOOMED TO ANGER.

I hate children. With a passion. Right now I really detest m sister because SHE ATE MY CANDY AND MY COOKIES without permission. And the stash of junk food I was saving up for a rainy day, esp. after A Math tests.

I think next time I shall booby trap all my snacks and fill them with decoys loaded full of arsenic and I shall watch her CHOKE. -steams-

It's a good thing she shut her door and I am upstairs in the soothing environment of MSN and the glow of my monitor screen, if not I might just jump down and squeeze that veined neck of hers oh-so-tightly, compressing it swiftly and watch her face turn blue.

A brilliant murder scene. Must add that to my list of quotes. NOT.

HOLY MOTHER OF ALL MOTHERS AM I PISSED.

I need to stop writing my stream of conciousness because there is someone looking over my shoulder and reading what I write, and YES I AM TALKING ABOUT YOU. IT IS RUDE.

Even my thumbdrive is against me today. Argh. #$%&!

Minor correction

2009-12-05T12:30:00.003+08:00

I apologise for the mistake I made. The writing course I took part in was Arvon, and not Avron. Thanks for notifying me about the mistake. and reading. (:

P.S. To wtf: Are you still interested in being a proofreader? I need a critic who would point out my mixed metaphors and comment on whether the emotions are adequately expressed, as well as...well critique it like a lit. essay.

Must go to litup soon to check whether Mr Chris has any comments, even if I made very minor edits to the piece before. I wonder if CAP accepts the piece on incest? I liked that the most, but Jing Yi said that it wouldn't get in because a mentor who was a gay activist got fired (or something like that).

Well it doesn't really cross the OB markers. All they said was no sex, no racism and no politics, they didn't say anything about no homosexuality or incest/bro-sis relationship(s).

I found the 'brain drain' phenomenon pretty ironic. Singapore chases away local talent with its OB markers and censorship while they are trying to boot lick foreign talent into joining Singapore's community.

Oh no

2009-12-05T00:07:00.002+08:00

Now I have a poem composing itself in my head. A very bad poem. ARGHHHH GET IT OUTTTTTT NUUUUU

Heeled boots are killer when you're standing on a crowded MRT from Braddel to City Hall, then from City Hall to Paya Lebar. Oh, and taking a 2-hour tour around the neighbourhood, learning what the heck a CDC is, a mayor of the 5 districts and various politics, as well as the culture hidden under the familiar HDBs and the stories it hides. Very inspirational and tiring. At least lunch was one and a half hours, so I could afford to go elsewhere to eat with my friends, yet no matter how close our destination was (like today's Bishan and the day before's Toa Payoh hub) we were always late. Got distracted along the way by plushies while I happily examined a dagger in the comics connection shop. Ooh blood, murder and gore!

Cookies are evil, and together with walking in the rain and then going to an air-conditioned room, it proves to be a formidable force. I hope I can use this as an excuse not to do my homework. Urgh homework, I'd rather be out spending money or writing / reading.

Purple prose!

2009-12-04T23:11:00.004+08:00

Ooh my tagboard is alive!

Well seeing as I actually do have a life outside blogging and writing (it is a well-known fact that writers are all busy and devoted to writing, as my mentor says, a writer is someone who is willing to be lonely in order to contemplate and present the world through his or her eyes. Paraphrased because I don't have a parrot memory.)

Spent the last five days at the wonderful AVRON PROSE WRITING WORKSHOP (: I managed to write something half-decent after so many months of hiatus and letting my ability fester away in memorisation, so I am overjoyed!

I have just realised that you cannot exactly label my piece on incest incest, because incest would mean that the two characters are having a sexual relationship, but they are not (in my story). I can't figure out the appropriate term for it...ah well, let's stick with the wordy brother-sister relationship. Somehow throughout all this the words 'Oepidus complex' float in my mind like tissue suspended, but I don't think it's entirely related to the situation. Aside from this minor quibble, I did express the emotions and guilt of the character very well, and was praised by the AVRON tutor for having 'talent' because the piece was 'raw, and you can get away with this for a first draft.' Oh, it must be pretty good then, considering how earlier in the lesson he shared with us one quote: All first drafts are shit. Ernest Hemmingway!

I really must do some reading up and get better at my craft, I feel that I am lagging behind in terms of simplicity of expression. However, when I mentioned this to the tutor at the tutorial, he said it was fine because it's my style. Well, I suppose two authors and my mentor couldn't be wrong. I mean, if two are local talents (my mentor started Poetry Slam in Singapore, and is well-established throughout the literary world, and Su Chen is a published author, whose text, 'Fistful of Colours' was the A-Level Literature exam text.) Well, if both of them think it's okay, it should be fine, right?

I learnt today that Alfian Sa'at also went to the same Avron CW class 15 years ago! Hooly crap! That means I really do have the potential to be like him, if I bother to get off my lazy arse to write a 1000+ words a day like authors do ("Adopt writerly habits," Jeremy says. "Don't expect us to push you, and don't lose focus when you're young. You're all very talented, all 18 of you...")

I shall work hard from now on and try to write something everyday, even if it's bullshit.

Oh and purple prose,

I am very glad that the troll, 'Stephen King' commented on my humble blog. I must say I don't really like your books because they seem a bit...bald. Anyway, the defensive tone of 'Stephen King' is quite suspicious, considering that he is the one who pointed our that Stephenie uses purple prose, and even insulted her in an interview. (Yep I watched that).

I have been faithfully following your quote, and thanks a lot, genuine Stephen King, it has helped me during my growth as a writer, and is one of the oft-repeated rule in my head: the adjective and adverb are not your friends.

I wonder what Stephen will say if he reads Vildamir Nabokov's Lolita. It should be funny.

Anyway, purple prose is defined as "a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response."

Oh, speaking of which, this just popped up in my mind: Jane Austen was not a very popular writer in the Victorian period because her writing wasn't ornate/elaborate enough. The victorian period called for emotion to be expressed through lush imagery, and Jane Austen's style didn't fall into the preferences of the people then, so she wasn't very well-received. Compare her style to Shakespeare, and you'll understand. Okay on with the post.

So, let me quote a passage from Ernest Hemmingway (you must be a literary idiot to not have heard of this man, one of the literary greats):

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plains to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, adn the water was clear and swiftly moving in the blue channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."

Now that's wonderful, evocative description. This nearly crosses the line of purple prose with repetition and image, and the whole load of sensory details, yet instead of turning the reader off, it is lovely isn't it? This is why Ernest is famous and celebrated throughout the world. If Ernest can get away with such descriptions throughout the novel, and we, as writers, learn through criticism and reading, then this should be perfectly acceptable.

Hence the term 'purple prose' is quite hard to define, unless there is
a) a use of metaphors where not necessary
b) too much adjectives (esp. in the description of Edward)
c) Too much adverbs and etc.

However in lit this becomes more debatable. Purple prose as an effect. Alfian Sa'at, one of our local poets, wrote in his poem, 'Singapore, you are not my country':
"Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness
lies at the end of a Toto queue
Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter
whose feelings are iron
whose courtesy is gold whose speech is silver whose
handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.
Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.
That that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a
broken collarbone and three dead comrades but who
will not hesitate at thrusting his tiger ribcage into
another fight
because the lanterns of his lungs have caught their own
fire and there is no turning back"

Beautiful. The suddeness and the repetition of 'whose' and the detail make is so much more effective, almost as a maniac mantra, ranting and crying at the same time. Like a stream of conciousness where you're on the divide between wakefulness and sleep, and these words just flow out of your mind and you have to write them down.

This is the power of the 'stream of conciousness'. It is natural in its language pattern. You cannot say that the above is purple prose, can you?

Now, where on earth did I use purple prose in my blog? In my attempts at writing lit pieces after EOYs, yes, but in my blog my language is simpler to make it easier for my target audience ot comprehend what I am writing.

I would put a very teenager grunt here: DUH. DUUUUUUH.

Anyway, I am pretty sure the MOE won't pick someone with a persistent problem of purple prose (omg unintenti0nal alliteration!) to join this program and spend the entirety of the 50,000 budget on us, especially if all of us are so untalented. And let's not forget the Avron workshop which is considerably more expensive. Alfian went to this, and look where he is today. This is a testament to the quality of this workshop, it has the ability to nurture talents, and someday we will be Alfian, or even better him if we work hard and keep our writerly habits.

(I love all the 'ands' like linkages to a stream of continuous thought!)

Frankly I don't give a damn about my style now. This, my dear, is called prose-poetry, the contemporary style. I am sure that you know (addressing the troll now) every art period has its salient features. The debate about Form vs. Function will rage on, I suppose. As a young person (now this is said by my mentor), my challenge is language for the sake of itself or language as a function. There are so many possibilities with both.

Today in the workshop when I listened to the readings of my fellow classmates, I noticed that they used Singlish (deliberately, of course, considering the smatterings of Hokkien, I suppose RI students are capable of near-perfect English.) and simple imagery (due to the character being from the lower end of the social spectrum) to create a powerful effect. One example: The wind blow blow, my heart shivering. Powerful. It will be some time before I can write from the heart and not the mind,

All I need to worry about now is how to write a piece on the stupid theme, 'Word weavers, World bridgers'. Goddamnit I can't think of anything.

D'you reckon I should give the anon the link to my work? I need a proofreader NOW. The harsher the critic, the better, but this only works is the critic is able to pinpoint the various areas he finds fault with and suggest a change. It's all part of the editing process my mentor does, so don't worry, you aren't being shortchanged.

P.S. One quote that stood out for me during the Avron workshop, written by my friend Lim Min:
"I turned red, not fire red or even volcano lava red, but holy-mother-of-all-mothers, am-I-pissed red."

The character was Singapore. I laughed so hard my throat ached worse than it did in the morning without the salvation of lozenges.

Letters

2009-11-29T00:47:00.003+08:00

I think I've been doing too many letters lately. What is my fixation with them? The last time, it was an angry monologue, the time before that, I think it was poetry?

OH NOES don't you see the poems, ripping forth in all their conglomerate glory of unwanted words and randomly pasted imagery? Sounds like a recipe for BAD POETRY! (Which isn't that hard to do, contrary to popular belief)

YES CHIN YEE Flowers for Almergon (Not referring to book now so not sure of spelling) is awesome! Just like the novella I am now reading, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka! Next, maybe I shall read Amerika by the same author.

So let me continue my puerile, pointless online way with 'wtf?', because I can do so and I have nothing better to do at 1 am in the morning because I am procrastinating on my poem, which has to be submitted next year for the Eye on the World publication. Hopefully I can rush it out last minute and STILL get published. My fingers are crossed, and so are my toes, and my dendrites and my legs.

Dearest wtf?,

It seems as though you are unable to refrain from putting in a swear word in every single sentence ejected from your brain. Honestly, vilification isn't absolutely necessary. You may notice I am insulting you in perfectly polite terms. (A feat probably impossible for you, but I shall be munificent enough to ignore that, because I am kindly and compassionate and Santa is watching. Oh yeah, santa, while you're at it, I would very much like a laptop, a car and a diamond-encrusted cellphone. It's not much, right?

The syntax...do you even know what syntax is? Oh well, I claim artistic licence as a developing writer under the MOE's CAP programme, so whatever. It's meant to be there, tripping you up like words trying to escape in bubbles from your cerebrum. Like how some ancient culture, the women made sure to make mistakes in their weaving so that their Goddess would not be offended by them trying to attain perfection, like she is. It's human, it reflects humanity, just like how any good piece of Literature should. (e.g. 1984, Wuthering Heights, Metamorphosis, Mockingbird...the list goes on and on)

...And what the heck, may I enquire, would I do with a sparkling boyfriend? Perfectly useless unless there happened to be a blackout, and we are trying to locate each other, upon which, at that very moment, light somehow streaks in and reflects off him, making him look like a disco ball. Or maybe some sort of emergency signal, like flashing police lights? What would I do with a boyfriend that looks like cheap lipsticks that taste of plastics?

However, you seem to be perfectly insistent that your boyfriend sparkles, so I would recommend that, for the sake of your health, you see a
a)therapist
b) the eye specialist
c) Ask a very good friend to slap you out of your delusion/illusion. Yes, the sweet fantasies of naive young love.

Drools? That's a good sign. He's drooling at my impeccable taste in fashion, my style and my beauty. Of course. *sneers arrogantly* Or maybe it's a Pavlov dog reaction... AWESOME! MY VERY OWN TEST SUBJECT! I've always wanted to try out the Chinese Water Torture...

P.S. Your syntax is worse. You need to improve your spelling. I recommend those Primary 5 close passage books where they make errors and ask you to correct them in the boxes.

Okay I apologise because I have to end this letter and resume my much more entertaining MSN conversation with a fellow poet about transvesite Greek Gods, PMSing Poseidons and Gods and their alter egoes. Tata!

Flowers for Algernon

2009-11-27T14:09:00.003+08:00

I have decided to stop being a lazy bum and start reading stories published the old-fashioned way, thus ensuring that whatever I read is of decent quality. Of course, not all published books are good, some are downright terrible.

I think my new favourite story from A sense of Belonging anthology is 'Flowers for Algernon'. Certainly, writing from the perspective of an intellectually inferior man is difficult, because it creates very little room for self-expression and description. Being a descriptive writer, I have never considered writing from this perspective before. I prefer to allude to things and hint at them, instead of writing straight on and giving the facts.

To be honest, I never quite liked 'dumb' people -- I am a cynical bitch, and don't take too kindly towards glorified, simplistic delineations of the fucked up world around us. It is extremely frustrating to talk to them, much less read their stuff.

But the author managed to pull it off. I find that the interaction between Charlie and the other characters, as well as his diary, is very introspective and allows for a lot of emotional detail and characterisation to allow the reader to sympathise with Charlie. Structurally speaking, the sentences themselves are very simple, even if the content is difficult, abstruse, almost. I had to slow down and re-read some sentences a few times to get it (which is why I take virtually all of forever to finish reading my thin, paperback classics. All the thee's and thy's and archaic vocabulary and imagery makes my head spin).

Diary entries are not new or 'fresh' ideas to tell the story, but I felt that the author really made the most use out of that particular medium and twisted it to form something fresh and original. I know, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole 'make something old and boring new and exciting' concept. The fact that I take eons to think and then arduously type out, letter by letter that infamous merlion poem just shows that my creativity meter is reaching the pits of hell right now. It can't go any lower, I think. Even if Dante's nine levels of Hell exists (but I think it's more of a circular hell).

Why am I discussing hells and venues of eternal damnation all of a sudden?
I have no idea.

I need to get writing, pronto. It's not healthy to keep poetry floating around in your head late at night when you are trying to sleep. I get all these random sentences suddenly popping up in my head, and they are good pieces of poetry, but if I forget to write them down they just dissipate into morning dust.

A pity.

Anyway, it's really amazing how much we have progressed since our first words as an infant, right? Right now we can compose letters and use punctuation and grammar naturally when it took us many painful hours sitting on the hard plastic chairs until our bums were sore in primary school. I think I have forgotten most of the grammatical terms -- what the heck is a 'predicate'?

Maybe I should get one of those primary school assessment books for grammar and start doing them. The ones with cartoon characters and speech bubbles, and awkward, bulbous noses. I think the publisher is Casco or something like that. It couldn't be Cisco -- that's a security company with ugly navy blue uniforms, I think.

It's be such a long time since I have ranted, because nowadays I don't get pissed off that much. Except yesterday, when I finally capitulated to Inner Bimbo Self (Oh shut up you, stop giggling you insane, inane animal!) and purchased a copy of Seventeen. What can I say? Mindless frivolity is veeeeerry relaxing.

It wasn't until I've gotten home and got a good look at the cover page did I recognise the mousy features and the open-mouthed smile of our favourite Twilight star. Then I noticed, across the top, emblazoned in neon blue, something about New Moon posters and bookmarks.

Shit. Just my luck.

The magazine was chock-full of advertorials that bored my ass off and a lovely, 4-page interview with Kristen Stewart and Prat. Oh, did I mistype that? It was completely intentional, I assure you. I suppose the head office of Seventeen is indeed going to have a very merry Christmas with their stockings full of cash, considering how many companies are paying them to insert page after page after page of laborious adverts.

Wonderful. A magazine with all the stars and products I hate. Kristen Stewart, Prats and Felicia Chin all in one day. No wonder I ate very little last night -- just one serving of turkey. Against my wishes, curiosity trapped the bloody feline that is my curious mind and I found myself reading the interview. At least it provided fodder for some internal, shrewish laughter.

When asked what attracted he to the script and Bella, Kristen answered that Bella was 'honest' and 'self-assured'. Psh. I think Prats also mentioned something along the lines of Edward being the guy 'everybody loves' and having an attractive personality.

Psh. I wonder what their addresses are? Those poor, deprived dears need a real book!

1) Twilight characters are two-dimensional, and their personality, or lack thereof, is perfectly evident through humdrum dialogue and long, draggy introductions.
2) The plot? What plot? Oh, you mean the whole I-see-the-emo-guy-OMIGOSH-he's-so-hot-I-want-to-jump-him and MMMM-she-smells-delish-I-am-in-love-with-her thing, and the little, hurriedly-inserted pathetic semblance of a plot with our idiotic protagonist skipping to James (who just died, and the climax was just nada cos she fainted?)
3)This goes against every single thing I was taught in CAP about prose (though it might be a little bit of a stretch to call Twilight prose
4)New Moon wasn't any better, because Bella spent 300+ pages moaning and angsting and god that was a waste of my cash though very good for my ego
5) The characters regressed, and their personality became invisibility cloaks.
6) Bella is not self-assured. She is flighty, insecure (needing Edward to do this and do that, needing Edward's validation of what she wants to do in her life), arrogant (the whole bit on calling her father Charlie and the snotty attitude she takes towards her human friends, abandoning them only to come crawling back when Eddikins left her, and looking down at the education system), aimless, clingy, whiny, deceitful, immature...the list can go on and on.
7) The characters aren't portrayed as having a flaw. They are, in Stephenie's world, perfect characters. They don't grow up at the end of the story, or learn anything, or progress physically or mentally through the whole experience. Through interactions with other characters and the plot, a character is supposed to learn something, come out wiser, different, changed. Something is supposed to propel these characters and enable them to change. Throughout the novel, the characters don't develop at all. It's like reading a fangirl's wet dream, where the characters are there to express the hormonal teenager's sexual fantasies.
8) I don't love Edward. Enough said.
9) Okay, maybe the series is supposed to have some moral value (like not having sex before marriage, etc.) But it's expressed in the wrong way or not adequately enough. While I admire and understand Stephenie's belief in her stories and her determination to find a publisher and get published despite numerous rejections, I still feel that the series leaves something to be desired.
10) Last note: I think once I had a nightmare about going into the future and examining the literature of the past. To my horror I saw Twilight sitting in one of the piles of the post-modernism era lit. I think I screamed the place down and tried to burn the book, I don't remember but I do remember waking up crying. My pillow was wet, and I hope it was from the tears and not drool.

Oh yes I have checked my tagboard (lying dormant for centuries, gathering faerie dust) and saw one very angry anon who had the misfortune of being named 'wtf?'. I had the feeling that maybe momm and daddy dearest didn't really expect his/her birth into the world and tried to get rid of it, but it's not nice to attack someone personally *clears throat pointedly* so I shall stop making conjectures on the birth circumstances and upbringing of said person.

Dear wtf?,

No, contrary to what you believe, I am most certainly not six. However, if I happen to be six, I surmise that I must have superior intelligence compared to the average six-year-old's intelligence worldwide, which may or may not include yours. I think this is perfectly evident through the syntax and diction of my entries, because a six-year-old may just be grasping the concept of grammar and proper punctuation. Besides, I highly doubt a six-year old could make angry elucidation on channel 8 dramas and how they portray women in society.

