I am such an extreme person.

It shows, even in my grades.

34 days.

All or nothing.

This is ten percent luck,
twenty percent skill
fifteen percent concentrated power of will
five percent pleasure,
fifty percent pain
and a hundred percent reason to remember the name.

-Remember the name, Fort Minor

Gonna be somebody
for anybody tellin me I can't
gonna be someone
for anyone who told me I had no chance
gonna be somebody
I'm tellin you the time has come
gonna be someone
and maybe you'll get it when i'm finally done

-Be somebody, Fort Minor

Still alive

So the prelims have ended. Well. I guess it was kinda expected. Not exactly bad though, sure, there were the usual blunders such as repeating the same mistakes over and over again despite telling yourself to make a "special note", time management problems(VERY BAD), blank outs, lamentations, but there were also a few pleasant surprises here and there, such as realising that those write-on-tissue-paper economics lunchtime lessons actually managed to get into my mind after all, infomation juices that I somehow managed to squeeze out from the brick of my mind.

And I learnt some important lessons too,like realising the importance of sleep. Everything seriously went downhill when I did not sleep last tuesday, I just could not think at all for those essays, and I even fell asleep during the afternoon paper. Bleah. Now I know that it's better to get some sleep and attempt to smoke through than to face the horror of having everything so jumbled in your mind that you are not able to put them together into something decent. There were a few embarrassing incidents too. Like being so tense up that I tore off the hole on the scripts meant for the strings,running like some idiot not once, but twice, after the papers were collected to the invigilator because I had forgotten to fasten something or handed up the wrong thing. See, not getting enough sleep can fry your brains into patties.

Ahh well. Honestly though, it's all my fault in the end, cramming only at the last minute. Hmm. This must definitely not be repeated for the final battle man.

Still,it's over.

(Double meaning intended)

Anyway, the days after the last paper were kinda fun. Firstly, to start it off, there was the sunflower making session at a friend's house right after the last paper. An interesting way to celebrate the end if you ask me(the wonders of peer pressure eh), and I never realise how hard it was to make sunflower origami till that day. Gosh, I think I probably use up the patience and meticulousness I have just to make one. Haha. But I did had lots of fun at the end of the day!=)

Then there were the meet ups. Went to Suntec on wednesday just to see the difference (not to oogle at the gurkhas or whatever ok!), though we were mostly doing stupid things just to amuse ourselves. Ahh well. The Pig Out at Chomp Chomp with the old gang was just fantabulous, GIANT (Stop laughing Muikee!) sugar cane mugs, surfer's paradise obsession,"You look like Paul Twohill!", ask JAMES for everything, "The sour likes pregnant!","I need air con!", the woman at coffee bean, the surprising phonecall, all the crazy stories we share, old or new, present or past...Let's do it again. Hahaha. Some things never change yeah?XD

I'm so grateful for everything right now.

Hmm.Have been surfing the net rather alot lately and some sites came to my attention.(Yes, I'm bored.)

http://adoseoflight.com/overdose/xiaokang.html

This is a series of photographs taken by someone who was suffering from acute schizophrenia. I said was because that guy committed suicide last year after completing his work. His photographs are hauntingly beautiful, though they are rather disturbing especially towards the end. But you can really feel what the guy was going through as you look at each picture. Turn down the volume if the sounds are too scary. And read the curating links to find out more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myqyKZsknmw

Haha. This is a crash course lesson in Singapore history taught MTV style by Hossan Leong. Brillant. "I live in Singapura, it's not perfect living but at least it's interesting.." Watch it if you havent seen it at mr brown.XD

