While I'm busy organising photos from my trip to the zoo today, here's one to keep you busy. It's one of my favourites, a cat defecating.
I saw the poop land with a plop in the water below and instinctively snapped; everything you've ever heard about tigers being glamorous is a lie to market the zoo. Though, ironically, if I'd known that it was going to be this good I would have visited a long time back.
Recently I've been spending most of my real life living the role-playing one, and an hour ago I was ready to write an entry about Maple Story, which I have been playing for the past few days. Predictably I was distracted by the game and began taking random screenshots in which I deny my ability to speak English in French while making faces at NPCs.
It's so fun to fritter away my life on such unproductive matters probably only because in the past two years I never did find the time to waste; there was always something more important and consequential in the future to consider. In fact when Mr X dumped me he said, "Your exams are coming so we better do this early." and I couldn't refute that. Not that upcoming exams isn't a really lousy excuse to break up with someone, but even then in the fog of rejection, I could still see where he was coming from: Resignation. No time to dwell on things that don't make money, honey.
Like most female characters, mine has a sugardaddy. I call him that because he supplies me with in-game currency and items without me even asking, and in return every time he does a cool spell I paste "Cool! ^_^" into the chat bar. He is also a genuinely nice person, and when he did ask for my number I decided that he didn't deserve any Bitch Treatment and gave him one of my two mobile phone numbers, the one that runs on a prepaid card and that I give to people I don't know very well.
I wasn't expecting Sugardaddy to contact me within the week because typical males play this game in which they starve contact for days and pretend to be wholly uninterested in the girl just so when they finally call, there is a higher probability of the girl having waited by the phone for hours and therefore sounding excited over the phone. Unfortunately ever since my pretty illusions of dating were shattered by one break-up over email, I've stopped waiting by the phone for anyone, and my shock (as opposed to relief) must have come across as hostility, because when we next chatted in Maple Story he said I sounded uncomfortable. After I assured him that it wasn't awkward at all for me, he asked, "What should I not say to make me sound not wierd?" and I didn't know how to answer.
Welllll...... For a start, spelling it that way is sort of "wierd"...... and so is the double negative..... and the question itself. >_<
Also, I have started lying about the school I recently graduated from, because it intimidates my Maple Story buddies. Frankly it gets a little annoying; I don't see why I have to be treated like a supernatural untouchable being just because I was fortunate enough to attend an established school. I don't even sound intelligent on Maple Story; I engineer breaks in language structure here and there to blend into the conversation in the same way you learn to use native slang to relate to locals. It's been a week and every time I try to coax Sugardaddy's school into his speech bubble, he types "Noob JC!" instead and I feel immensely guilty.
Lately I realised that Maple Story players, like most online RPG players, don't have a very good grasp of English. I'm not referring to the shortening of words or omission of vowels in strategic places, which Dudette hates; her respect for the English language is so great that anyone who challenges the Oxford dictionary is committing blasphemy in her books, and she takes really long to read sth writtn lyk dis. As far as I'm concerned, though, as long as I don't have to read or write essays in that shorthand I'm fine with it. After all, spelling out words in their entirety in chat rooms doesn't directly result in immediate financial gains, and if the alternative saves time, then why not?
I frequently contribute to progress for humanity by correcting my brother when he comments, "I earn lesser than you" or "She levels quicker". When I was eight, my teacher wrote a story with input from the class one day, and I raised my hand not to suggest content but to correct her 'who' to 'whom' because it preceded a pronoun. Did your mom specifically teach you to differentiate between those two words when you were eight? Hopefully not, because there is sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that such treatment has adverse side effects such as obnoxiously extreme grammar bitchiness.
In Maple Story, though, distortion of the language is taken to a whole new level, and for hours yesterday I stared at the screen cracking up whenever someone typed a line. There was a girl whose character didn't budge from one spot for ages, and when she finally replied my question she apologised and attempted to explain herself, "I tok n click wil lag." And then there was the guy who typed, "GN ELIGN PL WT 4M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" including all those exclamation marks. I eyeballed this for centuries trying to decide which language I was reading. Was he trying to tell me that he was drowning in a toilet bowl at home? The only conclusion I could draw was that this person most likely wasn't a native English speaker.