I do take perverse and childish pleasure in coding the right click and watching people try to click through them one by one. Yes it is jejune, but utterly delightful, especially when people with nothing better to do tag angrily on my tagboard. Thank you for your comment though, it made me all the more determined NOT to remove the right click code.

Besides, what were you trying to do with the right click, may I ask?

If it hinders your viewing pleasure, I deeply apologise, but I believe you know the keyboard shortcuts? No? Well, too bad.

Thank you for your comment and have a very pleasant day. I hope it snows over there whereever you are. Enjoy it, because global warming will soon take it away, as surely as that ambrosial scowl will corrugate itself permenantly on your face if you keep up the grouchiness.

With utmost sincerity and affability,

the authoress.

Annoyance

2009-11-04T19:13:00.002+08:00

Friggin' hell, I am pissed off again.

1) The channel 8 drama that shows at 7 pisses me off, to the point where the theme song is a psychological trigger for murderous intent. I would have preferred more libreal programmes that are informative / of the sociopolitical satire, unfortunately the producers decide to cater to the tastebuds of Singapoire's aging population, what with the lack of babies and abandoned grandparents. Yes, 'home' is indeed a very versatile theme, and I am disappointed that scriptwriters always choose to interpret it in a very narrowminded way (same old same old wife vs. husband and blah blah blah). Well, this is a Singaporean drama, and I am afraid but not at all surprised to find that it sucks.

The more you dwell on how important home is and other asian values are, the more these asian values repel. Try going for the mystique and the glam, a la hollywood.

Anyway, in the drama, it appears as if a woman's lifelong ambition and goal is to gave as many babies as her tired c*nt will allow (sorry for foul language there I think this is worse than 'fuck'), because 'a woman's place is in her house and home, and that is fulfillment'. Or so every episode proclaims.

I am a feminist, and I campaign for FEMALE RIGHTS. What sort of backward thinking is this? Family, family, family. Yes, family is important, but do you seriously want to have no life other than catering and laundering and washing and drying for generation after generation of brats? What are women, relegated to the duty of childrearing, no more than conquests and nurturer of children? Honestly, everytime I pay even the slightest attention to the show (because m parents absolutely REFUSE to watch channel U instead) I get pissed off. The implicit message of the television series seem to be geared towards greek or america in the 1950's thinking.

(And we all know how greek women have no place in society, and that they are unimportant because their bodies don't manufacture sperm which supplies the 'soul' of children while mother provide 'matter' and they are dirty because of menstrual blood and they are not allowed of the house throughout their lives, simply passed on from father to husband)

AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THE FIXATION WITH MARRIAGE AND KIDS?

It is as if there is no other interests women want to discuss. No hobbies, no politics, no jobs. Oh no, they are only interested in cat fighting and one-upping one another, and vapid subjects like shopping and children while the big, macho men discuss business and how to control their wives.

WTFWTFWTFWTFWTF

Whoever wrote this script and forced me to watch episode after agonising episode (partly my parent's faults because I couldn't get them to change channels) I hope that is you are male, you will be kicked by a raging harpy in the balls with a stiletto at least 6 inches high. Multiple times, until you bleed.

If you are a woman, god, you need to get a life or GET CREATIVE. PLEASE, BECAUSE MY EYES ARE BLEEDING WORSE THAN WHEN I READ THE SEC ONE'S WORK. At least they are creative (garystus who survive bomb explosions and summon rain are entertaining and exasperating at the same time.) Even Shakespeare who is a misogynistic pig could entertain and discuss several other issues central to society and hman nature.

2)
I am again forced to look forward to the pleasure of my Chinese tutor's company tomorrow morning.

Yes, I know I am an ungrateful bitch, but you can't blame me when the chinese tutor (from china, can't speak a word of English) treats me like a retard who is convinced her own shit is edible.

At this rate, if all people from China treat me like an idiot (all the people from china that I know, anyway) I shall develop a sort of hatred to China citizens. What was that intolerance called again?

Ah, yes. Xenophobia. Such a prejudice is distressingly unhealthy, especially to be because I generally don't like to dislike a person or culture, and I hate prejudices and bias.

But honestly. There is so much I can handle before I attribute these people (who coincidentally happen to be citizens of china) a negative trait and associate them with something fetid like some vaginal disease. But I don't hate people from China now, because I know it is wrong and there are some genuinely nice and humble people there, like my deskmate. I'm saying that I might develop some sort of xenophobia and start cursing China. I'm afraid that might happen to me.

Anyway, due to my inability to adequately express myself in Chinese, I am often frustrated in my effort to communicate with her. The problem is that I know what she is saying and the answer to the question, it's jsut that I don't know how to phrase it in Chinese. To be honest, what might be genuinely helpful is someone well versed in both Chinese and English so she knows what I am trying to say and corrects my errors, explaining them in English so I understand better. The more she forces me to speak Chinese, and the more I can't express myself in it, the more I abhor the language, and couldn't wait till the cursed language is dead like Latin.

To be honest I think Latin would be easier to master as compared to Chinese.

Fuck those personal response questions! I am sure I would get full marks if I answer everything in English and not Chinese. The way my tuition sessions are set, is like trying to teach a student Latin in Latin when the student does not understand even a single particle of Latin.

So I would be all, 'I know what you are saying, but I don't know how the fuck to say it' and she'll be frustrated with my moroseness and in the end we'll end up pissing each other off. Hardly productive if you ask me.

I hate how she degrades my literary skills. I understand my Literature and can identify various devices in a Chinese passage, but the problem is that my Chinese is too weak to defend my choice. Take the example of the previous lesson. The passage was about some sort of willow tree forest and the author was exhalting its gracefulness and strength, and when I wrote my answer down, it disagreed with the answer key. The question was, What positive traits does the willow tree possess that is admirable? She says my answer is not petinent because I answered that "The willow tree....". She said that this type of question will require us to see things from a person's view, how human qualities are bestowed upon a non- homo sapiens objects, and we are to answer that "The human qualities are...." not talk about the effin willow tree.

My answer was structured so that it encompasses the human qualities the willow tree REPRESENTS. It should be correct right?

I couldn't defend myself, so I had to listen to her tirade, livid with fury because goddamnit, I AM A FUCKEN LITERATURE STUDENT AND I GET A1 FOR EVERY SINGLE FRIGGING LIT EXAMINATION AND THE LITERARY DEVICE USED IS PERSONIFICATION. BUT I CAN'T EXPRESS MYSELF IN CHINESE. CURSE YOU, YOU DAMNABLE LANGUAGE! TO HEURES YOU GO! CURSE YOU!

Unfortunately I wear my emotions on my sleeve and she must have caught my dissatisfied expression because she lectured me on how I kept quiet. I had to calm myself down so as not to abuse her verbally in English, because I like to play fair.

(Victory tastes sweeter when your opponent knows he is beaten and is smart enough to appreciate your superiority.)

I was irate, I simmered through every single Chinese lesson. Writing a letter to her in English just to spite her would be a waste of my efforts because she cannot understand my genius. Honestly, I just want to slap her sometimes with my copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or prefarably, purposely-on-accidentally leave all my English prose and poetry lying about when she visits. Maybe my lit examination papers.

Which brings me to my next point.

3) Outsiders who beat you in every single subject including your niche subject.

Yes, I am still very sore over it, and if I do not get to express this in writing I might just go commit a felony or something. I am pretty sure murder is a felony. But I'm a minor, so technically I should be forgiven and my criminal record erased when I'm an adult right?

The temptation is too great.

Please, people who know what -or to be more specific, who- I am talking about. If you know anyone who fits the description, please make sure all harmful objects are kept out of my hands because I don't know what I may do in a fit of passion.

A fitting ending would involve him/her being cut open along the arteries, and me dipping a stick in the blood to write a nice, long suicide poem. I can already see the scarlet of blood...the metallic smell and the cries of agony...

*jerks out of violent fantasy*

I can emphatise with how the Americans feel when migrants 'steal' their jobs in the workforce. I can TOTALLY emphatise. The frustration of not being good enough, booted out in your own country by these filth who steal your rice bowl and live high lives (hold shit I am thinking like Draco Malfoy...all I need is to refer to them as 'mudbloods' and the elite Singaporeans as 'purebloods' before turning truly prat-tish).

Let us drown our sorrows in NEWater, because this is Singapore and I am underaged.

Long overdue post

2009-11-01T21:09:00.006+08:00

Ah. I feel so damn tired today, despite doing nothing but having to read publicly my poem.

I see a few arched eyebrows...in my imagination, because I know now one reads this defunct blog anyway save Chin Yee, so HI CHIN YEE! *Waves madly*

Yes, people, Chanel is proud to announce that she was taken back into the reading list at Singapore Writer's Festival! They decided to give me another chance cos their first email went into the 'Junk' folder!

I never thought I would say this, considering how many times it screwed up on me and refused to let me open my attachments, but I LOVE YOU, WINDOWS HOTMAIL, even if I end up utilizing my non-exhaustive expletive vocabulary on you when you screw up (:

It was super exciting and fun. I was a little apprehensive at first, mainly because a) the poem was a complete accident b) I still think it is terrible c) I'm a bad public speaker, and I tend to be too soft, even with a microphone and finally d) I had no idea what to wear to this type of occasion? Smart casual? Well, pyjamas and my finest Victoria Secret (not that I have any) are definitely ruled out.

Anyway, I settled on a one-piece hoodie thing with a miniskirt and black Japanese thigh-high socks and my loyal boots. Chanel is going to kick some ass! Just to be safe, I made sure to print out my poem in EXTRA LARGE FONT, because I tend to skip over words when nervous. Happens in Chinese oral examinations too.

It was frigging awesome because the Arts House (where the festival was located), and the Chamber (where my reading and the Merlion debate was to be held) is actually the old parliament house. I got to sit on the seat of the then-authority for Nation Development, right beside Lee Kuan Yew? Is that not awesome? I'm sitting right beside the exact place Lee Kuan Yew sat in ancient Parliament debates and goodness knows what they do inside that old but magnificent room...

They had two chalendiers, for prudence's sake! A FRIGGING HUGE CHALENDIER SUSPENDED FROM THE HIGH CEILING!

I, being a lover of elizabethean-era furniture and other rococo-era stuff, eyed at it avariciously for a while. Anyway, the seats on my side (where I sat together with 8 other readers, I was the youngest there) all had these weird dial thingies on them. I suppose it must've been some sort of translation device, because there were pointers, each labelled 'English', 'Malay' and 'Chinese'. Of course, my overactive imagination charitably conjectured that these might be electric chairs. I indulged in this fantasy for a moment, imagining several bloody scenes with aqua blue static and certain teachers' faces twiste in pain, before I dismissed it.

Because I was a contributor, I received two copies of the anthology for my trouble. Being young and hopelessly naive, I must say I felt a huge sense of accomplishment because this was my first time getting published. To see my name and my work in the book gave me satisfaction.

Those who doubted me, EAT YOUR HEART OUT. I am officially a poet!

*prances around in lalaland*

I was nervous when it came to my turn to read, but the people sitting beside me were real nice about it, complimenting my poem. Still I doubt it is an actual compliment to my writing ability and my skill, as opposed to a white lie to get me to work harder and be spurred on to improve. Well, nevertheless, it did work.

Xinyi (not the one from CCHMS 3RP, but my best friend) came over to support me (well, okay, I did ask her to come over after all). For once, someone finally agreed that the retarded merlion poem I did was substandard. Except that these were the exact words she said. She merely said that "Yes, I agree, this is not your best work so far."

I knew I was best friends with her for a reason.

The debate that ensued after the readings were done was hilarious, and not like the seriousness and boring legal jargon that I had expected. The motion for the debate already provokes much potential for humour: The merlion is maligned. Somehow the proposition deemed it fit to call themselves the 'Government'. Anyway, my point is, the clash between the two houses were comical. What struck me as most memorable were discussions on certain anatomical parts of the Merlion ("It has pores and hair...just invisible to the human eye" and "The merlion is an accurate symbol for Singaporeans. Big hair, big mouth and no balls.") Then somehow it has lead to spectaculations about what actually gave birth to such a freak of nature -- that a lion and a mermaid, caught in a situation with no condoms and nowhere visible to put them on, ended up in a merlion.

Darn. I wasn't so intellectually stimulated or entertained in such a while. I came away with better pronunciation. Sadly this lasted until I took my shower after dinner, and I am relegated to a Singaporean accent right now.

By the way, the book was absolutely hideous. I heard one of the poets there comment that it looked like some sort of street directory, with the plain photograph and white words. Me thinks that it is more suitable as a postcard. No wonder Singaporean literature is not very popular with mainstream culture: I think that the boring, dull and sometimes bad-till-your-eyes-bleed designing of cover pages just don't appeal to anyone save nerds with nothing better to do. Sure, it's meaningful and all, but it's not pretty, and if it's not pretty, it won't attract audiences. The thing with Singaporean publishers is that their book covers tend to be extremely unattractive (from the viewpoint of a easily distracted teen with a short attention span, A.K.A. me), and thus I would be disinclined to pick them up. Heck, I've never heard of Singaporean writers till last year, where I consente dto read a book by Catherine Lim, but didn't really like her writing style.

Perhaps, instead of pop art and photographs that would look better in an issue of Forbes, Business Times or even Reader's Digest, maybe a plainer close up of an object with a plain, one-colour background is suitable. Look at the Shopaholic series and (dare I say it?) Twilight series. Even if the writing is deplorable, at least one thing they've gotten right is the advertising. Too much detail on a photo is unappealing, period.

I am really exhausted now. Been hooked to 'Fireflies' by Owl City lately, even if I do abhor flies. I am still scarred from my experience at Kota Tinggi, the huge mass of winged, buzzing objects who made it their sole mission in life to bug the hell out of us (notice the pun?).

HAPPY HALLOWEEEN, PEOPLE!

2009-10-31T10:47:00.001+08:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! SCARE THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE PERSON YOU HATE MOST!

OB markers

2009-10-19T20:42:00.003+08:00

I find this inherently amusing, particularly after reading 'Singapore, you are not my country (for Noora)' by Sa'at.

OB markers. They tell us to open our minds and mouths yet gag us with OB markers. O Singapore of inumerable paradoxes.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7153/2102/1600/obmarker.jpg

(Stupid blogger can't upload pictures! ROAR! WHY IS EVERYONE OUT TO PISS ME OFF TODAY?!)

Edit on Merlion thing

2009-10-19T18:33:00.002+08:00

Apparently because I replied more than 2 weeks late, the position has been filled up by another person.

Yeah, I am disappointed and pissed off. CURSE YOU, STUPID END OF YEAR EXAMINATIONS! ROOOOAAARRR!

*aims dart at exam timetable*

Hi Chanel, Unfortunately you replied almost 2 weeks late, and the position
has been filled with another reader. The book itself will be launched on the day
itself and you will be entitled to a copy, so do come and get yours. Take
care,Kai Chai.

I am a civilised person. I am reasonable. I will not threaten or kill the poor messenger.

*fumes silently, before stomping off to corner of woe to wallow in self-pity*

ALAS...IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE.

I swear to God if Chang Bo puls a miracle and beats me in English composition I might just lose it and come after him with a parang. So please wear armour and stay away from me.

*wails and melts down in a blubbering mess*

But it's okay. My poem was shit anyway, and I am glad not to have to read it and look stupid in front of all those people. Who would care about a teen reading her poem anyway? Since I'm not gonna read it, I think it's time to release it here for you all to poke fun at.

(Anyway, as testament to how crappy I thought said poem was, I named the file 'terrible writing'.) Here goes...

100-word drabble: Merlion

Tonight is clear and starry out, and
street lamps slather light with soft tongues.

One day I will fall
apart and disintegrate, but do not weep by my grave. I plead of you nothing but
two favors: remember me, somewhere, nestled in the crook of your plastecine
mind, somewhere. Someday I will not be able to watch over your every second,
your every breath, count the stars and moons with you, but promise me you will
carry on.
I know one day I’ll be forgotten, but the indelible relics of
your passing will pass through my metal veins. I’ll remember.

Terrible, wasn't it? *nods in agreement to other poets on cyberworld. I know, no meter, no meaning, cliched content, melodramatic, blah. This is blah. It's really obvious which poem inspired this.

Obviously, it is 'Do not stand by my grave and weep' by Mary Frye.

Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep--Mary Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there.
I did not die.

Seeing how obviously superior it is to my pathetic effort makes me weep.

*goes once more into blubbering mess*

I wish I could get drunk, like how they do in movies when the female protagonist breaks up. I feel like I'm going through a divorce with my poem!

I will go wallow and cry m tears into the *rolls eyes* hot shower. Like a typical cliche. Meh. I will go back to being a cynical bitch.

Singapore, you are not my country

2009-10-17T21:37:00.003+08:00

Singapore, you are not my country -- Aflian Sa'at (i.e. the guy who wrote 'Cardboard', the poem in Unseen component of E. lit.)

Singapore You Are Not My Country (For Noora)
Alfian Sa'at

Singapore you are not my country.
/Singapore you are not a country at all.
/You are surprising Singapore, statistics-starved Singapore, soulful Singapore of tourist brochures in Japanese and hourglass kebayas.
/You protest, but without picketing, without rioting, without Catherine Lim,
/but through your loudspeaker media,
/through the hypnotic eyeballs of your newscasters,
/and that weather woman who I swear is working voodoo on my teevee screen.

/Singapore, what are these lawsuits in my mailbox?
/There are so many sheaves,
/I should have tipped the postman.
/Singapore, I assert, you are not a country at all.
/Do not raise your voice against me,
/I am not afraid of your anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the bark of my sapless heart.
/Not because I sang them pigtailed pinnafored breakfasted chalkshoed in school
/But because I used to watch telly till they ran out of shows.
/Do not invite me to the podium and tell me to address you properly.
/I am allergic to microphones and men in egosuits and pubicwigs.
/And I am not a political martyr,
/I am a patriot who has lost his country and virginity.
/Do not wave a cane at me for vandalising your propaganda with technicolour harangues,
/Red Nadim semen white Mahsuri menses the colourful language of my eloquent generation.
/Your words are like walls on which truth is graffiti.
/This has become an island of walls.
/Asylum walls, factory walls, school walls, the walls of the midnight Istana.
/If I am paranoid I have learnt it from you,
/O my delicate orchid stalk Singapore,
/Always thirsty for water,
/spooked by armed archipelagoes,
/always gasping for airspace,
/always running to keep ahead,
/running away from yourself.
/Singapore why do you wail that way, demanding my IC?
/Singapore stop yelling and calling me names.
/How dare you call me a chauvinist,
/an opposition party,
/a liar,
/a traitor,
/a mendicant professor,
/a Marxist homosexual communist
/pornography banned literature chewing gum liberty smuggler?
/How can you say I do not believe in The Free Press
/autopsies flogging mudslinging bankruptcy
/which are the five pillars of Justice?
/And how can you call yourself a country,
/you terrible hallucination of highways and cranes and condominiums ten minutes drive from the MRT?

/Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness lies at the end of a Toto Queue.
/Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter whose feelings are iron
/whose courtesy is gold whose speech is silver
/whose handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.
/Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.
/Tell that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a broken collarbone and three dead comrades
/but who will not hesitate from thrusting his tiger ribcage into another fight because the lanterns of his lungs have caught
/their own fire and there is no turning back.
/Tell that to the yuppie who sits in meat-markets disguised as pubs, listening to Kenny G /disguised as jazz on handphone disguised as conversation and loneliness disguised as a jukebox.