VLADIMIR:
You again! (Estragon halts but does not raise his head. Vladimir goes towards him.) Come here till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON:
Don't touch me!
Vladimir holds back, pained.
VLADIMIR:
Do you want me to go away? (Pause.) Gogo! (Pause. Vladimir observes him attentively.) Did they beat you? (Pause.) Gogo! (Estragon remains silent, head bowed.) Where did you spend the night?
ESTRAGON:
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
VLADIMIR:
Did I ever leave you?
ESTRAGON:
You let me go.
VLADIMIR:
Look at me. (Estragon does not raise his head. Violently.) Will you look at me!
Estragon raises his head. They look long at each other, then suddenly embrace, clapping each other on the back. End of the embrace. Estragon, no longer supported, almost falls.
ESTRAGON:
What a day!
VLADIMIR:
Who beat you? Tell me.
ESTRAGON:
Another day done with.
VLADIMIR:
Not yet.
ESTRAGON:
For me it's over and done with, no matter what happens. (Silence.) I heard you singing.
VLADIMIR:
That's right, I remember.
ESTRAGON:
That finished me. I said to myself, He's all alone, he thinks I'm gone for ever, and he sings.
VLADIMIR:
One is not master of one's moods. All day I've felt in great form. (Pause.) I didn't get up in the night, not once!
ESTRAGON:
(sadly). You see, you piss better when I'm not there.
VLADIMIR:
I missed you . . . and at the same time I was happy. Isn't that a strange thing?
ESTRAGON:
(shocked). Happy?
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps it's not quite the right word.
ESTRAGON:
And now?
VLADIMIR:
Now? . . . (Joyous.) There you are again . . . (Indifferent.) There we are again. . . (Gloomy.) There I am again.
ESTRAGON:
You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone too.
VLADIMIR:
(vexed). Then why do you always come crawling back?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
No, but I do. It's because you don't know how to defend yourself. I wouldn't have let them beat you.
ESTRAGON:
You couldn't have stopped them.
VLADIMIR:
Why not?
ESTRAGON:
There was ten of them.
VLADIMIR:
No, I mean before they beat you. I would have stopped you from doing whatever it was you were doing.
ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Then why did they beat you?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things that escape you that don't escape me, you must feel it yourself.
ESTRAGON:
I tell you I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps you weren't. But it's the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.
ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
You must be happy too, deep down, if you only knew it.
ESTRAGON:
Happy about what?
VLADIMIR:
To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON:
Would you say so?
VLADIMIR:
Say you are, even if it's not true.
ESTRAGON:
What am I to say?
VLADIMIR:
Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON:
I am happy.
VLADIMIR:
So am I.
ESTRAGON:
So am I.
VLADIMIR:
We are happy.

Waiting for Godot, Act 2, Samuel Beckett


A tragicomedy indeed. Hmmm.

Whatever that is left

For strong women

by Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tip toe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels,she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying,it opens
the ducts of her eyes,and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles,and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating,I told you so,
ugly,bad girl,bitch,nag,shrill,witch,
ballbuster,nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine,why aren't
you soft,why aren't you quiet,why
aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid.She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head,she is trying
to butt her way though a steel wall.
Her head hurts.People waiting for the hole
to be made say,hurry,you're so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside.A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth,midwives used to say,and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs.A strong woman is strong
in words,in action,in connection,in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
sucking her young.Strength is not in her,but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is other's loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues,lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain,the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us.Strong is what we make together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

I LOVE this poem. Alot. It reminds me of my mother. Especially stanza four and five.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside.A strong woman is a woman making herself strong every morning
while her teeth loosen and her back throbs.

Somehow I am reminded of my mother waking up at 4 am in the morning during school days to tidy up the house, prepare breakfast for us etc. I remember once when I got up early I saw her looking at herself in the mirror, sighing to herself before doing her usual stuff. Bleah. I felt so bad now, for all the horrible things I have done to hurt her.

A strong woman is strong
in words,in action,in connection,in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
sucking her young.Strength is not in her,but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

Again this reminds me strongly of my mother. I realise how much sacrifices she had made for us, yet we are always so unappreciative of her. Sigh. This realisation comes a bit too late huh? I use to think that she had never love me as much as my other siblings but I have recently come to realise that I was wrong all along, because my mother really loves me, but she does not really know how to show it. And you know what's the saddest thing? I AM THE ONE who has been putting up all the barriers. I had stubbornly rejected any attempts she made to get close to me, look down on her for her simple views.(Ah, yes, I was an arrogant snob, but I'm trying to change ok?) And in return she begins to think that it's all hopeless and I hate her etc etc. Bleah. I hope it's still not too late to patch things up again.

I want her to know how important she is to me.