My brother, who has spent approximately two-thirds of his life in RPGs, he took one look at that line and calmly translated, "Going to Ellinia, please wait for me." I stared at him in admiration and asked him how he knew, was he psychic? He smirked and said, "Noob encoding."
Last night I dreamt that when I looked out of my window there was a river. It was a wide one and I remember identifying it as a braided stream, with mid-channel bars colonised by vegetation (pink flowers), but after staring at it for a while it suddenly morphed into miles of desert. I didn't think it was strange at that point, it felt so natural and peaceful to be admiring a vast sandy landscape. Out of the blue it occurred to me that one spot exhibited fluvial scarring that ceased more than four thousand years ago as well as more recent evidence of water presence, and when my mind decided that the glaciers were melting I abruptly began to quote word for word an entire page from my Geography lecture notes, one of those that utterly disgust me now because it turned out to be totally irrelevant during the recently concluded exams. After that it became hard to breathe, and instinctively I knew that those were greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The last thought I remember having before I woke up is one that accurately pinpoints the source of my frustration today, that I never got to write these four words during the Geography exam: Cow fart produces methane.
My mom dragged me to see a doctor specialised in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) today, since throughout my exams I'd been breaking out in rashes. I fought against it with all the strength I could muster, because such a visit invariably results in me having to take some disgusting medicine. If you thought I was bitter enough about my ex, you really have to try TCM medicine for a whole new definition of that word. My mom won anyway, as all mothers do, and just a while ago I downed something that tasted lethal enough to exterminate the global population of termites. I feel like throwing up and the only thing that's stopping me from doing so right now is the awareness that if I actually puke my mom will drag me back to the TCM doctor for another prescription. What's the child abuse hotline?
Another reason why I prefer doctors specialised in western medicine is my dismal grasp of Chinese, a language often used by TCM doctors. I have written about this inadequacy of mine before here, but what I did not tell you is that whenever I speak Chinese, a few innocent kittens on the other side of the world die, and as a result I avoid the language whenever possible. It offends my kitten-loving sensibilities. However, this morning I had no choice, though it went well except for the dead kittens and the one embarrassing part where the doctor asked about some white thing, and I stared at her very blankly before looking at my mom for a translation. It turned out to be a pronoun referring to a certain type of monthly discharge.
The diagnosis was also given in Chinese: Hot blood. When the doctor said this line all I could think about was that I could have told you myself that I am both warm-blooded and hot-blooded, and why did my mom waste money for me to hear something I already knew? Apparently, though, it means something entirely different in TCM, and after one paragraph of explanation I nodded happily and pretended I understood, wordlessly of course. We don't want any more kittens to die, do we?
The doctor also told me to avoid "food that excites the taste buds" such as chilli, and to switch to bland food. And refusing to eat anything mild or tasteless, I wanted to tell her that the rashes were actually only a physical manifestation of a strong emotional allergy to an ex-boyfriend, except that I didn't know how to phrase that in Chinese. I feel so wronged.
Behold his talent for unintentionally making me feel insulted, time and again
"So are you bringing your new girlfriend along? I need to know whether I'll be meeting her, so I know whether or not to pack my chainsaw."
"..."
"Haha, just kidding! You know I'll bring it with me anyway."
"..."
As you can tell, the obligatory phone call to Mr X was surprisingly civilised. I needed to settle some odds and ends now that my exams are (finally!) over, though he ended the call after I asked him nicely! if he had a new girlfriend because he thought my honesty was "weird" and because he was apparently busy finding his way to some mall. !@^$#^%!$&!!! I did make an effort to be considerate, and specifically requested if he could message me whenever he was free to talk. There is such great potential for creativity in the creation of an excuse that insults me less, it just disappoints me so much. All I have left to say is one word: ORLY!. That just about sums up the way I feel about this, including how I am thisclose! to hammering nails onto a certain someone's forehead right now.