/Tell that to all those exiles whose names are forgotten but who leave behind a bad taste in the thoughtful mouth, reminding us that the flapping sunned linen shelters a whiff of chloroform.
/Tell that to Town Council men who feed pigeons with crumbs of arsenic.
/Tell that to Natra Hertogh a.k.a Maria who proved to us that blood spilled was thicker than water shed as she was caught
/pining under a stone angel in the nunnery for her husband.
/Tell that to Ah Meng, who bore six hairy bastards for our nation.
/Tell that to Lee Kuan Yew's squint.
/Tell that to Josef Ng, who shaves my infant head amidst a shower of one-cent coins, and both of us are pure again.
/Tell that to my Warrant Officer who knew I was faking.
/Tell that to the unemployed man who drinks cigarettes smokes tattoos watches peanuts unself-conscious of his gut belch
/debts and wife having an affair with the Salesman of Nervous Breakdowns.
/Tell that to our Maya Angelou's who are screeching like witches United Nations-style poems populated by Cheena Babi
Bayee Tonchet Melayu Malas Keling Geragok Mat Salleh.
/Tell that to the fakirs of civil obedience, whose headphones are pounding the hooving basslines /of Damyata Damyata Damyata.
/Tell that to the statue of Li Po at Marina Park.
/Tell that to the performance artists who need licences like drivers and doctors and dogs when all they really need is just three percent of your love.
/Tell that to the innocent faggot looking for kicks on a Sunday evening to end up sucking the bit-/hard pistol-muzzle of the
/CID, ensnared no less by his weakness for pretty boys naked out of uniform.
/Tell that to the caretaker of the grave of Radin Mas.
/Tell that to Chee Soon Juan's smirk.
/Tell that to the pawns of The Upgrading Empire who penetrate their phalluses into heartlands to plant Lego cineplexes
/Tupperware playgrounds suicidal balconies carnal parks of cardboard and condoms and before we know it we are a colony once again.
/Tell that to Malaysia whose Desaru is our spittoon whose TV2 is our amusement whose Bumiputras are our threat whose outrage is our greater outrage whose turtles are weeping blind in the roaring daylight of our cameras.
/Tell that to the old poets who have seen this piece of land slip their metaphors each passing year from bumboats to debris to sanitation projects to drowning attempts to barbed neon water weeds on a river with no reflections a long way off from the sea.

/O Singapore your fair shores your garlands your GNP.
/You are not a country you are a construction from spare parts.
/You are not a campaign you are last year's posters.
/You are not culture you are poems on the MRT.
/You are not a song you are part swear word part lullaby.
/You are not Paradise you are an island with pythons.
/Singapore I am on trial.
/These are the whites of my eyes and the reds of my wrists.
/These are the deranged stars of my schizophrenia.
/This is the milk latex gummy moon of my sedated smile.
/I have lost a country to images, it is as simple as that.
/Singapore you have a name on a map but no maps to your name.
/This will not do; we must stand aside and let the Lion crash through a madness of cymbals back to that dark jungle heart when eyes were still embers waiting for a crownless Prince of Palembang.

OHYESOMIGOD

2009-10-17T20:32:00.003+08:00

FUCKING AWESOME!

YES YES YES YES YES

(I know I sound like I'm experiencing an orgasm here, but I really am. Writer's euphoria! Yes yes yes yes yes OMIGOD! KYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!)

LIKE, YAY! I amk so frigging happy I sound incoherent from bliss.

Lookie at the surpirse I found in my email!

Hi Chanel, This is Kai Chai, the co-editor of the Merlion anthology. We are launching the anthology, Reflecting On The Merlion, at the Singapore Writers Festival. The Merlion debate, which includes speakers such as Alfian Sa'at, Ovidia Yu, Ng Yi-Sheng and Alvin Pang, will follow the book launch. As 'Merlion' is included in the anthology, we would like you to read your poem at the launch. Would you be able to make it? The event will be held at November 1 (Sunday), 5-7pm, at the Chamber in the Arts House. Kai Chai.

Is this not frigging awesome?

I myself was surpirsed at it, and proceeded to get a big, shit-eating grin on my face, ecven though I am screaming my head off like a deranged fangirl in my heart, squealing and letting crazed laughter swing through the bars of my ribcage like monkeys on crack.

(Holy crap I am poetic even when deliriously happy!)

You know why I was surprised?

THAT'S BECAUSE I DIDN'T SPEND ANY EFFORT INTO WRITING THAT POEM.

(Actually, it's not a poem, but a 100-word drabble).

The night before the dateline, I was in a tizzy. I had to submit two pieces as part of CAP homework, and I have only finished one prose piece, of which I was relatively satisfied with. The subjects of the two pieces must be 'home' and 'merlion'.

It is pretty much obvious which one I finished writing first right? Obviously it was 'home'. What else can you write about an ugly, white mammoth who got struck by lightning? Okay fine it isn't a mammoth (dunno whether it gives birth, but I suppose it has hair because the top part if furry and all).

I was panicking, running around in circles like a headless chicken, and typing crazed messages to my MSN contacts, or those unfortunate enough to want to talk to me then.

Why wasn't I writing, you ask?

Ah. Well...I am the king of one nation known as PROCRASTInation, and even as the deadline draws near, I was still being my lazy, indolent self and doing completely useless things like panicking, messaging and reading. Anything but writing.

But I decided, okay, no use panicking.I might as well bite the lion in the head and start writing, because I was horrendously late, rushing to back up everything on a CD-rom and filling in my particulars for mentorship, juggling between tests and managing the internal affairs of PROCRASTInation. What the fuck, I thought. Just anyhow write lor, mei you shi jian liao!

I wrote some quasi-romantic crap, and being inspiration-less, decided to limit it to 100 words drabble. Gave it a title, and called it 'a piece of homework'. There. I had doen my duty.

Exhauted due to m overly brilliant machinations, I fell asleep contentedly and assumed I would never get into Mentorship, unless pigs flew.

Well, you know what happened to Mentorship. I got in.

Somehow the pigs weren't flying.

Just as I thought my luck is running out, I got this message.

YES. OH MY GOD YES FUCKING YES.

HAPPY~!

But I still think my writing is crap. Exams kill creativity, and excrete it out of some mighty bladder like creatinine and urea and uric acid and excess mineral salts and water.

WAHAHA THIS IS AWESOME MAN I GET TO READ MY POEM! YAY! SINGAPORE WRITER'S FESTIVAL! I can officially declare myself as a writer now!

Eat my dust, those who criticised me! Eat. My. Dust!

Okay now that the euphoria has worn off slightly and I have decreased my acceleration off Earth's surface, I know I cannot be proud just because of one insignificant achievement. This will spur me on to do better and scale more heights in my writing! I shall try my best to conquer all difficulties!

Oh. And another reason why I am so happy:

The fella who wrote the poem for the Unseen section of the EOY's lit paper is there! I can then ask him in person what the hell he means by his poem, 'Cardboard'. And of course, ask him questions like what is his inspiration for writing, and the infamous poem, 'Singapore, you are not my country'.

Awefriggingsome.

I shall bring along my E lit EOY paper and cleverly hide my results, before asking him to autograph my paper at the Parent's Signature space.

=D

Will post Alfian Sa'at's poem, Singapore, you are not my country on the next post.

Personality

2009-10-16T23:11:00.002+08:00

Physics exam was a complete fiasco.

I started sneezing halfway through the exam, and I had no tissue on end, so I sounded like someone suffering from bird flu. If you would like more details on the consistency and colour of my mucus, you can send me an email, otherwise, I'll spare you the details.

I sneezed over the entire page of paper, and I daresay that it made it more interesting. The droplets of saliva or whatever clear fluid it was spiced up the otherwise boring landscape of stupid blocks that always fall in exam questions, and balls which have limitless ways of falling.

Who the fuck cares about a stupid block moving down the ramp? The block can slide its way down to hell for all I care. God forbid that it happens, because the impossible actually occured: Physcis is interesting! GASP!

The way the questions are phrased are so boring. I don't care about a metal hoop or whatever it was. Instead of using such boring terms, why can't they add more fantastical details to the question? e.g.

Physics questions Chanel's style:

A cherub weighing 500N slides down from heaven and, due to some mistake on God's part who forgot to close the holes to hell, the cherub falls to Hell at a velocity of 666m/s, and lands on an occupied Satan's head. Assuming that no energy is lost,

i) What is the force at which the cherub butts Satan's head?
ii) How will Satan be affected? Explain this in terms of Pressure.

At least this is more interesting than some stupid metal ball which falls in oil. WHo the heck is so free to ponder the speed at which the ball falls? I would rather be doign something mroe productive like sleeping or blogging.

You know, what makes a blog entry or even a diary/bad prose so different from prose as it is SUPPOSED to be written is that fact that the narrator must have a personality.

I contemplated this while reading criticisms of Twilight (see? Reading criticism DOES SO help you improve your writing because you learn more).

That's when it occured to me that holy crap! I have a lack of personality! because my ramblings in my head sound so similar to Twilight, minus the elegies/sonnets/exhaltations of one disco ball known as Edward Cullen. I'd like to think that I'm not as boring or vapid as Bella. I hope. Stuff in your head sounds better than what you write down. A good thing, considering how doleful and woebegone my sucky poetry is.

First it was the lack of emotion in my work. Then a lack of personality. I accept it! I am a terrible writer! This amazing hypothesis struck me as I was struggling with the Lit paper this afternoon, wondering at how insanely difficult it was to express myself. I felt like a 3-in-1 coffee mix: promising with good allocades, but terrible to the taste buds.

Maybe there are people who like 3-in-1 coffee though.

Re-reading what I wrote for this dratted entry, I figured that even if I added in a few vulgarities here and there and sprinkled it with sugar it would still suck because the previous few paragraphs were boring.

I am boring, Period.

The only interesting thing that happened to me was the infamous egg conditoner incident, which will be going into the 'classics' section of this blog if I bother to remember.

The exams are over! Yipee!

Listening to the girls discussing various facial treatments they wanted to do after the exams made my hands itchy for a lack of something to do, and I went to Watson's to try it out. Emerging with a dubious-looking pack of pore strips which looked like it was some pest killer (that's how unappealing the packaging was) and a deep hydration mask, I went home.

After giving my face a good scrubbing down and exfoliation or whatever that stupid beauty thing is called, I'm a facial idiot but a hair-beauty-expert, I followed the instructions to a T.

Much confusion ensued because I wasn't sure about what the instrucitons meant. What did they mean by 'smooth' side? Was it the sticky, shiny side or was it the furry side? Anyway both sides felt smooth to me. Why are insturcitons so goddamn ambiguous? It's like cooking instructios which tell you to add milk but never state what type it was (cow? goat? sheep? breast?). For goodness' sake, pick out a more defining quality!

I came ot the conclusion that instructions were useless, and fiddled with it for a while, and decided to stick it to my nose the sticky side down. Well, whatever. To be safe (because the instructions said to wet my nose), I think I dunked my entire face in water.

Whatever. My nose felt weird, and I looked like one of those Chinese criminals. Except that these anceitn chinese criminals stuck weird black patches to their temples (which I never quite figured out the purpose). Did the chinese invent facials or something?

I surfed the internet because I had nothing better to do than to wait for the ugly strip across my nose to harden up. Thank goodness it smells relatively pleasant, and not like some mysterious herb medicine of the coast of South Africa. Nevertheless, I was grateful no one came up, because I must have looked quite the sight. Anybody with a humongous back curtain plastered to their noses will look ridiculous. Especially facial masks. When I was young I recall thinking that women were stupid to put green stuff on their faces.

Anyway, I peeled it off 15 minutes later, liek the instructions said, and discovered that only one or two black heads were popped.

Stupid advertorials and the people gullible enough to believe them (i.e. me!)

I can do a much better job with my hands, damnit. (Doesn't this statement sound wonderfully sexually suggestive?)

Stupid commerical products. Arghhh. Why bother to manufacture them when they don't work.

Conclusion: Biore pore strips don't work. Period. For them to work you must have blackheads the size of a shitake mushroom, which is pretty damn big when it's on your face, rather like huang zu ren's mole. The type of blackheads that, if your nose was the world map, would obscure the entirety of China.

I AM STILL FRIGGING HIGH THAT THE EXMAS ARE OVER. I WANT TO BUY MY ANKLE BOOTS! BOOTS BOOTS BOOTS!

Social Studies

2009-10-08T21:21:00.002+08:00

Welcome to the 21st century way of brainwashing regular students into docile, politically infantile adults: Social Studies.

Honestly, after a good solid hour of attempting to memorise the infamous chapter on globalisation (up to now I fail to see where on earth the rest of the world is...isn't globalisation supposed to involve the movements of the entire world? Funnily enough, there's a gargantuan wedge of it focusing on 'ol, self-centered Singapore.

No wonder foreigners hate our country and our people so much.

What is the point of Social studies, apart from teaching us critical thinking skills? I only find the whole 'critical thinking' bit useful in Social Studies..the self-praising, pompous, outlandish praisings of Singapore and its reigning government start to grate on one's nerves after a while. I can't give a flying fuck whether you hosted the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Haze in December 1997 or not, so apologetic to tell you. It's almost as if every single tiny, nanoscopic achievement Singapore has gleaned is polished like gold and embellished with pride before dropping it straight into textbooks.

And of course, A1-hungry memorisers like us docile sheep will jsut gobble it up and vomit it back on the exam paper. After continuous regurgitations, we learn to accept what we come to memorise as the absolute truth.

Yes, learning about government policies is important. But all I see are the pertinent point of these policies -- why aren't their drawbacks expounded upon? If they want to teach us 'critical thinking', why do they only do so in sources of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, and never of Singapore? All we get are politically 'correct', clean versions in newspapers. Kinda reminds you of George Owell;s 1984, where the government had free reign over the textbooks and knowledge, and tinkered with people' minds like machines, ain't it?

I am a Singaporean and proud of it. I love Singapore. But the social studies textbook just irks me sometimes. Why can't they be like America and teach us about the constitution, or give us more details abotu the policies? It's better than the boring trifles.

There. I just admitted Social Studies can be boring. Right now I am bored off my ass, still stuck on 'globalisation'.

ARGHHHH.

Someone please help me take my paper tomorrow.

Is it me, or...

2009-10-03T22:52:00.002+08:00

Is it me, or is it possible to sweat from your arse?

All exposed parts of m body feel cool, with the exception of my plump derriere and, to be fair, my back. I swear hair is good insulation material -- it acts like some thick, luscious fur coat that I don't need on a hot summer night.

Speaking of hot asses, I just imagined a little scenario in my head while trying to memorise the content on page 120 of the elective geography textbook:

A little girl sit heavily on the wet sand, near the stumbling waves as it attempts to crawl up land. She squirms about for a bit, before finally jumping up, leaving two little-girl-sized footprints on the sand. She inspects her artwork, and then dances off.

"Mummy! Look what I made -- butt shaped imprints! They look like cauliflowers! Or peaches!"

Oh wait...cauliflowers don't look like butts. They look like brains.

Now, class, here is a Social Studies question:How similar are the above two pictures, aside from the obvious (e.g. colour, type of material, origin)?

Okay, fine. It does take a rather active imagination and a poet's lunacy to see it, but it's there! I swear, despite knowing how much of a patient in psychiatric facilities I sound like. You see, next I am going to tell you how I see little spectres floating around out heads. Crane your neck slightly to your left, there's one bobbing gleefully there.

*smiles serenely*

Sometimes even I doubt my own sanity.

Yesss, having the urge to kill people with bad pronunciation is indeed abnormal and downright irrational. After viewing poor Ris Low's video, I think she's not that bad.

Really.

Because I've heard worse.

Like that time on Friday when I encountered an uncle selling duck rice. I had ordered roasted duck noodle, and he was trying to tell me, but whatever it was, it sounded like Yiddish. Perhaps it was aggravated by my dismal hearing, so I just repeated my order. This exchange went on for about five times, much to the amusement of other customers.

To make matters worse, I was in my uniform. Nope, not worried about the fact that I am not supposed to eat meat on Fridays due to religious reasons, because I hate being forced into it and it taking away much of my options, but that's another story for tomorrow.

Anyway, he said something to the effect of pasta finis. I thought it was some spanish buzzword, and I lazily repeated my order while contemplating the probability of him just being plain insane.

Apparently he was trying to tell me, in rather broken, terrible-pronounced English, that it 'had finished'.

What had finished? Who's finished? Who died?

They had sold their last plate.

Oh.

I was too tired and grouchy to correct self-righteous ah peks under my breath, so I just acquiesced with whatever he said. How hard is it to pronounce the 'sh' of 'finish'? Never mind the grammar, at least pronounce it right. Oh wait, I forgot -- since this is Singapore, we have the msot convenient excuse of ducking under out national 'culture', Singlish. Therefore we have a right to mispronounce Standard English and make it into some unintelligible, unevolved-human speech.

I don't care about age or how young or old these people are. I just hate people with bad pronunciation. Your age is not an excuse for bad pronunciation, you can always learn. True, I wasn't very clear in my enunciation of consonants when I was younger, but I learnt. My fluency in the English language (for my level as a student) is not exactly intristic; I did not start speaking in the womb.

It just pisses me off when people come up with all sorts of ridiculous excuses not to speak properly. Proper language is there for a reason : to make yourself understood. I can't tell what the hell you are trying to say with that bad mish-mash of pidgin English and something undesirable.

I'm a realist and a soft-artist. So fuck you and your ideals, as well as your compassion and sympathies. No time for sympathies and to coddle young ones. Just keep pressing on, keep running, keep pushing others out of the way until you are the first. Life is only as cruel as we make it out to be.

I sound like a bitter, cynical, estranged wife.

My funny's gone down the drain when I started memorising the first strains of CASH (Corrasion, Attrition, Solution, Hydraulic action) and meanders.

Maybe it won't come back. I don't care. I will sit here and self-destruct, and be a boring, bitter old fart in general.

I am greatly saddened by the indisputable fact that I am no longer funny.

2009-09-29T15:25:00.004+08:00

"But I was more at home in my father's world. People like Mr Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men; seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about the, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked... they weren't --

'Hypocrites, Mrs Perkins, born hypocrites,' Mrs Merriweather was saying. 'At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders down here.'"

-- To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout, Chapter twenty-four, page 240.

Something about the last class left a bitter taste in my mouth as I contemplated this, while simultaneously attempt to mentally calculate the probability of me getting A1's in everything, while half-listening to JL's lesson.

I do not rescind my earlier statements. Yes, I admit I could have been more tactful about it. I was in a highly emotional state as I sat down and typed the following, and I know I will be held accountable for my words. But I do not regret it, because I was perfectly honest. I live by my convictions, and die by it. I know I am a hypocrite, all people are, but I do try to be less hypocritical and be direct, irregardless of whether it hurts the person's feelings or not.

Okay, to deviate a bit, let me relate to you one of the workshops in CAP I participated in. The teacher (Mr Courttia Newland) was telling us to relax and let loose our creative selves. I cannot recall much of the lesson, but I do remember tearing up my work in frustration when I judged it to be terrible, and he telling me gently not to tear up work, because it is essentially part of ourselves as writers, but that is irrelevant. The point of this little story is that, one of his prompts was, "What is the one thing you would rather die than to lose?"

I sat there and thought. Was it family? Friends? My soul? My eyes fell on the pencil clutched loosely within my fingers, and it struck me. No, there's a single thing that I would rather die than to lose - my 'voice', my inner creative self, my opinions and thoughts and dreams. There is simply no point in living if I cannot find the words to express myself, or to tell m loved ones how much I love them, or scream shrill words of desperation and hate, or even comfort in whispers. I would rather die before losing the right to speak my thoughts freely.

I know this is the recipe for chaos if everyone had the right to speak freely. Racism and prejudice would colour our words without any filter, and sexual terms would wrench their way into the hearing of innocent ears. But an honest world - for once, no more societal expectations of being respectful to elders despite them behaving ungraciously in public. Don't lie and say that I am being impertinent -- it is true. How many old people have you seen spitting in public, or teachers behaving ... (cannotthinkofadjective), and many others behaving like chimpanzees run loose from the zoo? Misbehaviour is common (I do it too!), and it is human to err, but just because some of them are older than us, we have to pretend that we didn't see anything?