The recent incident seem to have torn off a bit of me, and from it spill all my past anger, hatred, and paranoia which I had accumulated over time. I find myself having to confront to events that had happened to me before that angered me so much, and hurt me so deeply, things that I had kept them lock up somewhere under the layers of defenses I had put up to protect myself from further pain. It's like someone had just open the Pandora's Box in me, and it pains me still to have such flashes of memories or emotions coming at me everyday while I tried to act normal and engross myself in studying for the prelims. Memories of how my mother had blamed me for her problems, all the things that were said to me, memories of been humiliated in school, by jealous relatives, of being bullied, being wronged and misunderstood...Gosh. No wonder I turn out to become the horrible kid I am today. Haha. Now the problem seems so much smaller when it's written down.

"Stop living in your past. It's over already. Learn to move on!" Said a friend to me yesterday.

Hmmm...well, I'm really trying to look to the future, but I think I have to figure out how to get out of this first. I think I'm really traumatised by THAT incident. For days already I will always have this same horrible dream. It will always begin with a particular classmate crying, and I will be trying to approach her to apologise but my path will be blocked by the persons involved in THAT incident who will give me that fierce accusing stare while telling me what a horrible person I am, how insincere, should be alone etc etc. Or it will be dreams of trying to ask for something but getting ignored, or being shouted at for being a unrepentive loser. Sigh. I havent been sleeping well so far, and I have even resort to keeping myself awake for as long as possible so that I will get a dreamless sleep. I know it sounds stupid, to be so affected by dreams, but somehow it's disturbing me alot. Well, I guess those persons involved should be feeling pretty happy by now, if they know how much that incident had affected me. =(

Like I have said earlier, that incident seem to have torn off something out of me, exposing me to my worst fears and weaknesses, forcing me to see things which I thought I had shut them out earlier, in short, the weak, pathetic me. Sigh. It's like my mind is constantly struggling with opposing viewpoints. One side of me is telling me to curl myself up into a ball at some dark corner right now, ignoring everything else that involves people, believing in only myself,while taking time to mend the big gaping hole and trapping those past horrors back into that secret box. The other side of me is offering a more horrifying option. To LET GO. To face up to my past, to acknowledge all the past hurt and anger, and then let them go. Forget about trying to repair the damage done, but rather let them be a reminder of my own weakness and vulnerability. In short, open myself up and start anew.

Hmmm, the first path looks really inviting, because it will keep me safe I suppose, and I will be in control of myself. But I will end up being the ultimate paranoid weirdo, never coming out of my past. So I think I will look to the second option, though I admit that it's a very big step to take and I'm kinda scared by it too. Because taking the second path will means that I will be allowing myself to every possibilities, and not only will I be unable to control what is going to happen,(which is one of my worst fears actually) I will also be exposing myself to all the hurt and whatever that might occur. Argh. That will really need alot of courage. Like ALOT.

But I have also come to see that the second path offers me something which the first one will never give, hope. Besides, I believe in taking on challenges head on too. Like how someone's favourite song goes " what have you got to lose, which ever path you choose", I think that I really have nothing to lose at this point. Haha. I dont what to end up in the future a lonely grumpy old woman feeding my hamsters while thinking of all the What ifs. XD

Heh. Now I'm feeling so much better, after rambling like a schizophrenic on this blog. I should have done this earlier, it will have save me from all the horrible nightmares and increase my study time too. Haha. Everything seems so unnecessary now. Bleah. Now there's only two days to go and I have only covered only two literature books and a bit of history! Geez. I better go.

Strong is what we make together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Give me strength, and the courage that I need.

From the mail...

THE CAB RIDE

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away. But, I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said.

I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

"It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated".

"Oh, you're such a good boy", she said.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"

"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

"I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long."

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. "What route would you like me to take?" I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now." We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.

"Nothing," I said.

"You have to make a living," she answered.

"There are other passengers," I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.

She held onto me tightly. "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said. "Thank you."

I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light.

Behind me, a door shut.

It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware---beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.



PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.


(Saw this while looking through my emails today. Funny how I had not notice this email till now. It has been there since 27th August. Maybe it was meant to be this way, and I believe this is the right time for it too... Thanks Patrick!)