If I had to describe my unadulterated wrath, I would compare it to a shoe-shopping experience. Just when you thought you'd found the perfect pair of shoes, some glaring flaw irks you to no end, like the way it cuts or how it doesn't come in your coloursize number. This frustration, it negates your IQ level and makes you seriously consider for the first time since eighth grade killing every salesperson present with your fart. Nevertheless, I remain totally capable of open hypocrisy, which I shall demonstrate in the following sentence: I love Mr X so much. He is a good person, so please don't burn his house down! He still owns my stuffed doggie named Cookie. Unless he has thrown Cookie away, in which case feel free to do whatever you wish, as long as I'm not involved.
Also, slight layout revamp and a new masthead, because I couldn't stand the previous (cheesy!) one anymore. Though this masthead will only be around till the December one comes along in exactly ten days. Still, ten days of extra cheesiness? I think I'll pass.
More proof that I am insane, as if you weren't already convinced
One source of private jokes between Dudette and I is her habit of throwing things away the moment the economic profit generated from it reaches zero, a fact that has been documented here. Between us there is a balanced sense of humanity only if you take the average between her detached pragmatism and my melodramatic romanticism, and conversations with her about boys usually mean her advocating that it is much more profitable to marry a cute guy because if things don't work out you can always pimp him out for cash, while I mutter bitterly to myself and sigh a lot very, very loudly contemplating The Break-up, The One Where I Cannot Get Over How He Dumped Me Over The Email, That Ass!.
Because I wanted to make fun of Dudette, once when we were disposing of some rough paper I told her to say goodbye to it like I did, in all seriousness, because courtesy is a virtue, and karma? It is a scary thing, and if I were a piece of paper I would totally find a way to get back at the cruel person who crumples me up and throws me away without even saying a proper goodbye. Which is why I hate a certain ex. But I digress. So to this day Dudette still thinks I genuinely whisper 'bye' to my rubbish before throwing it into the bin, because I usually do so in her presence just to prove my point. I don't know whether being able to pull this off is something to be really proud of though, since it means either that I am a convincing actress or that I am, in her opinion, to be excused for this because I have lost my mind.
It doesn't really matter though, since I am now officially crazy. Lately there has been so much drama in my life that I could write two or three Jacobean tragedies with content generated from just one day's worth of events, way more than I have dared to list here. A direct consequence is increase in productivity and decrease in sanity as I suffer from insomnia, and everyone knows that a tried and tested remedy for insomnia is work. Last night while listening to Bryan's soothing voice I finally found some shuteye around 5AM; when I woke up three hours later I found myself tangled up in the MP3 player's wires. And I laughed out loud and said to no one in particular, "Aww, I feel so loved really."
Every night I get weird dreams, so it's only out of the ordinary if I don't dream about the out of the ordinary. Yesterday's was quite a remarkable piece of literature though, so I thought I'd share, albeit at the risk of sounding batshit insane:
I was in a school toilet cubicle, and when I left the toilet and reached the corridor I found myself completely nude. Suddenly I realised that I somehow left my clothes back at the toilet and I started running back very frantically while attempting to cover my bits with my hands, but I simply couldn't find the toilet again. I was going in circles, and I would see familiar schoolmates' faces again and again; by the third round I was waving and saying hello to people I knew along the corridor, because, I mean, they've seen me run past them nude three times, wouldn't it be rude not to at least say hi?
After a while instead of going about in circles I took a turn and kept running; when I reached the dead end of the corridor, I saw Mr X. And immediately I turned around to run away from him as quickly as possible. Then I woke up.
My interpretation:
"nude" -- Expressing my naked emotions "going in circles" -- repeatedly "Mr X's apartment" -- about the ex "dead end" -- is pointless. Instead, I should "run away from him as quickly as possible" -- run away from him as quickly as possible. [waking up] -- And then I shall see the light.
Amen!
The strangest thing is that I came up with this analysis while in the dream itself, thought up of the meaning of every line of my dream as if it were a physical piece of prose. It's probably the recent Literature exam messing with my mind.
Something fishy. With air bubbles. Let us forget that I am actually a week shy of eighteen for maybe a minute or two while I dig a hole in the ground large enough for me to hide in.
That thing that looks like a mushroom, it is actually a tree in autumn, because I ate up too many green ones and didn't have enough for a convincing evergreen. Not that this one is a convincing tree, but you get my point. The other thing that looks like a multi-coloured squid is actually my tragic interpretation of a lonely cloud and the sun.