That's one thing I don't really understand. Does justice not prevail? Why do we have to play by these invisible codes, set by faceless men whom we do not know? Isn't this how prejudice continued, with people just following conventionality like blind sheep?

Yes, I have absolutely no authority to voice my opinion on teachers as students. But I have the right to an opinion. Schools appear to recognise this, for they hand our survey forms to us. If we base our arguments on 'she has no authority whatsoever to make a conjecture...', then we would be a backwards society. Critics cannot exist, for the ordinary Joe is NOT a governor, so he cannot comment on world issues. That reviewer is NOT a movie director, or actress, or even a fashion designer, so he or she cannot comment on how terrible that was. You see now? It's the same thing with constructive criticism: even if my readers or audience are younger than I am, coming from all walks of life, they may be uneducated or perhaps not particularly inclined to literature. But I still pay attention to their critique, because everyone has a valid point of argument. Everyone has an opinion and everyone can judge for themselves whether something is good or bad. Even the cleaner down the block can tell you whether the American government's latest move in healthcare was a right thing to do or no... he is entitled to it and is simply stating his views from what he knows.

Likewise, I am simply stating my views from what I know. I never pretended to be a professor or an academic. I love English and I pay attention to how words are pronounced, and I make a conscious effort to speak and write it well. I can tell when the pronunciation is bad, or when a person's attitude is bad. I can tell what separates a good teacher from a bad teacher by comparing him/her to the ones I have had before.

We students do not go out to pick on teachers, we want to learn. I want to learn and be the best. All in all, it's a game of respect -- you respect me and I will respect you. You know why Mr Ahmad is so well-liked? He respects us, and is extremely patient. From the past few terms he has taught my class, he has never lost his temper once. Even when the noise level gets a bit uncontrollable, he waits, patiently, and tells us nicely to quieten down. We listen, or at least most of us do, and all in all Literature lessons are highly enjoyable, inspirational and motivating.

Mr Davamoni too. Although the people of 2 HM 08 got a bad impression of him, he has ability and skill, as well as passion. That is what counts. So far, he has not taught me, but in the weekly meetings with him, coordinating the CAP training programme, I can tell he is passionate, from the numerous portfolios accumulated over the years from students to the enthusiastic air he carries. His desk is always cluttered with literature materials and english stuff for his classes. Of course, the sec four's opinions helped too.

One more example. Aside from all the inspirational teachers I have met (such as Mrs Pereira and Mrs Tan (chem teacher), etc, names slipped my mind I am so sorry teachers), there is one very memorable english teacher I had last year. Mr Chris Lim. Despite graduating from one of the best schools in Singapore (Raffles Institution!), and having a really strong command of English, he is NEVER proud or conceited. He interacts with us and being our form teacher last year, he actually tried to tear down the walls between teacher and student, trying to understand us and be approachable. He has sincerity -- and I can tell from his well-intentioned (but rather boring) grammar exercises he forced us through, the GP he photocopied and passed to the entire class in order to brush up our English, and his honesty. I remember his dry wit and interesting lessons (complete with that seemingly bottomless pool of vocabulary, from then on I vowed to be better and worked doubly hard on compos) actually made me want to pay attention, and look forward to them (the fact that I liked English probably helped).

Those above are my understanding of what a good teacher should be. They respect us, and we respect them. They do not try to deprecate our intelligence (all bad teachers tend to do this, treating us like complete idiots), and instead of working against us and forcing us, they work with us. They lower themselves to our level and try to push us up. I understand that teaching is a difficult thing to do, what with the added responsibilities and talking to distracted teenagers who would rather be elsewhere, attempting to connect to different minds and instill passion in the subject, but then again it is a profession for a reason. It is respected for a reason. All new teachers may nor necessarily be bad -- Mr Chris Lim was 'new' when he came in and taught us, but he still succeeded.

Good teachers are truly deserving of all respect I could give. If you find that you cannot connect with others or if you are arrogant / unable to conduct yourself well (e.g. swaggering into classrooms, speaking broken English despite being an English teacher) then teaching is not for you. (Yes the broken english thing is not only present in CCHMS, but also in other schools...delicious irony, really.)Please find your path in life which would suit you better. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.

I know I might one day look back at this entry and laugh at my blatant stupidity, but this is me. This is me then, and this is me now. I will have matured over the years and would probably look at these in shame, but I will accept it. (Like my bad poetry. I still wince whenever I stumble upon one) I am learning, still growing, still maturing. We all are. Even the oldest and wisest sage of time would still have much to discover even after the end of his life. I am acutely aware that there is so much more I don't know, that the mysteries of the universe is more than what my tiny head can grasp. The more we know, the more we know we don't know. There. Now that I have professed my ignorance, will the proud men profess theirs so we can shut this rather pedantic discussion and get on with learning?

P.S. One thing I don't understand. Why do people deliberately go out of the way to insult others? (Yes, the quote wayyy up is relevant to somebody I know?) Is it to get a false sense of justification or...oh wait I am insulting someone! Crap, I'm a hypocrite.

Obviously I answered my own question. Ha. Ha.

P.P.S. I try not to lie. I live by my own morals and I'm a competitive, cold-hearted bitch. I never once pretended that this was some sort of analysis or was factually accurate. Opinions are unreliable for a reason, as your social studies teacher will tell you. However, as a student, I do get to mix around and hear other's opinions. I know who and how many people dislike a teacher, and why. I can tell you that JL is about to become an integral part of history on the dislike wall, because I have never seen a class (or to be accurate, classes) so united in one purpose. Take it or leave it. I don't care. Besides, how silly this will all seem if it is dredged up to the principal. 'My student wrote on her blog how much she disliked me!!!' From blog-hopping I do as a result of boredom, a hatred of some teachers are common, and often a common topic of debate in blog posts. Maybe it makes me the smaller person, but it's okay. It's my work, and if you don't like it, well, you can always choose not to view it, I didn't force you.

I would be more than delighted to entertain you if you have a different opinion, but do support it. Flames simply show the dignity and intelligence of the poster.

Baby steps

2009-09-20T15:04:00.002+08:00

I'm planning to WORK HARD FOR O LEVELS FROM NOW ON, AS WELL AS FOR CAP.

JIAYOU CHANEL.

I need to write. Write better, writer more originally, write more poetry, moer prose, more meaning, the world between my palms and the taste of emotions, happiness, sorrow in my tongue. I need the ink to flow viscuously on paper and communicate my soul in these ink-marks, imprinting them on the hearts of fellow humans. I need it. I need to succeed, I need to be the best, I must be able to weave the world at my fingertips.

Refer to CAP 2010's theme: word weavers, world bridgers.

I want to get the humanities scholarship!

http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/scholarships/moe-preu/humanities/

I WILL work extra hard for my humanities and participate actively in my CCA! You see, the requirements are extensive, and terribly difficult to meet:

Eligibility

Candidates should:

be Singapore Citizens, Singapore Permanent Residents, or children of Singapore Citizens

Have done consistently well in school, obtaining outstanding results in the 2008 GCE ‘O’ Level Examinations / equivalent results based on IP school’s internal assessment;
(I don't like the sound of this...'outstanding' sounds very...minatory...
have a good record of co-curricular activities (Hoshit I'm fucked.)
have successfully been admitted to one of the Humanities Centres (?)(What's a humanities centre? Must ask Mr Ahmad.);

and not currently be in receipt of any other MOE scholarship (except EESIS and ESIP)

You reckon I could just appeal with my CAP certificate. Must take creative writing mroe seriously from now on and graduate from the program with flying colours!

Okay, will not play anymore, I shall study hard!

this saturday morn

2009-09-19T17:21:00.002+08:00

You know your password is too long when it takes you FOUR tries to type it in correctly and log in.

*uncomprehending audience stare back blankly8

Uh, nevermind.

Okay. On to the list of things I really hate (UPDATED! NEW AND IMPROVED RECIPE!)

1) Twilight. (With full reference to Stephenie Meyer, a SadoMasochist. Get the joke?)
2) Yang Meh. (POP THE CHAMPAGNE PEOPLE SHE RETIRED!!!!111oneone)
2) Miss Lim, the empty cockleshell with no flesh between her temples. The fella who WOULDN'T GRADE MY COMPOSITIONS BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO LONG. ARGH THAT PISSES ME OFF AGAIN.
3) A Math
4) Chinese, Physics
5) When I can't find my goddamn things when I need them, only for them to appear, rather innocently, beneath my nose.
5) Children. Old people. Screaming fangirls. (Yes I know I was once a kid and will grow old in the future, but I am a misanthrope. I hate people, period. So don't piss me off, because I don't know what I will do if I get very angry. Probably murder)
6) Hated words i.e. 'sparkle, chagrin, banquet hall, whichever overused word SM has a propensity to use
7) JOHNATHAN LIM (Did I spell that right? Do I care? Not the least!)

Doubtlessly you will find my regaling the reasons why I dislike him so entertaining.

If you don't, or even if there is a remote possibility you are the abovementioned person, let me tell you a secret, darling.

Oh, no, it's not 'fuck off'. But it's a very astute guess, my dear. Rather, I would like to indulge you with a little known command -- Alt+F4.

Sayonara!

If you are not the abovementioned person, then read on. I know I have stirred your curiosity, a boiling vat now in the arterioles of your soul. YES I KNOW THAT THE SOUL IS NOT A VALID ORGAN, SHUT UP.

Okay, now into my discursive essay why I dislike him.

A rather squat figure strolls into the classroom, with a walk reminiscent of a yakuza. You catch an eyeful of his face and balk. Please, please, don't walk in my class, you pray to all gods and goddesses existing in the world, hoping against hope that someone, anyone would rescue you from looming drudgery and fill your soul with the warmth of English.

Preferably a hot / smexy teacher. Well, it doesn't hurt to look at pretty things when you're bored.

Where ever God is, he appears to be taking a permanent vacation to Hawaii, because The Horror walks into your class with great, lumbering footsteps that will make even Bottom the craftsmen disgusted.

"Guhd Mourning, class."

Oh fuck.

-
This couldn't get worse.

You were wrong.

Immediately he launches into a convoluted praise-session, extolling the virtues of VJC and his running speed.

You eye at his waist size and quietly snigger. Then you proceed to count all the pronunciation errors he makes.

Hey, it's entertainment. Better than the crap he is sprouting.

Unfortunately poor, naive, hardworking Chanel is paying attention because her faggot of a conscience won't let her dose off. Apparently there's only an option for shutting down during A Math, Physics and Chinese.

However, somehow you manage to get snatches of the conversation, like how chicken rice is supposedly better than nasi lemak.

Wut?

-

Chanel tried to have a debate with Lim. Chanel suceeded in wasting about 15 minutes. Chanel is sad because she lost, and she hates losing. But she loses gracefully, unlike people whose arguments spin out of control into other territories. Chanel is objective in her arguments.

Chanel cannot say much about Lim.

Chanel just realised that Lim teachers are 50-50, a wildcard on their teaching abilities. So far, she has had 2 sucky lim teachers (Mr and Miss Lim, my god they would be better halves), one okay lim teacher, and 2 good lim teachers (Mr Chris Lim and my tuition teacher).

Okay Chanel is tired of speaking in third person.

-

1 more thing. WTF (Why The Fuck) should an English teacher be making basic grammatical and spelling errors in his corrections?

And saying, 'Nevermind, if it's me, I can make them.'

Irresponsible dog owner (I say this because there are a lot of dog owners near Chung Cheng who let their dogs shit all over the pavements, thus we have to walk on the main road to avoid stepping on them). They will have bad karma, and thus be sentenced to an afterlife soaking in a dog-crap sauna, eating dog crap, sleeping in dog crap and doing whatever activities with dog crap! That is holy justice!

After seeing so much of him, I think I do not want to mention him anymore.

Sometimes I look at all the trashy shoujo manga I read (mainly to laugh at stupid girls and their infatuation...tsk tsk), as well as the Seventeen magazines I buy, and wonder why I even bother to read such literary trash. Girls, come on, there's so much more to life than clothes, jewelry, cosmetics and guys! (Like money! $$$$$$ And chocolate, and poetry and prose and villianelles and sonnets and sestinas and freewriting and...)

Then I realise,

Sometimes you need to read brainless stuff so it doesn't tax your mind too much.

It's always fun to laugh at the stupidity of lesser beings, or at stupid things in a magazine. It helps that it's grammatically correct...it's not that funny when you read awful fangirl poetry -shivers-

Oh yeah, random fact, but did you know you could get addicted to lip balm? Basically lip balm contains come stuff that will actually make your lips drier, thus you use more and establish a sort of psysiological dependency on it. You can't live without it, it's a vicious cycle.

Sibeh cool. Thank goodness I am lazy and kept on forgetting to apply lip balm my mum gave me when I was younger. You see? Forgetfulness is a good thing!

guilt

2009-09-07T11:34:00.000+08:00

Oh darn. The presents were so nice it made me feel guilty.

Chanel, yo selfish little bitch...your friends spend on you yet you are like a miser hoarding up your money...not even bothering to wish them happy birthday...

Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt...

All those whose birthdays I missed: I AM SO SORRY OMIGOSH. I shall start organising a gift list and start buying.

Hopefully there won't be a a need to give again in Christmas, because I am a conventional, boring gift-giver whose presents are normally chucked out or unused. Yeah I have weird taste... I felt so guilty last night that my friends knew me so well. ARGGHHH...

Okay shall not dither further. Must find a (cheap) place to buy the stuff...cannot exceed budget...

(yeah my junk food appetite is pretty extensive)

Bye!

(You didn't read the previous post. I wasn't in m right state of mind, my depression demons got to me again.)

One more time...

2009-08-31T14:29:00.001+08:00

One more time I see the muthafucking phrase "the water sparkled/ shimmered / glistened like thousands of diamonds." I shall go on a rampage and violently stab the author with raw diamonds, and smilingly tell him/her, "Your blood sparkles like a million rubies / the excretement of a crow"

Of all jewels in God's good, green, somewhat muddy earth, WHY ON THE FUCKING EARTH DOES IT HAVE TO BE DIAMONDS? Why not pearls? Swarovski crystals? Sterling silver? Nooo...of all jewels it must be plain, old, boring diamond.

When I get married in the future I shall ask my fiance to give me a sapphire ring.

P.S. Add on the the list of words I hate:

Sparkle
chagrin
ochre
diamonds

Fucking bitches shouldn't read Twilight. ARGHHH TWILIGHT AND SEC ONE BRATS, YOU SPOILED THESE WORDS FOR ME! THOU ART DIABOLICAL! THOU ART HENIOUS BEAST, CANKERWORM!

P.S. What the fuck is with the phrase 'stared hard'? All the sec one twits seem to like using it.

Propensity to find thigns to get pissed off at

2009-08-25T20:11:00.000+08:00

I think I may have a masochistic streak.

*watches as imaginary audience gasps in horror*

Yeah. Somehow I enjoy diliberately reopening old wounds and reading scathing criticisms on my fanfiction (irregardless of the fact that I had long outgrown fanfiction, bad poetry and now have launched into full-out purple prose). Reading a particularly vicious comment somehow just pissed me off again because I noticed the author had not even given me any concrit regarding my writing.

Here's the review:
"
"Am a first timer."

Oh yes, this is so professional. Normally I would read someone saying, "I am a first timer."

You made me laugh honestly by saying "go by the excuse that this is your 'first fanfic'" yet you said that you have read all my stories? I doubt that my the way because I place my stories on about three websites, some have other stories that the others do not carry.

What humored me and my friend was that your little review was nearly just as long compared to the only fan fiction you have done on this website.

I hope the review was professional enough for you."

Now I suppose it was my fault in the first place because of m grammar nazi-ness, leading me to comment rather scathingly on her writing style and ploit development, as well as characterization. I was in secondary onewhen I wrote that awful piece of drivel, and in sec 2 when I gave the scathing review.

Yes, I was perfectly aware my reivew is longer than my story. Oh hardy har har, the irony neophyte writers use to soothe their nascent egos. But isn't that the whole poinbt of review? To give concrit and comment on things like flow, metaphors, style and etc.? I don't want some shitass comment about "aw." or "so cute" or "it's very well-written" -- well, it's flattering, but it doesn't help me.

Egoistic bitches like the above certainly have an ego that precedes their intelligence.

And yes, I am aware that this is an argument fallacy because I am basing this on my opinion. Her spirit "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" really rankles, especially since I reviewed her in hopes of getting her to improve. Geez, I read it and I bothered to comment. If you want empty, honey-glazed flattery, go and ask the twilight fangirls to read it. I'm interested in literature, not sexual fantasies written by a hormonal teenage girl who has no sense of diction or literary devices.

Did I mention that seeing typos still rankle me?

At first, I wanted to adopt another username to review her other stories -- she had improved over time, but I still saw a few errors here and there, but I decided that it was pointless wasting my breath on people who do not want to learn. It's like what Calpurnia said in Mockingbird, tht people will only learn if they want to, you can't force them to.

Meanwhile I'll save this for people who appreciate it, like my fellow CAPpers, who enjoy a good book and engage in all-out literature talks for hours.

It's not that I don't accept negative feedback. I am more than happy to receive any type of feedback, as long as you have a reason and suggestions fo rimprovement. If you simpoly insult me without any reference to my writing, then don't bother. I am aware I am not exactly the epitome of maturity-- I am still learning, still trying to be better.

However, I am extremely happy to have found a home in DeviantArt, which is loads better than fanfiction. I have journeyed on and never looked back. I am now a mentored participant, with my own portfolio, learning under a published writer and teaching others how to write. I know it's extremely childish of me to throw one last jibe back at that scorned writer, but I can't resist.

To YOU (yes, you know who you are, emo-shukun)

I am now living a life that brings me more satisfaction that one anonymous writer who has no talent whatsoever, sitting behind a computer screen using others' characters for choppy stories with poor characterisation. I have journeyed beyond this notebook drivel of fanfiction and never once looked back. While you indulge in yoru wet dreams with anime characters and are gloriously proud of your achievements in beign published online, I will be published in a book next year. So now, who's more qualified? Who's more 'professional', so as to speak? While I leave my imprint as a young talent on Singapore's shores and get scholarships, you are still there, where you begun: a Nobody. I, as a writer, sincerely wish you better luck in your writing.

P.S. consider getting your characters right. What humoured me was that you seem to think a mother purposely messing up her son's bedroom and behaving as if she is bipolar is the epitome of maturity.

HALLELUJAH!

2009-08-23T14:48:00.000+08:00

Let us celebrate the one day hotmail didn't fuck up! I managed to view the 'family portrait' of my CAP mentorship group.

Is my posture THAT bad? Goodness gracious me, I must really learn to sit up straight! The uniform looks as if it's too big for me-- the sleeves are touching my elbow. And I look FLAT. You know what I mean, girls.

I need to get more sleep -- the dark circles and eyebags are extremely unsightly.

My expression was more of a grimance than a smile...My expression was 'Goddamnit, when will this stupid hoto be taken? I want to sleep NOW!'

If you don't believe me, lemme try and upload it:

Okay. The one day hotmail didn't fuck up is also the very day Blogger fucks up,

Well, you can't have best of both worlds, as I have been told.

I need sleep.

an artist who has forgotten how

2009-08-17T18:19:00.001+08:00

today, your forgotten painting hangs proudly on the corner, always tilted more to the left than the right. it wasn't much: just a table of fruits and a vase of plants.

i asked who painted them, and you nonchalantly replied it was by you.

where are your painbrushes?

"Oh, I threw them away after I started work," you said.

the only painting you do now is on your aging canvas, drawn and re-drawn to perfection everyday. but makeup doesn't stay on like the watercolours do once upon a youth.

