Thursday, April 29, 2010


Look what I found in my dad's Pictures folder!


That's me at some inconceivably young age. I didn't even have teeth. And my dad told me I'd always squeal and laugh when he tossed me onto the bed and I landed in the middle of the pillows.



That's when I was two, I think. My dad said I was in the middle of looking through a photo album when he softly called my name and I looked up. That's when he clicked the shutter.















I can't even remember this. But my dress matched the window display, for some reason.

















That's when I was about five, maybe. I was nuts about that pair of shades.








My eighth birthday! That was when my dad bothered buying me a cake. Later, he told me, there was one year when I smeared cake all over the floor. Nobody bought cake for me after that.







Obviously, that was taken during Chinese New Year. I don't wear that at home on normal days.
I had the weirdest dream ever. (Well, not the weirdest - I've had weirder - but you know what I mean.)

I dreamt that a few (faceless) friends and I had accidentally killed a girl. And we were figuring out how to dispose of the body when - of all people - Prof. Lazar (from EL3254) appeared and said hi to us, blithely unaware of our misdeed. And strangely enough, we were in Lucky Plaza. The top floor, where there were many little shops selling Filipino snacks and groceries.

And I have only ever been in there once, for my Southeast Asian studies fieldtrip report.

In the dream, I spotted Prof. Lazar before the rest did and cooked up some excuse about having to relief myself. So I ran and hid, but later I decided to visit every shop on the level and strike up some conversation with the shopkeepers so that they'd remember me. They were to be my alibis, you see, in case I ever had to come up with one (or more) in court.

Finally, the dream ended with the few of us dragging the body down a spiral flight of stairs that never brought us to the end.

I should be worried that I can be that scheming even in my dreams.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A case of the nihilistic woes

I left the last seminar (of English) for this semester feeling oddly ... bereft.

Sometimes, I wonder what I'm doing in university. I'm not intelligent, I'm not maniacally driven to get that A, I'm not even that head-over-heels passionate about what I'm studying. I mean, sure, it's interesting and all, how reality is all mediated experience and we can never count on any piece of information to be untainted by someone's preconceived notions imposed upon us, and discourse is the blatant manifestation of one person's experience being transmitted to another. Yes, interesting concepts and food for thought.

But to read up on such concepts for leisure? To engage the professor in profound discussions? Is it just me, or does anyone else not see the point of it all? So what if we realise that it is impossible for the media to ever tell the unsullied truth, or that we can spot what the advertiser is trying to get us to do or think by noticing the words they use, and the way they make use of visual elements to complement their texts?

Come to think of it, so what if we know the minority groups in Laos and Vietnam are repressed by the onslaught of urbanisation, and nationalistic sentiments in Indochina were rampant during the turn of the 20th century, leading to the Communist-led expulsion of the French in Vietnam, and the nationalists' movement to eliminate the threat of Communism in Indonesia? So what if we feel that America is a benign hegemon and not a rogue state because while it does run several dubious foreign policies (and that might be an understatement) and functions as a corporation-country (which is, debatably, a worrying progression), it has served Asia well in terms of economy and security? Will my comments and opinions matter either way? So what if it does?

I disgorged all this on my best friend on the bus home just now, feeling strangely lost and insignificant and generally not seeing the meaning of all that I was doing now. She identified right away, saying that I was just jaded/tired, and that she felt the same way.

The thing is, I thought I would enjoy it more than this. I had been looking forward to it, and no, it hasn't begun to disappoint, but maybe it is me who has let myself down. My peers seem to actually enjoy the seminars immensely and can articulate their opinions comparatively much better than I can.

I'm lost amongst them. What am I even doing in university?

On the way home, I tried to come up with a reason why I felt, like Gerlynn suggested, so jaded. (And that's why you tend to see me staring disconsolately out the window during long bus rides. Don't mind me; I'm just wallowing in self-pity.)

And I realised it was because I had nothing to really look forward to after graduation. You might find me worrying too much - a freshman shouldn't be fretting about something that far down the road - but isn't university a (pardon the cliche) stepping stone to a more privileged life? Isn't the whole point of education to free us - opening up more avenues in which we can make better use of our lives, open up our minds, help us achieve actualisation by aiding us in breaking the shackles that pin us to cocooned middle-class drudgery (though, of course, I won't be hypocritical and deny that it is also a luxury)? I sound ungrateful - many people would love to have access to higher tertiary education. Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm not complaining about the opportunity to brush shoulders with people my age who seem to be so much more advanced intellectually. Really, I'm not. I like what I'm learning, what I'm exposed to.