(See, I knew there was a reason why I never took Art.)
(The world is obviously not ready for my brilliance.)
I bit the red one in half before I realised I needed it.
It's raining noodles, really!
Racial harmony!
(And also homosexuality, if you want to go into technicalities.)
Then my conscience speaks up, because I should have been preparing for my Math exam:
So I started reducing the distraction by eating it, and found...
Aww.
Someone should manufacture and market edible lego blocks, or edible little dolls. I want a bite-sized version of Mr X with which to feed my neighbour's dog.
I found these pictures in my camera and they made me realise how much I missed The College; it's hard to believe that after this year I won't be studying there anymore. The two years I've spent at The College have been the most colourful and enriching in my life and I wouldn't trade them away for anything else, not even if I were offered ownership of all the ice cream in the world. Tempting, very, very tempting... But no.
This is the view from The College's three-storey library. A few months ago on the day this picture was taken, I was napping on one of the many couches in the library and when I woke up and tried to walk in a straight line, I bumped into a cute guy. I first noticed him on the first day of school more than a year ago and even though I still don't know his name now, I've had a secret on-and-off crush on him ever since. He's the sort of guy I'm afraid of, the player type I'd never date, but he's such a pretty thing.
It's absurd that even though I know close to nothing about him, one of my fondest memories of the library is that single time our paths crossed, when I smiled apologetically and then stared at him dreamily for long enough for him to have dialled for the police about ten times, if he'd wanted to -- and he would have, had he any access to my thoughts at that point in time.
It's been seven months since our break-up, and I'm still wondering why I'm writing to you. When we were together did I ever have this much to say? What's your secret? Do you stuff your phone under a pillow while I text you my lengthy essays? I can't recollect much about the way we were in the past and at this point I have no idea if it's genuine emotional exhaustion or plain escapism.
A few days ago we had an argument. I accused you of being selfish, and you said that as an ex I had every right to blame you for this, but that you were entitled to void my view on the same count. Ignoring my opinion per se is one thing, but telling it to my face is another, and the moment I realised the full extent of what you were saying I ran to the refrigerator and returned to my room moping into a bowl of ice cream. This must be the strangest feeling ever, rebuking you for being selfish and then blaming myself for selfishly trying to take away your right to be selfish -- Does this make sense? My ice cream tasted salty and it made me laugh. We didn't talk for a long while after that and yesterday, when we finally did, it was as if nothing had happened. But what does this mean to me? I haven't had time to think about this.
It's probably for the better.
Some weeks back Dudette and I were talking about a friend who wasn't coping too well with the recent loss of a loved one. Dudette concluded her analysis of that friend's unfortunate circumstances by saying, "Bad things happen to people. He just has to deal with it." What kept me going this month was a mental image of the very unemotional Dudette chanting repeatedly: Deal with it, deal with it, deal with it. If the disturbingly increasing number of similarities between our handwritings is any indication, peer influence is totally at work here, and this week I found myself adopting Dudette's tranquillity in the face of the insanity named Examinations. It's partially fatigue to the point of detachment; the finals have vacuumed up so much of my energy that I struggle to type this on my keyboard without making one or two errors per line. The last time I had this much trouble typing was more than eight years ago when I first learnt how to type, the single exception within those eight years being the time when I was dead drunk.
This November one of my pals broke up with her own boyfriend, and I have a huge admiration for the way she is handling it despite this insane examination stress. She didn't do the crazy things I did in April, didn't cry non-stop in school or hide in toilets to weep or force ludicrous amounts of chocolate down her throat to muffle the sobbing. I don't even have a break-up to deal with anymore, but my complexion is already so awful it looks as if I planted red beans on my face that germinated overnight and will soon be ready for harvest. That pal of mine forwarded me an SMS that her recently acquired ex-boyfriend had sent her, and I abruptly recalled the rejection I myself had felt, right down to the urge to grab hold of your leg so you wouldn't walk away with your heart. The sudden emotion in me felt very foreign.