-

yesterday you asked me the difference between a h and a 2b pencil.

i said, you are the artist, shouldn't you know?

you said, i gave everything back to the teachers after i graduated from nanyang arts academy. i can't paint now, not now, never now. perhaps later, you'll say and smile as though trying to recall something, an erased harried-sketch between lectures perhaps, or the smudged ink printed at the recesses on your mind.

so what's the difference between a 2b and a 6b pencil, you ask.

i can't reply. somehow i knew, in the midst of stiff formal print and tax invoices, you had long forgotten the sharp flick of the rish when tracing the spike of the durian, the smell of paint and the swift, feather carress of pencil on paper. you no longer look nor admire how pencil traces the paper; you are more interested in what it can do, what it says. then you are off, away in the flood of telephone calls and office meetings.

i look at framed photographs of a past and -

-----------------------

True story.

I really do know an artist who has forgotten the difference between a 2b pencil and a 6b pencil. While this may seem trivial to you, well, it is the equivalent of a scientist asking you the difference between an electron microscope and a normal one.

These are our tools, our escape from life, our layout of ourselves, our way to forget and remember things, and to breathe life into our imaginations. To forget something like this is indeed a painful thing. Painful to watch, that is.

I hope I will never be like that person, but you know what they say, never say never. Someday I will look back on the works I did and quietly admire my genius, because I had forgotten how to write.

I'm afraid of that day coming. But I know, it is imminent. It would be a very great shock, certainly, as writing is now not only an art form, but an integral part of my life. Taking it away is the equivalent of pulling off my tongue or depriving me of one of my senses. It is infinitely precious, and I will do anything to protect it.

Email

2009-08-05T21:27:00.000+08:00

It's been one year ever since I've used email services (yeah yeah I'm a dinosaur living under a rock) and reading back on some that I've sent out to friends, all that came to mind was this:

Was I that annoying?

God, I annoy myself. The irony.

I am a writer

2009-07-31T15:52:00.000+08:00

I am a writer. I am a storyteller, a crafter of words and expressions, weaving tales from distal lands you've never heard of.

I've been focusing too much on pretty images and purple prose, neglecting my characters as well as my plot. I realise now I have been killing my story with the huge amount of purple prose I libreally SMACK it with. Now, reading the work I have submitted, I realise that the most recent things I've submitted are CRAP. Completely terrible!

At least Wonderland was saved by the dialogue bit in the middle, but the purple patches in front is definitely unsalvagable.

Oh God I can't believe I had the temerity to submit such crap up! Yuck yuck yuck...it tastes like am overdone ice creasm, crammed full of all sorts of flavours around the world. However, you can't taste a single thign or even learn to appreciate it because everything is very overpowering. The pleasant ingredients have turned into something pungent with that muddled combination. Oh gross.

Maybe I should delete it. Or I can rewrite the bit in front so the dream sequence won't be entirely too overpowering.

Now finished editing 'Wonderland, and I think I went a little too delete-happy. Quite satisfied with this version now, unfortunately the lack of bad writing in the beginning just made my suckiness in dialogue a little more obvious. The doctors is like some deux ex machina for expository writing, and the mum is a bit too flat (too typical-I-shall-cry-my-eyes-out-like-a-weakling), the only interesting character was the main character, and even that was major suckage. The doctor was fine, and that was because he is a deux ex machina and a professional.

Blah. I think my characters are too blah. The only intersting character I created was Caroline, who betrayed her best friend (for reasons unknown to the reader) and was murdered in a church by said friend's brother, who then commited suicide after finishing her off. Hang on! That was plot, not character, Caroline was a flat, undeveloped character!

Well, the unnamed character in The Other End of Mirrors, who I can easily identify with because of my eczema condition. I think that is the only good character I created who I really explored themes and issues through.

Apples rock. Cinnamon too.

2009-07-27T20:17:00.000+08:00

I wrote about that vile, disgusting yogurt the other day, I believe. Considering the two options of this yogurt in order to cure m yeast infection are:
1) Squirt it up there. YES, UP THERE, AND I DON'T MEAN THE MOUTH.
2) Eat it.

Well, however gullible I am (I still recell the memories of the notorious egg shampoo - a wonderously bad idea), even I know that inserting foreign objects in your thing is not a wise thing to do. I mean, if I eat it and it's poisonous, I can get rid of it and eject it from my system via the anus or kidneys, but once I squirt it up there...well, if it doesn't work, how am I gonna get it out?

Happily, at least one suggestion on the Internet proved true.

Coat an apple with Disgusting yogurt and top it up with cinnamon. Note: Apple must be very sweet for this to work.

It actually tasted...nice. Or maybe it was the cinnamon. I love cinnamon and apples.

I admit that the potpourri didn't look might appealing at first, it looked like... an innocent apple slice bludgered by bird crap. Eww.

But it tasted okay. I am still surprised at that fact.

Unfortunately, the downside is that evcen though I managed to down some great teaspoons of it (an achivement, considering how I oculd barely stand the taste of plain yogurt), there is still HALF remaining.

I hope it can tay in the fridge till tomorrow. I'll eat it until it's gone (and hope for more sweet apples).

Yogurt

2009-07-26T17:32:00.002+08:00

I've somehow developed a yeast infection - and again, after extensive research, Google told me to go get yogurt with the acidolphus (or sth like that) culture in it. Unfortunately, said yogurt must have no additives or fruit. It'll help, it said, and eager to get rid of my embarassing condition, I rushed out enthusiastically to buy some.

Now I am a yogurt lover. By 'yogurt lover' I mean I love those sugary, high-glucose commercial yogurt, and I love chomping on it pretending I have made a healthier choice when I am consuming approximately the same amount of sugar. Throughout m whole pamopered, junk-food life I have never tasted natural yogurt, but I hoped to all gods that might be it would taste passable. Passble meaning I don't feel the need to puke after ingesting 1cm^3 of that substance.

I stared dubiously at the exceedingly plain container and the label. Cautiously, I peeled back the horrible tin foil, ducked a metal teaspoon in the surprisingly firm thing (kinda like tofu) and stuffed it in my mouth.

Hm. Weird. It's solid.

Stupidly, I chewed it, and I suppose my facial expression then would be a great representative of YUK!

Gagworthy. I swallowed the vile substane down and peered at the container...only to discover I had only eaten a very, very tiny bit. Oh shit, how am I gonna eat everything?

Just tried mixing a small spoonful of it with about a tablespoonbful of honey. It was okay at first, but then there was this horrible, horrible herbal taste to it, on top of being sour. Wonderful -- it tasted considerably WORSE than my mother's repetorie of herbal soups. YUK YUK YUK.

So right now I hate yogurt and honey.I definitely won't be eating any anytime soon.

I suppose I can always try mixing it with jam or bananas to create some sort of wonky smoothie. After all, I am a master at choking vile liquids down my throat-- a skill derived from many years living under an over enthusiastic mum who works at Eu Yan Sang. But I couldn't stand the thought of hating bananas forever. Bananas rock, especially as a great breakfast when I'm in a rush and on a diet.

A website jsut recommended that I spread some on apples, but I can't hate apples forever! It will ruin my LIFE! Spreading them on biscuits is also a terrible terrible idea because it's my favourite snack food! Mixing it with chocolate...yuck, sour chocolate?

Yes, Wei Qi, you and I can wince in unison.

Conclusion: Natural yogurt is sibeh gross. Anything natural is gross. Like Kota Tinggi's decrepit bathrooms and the beloved fly carpet, and cockroaches scuttling about in a kampong, and natural bananas, pre-GM. (Did you know that wild banas are not yellow and must be cooked before being eaten? Did you know that it's most often not sweet? Did you know it has hugeass seeds in it?)

Unnatural stuff is nice, like air conditioners, laptops, spectacles, contact lens, CHOCOLATE, COFFEE, pocky, etc, etc. Fuck natural yogurt, I want my calorie-laden, sugar filled, preserves loaded yogurt that is fake yogurt and even if I die from diabetes or high blood pressure or artiosclerosis, I don't care!

Sugar is nice. Om nom nom.

P.S. I jsut discovered that that henious container of yogurt has 100 more calories than a box of chocolate pocky! Hence, pocky is healthier than yogurt and therefore thou shalt eat more pocky! YAY!

The Long-Term Marriage -- Spencer Reese

2009-07-24T20:51:00.002+08:00

At last she’s happy, reigning with her creams,
rubbing his scalp’s roof until it gleams.
As the squamous-cell carcinomas sprout,
the local dermatologist cuts them out

or frosts the lunar surface with liquid nitrogen.
The creams come from West Fourteenth Street, Manhattan,
FedExed from their adopted son’s boyfriend’s home,
a relationship that remains, to them, unknown.

Their Oriental rugs are steeped in piss
from the bulldog barking like an activist.
Bickering over misplaced books, the tchotchkes
lost, and how she re-remembers her stories,

they wait with an unfinished, finished look,
and note how honeysuckle crowns Old Saybrook
and thistles overrun their last garden.

The dash between their dates is nearly done.

New piece I am going to learn:

2009-07-18T13:00:00.003+08:00

Heard Colours of the Wind (sung in Pocahontas) in class yesterday and I kind of fell in love with it. Somehow the refrain about the blue corn moon stick in my head. Hence the mad printing and the horribly off-key notes as I attempted to play the higher version rapidly.

I preferred the higher pitched version compared to the lower one I got off the net, but then again as I eyed the sheet for the higher version I realised that I couldn't play a select SHN (Super High Notes). I wasn't taught by my flute teacher to play those (or even if she DID teach me, I forgot.)

So right now I am happily embracing my flute (taking care not to flip the keys or damage any delicate parts) and crooning to it about how much I missed it. It felt like coming home (weak pun on CAP theme intended).

Anyway, the mentorship thing still kinda bugs me, and I'm not too sure I will get in because I am convinced my writing is absolute, overembellished crap that no one will enjoy reading. But then again, most people my age don't really like Shakespeare. Hmm...so maybe there is hope, but I;m not counting on it, see, I learnt the hard way not to expect or hope for anything because ultimately you'll get disappointed.

Anyway. On a sidenote:

A MATH SUCKS! ROAR! I HATE IT MORE THAN I HATE THAT PHYSICS CHAPTER ON KINEMATICS! I HATE IT MORE THAN I HATE CHINESE!

(which is a lot, considering how within 15 minutes of meeting me one will leave with the knowledge that I am irrevocably and unconditionally in hatred with Chinese.

And yes, the overuse of adverbs above has been lifted from -SURPRISE!- Twilight so as to 1) mock the book 2)get some lulz from it. I love mocking stupid people. (How you interpret this statement is up to you. I will not claim any responsibility for abject stupidity.)

Which brings me to the next point about how much I hate stupid people.

Fortunately, I haven't bumped into any this week, and thank god the Twilight craze seems to be dying out and I can mock it in a jocose manner. On a sidenote, I now loathe the word 'dazzling', 'chocolatey depths' (used to describe eyes), and...er...I think there was something about heroin in there right?

Which is a pity, since I had been using the phrase 'black depths of his eyes' ever since with ridiculously fervid vigour (ahhahaha adjective and adverb overload!) but now I have to avoid it like H1N1. (Plague is getting a wee bit backward and boring as a cliche).

Well, I suppose 'depths' is better than 'orbs'. Despite using it with a fangirl's obsessiveness in my younger writing days *winces coughcoughse1coughcough* I really can't stand that stupid word.

Anyway, if I could rewrite Harry Potter, in the Chamber of Secrets I would make that horcrux diary Twilight. Imagine Voldermort trying to rule the world through Twilight! *snorts*

Then I will rewind the part where Harry plunges the basilisk's tooth into the dazzling sissy and shame of all vampires, Edwar- I mean, Twilight- again...and again...and again...Ooh, the thrill! Then, I will proceed to collapse in a heap of hyperactive, shrill giggles, then reach over to Harry, snatch that Basilisk's tooth and kill him. (I never liked Harry much anyway.)

Then I will march to Voldermort and smack him with my A Math textbook. That snaky bastard would be too busy planning the demise of the magical world to understand the complexities of trigonometry and logarithms. His snaky mind will be so full of confusion, he would die from information overload.

Then I will rule the world in his stead! Mwahahahaha!

I'm deeeelusiiiiionaaaaaaaallllll YAY

Poetry

2009-07-06T18:23:00.003+08:00

Forgetfulness-Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

-

I think Xinyi (yes dear BFF and proofreader, love you lots, and it's not just for the proofreading you do, that's an add-on bonus), you would like this as well because of the style of this poem, as well as the overall atmosphere. I liked these things, as well as how the poet addresses the reader, and his diction, as well as his prose-poetry style which is 10000000000000000 times better than my overembellished one. I would very much like to embody this kind of emotion in my works, ( and so far have been largely unsuccessful), but anyway, I think you'll enjoy this. Cheers to literature.

P.S. Stupid Alexis is annoying the bejesus out of me. I am very much tempted to slam my very heavy english file on her delicate skull and pry open her hollow cranium, but then again I suppose the Biology textbook would be more appropriate. Am a very good girl. Will not succumb to temptation.

To Hui Ting

2009-06-27T17:13:00.001+08:00

I still feel very guilty for making her scan those worksheets for me again T.T

I seriously owe her. So Hui Ting, if you are reading this, I love you in the purely platonic way friends love each other. And I'm sorry ><

I will offer to help you do your picture discussion if you want...

CHINESE HOLIDAY HOMEWORK DONE

2009-06-25T21:03:00.009+08:00

Whew! I finally managed to finish the stupid Chinese zhouji. Being sucky in Chinese, I had to take the extra step of writing something down in English before translating it to Chinese.

I must be a pretty shitass translator, because the 245-word English tidbit more than doubled to become 600 words in Chinese. This goes to show how puerile and childlike my command of the Chinese language is, such that I can’t even describe abstract ideas with one word.

I am ashamed to say that translating it and re-copying it onto my composition pad took me all of today. *red-faced* Little kids reading this, please don't neglect your chinese so you can finish a shitty chinese composition in 2 hours, tops, not *stops to count* 5 hours...

YES I TOOK FIVE BLOODY HOURS TO DO THAT DAMNED THING SO HEDACHENG BETTER APPRECIATE IT OR ELSE I AM GONNA SLAP HIM WITH THE ENGLISH VERSION.

But slapping him with a piece of char siew is funnier. Meh. It's difficult to be angry, the choices you have to make just to slap someone!

If he fails me I am going to submit an english piece as a joke.

Maybe in Shakespearean language while I am at it...Hmm...

Speaking of Shakespeare, I haven't done that art review on Much Ado About Nothing. I suppose I really am not an auditory person because my attention kept wandering. However, if they had given me a script, maybe I would enjoy it so much more.

Like Midsummer Night's dream. I enjoyed it because I am familiar with the script, but the atmosphere was a little too conducive because it micmicked my sleeping environment a little too well. Minus the people in costumes prancing around though, but I must say what goes on in my head stays in my head, lest everyone is swayed by the awesome powers of isomnia I have.

I shall now do my last jian bao. God I hate those damned things.

P.S. I bought a classic for $4.90! That is incredibly cheap considering the average price is $26. Okay, fine, it was a Penguin Classic, but I like cheap classics that go easy on the wallet and great on the mind. The Scarlet Letter, one more notch on my brainpost!

Dear health minister

2009-06-22T22:14:00.003+08:00

Dear Health minister:

Screw you.

Didn't your mother tell you it isn't nice to toy with women's hearts?

Today you made me so happy, I thought that I was truly blessed to have a health minister as capable as yourself. Later, you cruelly broke my heart when you went behind my back and announced you weren't going through with your initial plan.

Well, needless to say, I am pissed. AND HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED!

Let me tell you something, monkeyface. You do NOT raise people's hopes up by saying that you will extend their holidays, and then crush it by being a pansy and saying you won't go through it.

While I understand the significant impact of it on my schoolwork, allow me to be a typical obdurate teenager and extend my goddamn holidays so you and your stinky government can collect more taxes from us as we spend.

GST, remember?

I have a plan for revenge.

I will sleep with my hair wet tonight and get a flu, and the next day I will dress up in a biohazard suit, venture close to the minister's office, and give you a !SNEEZEsurprise. The security will not pull me away from you, rather, they will be cowering in the corner cos I threatened to sneeze on them if they do.

You will be completely defenceless, unless you have a team of sanitizers and tamiflu administrators all decked out in white, but I doubt you would want to blow your salary on that type of security.

I will then smile savagely and wipe my snot on your perfectly immaculate business suit, and then I will proceed to christen every surface of your office with my germs until you promise to extend the holidays. You will realise the awesome power of me - er, flu and panic! Mwahahahahah!

So anyway, if I don't get you, every single student in Singapore will be making effigies of you and curse you. One of their voodoo dolls will be effective. So you watch out! Owe holidays pay holidays!

Tata, darling, You'd better be vaccinated with tamiflu.

---------

In case you don't get it, the above is a joke. I don't think I would be able to get into the minister's office for peanuts, but the possibilities...

Chocolate craving

2009-06-18T23:30:00.002+08:00

I have a raging chocolate craving. Mars Bars to be specific. Yummy nougat and caramel oooh I love caramel, nevermind the poor quality chocolate wrapping those up...

Okay. I looked at the circular for the mentorship programme and the deadline for submission is 1st of July.

*gasps dramatically, wriggling on the floor like a cruicio'd caterpillar before turning to Corner Of Woe*

I am so dead. How am I going to get approval + recommendation from the teacher?

DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDEADED.

And I have to put in at least ONE new piece...which I am sure will suck. A lot. Suck major a$$, considering the caliber of my writing recently. I can barely get a coherent sentence out, for goodness' sake! And I forgot the definition of a fucking metaphor. Yes even though I am a literature student I have time and time again forgotten what a metaphor is. Oh, the shame! The humiliation!

I mean, if a metaphor is used to represent something and is something like a simile, what makes it different from a symbol?

ARGH.

And how on EARTH do I classify my work? It's not poetry, it's not prose, it's a freak combination! OH NOES! IT'S A FRANKENSTEIN!

ARGHHHHHHH. It's too long to be poetry and too poetry-like to be prose. Because in prose, you don't have imagery (unless you are a descriptive writer), and most of the stories are implicit and narrative (no surreal ones like poetry where what is said is not the message but rather the message is between the lines).

OMFG.

I need a theme for my new portfolio. The last one I used was 'Human experience (momento mori)', the failed one was 'bleakness of life' (I bet the judges then didn't really like my pessimistic and angsty ramblings), and now what? GAH!

Books I want to read!

2009-06-15T14:26:00.006+08:00

Books I want:

Lit books:

Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
1984 by George Owell
Animal Farm by George Owell
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr.
Lolita by Nabokov (again!)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [in progress]
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Escape From Paradise by John Hardling and May Chu (set in Singapore)
Abraham's Promise by Philip Jeyaretnam
~~Wuthering Heights~~
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Phantom of The Opera by Gaston Leroux
Gone with the Wind by Magaret Mitchell [didn't like the excerpt though]
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy {The thickness and tiny text is intimidating though}
And read Hemingway. Must. Read.

Discussive books / feminism:

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

Epic Poetry:
Paradise Lost by Milton
The Purgatorio by Dante
The Paradiso by Dante
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Odyssey by Homer [OH YES IT IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD! I LOVE YOU GOOGLE! SMOOCH!] Will read it again, I probably didn't appreciate it beyond its story when I was eleven.
Much Ado about Nothing by Shakespeare
Hamlet by Shakespeare

Plays:
4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

Non-lit books:
Magic Study by ???
Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. (Should be funny)

Doing holiday homework

2009-06-11T18:30:00.002+08:00

So I finally decided to get my lazy arse moving and start on my holiday homework. Unsurpirsingly, English was the first to go.

I think the worksheets are jinxed for picture discussion. Whoever who lives up there really doesn't like me.

It's unfair how the even number pictures are more interesting than the odd numbered pictures!