But after graduation - what then? A 9-to-5 job in an air-conditioned office, with stipulated lunch breaks, corporate hierarchies to inch around, attires and high heels (the horror!), the regulations, rules, laws, codes and oh, a million other things that culminate in the exact opposite of what my education had promised me. How is that freedom? How is that actualisation? Will we ever find it within ourselves, in others?

I'm aware of how my absolute dream is a fool's paradise. Not only is the literary market crazily difficult to break into, there is no guaranteed success even after you've successfully become an insider. Even literary agents face rejections from editors, what more aspiring writers from literary agents. Yet, I'm almost completely certain this is the only job I will do despite not getting a promotion, or a big fat bonus or salary. Everything else feels like a chore. Is this me being parochial, too unforgiving of other options, too fixated on being a writer, writer, writer?

After graduation, will my words run out?

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Haiku - The Deep Blue End

Haiku of swimming (created while swimming)

The endless blue track,
This delightful momentum -
I don't want to stop.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

"There are people in this world who try to hurt you, but there are also people who get hurt because you're hurt."

~ from Devil Beside You

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

I finally got around to searching up the lyrics for Brick by Boring Brick by Paramore, and am so impressed by it. For those who think Paramore is just another generic rock band that comes up with mere catchy songs to headbang to, you should totally check out the lyrics (and the music video) of Brick by Boring Brick.


But to save you the trouble, here are the lyrics:


She lives in a fairy tale
Somewhere too far for us to find
Forgotten the taste and smell
Of the world that she's left behind
It's all about the exposure the lens I told her
The angles were all wrong now
She's ripping wings off of butterflies
keep your feet on the ground
when your head's in the clouds
Well go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Well go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle; bury the castle
Ba da ba ba da ba ba da
So one day he found her crying
Coiled up on the dirty ground
Her prince finally came to save her
And the rest you can figure out
But it was a trick
And the clock struck 12
Well make sure to build your house brick by boring brick
or the wolves gonna blow it down
keep your feet on the ground
when your head's in the clouds
Well go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Well you built up a world of magic
Because your real life is tragic
Yeah you built up a world of magic
If it's not real
You can't hold it in your hand
You can't feel it with your heart
And I won't believe it
But if it's true
You can see it with your eyes
Or even in the dark
And that's where I want to be, yeah
Go get your shovel
We'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Well go get your shovel
and we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
(Guys x2):
ba da ba ba da da ba da


(Hayley x2):
ba da ba ba da ba ba da




It's basically about the loss of a young girl's innocence as she grows up in a society as complicated as ours. She comes to learn that the real world isn't a magical playground to discover and its ugliness reveals itself when you least expect it.


The MV has this dream-like quality to it, and a sort of gold tinge, perhaps to suggest the tinted lenses through which we (along with the main character of the MV) regard the world. The colours are vivid, surreal, and at the end where the little girl runs frantically away from the monsters in the castle of mirrors and into a six feet-deep hole, it suggests the death of her innocence now that she's witnessed for herself the ugliness present in the world.


As someone on YouTube commented, it's f**ked up, the poor child. But is it not happening, after all? Kids these days grow up so fast it's ridiculous. When we're young, we want to grow older. And then when we finally reach the age we aspired to be, we realise it's no effin big deal at all. And we'd have wasted all those years yearning for that mirage and missing out on the present. I think that's one of the reasons for our disillusionment when we reach this age. That, and our insatiable desire for greener grass. We can possibly spend our whole lives searching, and then end up realising life is only such. It's a case of okay-so-we're-here-now-what that we end up with, which honestly is nobody's fault but ours.


Not that my life's completely meaningless, or that my childhood were halcyon days compared to now, in case anyone's forming that thread of thinking now. I'm just wondering if anyone can retain and survive with that innocence that most of us have lost as we grew older. Thoughts?


Anyway, good job, Paramore.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Towards the end we saw only blue

We tore
Past the winds that flapped uselessly by.
We tore
Through the whistling air
That skinned us deep.
We tore
Like madmen fleeing
From faceless ghosts in their minds.
We tore
Because the world
Could no longer
Fit
Us
In.

Will we ever reach
The deep blue end?



Haiku

We sang the chorus -
Notes rose, fell, rose like lost boats
Riding the grim sea.