These seven months I've been searching for that magical model answer, the one that tells you how to let go and how to forget, and the closest I've come to so far is Dudette's deadpan expression: Life goes on. Moving on is simply a matter of necessity. This emotional detachment is something I'm not used to, and I still find it absurd that right before our paper last Tuesday Dudette and I were more preoccupied with a pretty Jaejoong. This was the culmination of my existence for the past two years, the final examination with no second chances, and I should have been feeling excited or panicky. But there I was, busy describing with relish some Korean star's beautiful facial features.
If there is one literary skill you have endowed me with, it is the art of elaboration. Before we broke up I had been singled out from the class for my indecently miniskirt-esque essays, and my worried teacher told me specifically to stop saving the trees. Now, though, I have no problem rambling, see every thesis paper I have ever written about our break-up on this blog, and for a few months after the heartbreak, email conversations with our mutual friend in Kiwiland meant me whining and Kiwi nodding his metaphorical head in understanding while casting sympathetic e-glances my way. Sometimes I imagine that right after a few hours of rapid scrolling to the end of my email he rolls his eyes and sighs, "Why me?" And then he phones you to fix an appointment so he can kick you hard in the crotch for giving him such an annoying ex-girlfriend to deal with. But this is not my point. I mention Kiwi here not because I need an excuse to form the mental picture of him kicking you in the groin (Since when did ex-girlfriends need excuses for this?) but because I need to tell you that he was right all along, even though for a long while I fought against it with all the strength I had: All we want is closure.
I suppose if I'm prone to nostalgia then it's only because of some naive ideals that would eventually have been shattered anyway. It's strange that I should be telling you what Kiwi said, though, since on hindsight it's what you've been trying to tell me for the past few months. And I better say this little something I should have said a long time ago, while I'm still numb enough to pretend I have the courage to when I don't: I miss you, but things are fine just the way they are.
"Hey bitch, get your ass here! I'm dying from [Dudette]phobia!"
After I received this SMS from Dude, I knew I was going to be in trouble if I didn't arrive in school soon enough to take over Dudette's Math tuition. By 'trouble' I mean the sort of mess you get into when you accidentally kill one or two people, which is more or less what I would have been indirectly doing had I left Dudette with Dude.
I didn't want to check anyone into a mental asylum any time soon, much less be responsible for deaths, so I was more than willing to immediately be on my way. The only problem was that I was busy with a friend on the phone. She called to ask for help with her computer, because she obviously hasn't heard of Google, Who Knows More Or Less Everything. When she sensed that her lifeline was about to hang up on her, she yelled into the phone a long list of technical problems so quickly I had neither the time nor the heart to interrupt. Finally, she said, "The technician asked me to copy my data and burn a CD."
Over the phone, she continued in a sad voice, "So what do I do? Do I use a pen to write out all my documents?"
I think I know why the technician said he would call back, and never did. And I stayed on the phone with her for another hour, worried that otherwise she might set fire to her CD.
This morning Dudette called to request Math tuition. I couldn't meet up with her because I was busy, so I entrusted her to Dude. Less than an hour after they started work I received a distress signal from him, a message on my phone demanding my immediate presence because Dudette was killing him; now he knows how I have felt every other school day in the past two years. The very first time she asked me how to do the same question for the third time in the same week I'd wanted to jump off the building, and later it gradually nurtured a tragically optimistic patience in me. Though there are still times when I'm tempted to scribble Math formulae on a post-it and then to stick it on Dudette's forehead.
About an hour later I messaged Dude to determine the order in which I should helpfully dial for the ambulance and the mental institution, but to my pleasant surprise he replied, "She managed to complete one question on her own!" You have NO idea how religious this experience was for me: In that moment I felt as though my suffering for the past two years had finally paid off, and I was suddenly certain that a benevolent Supreme Being had been watching over us all this while.
While revising my work I found scribbles on the margins of one page. I didn't find this surprising because at times I get into a note-taking frenzy and take down everything the lecturer utters, right down to the awful jokes. This particular page, though, had Korean words and drawings: The generous, wide smiley faces by Dude, the microscopic words and tiny hearts by Dudette, and the slightly larger font by Awesome Girl (because someone who buys me pink cotton candy of her own accord is obviously Awesome). I'm closest to these three classmates, and ninety-nine percent of the time when one of them leans over to write on my paper it is something totally irrelevant to schoolwork. Why else would I have a sketch of the uterus on my Math lecture notes?