PREPOSTEROUS. UTTER BLASPHEMY I TELL YOU. THERE MUST BE A CONSPIRACY.

A conspiracy to ensure than piteous moi will get a lower grade for English due to the fact the my pictures are all sucky. *sulks insolently like a brat*

This may be completely irrelevant but my nail harderner keeps peeling off. What, may I ask, is the point of applying nail hardener on nails to make them hard if the goddamn hardener just peels off like an...er...flaccid penis?

Okay, been spending a bit too much time around bio. Never mind that the above sentence is grammatically wrong. And my nail just broke in the shower for the 5th hundredth time, not that I counted! What is the point of applying nail hardener to nails that will entangle in your hair and then fall down and look like dandruff? NOT COOL MAN. At least the stupid things can wait until I am done with my shower until it breaks/splits/whatever!

Yes, I know I sound vain and annoying right now, but have you ever been disturbed in the middle of scrubbing your hair by the uncomfortable pull of a split nail on a hair near your scalp. IT IS MIGHTY UNCOMFORTABLE AND I DON'T LIKE IT.

*audience backs away, waving hands in front of mad authoress futilely, saying 'geez, we get it, we get it.*

Anyone who disagrees with me will wash my rebonded hair for me. And god, those chemicals stink.

rebonded hair record

2009-06-11T10:14:00.002+08:00

Day three. Oh boy I can't wait to wash m hair tonight. The things we women do for beauty, which include not washing a head full of oily hair that would make severus snape's head pale in comparison.

Heck, the straightness reminds me of Lucius Malfoy's except that I'm not blond, and that I'm sure he's always immaculate and clean, considering how he's a pureblood snob.

I learnt new british words to scold people with! 'Sod', 'git', etc, etc. Okay, so I didn't learn them, I merely took a refresher course.

See? I told you reading fanfiction is healthy! And my hair could probably meet the electrical needs of Singapore for a day if they in the biotechnology industries figure out how to make use of human-produced oil! *hint hint target teens with skin problems hint hint*

Well, I wish I coulkd take a picture and horrify you all with my glamorously disgusting oily hair, but unfortunately -or fortunately, depending on how you view it- I lost my cable.

Whoever who lives up there really loves your eyes.

Rebond

2009-06-08T17:07:00.002+08:00

I did it. I took the (not so steep plunge) today and did it.

O HAPPY PROMOTIONS!

Anyway I dom't think there's much of a difference, it's not the very super straight type you see on models.

But I'm happy and I love my straight hair.

Straightening already straight hair. God, I sound like someone with OCD or an unappreciative ingrate.

CAP iii

2009-06-06T21:18:00.002+08:00

Since I have a little more energy now to blog (I always am hyper at night. Beats me.) I decided to give you a blow-by-blow account of CAP so as to plump up my scrawny ego and bore you all to death. Yay me!

Okay.

Monday 1/6/09

I remember being stunned as I gazed at the greyish-stuff that was on my dorm bed. The musky smell that permeated the entire room, like little old ladies, and the dust. Oh god the dust, I think it has about as much dust as the Grand Auditorium at Chung Cheng, which, to this day I am still puzzled as to why it was called 'grand'.

Thank god my mum tagged along and managed to wipe my bed with a couple of wet wipes. I know because I found them in the bin after a tiring day of attending lectures and socialising with RGS people. They aren't as snobby or proud as I'd expected (the stereotypes again), but actually they can be quite friendly, down-to-earth people, like the sort you'd find in Chung Cheng, except that they won't give you a blank look when you talk about prose-poetry and Shakespeare. I made a korean friend =D, which to this day, the pronunciation of her name still escapes me. Heck, I can't even read a paragraph of chinese letterheads without someone laughing at my pronunciation (like an angmoh's they'd always say), so how the heck am I supposed to pronounce Korean?

Also, I learnt something new: Never to judge a building by its paint job/layout. The Prince George's residences looked like a high-class condominium, but once you enter my room...heck, I bet the prisons have more space. It really did resemble prisons with bedsand a sink in the room, except that this room had a fan and the bed was just a single bed. And there were windows and curtains gathering dust.

Basically today was just orientation and introductions, nothing important. No wonder all the rejectees were invited to participate. (Yes I know it sounds mean). For free too -- I bet they didn't need to pay for the catered food.

Lectures were intersting, or at least the parts which I was awake. Lord Puttnam from England had that monotone accented voice you hear in your head when you're falling asleep. I brightened up when he set up Powerpoint, thinking that I could easily not zone out, but when he ended his speech and shut down the window, I saw it was just a single slide comprising of his name and hugeass photo.

What's the point of setting up a single slide just with your photo and name? Boy, he has a huge ego or something.

I had very little appetite and ate just vegetables and a small piece of meat without rice, for dinner. I had planned to take the rest to my room to finish.

I ended up throwing it away.

The beds were hard. But at least despite my grievances, it was WAYY better than Kota Tinggi.

In your face, Malaysia.

Tuesday 2/6/09

We had our writing workshops! Fun fun fun.

Yes, I know I have a weird idea of fun. Right now my peers in Chung Chenng would be groaning and moaning in unison as they beg Mrs Pereira not to unleash another journal on them. I can't recall whether I fell asleep during the lecture, but I think it was interesting. Couldn't recall the contents much, I told you I wasn't an auditory person.

My first workshop was conducted by Agnes Meadows from London, and though her build was slightly...bulky and she looked like a spitfire in her photos, I think she's an awesome lady whose poetry kicks ass. I liked her poem, 'Tracey says', which is about domestic violence. God, this lady rocks.

We just sat there and listened to her read out some poems for inspiration and then wrote poems on the topic 'She's leaving home', because this year's seminar is based on the theme 'Jurneying home'. I managed to pen down a despondent, emotional, melodramatic piece on divorce after biting my lip and after some constipated looks I was sure I had on my face as I struggled to find the words.

The next workshop was a complete blah. I think I hated this workshop most of all. Poor Sheena who sat next to me wrote on a corner of her paper and passed her note to me : I don't think I am enjoying CAP so much. Something you like isn't supposed to make you crawl into a corner and die. I wasn't good at comforing people but I wrote a paragraph trying to comfort her instead of focusing on writing a prose passage about some character.

I really disliked this workshop because Muse went off to lalaland without me. I tore up my papers in fustration and (just nice!) the Courttia Newland, the teacvher pointed at me and asked me to read out mine. I held up the torn papers in my fist, shame-faced. He didn't reprimand me, but he said something to the effect of not tearing up your work as it is part of you.

Had my first performance workshop, and it was rather unfortunate I didn't really like the people there. Somehow the people I met at CAP reminded me of people I've know at Chung Cheng, There was this sec 1 from Nanyang that reminded me of Sharon and a hyper girl who reminded me of Sueann. Except that Sueann wasn't that annoying.

I realised that my group consisted of extremely elite people, Nayang Girls', RGS, RI, Hwa Chong, etc, etc. I frowned at my Chung Cheng uniform, and couldn't help but feel a bit shorter than I was. Anyway, the hyper, nanyang girl had an annoying laugh, one that reminds you of a hyena. Now, I suppose with that kind of laugh, if she had laughed when I was a bit more enegetic of laughed less frequently I may even laugh along with her, unfortunately, a sleep-deprived Chanel is an anal-retentive, irritated Chanel. I think I may have accidentally glared at her or something.

That night, for some unfanthomable reason, I couldn't sleep.

3/6/09

It was with much relief when Wednesday rolled around. I was sleepy, tired and I think I nearly bit the head off Sheena when she came and knocked on my door. Thank god today's first lecture is gonna be held by Agnes Meadows, who had more lovely poetry for us all. Goody!

Oh, on a sidenote, I skipped breakfast all these days.

Anyway, writing workshop was also fun, with Josephine Chia, a local writer helping us. Her handouts were useful, especially for the section on how to create dialogue. I admit my dialogue skills are rusty, since I am a descriptive writer and not a playwriter. Somehow I still have this WONDERFUL ability to write passively. Yadda yadda yadda.

Performance Workshop was hell, because somehow I suspect that given the furtive glances that the two nanyang girls were shooting at me, they didn't like me much. They also ended up doing most of the work, despite my objections. When I spotted a grammatical error and proceeded to point it out to them, the writer was VERY defensive.

Oh-kay...

I decided to comply and shut up. Because it was easier and I was fucking exhausted.
After dinner they decided to bloody change the entire script. Nevertheless, I wasn't too happy about it. Whatever floats their boat then.

They also decided to have morning rehearsal, to make up for the time wasted in writing a new script. I did not say, nor mutter anything. I was sure everyone knew the cause for that.

I had a cup of fruits for dinner, which was pathetic, considering the 4-5 course meals I get at home.

4/6/09

It was with great relief that I r eceived Thursday. Despite not getting enough sleep, I still managed to get myself up and shower. Sheena came into my room and we talked while I brushed and groomed myself (i.e. dried my hair). I was late for the stupid rehearsal, and made a half-hearted apology and later ate my breakfast of twiggy (a cake product of Gardenia).

Thank god this lecturer was a university professor who brought along some powerpoint slides. I was able to keep myself from zoning out during hte better half of one and a half hour, but somehow I found myself doodling and being a zombie in general. That day I accidentally got me timetable wet, so during the forums I was pretty lost on where to go. I ended up at a publishing one and a n ot-so-informative poetry one. Got bored but took down notes.

We had a formal dinner today, and the dress I wore received compliments. I was cold in the air-conditioned rooms, due to it being a tube dress. My fats arond the shoulders were exposed, an ugly reminder for me TO GET OFF MY ASS AND DO PUSHUPS NOW.

I was also able to sleep that night, thank god.

5/6/09

Friday. The last day of CAP and checking-out day.

From the past few days I had managed to remember how to get to the auditorium using the lifts and minimise the labour needed to carry my heavy luggage down. However domestically-blur I am, I managed to fold my laundry somewhat nicely and throw my laptop in my luggage. It was still damn heavy. I hope the hostel never bills me for that one bottle of water I left on the shelf. In fact I should bill them, given how much the cost of water is these days.

I skipped lunch and breakfast, choosing to eat only a roll for both events. A very small one measuring approximately 12 cm long and 4 cm wide. Whatever: I knew that the food I'll get at home would be better.

Unfortunately I couldn't skip dinner as well, as they had catered food, which I dug into eaagerly after the crap I've tried at the canteen on Monday. The technical rehearsals and performances were lovely, I particularly liked the drama and had a soft spot for the balcon scene done by a poetry slam group.

My dad helped me carry my luggage. Thank god, because I don't know if I had the energy to lug it up. At least if you lug it down the bus there's gravity to help you, but when you carry it up, you're going against gravity and whatever depraved resistances.

I also developed a taste for Taylor Swift's 'Love Story'. I could hear it again...and again...and again...

Okay. You can read my thoughts on jouneying home *rolls eyes* if you scroll down.

Anway, I have to give credit to the councillors, who were the last to rest and the first to get up in mornings so as to ensure our wellbeing, and they took pains to pen the aCAPella, the daily newsletter. It must've been difficult to be in good humour when you're tired.

On a sidenote, the list of books I am gonna read:

Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Magic Study by dunno-who.

Anway I am very shuang right now because I can skip cathehism camp! YES BABY!

CAP camp ii

2009-06-06T16:20:00.002+08:00

Oh yeah, besides loosing sleep and poetry slam, I learnt one thing there:

By the moon, Shakespeare IS a perverted old man. Romeo and Juliet, besides being cheesy and melodramatic, has a lot of perverted allusions.

Here's an example, taken right out of the play:

ROMEO
O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

JULIET
What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?

Satisfaction. Satisfaction tonight. Are you thinking what I am thinking? *waggles eyebrows.* Nevertheless, the whole congragation of CAP people, the 80+ of them snickered at the relevation.

*Naive audience gives a blank look*

SEXUAL SATISFACTION, DIMWITS.

And some of them tie to a very popular song.

ROMEO
Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--

JULIET
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

ROMEO
What shall I swear by?

月亮代表我的心。Get it?

Oh, and 'Under WHERE' sounds like 'underwear' if you say it quickly.

You may think it's obvious but it's pretty hard to come up wiht these puns!

Okay, digress a little here, but there's this funny poetry slam thing done by another group that I'll liek to share. So this is written from what I can remember, without reference to the script.

Narrator 1: One fine day
in the month of may
Two people met
On a gaming set

Narrator 2: The enemy was Romeo
But Juliet-- she loved him so.

Narrators:The characters are played by these two boys
Controlling them like little toys.

Juliet: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou romeo?
You are my love, and not my foe.
Surrender now, if not K.O.

Romeo: O-M-G! I know, I know
I will change my name tomorrow.

Juliet: How chance you came onto my teams' orchard
Without fear of being tortured?

Romeo: I came here on love's light wings
The shop down there got many things.
But that isn't the crucial bit
I came here to kiss your jewelled feet

[Forgot this part that leads to the enxt]

Romeo: I swear-- by the moon!

(Everyone comes out and points to imaginary moon at stage left)

Juliet: (flings romeo's hands from hers* But the moon-- it changes everyday!
How wou ld I know if you're here to stay?

Romeo: Alamat!
Then swear by what?

1: Off to you Romeo
What do you say -- yes or no?
2: Don't leave her heart broken to rot decay
Hurry romeo-- swear you'll stay!

Juliet: Swear by yourself, if not
don't swear at all.
This very fast, like lightning y'know?
I really think ' that you should go.

Romeo: Would you leave me so unsatisfied?

Juliet: What satisfaction do you want tonight?

Romeo: I only ask for your fair hand.
Marry me -- I'll be your man.

Juliet: My hand was yours before you asked.
Since this test of love you passed.

Cybercafe owner: Get off the comp, you time is up,
Pay up now or just shut up.

Juliet: I'm sorry my love, I have to go
My team wants me to go and kill
By nine tomorrow we'll be wed,
I'll wear your wing and fly your flag.

Romeo: I hope my love will come back soon
And not leave me in lovesick doom

Juliet: I'm back for now, but I have to go
know one thing: our love will grow

Romeo: By nine tomorrow we'll be wed,
It's this crazy new facebook fad.
Our status we will change
An online marriage-
We'll arrange!

Narraotrs: Goodnight,sweet lovers, dream of lovers fair
Tomorrow they'll be a lovely pair!

(Boys playing the characters):
Juliet: He knows my gender is a lie
Romeo: Oh my god! You're a guy!

Back from CAP

2009-06-05T23:25:00.003+08:00

I'm baack!

Seriously, no one sms-ed me...as if you didn't miss me. *huffs*

I phail as a friend.

Okay anyway this post is gonna be super short as I am exhausted after camp. Sitting through 3-hour lectures and writing workshops and performance workshops day after day after day is no joke. YES, THE WHOLE DAY.

Well, except for the three meals, 6 hours of sleep (less than that on the first few days) and the occasional tea break. It's like we eat, breathe and live writing.

And I am in zombie mode right now. ZOOMBIIEEE. I LOVE HOME.

On a sidenote, this year's theme is 'Journeying Home'. By some miracle I had managed to get into CAP and all I got from those dizzying, more-boring-than-mr-lo's-grammatical-error-laden-speech, monotonou lectures, less than 6 hours of sleep and stress and feeling like crawling into a hole and dying when people seem to have no prob overcoming writer's block; was a certificate of participation and a lousy t-shirt.

Seriously, it's those kind of cheap t-shirts, with stickers ironed on at the back. I personally thought that this year's design was fugly. They reminded me of a rainbow of cockroaches.

And certificate of participation only?! It made me feel so inadequate! At least give me some recognition, like, certificate of achievement that I have managed to get my fat ass into this incredibly tough course and survived these days with fruit and twiggies. Oh and water.

Stingy.

CAP Camp

2009-05-31T22:26:00.003+08:00

I am leaving for my CAP camp tomorrow.

I'll bring my phone along, so if you want to contact me, please SMS or call me okay? (PLEASE PLEASE DO).

I dunno. I feel appehensive yet excited, and I also have that typical goddamn-my-work-sucks-lyk-shit type of feeling when re-reading my work. Argghh.

As well as the homesick feeling and the oh man I am gonna miss my flute feeling, and a lot of other things, like my computer.

I mean this is a nice camp and we'll be living in a hostel which looks kinda nice but there are 2 CCHMS students in this CAP thing, including me.

AND NONE OF MY FRIENDS ARE INTERESTED IN WRITING (okay, those who are didn't get in) and I am scared about feeling lonely and rejected during the group activities.

I mean, it's so unfair. Even though I and Sheena made fast friends, at least she has her own group of friends to hang out with, while poor poor me has no one ): And there is a hell lot of RGS girls in the program, and they are sec 2, but even though I am older than them I still feel intimidated by their large numbers.

It's kinda pathetic to be sitting in a convention with a large number of people who are definitely smarter than you, but oddly enough I happen to make friends who are less intellectually...stimulated. Heck, I realise none of my friends are better than me in terms of level position and PSLE aggregate. NO, I AM NOT BOASTING. THIS IS A MERE OBSERVATION.

Holy crap! Do I have an inferiority complex or something? I'd really hate to be a bitch who just hangs out with less...gifted people to appear smart. I hope I'm not like that, but if I find out I am this sort of person I shall go drown myself in...er....A Math homework. Yes, A Math and Physics.

(Urgh.)

OH SHIT I FORGOT TO PACK THE ALARM CLOCK!

--

Okay. Settled.

Anyway, back to whining.

I am really scared of not making friends and being all awkward and stuff despite having loads of thing in common i.e. we're all aspiring writers! But it's just weird.

Hey...maybe I can make use of this opportunity to talk about stuff I can't talk to my friends in school, because they'll just give me that blank look or run away from me. Hmm...

But I'm still scared. And reluctant.

Pads and pondering

2009-05-29T12:22:00.005+08:00

WARNING: The following post will contain explicit mentions of menstruation (not mensuration, math nerds) and may be religiously sensitive. So if you are an anal retentive prude/ a prim and proper person with a stick up your arse, kindly arse off. The authoress is not responsible for the mental trauma/implanting of perverted thoughts / kids expanding their vocabulary of foul words. Thank you.

I seriously can't figure out the point of menstruation.

Yes, according to the acient wise sages of Science, the womb has to prepare itself for the potential baby, hence the planting of the endometrium lining and etc, etc. However, what's the point of shedding so many eggs (and wasting so much cells and blood that could go to my brains and hence improve my results) when I only use about 2 in a lifetime? (Assuming that a woman produces the worldwide average of 2.1 children.

Why can't our body be like a machine that can be switched on and off? So when the parent is ready for their whiny progeny they can happily flick the 'on' button for producing of eggs. Then we don't have to clean up the stupid mess that comes monthly.

Personally, I call it the curse.

No, I am not ashamed of it, I know it's part and parcel of life, but it's mighty inconvenient! Oh, if I were a man! All that differentiates a man and a woman is just an asinine reproductive organ, a chromosome and hormones!

What's the great deal about penises in the ancient times anyway? It can be chopped off as easily as your butcher chops chicken for chicken rice, so isn't it temporary? But I suppose that having one of those is better than a womb which bleeds monthly and aches like nobody's business, and then everyone would pressure you to have kids.

Stupid reproductive organs.

Odd coincidence

2009-05-25T16:28:00.002+08:00

Today I Brought a hugeass packet of sweets to school as usual (mentos, fruit), but oddly, every single little sachet containing a sweet I opened is strawberry flavour.

Weird. I opened 3 of those little sachets again in hopes of finding a lemon or orange, but they were ALL strawberry.

o.0

Also, the first sachet of mentos I ate contained one and a half mentos. Kinda cool. Seriously, the other half was still perfectly preserved -- you can see the many layers of the sweet. My final conclusion of mentos: It's the topmost layer to the middle that has taste, the center just tastes fainly of strawberry and burnt rubber.

i just have to get this out-

2009-05-22T22:39:00.003+08:00

Today I created a new character in my head, admidst silence from my part and the chattering of classmates and friends (or mere acquaintances? I couldn't tell)

Her name is Anne Whitdale.

Okay, so I lied, I created her quite a few days ago, and she's been in my head ever since, mostly pacing in the confines of my mind and languishing in silence. So is cyborg 213, whose gentle whirrings and fake-breaths lull me to sleep.

Honestly, that is the main reason why writers (and artists) are isomniacs. Because to them, their characters are alive and speaking, they are alive and bonded to you because they area figment of your imagination, a childhood friend you've never had. But I dare not label myself a 'writer', for this is a title only to be bestowed upon others who recognise your talent or gift, no matter how minute.

My writing sucks. I know. I face it everyday, what with the unlimite purple prose that make me wince and pretentious speech. Because I am just fool's gold, I have no talent at all in the art of weaving words, and I ound like an andriod most of the time, and my characters are endlessly one-dimensional even though i have tried my best to flesh them out and show their emotions.

They are alive in me, but I just can't breathe their life on paper.

Dead mosquitoes

2009-05-19T18:20:00.003+08:00

I could see a black streak of something mobile whirring around happily from my peripheral vision as I surfed the net.

Annoyed, I tried to kill it because it was pissing me off (yes, very yakuza like, not like a lady at all) but the fucking cretin just darted out of my smacking hands.

Whatever, I thought. As long as it buggered off (weak pun intended) and kept out of my way, I am perfectly happy to let it live its miserable existence knowing it'll perish due to insecticide or my demonic, sadistic alter-ego who kills bugs for fun.

Bored, I turned my attention to my phone, and was about to open the inbox when I noticed something unsightly sitting on my royal highness' perfectly tan, caramel arm (ahh... I do do a good Stephenie Meyer). Well, I supposed it can't be helped, since my blood is so delicous smelling and attractive (the product of eating too many sweets today). What now, Bella? I might just steal your sparkypire and tell him to be a real vampire!

What did I do?

Well, my royal Highness howled in rage and whipped out a weapon emlazoned with so much frills and lace, Sailor Moon would drool at it and oblierated the creature from this face of earth.

Unfortunately the above paragraph is a product of my imagination.

Okay, what I did was that I took opportunity of the situation. The little fucker was so engrossed in sticking her stylet into my perfectly untainted, virgin skin, penetrating me and taking her fill of me she didn't notice my ru lai shen zhang descending to smack it to a squashed death.

I imagine this is what must've gone through the bugger's mind:

Mozzie: Oh, yum yum, delicious blood. I want to drink. *Starts stinking in stuff that doesn't belong to my body* Hang on...there's a shadow. Oh never mind, it's nothing, since humans are such fidgety creatures...now where was I? Oh yeah, the blood... Here I come, baby! OUCH! ZZZ! My poor guts are squeezed out and I'm dead so maybe I should shut up now...

Okay, maybe I am assuming that mosquitoes have intelligence. However, IF a mosquite speaks English, I bet the last thing that went through its mind was....Must. Drink. Blood. Unfortunately for the poor mosquito, her thought process was interrupted by a resounding smack.

Upon closer examination of the corpse in my hand, I noticed some black stuff on my arm and hand. Do mosquitoes gather dust or something? But that's not the point. The point was that this irritating bugger had white spots on its legs!

If I had not smacked it to death, I would be the one down with dengue fever.

Grr. First she wants to claim my blood, now she wants to make me sick? Why, the ungrateful little bastard! I gave it sustenance to survive, and this is how it repays me?!

Well sucks for you, because you are somewhere in Singapore's waste water system, being filtered. Ha! I hope you are reborn in hell where all the demons there will smack you and kill you thousands of times in a day, and you have to be reborn again...and again...and again reliving your death!

RAWR! I hope all mosquitoes drop dead!

Help me

2009-05-17T20:08:00.002+08:00

I am very scared about what happens tomorrow. About my results and the stupid A Math file.

Argh I don't want to live, I see no reason living on if the world is gonna end in 2012 anyway.

Just lemme die in advance. Please.

Somehow I am getting the image of screaming, screaming so hard until my throat bursts into ssplinters and my lungs constrict themselves, screaming until no sound leaves my lips except the rush of wind through my trachea, a wordless, mouthless, silent scream.

No one can save me from m demons this time. I hear them whispering and giggling in the dark, I see them wind their knotty wrists up my thighs and their jaws snapping on my breast, I feel them blanket me in murky nothingess of static and insecurity, they whisper...whisper...whisper...

I know it's all imagined. But every now and then fear grips my heart.

Just let me die or let me be numb.

God

2009-05-17T19:39:00.002+08:00

Some people call God the great big bastard/asshole in the sky.

At first, I was scandalized, and thought that it was too harsh. Now, I thoroughly agree.

Right now I want to stick my head out of the window and yell, "Oi! The great bastard in the sky! Get your holy ass down RIGHT NOW and help me find my AMath assignments!"

But I suppose it'll make me look deranged instead.

Fuck.

WHERE THE BMFH ARE MY ARE MY COMPLETED ASSSIGNMENTS?! I DON'T WANT TO REDO THEM!!!

ARGH

2009-05-16T22:56:00.002+08:00

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.

Before you wonder what warrants such an explosive reaction, allow me to tell you what made the bomb detonate:

Presenting to you, my current list of people I hate.

1) PEOPLE WHO BORROW MY COMPUTER AND CLOSE MY RUNNING PROGRAMS.

Is it so fucking hard just to CLOSE THE GODDAMN WINDOW I SPECIFICALLY OPENED FOR YOU ONLY?!

Or is your twitching fingers accostomed to be overcome by sporadic bursts of uitchiness and mind-numbing idiocy?

Even a five-year-old could manage to close the explorer window he/she has been working on and leave the other running programs alone.

Fopr goodness' sake, you are not computer illiterate., How fucking hard is it to close a single window? What I would really like to know is how you maged to close the tabs as well.

NEXT TIME YOU COME WITHIN A 50-CENTIMETER RADIUS OF MY PRCIOUS CPU AND MY MONITOR SCREEN, DON'T FUCKING TRY TO GUILT-TRIP ME INTO GIVING IN. Because I know exactly how emotional manipulation works. I am a master myself.

So. Next. Time. don't. expect. me. to. fucking. let. you. close. my. running. programs.

And saying sorry won't help. If the word sorry could help resolve matters I bet Huang Na's killer would be languishing in a villa somewhere and drooling and pedopliac videos. And then there won't be guantamono (sp?) bay or religious wars or melodramatic revenge plots that could come straight out from an opera.

So what if you brought home the computer? I enrich it and use it, I install m programs and help to enhance its effects. If you don't ask me for help, how the hell am I supposed to know you need help? I'm not fucking God or a seer or a clairvoyant. It's just like a patient expecting to get treatment for a certain illness even though he/she didn't tell the doc about any prevalent symptoms or the sickness itself, just because of pride. Pricks.

Which leads me to number 2.

Stupid people.

I cannot stand stupid people. Stupid people take eons to decipher a simple sentence (heck, during that span of time I even could double and triple check it for sentence strucutre and grammatical errors), and claim I am mumbling despite her obvious need for hearing aids. C'mon, how expensive can that be? Nowhere near your cupboard full of SKII, I am sure.

I have enunciated even dratted syllable and even did voice projecti on, to no avail. Perhpas I am not the problem. It's you. Don't worry my dear, it's never too late to master the art of lip-reading...or just put that money you spend on cosmetics to good use and BUY A PAIR OF HEARING AIDS INSTEAD. YOU KNOW YOU NEED THE,M.

Fucking hell. Thinking about them makes my blood boil. Of course the term 'stupid' is rather subjective, but anyhoo, the list of people considered 'stupid' are:

i) VERY VERY LAG. e.g. I have been telling you for 26 times (YES, I COUNTED) about the motherfucking CAP and everytime I mention it(there was once I clued you in and exactly 5 minutes later I mentioned it again only to have you stare at me blankly) you ask me to define it. And you claim that you have a lot on your mind.

That's not a fucking excuse, and you know it. What person doesn't have a lot on their minds? Either you care (and that means listening, if you love someone you'll definitely listen instead of bitching about how busy you are and disregard what the other party has to say) or you don't. Simple as that. If you care, you jolly well listen, and I will repriocate. If not, don't be a fucking hypocrite and ask me to carry your burden without the benefit of sharing mine.

ii) People who mess with my digital equipment. This includes files, downloads, MOVING MY SPEAKERS, CLOSING MY PROGRAMS, and reading my unedited prose passages. I will never forgive anyone who does that, and trust me, you will feature in one of my prose passages...how does a part playing the whore or a cockroach sound?

P.S. I have nothing against whores, except that they spread HIV and AIDS. I bet they'll make very interesting subjects, but then again for the sake of this curse...

iii) People who try to lead, but have no clue what they are doing.

iv) People who have no clue about politics and try to act cool and talk about it anyway.

v) PEOPLE WITH BAD PRONUNCIATION AND TERRIBLE GRAMMAR. (And yes, I am talking about THE infamous egeog teacher)

vi) The creator of mutant vampires that friggin sparkle in the sun instead of bursting into dust or flames.

vii) Amateur writers who try to act professional. (Yes I know I am an amateur writer, but I don't pretend that I am the best in m age group).

viii) Bimbos & people who are too cheery so bloody early in the morning & people who wake me up too early & noisy people who disrupt my shower/thinking process/writing with irrelevant comments

ix) People who take bad writing as good writing and even fangirl over it. And peope who don't give constructive criticism.

x) PEOPLE WHO KEEP ASKING ME WHAT A WORD MEANS/try to take advantage of me. I am not your free dictionary. You want my services? Pay me.

Anyway, on to number 3

For some reason religion bugs the hell out of me. The reasons of which I will not disclose, for I know I will be apprehended under the internal security act for trying to spread disharmony among religious groups.

So I shall try to be as vague as possible.

1) Please do. not. try. to. convert. me. I am not interested, okay?! I am being very polite in demurring, if you don't want me to start an uproar similar to the AWARE saga please kindly shut the fuck up and put your trap where it belongs.

2) I do not appreciate being forced to accept a religion. Libertating enlightenment? Ha! I only see prison bars, shackles and manacles dragging me closer to my fate because it's what good daughters do, they bow down to fate.

Yes, I think God is an asshole, a theory that has proven through a string of seemingly inconsequential events:

1) My exams were tough, despite my sparse prayers (I hardly pray anyway, so it's a considerable achievement).
2) Ill luck e.g. loosing a bangle a day after I bought it, then losing a bracelet as it slipped from my wrist.
3)Losing money.
4) Isomnia.
5) Plauged by near insanity
Well I can go on and on about the list of bad stuff that happen to me week after week, but I suppose it would fill several thick Stephen King novellas. Anyway, I am an athetist. I don't realy care much about religion, so if you try to force me, you are only pushing me away from it.

Because God has lost my trust, and I don't see any reason why I should just let myself fall to a spiritual and psychological suicide, hoping after hopes being dashed.

Number 4.

Okay I feel so much better now. So I shall continue this list in the future when I feel pissed off again.

Note to self: I need a skull. Or a voodoo doll. Pronto.

Diaspora

2009-05-16T14:23:00.002+08:00

God, you gotta liove that word.

I officially promulgate that that is my !wordcrush.

Diasporadiasporadiasporadiaspora.

I can go on saying it over and over, rolling and twining the briny bits of syllables in my tongue: diaspora.

Yesterday when I attended the CAP briefing, I was gobsmacked.

Why?

Because out of the whole CCHMS, only 2 of us were in there. Majority of the students were from RGS. Majority of the students there were also females.

But I digress.

I was heaving a sigh of relief when I realised the other student from CCHMS who got in was a girl (and, a sidenote: for some reason my genger on the namelist was listed as a male...I am OBVIOUSLY female! Look at my boobs, c'mon! Ahem.)and juding by the look of relief on her face, she obviously shared the same sentiment.

While sitting in the lecture hall gazing at the rows of black bobs and ponytails, as well as the massive surge of navy pinafores and snow white blouses (shut up and let me have my Stephenie Meyer's moment of purple prose), Sheena said, 'I feel shorter than I really am.'

I eyed the RGS female (sec 2) sitting next to me, and her badge that read 'prefect-in-training', and I nodded (while completely disregarding any situations associatd with the word 'in training', like heiresses...but I digress. Again.)

But after I learnt why the hell the stupid selection process took so long (Words from the organiser: "You sent in 3 portfolios. 1 goes to the officers at MOE, where they decide whether you make the cut. The other 2 go to experienced writers. So your portfolio has probably been read as many times as 5-6 times before yuo got [your sorry ass] in.")

Okay, so she didn't really mention the part about 'your sorry ass', it was all my own invention. But I stunned. I went, 'OMG, I survived all that?!'

Sheena responded, "I feel taller than I am, suddenly."

I gave her the 'don't-suan-me-too' look. YES, I KNOW I AM SHORT LA, DON'T BULLY ME OKAY?!

Short but fierce. Like Hermia!

Anyway nafter the seminar was over, I heard the sound of rain, a very welcome sound had it not been the fact that I didn't have an umbrella with me. Sheena's dad offered to drive me to the MRT, but he drove on and on...and he ended up giving me a lift righ to my doorstep.

I was wincing as we left the CBD area and as every precious dollar was deducted from the ICU, as the ____ (fill in a suitable invective) ERP was in operation. Beep. Beep. Reminded me of the life support machine and the beep of every heartbeat.

I went back and rewarded myself with a huge bag of Chipster's and a packet of pocky. Yes, I know my nutrionist will be appalled and that it is egregiously unhealthy. Yes, I know the amount of saturated fat there is in one packet. But do I care? Oh, as much as I care about doing A Math or Physics assessments after the MYE.

For those lost in translation, that means that I don't give a cockroach's wriggling ass about it, unless it's within a 1km radius of my revered self, and I would whip out a canister of Bygon and spray it to a stinky death, and watch it flail about helplessly in the contaminated air while giggling with vicious glee.

Too bad I can't exterminate teachers I dislike like cockroaches. There's nothing we poor abused students can do except hope that the teacher twists her/his ankle and falls off the stairs, hits her/his head against the banister and get a concussion. But even that would be too far fetched for something Stephenie Meyer would write.

(And yes, I do have something against sparkypires). Vampires. Don't. Fucking. Sparkle!!!!

I wonder how much glitter they had to throw onto poor Cedric's face to make him sparkle like that. I imagine that he'll even outshine the brightest neon brothel lights in Geylang. Reminds me of...nail polish...

Okay this sounds quite incoherent now. Anyway, the rebonding has lost its effect on my stupid hair and the waves are back with a rage. Urgh. The knots are back too. And the frizziness that defy all forms of conditioner and moisture, like a petulant younger sibling.

RAWR I WANT TO GO AND REBOND AGAIN!

2009-05-14T20:27:00.002+08:00

I am a woman.

So?

This means I am a regular, two-faced bitch with confidence problems, bogged by insecurity in everything I do.

I am calm. I embody calmness. Everyday before the start of each paper, I eye my watch and time my breahing according to seconds that tick by. One, two, three, four five, inhale; one, two, three, four, five, exhale.

I just lost my head during Physics and A Math, as well as Chinese.

Muse whispered in my ear during English compo, but I didn't listen to her, stupidly deciding to do an argumentative.

Because sometimes what our heart tells you is better than your brain. Sometimes our minds are smarter than our logic in the sense that you can 'predict' stuff.

I'm tired. I am scared. I am alone.

But I am glad I feel this loneliness

Because it's the only way to reassure myself that I am sane, and I can still feel. I'm not numb

yet.

--

Went shopping today, bought a bangle. It is kinda too big to fit on my wrist though, hangs there like clothes from the starving.

I wanted to buy that lolita fashioned dress I saw, thinking it was $18. Today I went back to check. It was $118.

Fucking hell.

It looked much better with the '1' in front eliminated.

Speaking of which, I saw a lovely bracelet today. It was fake pearls and rather lolita style (ribbons and bows, very girlish but elegant).

Only $10. I regret not buying it. I fell in love with it and was reluctant to leave.

Wonder if I could go back for a refund on the dumb bangle which just lies suspended on my thin wrist. I look undernourished when I weasr it. Who cares whether it's 'in' or not.

Hmm. Perhaps tomorrow I shall do a manicure and buy that. Shall also go to orchard to ask for a refund, even if the bangle was only $4.90.

I know why I am suddenly embracing my girlish side. Because I finally admit it's the side of me that still dreams and dares to hope. Well, there's the dream of making big bucks, but I suppose it's more of a symbolic representation of me wanting to go back to what I was when I was in secondary 1. My sense of humour and my death glare. ESPECIALLY my death glare, and my readiness to embrace the new and ponder over seemingly minute aspects of life, questioning humanity and being able to write poetry on the spot.

I miss that side of me. I miss my easy imagery and my swift command of vocabulary, I miss my metaphors and alliteration, I miss my deadpan humour as well as a love for all things macabre, I miss the days where I can feel something other than misery and stress. Joy that is not bought.

I miss my flute.

I miss everything that I was going to be, and thought I would be, I miss the dreams and hopes blown away by the harsh winds of change, I miss the past because it is always filled with regrets.

Heck, I even miss my creative cussing.

And YES, cussing can be creative. To hear it I have to be pissed off, but I don't recommend pissing me off because I frankly don't know what I will do if I lose the last strand of reason and control. Probably fulfill all my darkest fantasies of execution.

The carcasses and stench would be a major problem, though. Reckon I could mask it with some Anna Sui or hide the screams through loud revolutionary music? Music whose lyrics proclaim 'Give Chanel all your life savings. Because you want to and she's beautiful,. strong and deserves every shred of material wealth you peasants can scrounge up.'

Okay, please tell me you didn't take the above line seriously. But if you DO want to give me money, well...I guess I can accept with a ready smile (:

A VERY ready smile.

Conclusion

2009-04-06T17:38:00.003+08:00

For once I am ever so glad I said an expletive in public. Even if it was an offhand, 'fuck you'. Ok, the exact words were 'FU'.

And the following rebuke happily managed to open my much closed and tied-down mind to the wonderful realm of reflection and the silent updating of data sheets regarding the analysis of human beings in my mind. Somehow the talk turned from the use of language to interpretation, perceptions, the effect of reality vs. the fictional worlds, figurative use of language and the multiple uses of the word 'fuck'(no twisted thinking here, I meant as a container of emotions), to the art of words to create a story, to human nature and finally leading me to my conclusion that humans are innately selfish.

Yes, I know it's a lot to process, but it's natural to expect such. Humans are complicated creatures after all. You cannot, just by reading an excerpt of their blogs or a clip from their speech determine their exact character. It's shifting, ever-changing and evolutionary.

Just because I'm a girl I can't use coarse language? What makes coarse language course, anyway? Certainly not the words itself. Think about it: a word by itself has no meaning, but used in a certain context it opens up to a wonderful world of colours and flavours. Wo gave a word its meaning from the scrabled alphabets? Humans, of course. What prompted its arrival? Humans. What gave words it 'positive' and 'negative' aspects? Now here I cannot say 'humans', rather I'd say it's society: A group of humans somehow getting to the top and letting us follow them blindly like sheep. And what makes us follow them like sheep? Other humans of course. And why do we follow others?

Well I suppose this reasoning can go on and on into a nice 5000-word essay (possibly more) on human psychology. But the study on human psychology is still incomplete, there is much we still don't know and the many mysteries left unlocked. We cannot but emotions to words, we can simply link them up to imagery or metaphors. Yet, even a good Shakespearean piece cannot convey to even the best Literary critic that even wandered this Earth what exactly, at the point of time, the writer is trying to say.