One portion of this page confesses our love for a certain Korean celebrity, and it reminds me that if I had to trace the history of my friendship with Dudette I would have to do it using pretty faces. There was the Johnny Depp phase, the pretty Japanese stars era, and then today's gorgeous Korean boys. I was dragged through English to Japanese to Korean because Dudette refused to gloss over the cultural subtleties in the different tongues, and unknowingly I learnt to read and write 'I love you' in nine different languages; evidence can be found on random pages in my lecture notes next to small pencilled hearts. Every time I read it, I feel so loved.
Dudette has a habit of throwing things away, and the first time I caught her disposing of a set of notes we had received just an hour ago I had been truly horrified. After that incident I told her to hand her 'trash' to me, knowing that it would be safe with me for as long as the rubbish in question generated nostalgia. Since then I have lost count of the number of times she inquired after trash she belatedly realised she still needed, but it was certainly enough for me to conclude that if she had a boyfriend he should totally be worried. She might dump him without even realising that she had been attached in the first place.
Over the past two years it became an unspoken rule that I was her walking diary, and over the course of the customary day I would drop reminders. Last Tuesday before our paper Dudette realised that she had forgotten to bring her entry proof, a document we require in the examination hall, and immediately both of us blamed me. Straight away I led her to the General Office where we could obtain an entry proof, and when we walked past a board with a hard copy of our seating plan pinned up, I asked her if she had already looked up the plan online. Cue clueless look, and without missing a beat I sighed and said, "It's okay; I know where you sit." She laughed and replied, "If I ever get rich I'll hire you as my secretary."
Her occasional absent-mindedness became a running joke between us ever since last January, when I loaned her a CD of Neil Gaiman reading aloud and a month later she decided that the CD was "somewhere in her room". I would remind her every other week to return my CD, but nowadays I no longer bother because "somewhere in her room" is obviously at the very unreachable end of the world, and every time she demands payment for providing fodder for my blog I inevitably terminate the discussion with a grim, "Gaiman CD." And then her eyes widen at the injustice! of me expecting her to retrieve something from the end of the world. Totally unreasonable!
Once we had been sharing ice cream with a few other classmates at lunch, and the lime sherbet I had ordered was unanimously christened Green Detergent, because it tasted like detergent (to them). I was feeling sorry for Green Detergent when, right after suggesting that the recent increase in local suicides via jumping off a tall building means that Singapore has a future in parachutists, Dudette dug into my favourite Green Detergent. I was so pleased to have company while basking in the glory that is Green Detergent.
Perhaps the memories I cherish most involve her refreshing honesty (read: stabbing me in the front). To thank her for making fun of my non-existent sense of direction and my hopelessness at Chinese, a few days ago when we were discussing her eloquence (and believe me, she is a genius when it comes to languages), I told her that it was sad how she had literary intelligence but couldn't count. She tried to delve into the technicalities and insisted that she could count, raised her five fingers and was about to demonstrate her ability in counting when I interrupted her and asked, "What's fifteen times fifteen?" I paused, and when she didn't reply I jokingly continued with a wave of my hand, "I'll give you the rest of the day."
Once, our lecturer gave us students a pep talk and ended off by quoting a famous economist who failed Economics in high school to inspire those who were struggling with the subject. The ever-amusing Dude pointed at Dudette and nicknamed her 'Mathematician', and it stuck.
Now that we're leaving The College for good, I'm going to miss our Mathematician. She's like the sister I never had, except that she doesn't like me calling her so I call her instead. And if you are reading this, Dudette, please get rich so I'm guaranteed employment. , !
Some time this week my parents bought lunch home after grocery shopping, though of course my only requirement is that they return with sufficient ice cream to last till their next trip there. This is my primary concern by virtue of the fact that it is a concern intricately linked with the state of my mental health.