Ok, cut the crap, you think. I shall. What I have been saying for the past few paragraphs, if you have been paying any attention at all (which I very much doubt), is that we humans interpret things differently, to our own advantages. Hence, we are selfish most of the time as we don't really think about others. You doubt that? Okay, let's put it this way: if doing good deeds were not encouraged from young and picture books you read as a child (inclusive of fairytales, mind you) all depicted cruelty and war against a certain nation/race, would you actually help a person from that race? Of course not. If doing good deeds were seen as bad, no kiddie will do it. Period. And this goes on to show the power of society on our views. That's why it took so long for America to shake off its bias against blacks. On a lighter side, it has been successful, which is why President Obama is standing there merrily giving speeches and inspiring hope instead of bloodlust and murder. (And obama fans, I am NOT lambasting Obama. I choose not to indulge in politics right now).

What do you think is the most repeated pronoun in telephone conversations? That's right, 'I'. I. I. I. A possessive pronoun, determining your self-importance and worth. Every human wants to feel important.

You doubt me? I dare you to see in this entry how many 'I's are repeated. That's right I am a selfish person to, but I know it and admit it, and that's why I detest humankind, simply because I recognise these negative qualities in myself and abhor myself for it. But as the saying goes, it's easier to place the blame on something else. I choose to place the blame on society instead of myself.

Tomorrow I shall start an experiment. My hypothesis: our views are governed by societal expectations (e.g. the values parents and teachers ingrain in ourselves). The sujects for my experiment will be those around me, includin my friends and family. No harm will be produced, I promise, save the possible servering of ties when you people accuse me of being inhumane.

I shall be exceedingly polite tomorrow and see what reactions I will produce. Of course, and I shall treat everyone like a '50s wife with no opinion of my own save theirs, which mean the world.

Tomorrow will be interesting.

I HATE PHYSICS!

2009-03-08T14:48:00.002+08:00

GAH I HATE PHYSICS!

It stinks, and it can rot in its own smelly hellhole for all I care. Screw Physics! It's messing with my mind!

I don't get the graphs. At all. Or A math (but that's a different subject for discussion).

I understand the concepts, but after every single damn question the assessment book has to offer, I don't get the drawing of graphs for every situation! Constant acceleration? Velocity? Line? Curves? GAAHHHH!

Have a migraine now.

I never knew...

2009-02-24T15:44:00.002+08:00

That Singapore actually has 1,000 notes and 10,000 notes in circulation! I thought the biggest was $100...

Now I know how my mum felt when Grandma gave her 20cennts pocket money. Apparently she was staring at it in so much amazement, she walked into a streetlamp.

Now, I'm staring at the image on my screen in so much amazement, my milk tea is dribbling out from the side of my mouth.

Oh, and drool too.

ALL I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY IS...

A 1000 note (authentic Singapore note) and a 10000 note. I will not spend it, rather I will keep it in my money collection album (I collect currency from all over the world).

Isn't it beautiful?

Not forgetting the 1000 dollar note (Though it would be much less impressive after seeing this)

I have decided that my second official favourite colour, right after blue, is orange, followed by purple! (For obvious reasons...look at the colour of the money...)

I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT.

Ok, even if I will have to be a tai tai in the future to get my hands on these notes, I don't care, because these are the most amazing superlicious wonderful resplendent notes I'll never have a chance to lay my hands upon in my lifetime!

Hate speech.

2009-02-21T16:16:00.003+08:00

Tag replies:

To LY:

Duly noted. Thank you, I shall remember that. Are you someone I know?

---

I hate Physics! I abhor it! Detest it! I wish it would go screw itself beyond the hemisphere os earth and into inferno!

The reason for the declarations of hate?

Because I can't score well in it.

It seems kinda useless to me at the moment. Besides, it can only be applied to inanimate objects. What about living organisms? Can it be used to tweak genes or something? As far as I am concerned, it does not help at all, unless you want to calculate your impact when you fall down the stairs, or carry a thermos flask, or try to stay cool.

It's downright boring. I have no interest in gravity or forces, thank you very much, I am more interested in the cure of cancer, or the emotional impact an event can give you, or the quickest way to kill a person (but then again this owuld involve Physics. Damn.)

Anyway, I hate A Math too (:

Are these mathematicians so free and leisurely, they have nothing better to do than to sit around idolently in their houses all day and craft out theories about the roots of a bloody equation no one honestly gives a damn about?! Who cares about modulars? Who cares about partial fractions? The most useful bit of Math I learned was in my primary school, where you can actually apply it to real life situations! What are you gonna do with the roots of an equation in real life? What do you get from knowing the biggest prime number (other than a hefty remuneration for your discovery?) What have you acheived in life, other than a miserable theory you've spent your life thinking about, and die thinking about? Is that all life is to you?

Then I pity you.

Literature is a much better use of time than Physics, any day, any time.

Love and hate

2009-02-16T20:41:00.002+08:00

There's a thin line between love and hate.

It's amazing. Minutes ago I felt nothing but happiness and pleasant expectation, but all this changed just because of SOMEONE inept in prepositions (within CCHMS or OUT?) and coordinates. I fumed all the way home.

Sorry Pu Yin if I shot that death glare at you accidentally.

My classmates walked past me as if I'm invisible. WTF. Three periods ago we were laughing together, now we're just two strangers on the road? Acquaintances are really so shallow. At least smile or show some form of recognition or something! I'm not a stranger, for goodness' sake.

But Pearly, that was a very sweet dedication. Thank you (: Even though I didn't really like HSM.

(And yes, I know I am going to be mauled by a mob of rabid fans.)

Ahh. My humour is back. Yipee doo yay.

How many ways do I hate thee?
Le me count the ways:

1) I am bloody suay. I lost at Monopoly. TWICE IN A ROW. I used to win all the time when I was younger, playing over the Internet. And I lost. BADLY.

2) Stupid skirt got stained during cha yi ke. Thank you, Amanda, Sue Ann and others who tried to help me... I had to make a mad dash back to the classroom (If this was shuttle run I bet I'll break a record) and grab my...refill. In the sultry weather.

AND IT LEAKED FROM BOTH FRONT AND BACK (You know what I mean).

Pissed off. But hopefully the guys didn't notice.

3) Walking with my lunchbox, belated valentine's day gifts, a wet skirt, and my personal effects dangling from my arms is no fucking joke. Especially when Chung Cheng is too f***ing big. People stared at me in my catwalk down the classroom block, across the canteen, past the concourse and into the General office.

4) People asking me why I got into the state should be stabbed repeatedly in the thin line of skin separating your vagina from your rectum. Unfortunately, the General office had a CCTV camera trained. And the VP asked too. I suppose it'll be hard to hide those dead bodies and explain their absence. Damn.

5) Just to let you know, waddling with stained undergarments is really cold, wet and downright repulsive. If you don't know what I mean, try urinating in your pants, run down three flights of stairs, run about 100 m to classroom block, run up 3 flights of stairs, and run about 3 m to the girl's toilet. Unpleasant indeed. My sensitive nostrils detected the faint musky smell of dead cells (endometrium lining) and blood. Not appealing at all.

6) Scrubbing it out at home was hell, too.

7) I just loathe my red friend who visits uninvited every month.

8) Bloody hot weather.

9) Can't join triathalon because it's on the week before tests and exams. And, though Sue Ann and I wanted to join (with her running and me swimming), we don't have a cyclist. Double damn.

10) Refer to the point about directionally challenged people who tell me I 'can definitely catch up one lah'. I'll have you know that running with blobs of...you know what in between is most certainly an uncomfortable sensation, and you wasted my time and energy.

11) I hate the world.

12) Religion can go fuck itself in hell.

13) The 'Eye on the world' book I borrowed from MRL (Ha! Students who attented CAP indeed.) was lackluster. The writing was mediocre at best, though I did like one or two for the effective use of repetition. Otherwise, it was dry and bland. It was publish in 1992. Was that the year of bad writing or something? I HATE Singlish in works, no matter whether it's in conversations or thoughts. I hate ridiculously run on sentences which have no obvious subject and predicate, and go against the rules of grammar.

An example?

I know you think you know that all stories which start with once upon a
time had happy endings because all the stories your mummy and daddy used to tell
you which started with once upon a time had happy endings but sometimes life is
not what we want it to be and one day when the little girl's daddy came home to
the little girl's mummy because Margie Darling had been cheating on him with his
best friend he found a horrid little girl who didn't look in the least bit like
his own little girl but somehow he just couldn't bring himself to love her but
it was alright because the little girl who lived in his house couldn't bring
herself to love anyone or anything anyway.

There is too much repetition, useless sentences and details. It feels like a second grader just wrote his/her first composition. I don't see the use of repetition here, the whole thing reeks of a wannabe writer trying too hard to impress everyone. What is the use of run-on sentences? Is it used as a prose deivce here? I don't see it. Is it trying to show how long-winded the author is, how conscientious and pretentious? Run on senteces usually are jumbled and disordered, giving a feel of disillusion and subtly drawing the reader into the person's frame of mind. However, in this case, it's just repulsive. After the third line, I lost interest.

Downright terrible.

And no, this isn't the longest sentence. All the sentences was about this long, with the shortest being 'Good night and sweet dreams'.

You call this good writing?

A third grader can come up with better. Don't insult us other writers who can do better than this with your ineptitude.

WHEW.

2009-02-14T17:25:00.002+08:00

Finished the Valentine's Day gifts to the HM clique! I know it's gonna be late over by the time I give it to them on Monday, but hey, it's thought that counts right?

I must say my packaging skills suck, because even though there was an equal number of sweets per person, it still looks one big one small. I did spend a lot of time trying to pick out the sweets that suit the person's personality. Originally I wanted to give keychains/chocolate/bracelets, but there's the question of budget and taste (I doubt anyone would like my slightly gothic/over embellished taste). Besides, Hui Ting doesn't wear bracelets. I think.

I also wanted to give heart-shaped candies (gummies) like the ones Wei Qi gave on Friday THE 13th (heh love this date, Valentines day masquerading as an unlucky day? OH NOES!), but decided that it was completely unoriginal. Then, I thought. Hey, since I take lit, wouldn't it be more fun and meaningful if the sweets carried meaning? I spent the next few minutes working on the mental spreadsheet in my head and analysing people (though I bet I got some wrong).

Just hope no one laughs at me for giving it late, because there's only EARLY celebrations and not LATE ones. I DID want to give it to them on Valentine's (supposedly Friday in our school), but because of the stupid tests, stress + more stress + time constraint, I had no time to buy any, much less package them nicely.

Pretty proud of how it turned out, even if it looks like xiao long bao.

Boy, I'm getting hungry looking at this image...

Of course, with the excess cloth sticking out at the end.

It was SUPPOSED to look like this:

But, thanks to my prevailing suckiness, it looks like crumpled cloth.

Bleh. I suck.

Nevermind. At least I tried my best.

2009-02-14T16:16:00.000+08:00

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, PEOPLE.

Happy Friday the 13

2009-02-13T15:56:00.002+08:00

Happy Friday the 13th, people.

Now for storytime!

The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."

LEGEND HAS IT: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, one will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are 13 witches in a coven.

Wonderful! Let me find 12 guests to sit with...

LEGEND HAS IT: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ... One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.

Stress

2009-02-07T23:18:00.003+08:00

I, on a sporadic burst of insanity and inanity (is there such a word?) decided to look at my ranking for the Amaths quizzes we did on acelearning.

I wish I didn't.

Being such a copetitive and a person used to getting nearly the top in everything, being average was...disorienting. I felt strange. My saliva suddenly tasted sour, the sour of scid and air.

I don't know. I'm not used to such competition. Suddenly I have to fight hard everyday just to remain at the top, and fight off my descension to insanity.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of putting on a smile for everyone to see every single damn day, I'm tired of pretending to be approchable and have humour I don't have at the moment, I'm tired of people not getting my jokes and drama + sarcastic humour, I'm tired of being an enigma, I'm tired of being a wallflower that fades into the shadows, and I'm tired of being nobody.

I'm trying to find my Identity. I know my name but I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am known by in other's eyes, and I'm tired of being judged every single millisecond of my life, and I detest and adore being alone by myself in class.

Being alone does help to clear my thoughts and help me relfect, a very essential thing for me as a wannabe writer. But it leaves me to my demons. There is nobody to distract me from my suicidal intentions and my depressing thoughts, no one who can actually uphold a conversation I am interested in, no one to save me from myself.

Yes, I am capable of feeling happy and content. I am. But I can't shake off those bouts of melancholy anymore. It's not that easy. It's suffocating me.

I'm so tired of fighting. I just want to give up and slink off to a dark corner to lick my wounds. So tired, so tired, so tired of having to keep up, so tired of having to study constantly, so tired of being lonely, so exhausted and weary of the phantoms that live through my characters I create.

So tired.

I am seriously getting suicidal, it's just that I haven't started slashing, because I have enough scars on my body and I do not need a couple on my wrist, the most important part of my body I treasure, because my watch and bracelets sit on it and i write with my hand and I play my flute and i look at my veins and i know i'm alive.

Just let me die already. I've seen all there is to this world-- there is more suffering and those imagined path to alleviate suffering (nothing but palliating the symptoms, and depriving oneself), so there is nothing else to live for. Nothing. I can depend on nothing but my mind.

Lit is the only thing keeping me sane. It is only when I immerse myself in another world when I feel completely at peace, trying to interact and dissect all the characters and the subtle nuances of the story. It is for this very reason I became addicted to manga. Simply for the immersion.

But after that, it's nothing. I feel pain in my thighs and my calves and I awake screaming with my empty throat. I sleep with my screams in my head. I dream about death, being pursued, dying myself and dying people. The streets are littered with the dying. The embers of heaven have long died out. Hell is a myth. There is nothing for us to go to or seek solace in the fact that we know what is waiting for us beyond death's door.

I awaken sometimes to see my pillow is soaked with tears I can't remember shedding throughout the course of night. Is it sweat? Impossible, since I sleep in an air-conditioned environment.

I'm getting desperate. I need to believe in something.

But not religion. I cannot handle another misplace of trust, because I'm sure I'll break.

It is those with the strongest exteriors that are the weakest within.

Sometimes I wonder, almost dazedly in between lessons and my conscious mind, a drifting of thoughts and emotions, whether anyone will miss me if -just the very possibility if- I died.

Probably not.

I feel empty. Just...nothing. As I transcribe these words onto the keyboard, I feel a subtle shift, and nothing. I hold my breath for one minute - exhale, inhale-, hold it for another, -exhale, inhale- repeat while walking, just to feel my heart pumping furiously to supply oxygen to every part of my body. To feel the pain. To feel something other than the sun sneering down at my back.

Tomorrow I have my church class. I don't want to go, but I havr to, because I'm forced by obligation of a religion I don't even want to be in.

Isn't it amazing how sometimes we curse God and yet sometimes we thank him. Odd, indeed, even for one who doesn't believe.

Never mind.

Most hated subject

2009-02-05T17:27:00.002+08:00

Ok, my official new abhorred subject is none other than Physics.

I HATE PHYSICS!!!

Not only is tremendously dull, boring, inert, monotonous, sleep-inducing, humdrum, tedious, dreary drudgery, I don't understand the @!^$# kinematics.

O kinematics, thou is most abhorred! The thorn among the jewels, the toad's skin among the swan's feathers, the wart upon the hag's nose, and the values of little consequence!

I HATE HATE PHYSICS.

I do understand the basic formulas and remember them, but I don't know how to use them. E.g.

A skater moves off from rest with a steady acceleration of 4 m/s2. What is her speed and distanced travelled after 10s?

To the setter of this question:

Firstly, why the fuck would I care about that goddamn skater? He/she can lose a leg/ do a face plant in the ice and I frankly don't give a flying fuck. Unless there's blood and gore involved.

Secondly, how would I know? Acceleration is (v-u)/t, so the it's 4 = (v-0)/ 10

Thus, v = 40.

Distance = ??????????

SEE?

Unless it's calculated by the formula displacement = 1/2 (u+v)t

=1/2 (40)10

=200

Is that even correct?

----

I found something which I detest more than Physics, and that is noteworthy, considering that the hate-o-meter currently registered for physics is at 99.99%. Apparently, something else gets my goat, it forces this hate-o-meter to shoot egregiously off scale into the yonder.

Guess what?

Yes, TERRIBLE WRITING.

I simply scorn bad writing. ESPECIALLY bad descriptive writing, when it's truncated by those jerky full-stops and inept spellings that make your tongue curl to the arc of your throat. A descriptive essay can be like a river, a beautiful stream which flows in the midst of a meadow filled with redolent flowers and their yolk crests, or it can be a polluted water source sitting at the back of a dumping factory. In other words, Singapore River, pre cleanup era. Or the Thames during the Elizabethan period.

The essay which I just read sounds something like this: I am hungry. I find food. I fuck with it. I sit. I open mouth. Chomp chomp. I eat. The end.

In other words, TERRIBLE, since I can summarise it in such cogent / pithy sentences which probably do not obey the rules of grammar.

Those who can't write, please spare us the torture of having to read those mangled words you call a masterpiece, piercing the downy spheres of our eyeballs and blemishing the lovely, vestal white of our monitor screens. If we want to be traumatised, we can go watch porn (those BDSM stuff) or maggots being removed from within human flesh. There is absolutely no need to pollute our mind with terrible sentence structure and mediocre descriptions that make you sound like you have a case of Multiple Persona disorder. Or schizophernia. Whichever.

I SHALL IMPROVE MY WRITTEN AND ORAL ENGLISH SO AS TO NOT SUFFER THE FATE OF THOSE IDIOTS! ROAR!

Wallflower

2009-01-31T22:28:00.002+08:00

After that positively depressing/deflating/doleful/melancholic/lugubrious/glum/gloomy/despondent/woebegone (yes technically I can go on forever listing synonyms but to cut the long story short, here goes...) post I decided to post about my current favourite manga: Wallflower!

It's just funny. So funny it changed my lugubrious mood to one of levity.

I LOVE SUNAKO! (The weird gothic girl who hates being a lady and loves her creepy paraphernalia).

Hee. I'm not too crazy over the bishies...they look perfectly average. That why I am still rather neutral over the topic of whether one boy is more handsome than the other, demonstrated in a conversation I remember having with some friends (can't remeber who exactly, let's call her L)

L: Chanel! Look! Shuai or not?
Me: *scruntinises, analyses information, mental spreadsheet which compares and contrasts said boy's look with manga's bishes* *after much deliberation, L vibrating anxiously* Okay lorh.
L: What do you mean ok lorh?! He's damn shuai okay?!!!
Me: *bluntly* Really? I never noticed.

This goes to show how UNGIRLY I am despite my love for chocolates, dogs, money, shopping (for myself), taking care of my looks (don't want to look sloppy) and abhorrence for outdoor activities, e.g. camp. I wouldn't mind if it's some sort of expedition to some city, like Paris...I'll HAPPILY go onto the museums and galleries and sip coffee and fly on airplanes...yes I am a city girl.

However, I very much doubt that an average girl has sadistic tendencies, a competitive personality, a deference towards sitting properly, is a rabid feminist, and knows about as much sexual slang as the average boy. Hmm. Must be the fanfic I read.

And NO, I don't do Yaoi. Sorry yaoi fans.

But I do suppose I eye money the way girls eye handsome guys...and I am a feminist and proud of it! Equality towards women! Let ability be the true judge, not our gender!

If possible I want to learn martial arts...and utilize it. And if I'm the PM of Singapore, I'd allow weapons such as guns and daggers, but I'll monitor its usage so there'll be no crimes commited with them.

But the 50 push ups I did within 5 mins or less aren't gonna help much for my muscles. Sigh. Not very effective for toning down the fats, if possible, by biceps look even bigger. But my biceps are still too soft for my taste. And I feel that obnoxious layer of fat nuggling beneath my skin. I wanna get rid of it! Anything just to be able to be toned and do chin-ups!