Apparently my parents had been too preoccupied with the marketing, because they had forgotten about themselves and ordered takeaway for only my brother and I at home. After we had been taken care of, they teleported from the dining table into the kitchen where my dad unpacked the groceries and my mom shoved into the refrigerator enough food to last us quite a few generations. My parents simply cannot co-exist in the same area for longer than ten minutes without at least one of them turning homicidal, and because this is a physical impossibility I have lived with for the past decade, I wasn't in the least surprised when their squabble echoed into the dining room.
Both of them then arrived and stood before the dining table because, obviously, when you have a dispute you need a judge, and who better to choose than the two innocent bystanders in this war zone? My mom placed a packet of food on the table and said very loudly and shrilly (read: screamed) to my dad, "I bought this for you! You're the one who forgot about me!" and my first thought was that she was going to have to make an extra trip to the supermarket to get more ice cream, because stress makes me pour criminal amounts of sugar down my throat.
My very intelligent brother finished his food and ran for his life, leaving me stranded at the dining table with two very annoyed kids more than twice my age. My dad immediately retorted, "I bought this for YOU!" to which my mom replied using exactly the same line, and I felt like laughing. Because I have a habit of laughing at the most inappropriate moments such as the second before my parents pull each other's hair out.
Suddenly my dad looked thoughtful, didn't continue the game of ping pong, headed for the kitchen and returned to the dining room with a doggy bag of something in his hands. He then placed the identical packet of food next to the one my mom had been holding, and mumbled something that I didn't catch because I was laughing too hard from the sudden anti-climax.
And now I think I finally understand why my parents are together: Despite all their differences (read: homicidal tendencies) they'd both tried to surprise each other with exactly the same thing, and this makes me hopeful for the first time since being dumped over the email that I, too, may someday find that special someone whom I want to annoy for the rest of my life.
Because of various tragedies this year like having major examinations this November in the three weeks preceding my eighteenth birthday as well as being dumped over the e-mail (!) and wanting the guy who dumped me over the e-mail back (!!), 2006 has earned a special place in my archive of memories right next to the very fond ones of me learning dance moves, at least until I succumbed to the urge of pulling all my hair out strand by strand to ease the mental anguish. Some say dancing is instinctive, in the same way that everyone can intuitively sing; it's simply a matter of resultant casualty count, the number of deaths following the off-key attempt. Obviously they haven't met people like me who have an absolute lack of rhythm, people with a sad inability to move to the beat in a way that doesn't resemble a stiff corpse climbing out of its grave for the very first time. I can do the Chicken Dance to a song known as Tripping Over My Own Feet.
This Halloween was boring like in previous years because nobody I know goes trick-or-treating in Singapore. Eighteen years of unfulfilled childhood are screaming for attention, but my neighbours would probably dial for the police if I showed up with fangs and demanded candy, and even though it'd be remarkably juicy fodder for blogging, I don't want to spend the night in jail. Unless there is broadband. So instead of feeling sorry for my inexperience in pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating, I scared the living daylights out of myself by plunging into unknown depths of paper and sorting them out according to subject. Now there are stacks of General Paper, Mathematics, Economics, Literature and Geography sitting on my window ledge, brooding and breeding like moss about to take over the rest of my room. [map]
On a happier note, November's masthead is up! Because my examinations begin tomorrow I did this in a hurry, threw in flowers of random sizes and a small furry ball of cuteness, so please overlook the lameness and instead focus on the bright and cheery colours. There is always a positive side to things, and when your eyes begin to hurt remember that instead of staring at my lame masthead you could be in my shoes, sitting for over thirty hours of examinations. And when the examinations hurt my head and my ego, I shall keep in mind that I could be spending my time staring at my lame masthead instead. And I shall give thanks.
It's raining noodles! Hallelujah! And the noodles shall inherit the earth!
If you know me, pretend you don't. If you don't know me, don't pretend you do.
Comments are not necessarily reflective of my opinion. Only people who love me are allowed to comment. I'm serious. Trolling is so last season.
Bitch in my face if you have to.
It's only polite!
I live in Bloggerland, Singapore. Please don't stalk me. (:
so I call her 
instead. And if you are reading this, Dudette, please get rich so I'm guaranteed employment. 
!
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