someday, we'll know.
written: 7:50 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005

And then I'm on the bus and it's heading for NUS. I stare out of the window and it's a lonely bus ride.

At NUS and I'm early. Why am I always so fucking early? I sit down and stare into space and thoughts are going through my head. A while later the dude in charge of the publication sub-comm arrives and we engage in an on-off discourse about things. India and arranged marriages and culture. Interesting but that's about it. More people arrive and then he asks, What kind of articles do you want to contribute to the Lit Soc magazine? I think and wreck my brains and force myself to think but nothing comes to mind, nothing except a half-brained idea about writing about Law school and how I wish I were majoring in Literature. Only, I say, this sounds extremely cliche but I think I could write about what Literature means to me. And I add a qualifier, I'm not sure if I can write though; I'm not very confident of my writing abilities right now. And it's so true that I want to cry when I realise I don't have anything to say. And I feel like an alien visiting Earth for the first time. When the meeting is over half an hour later I remain at the bench and talk to two girls and it's fun but I wonder, why can't I do things like that with Law people? Law school is always so lonely when lectures are over.

4 o'clock and my parents are here to pick me up. We drive down to Bras Basah complex and we go to the new national library. I'm put off by the overwhelming displays of glass panels and clinical empty spaces, annoyed by stupid and uncultured Singaporeans who bring their retarded and noisy and pesky kids to Michael Yamashita's (Yamashito?) photography exhibition and demean the power of his breath-taking photographs by giving their stupid kids a lesson in culture in such a crude and uneducated manner, awfully disturbed by HP's blatant pimping campaign, perturbed by the fact that the NGC photographer agreed to it, amazed by the beauty of his photographs, the elegance of his subjects, the stories they tell and how they succinctly capture the ups and downs of the human condition. It's so much to take in, the Great Wall of China never looked more gorgeous, that particular photo of a few travellers wandering through a desert hit me so hard because it makes me realise how small and insignificant we are in the face of the natural order of things. The desert forms a monstrous backdrop, all shadows and light and yellow-brown, and the travellers look like tiny ants amidst the grand majesty of the desert that can be swallowed up any minute. What an apt juxtaposition of subjects and I really don't give the slightest fuck that the photos were printed using HP technology whatever the hell you have. Commercialism and art are mutually exclusive, now and forever.

I love my parents because they are so good to me. I buy Felix Cheong's poetry for ten dollars at Kinokuniya's Book Bar on the third level. Singapore Writers Festival but I don't care for it at all. Science fiction is not my type of thing, I don't see what culinary arts have got to do with writing and hell I don't like Kylie Kwong or whatever anyway, her cooking show on Travel and Living annoys me, Anthony Bourdaine is like so much better (and hotter), and I'm not fond of against poetry being read out loud. Poetry, like all forms of Literature, is deeply personal and its meaning exists solely in the reader's mind; to dramatise what is intangible is to sully the wispy beauty of words.

The reference level of the library is quite magnificent, with a suitable degree of austerity to it that you don't find in the basement level. The basement level is infested with people and kids and ah lians and ah bengs. The queue at the borrowing counter snakes around ten million times over and over and the sign that says 'Creative and Literary Arts' should be revised, the person who wrote it fired from his/her job, because I don't see no fucking Literary Arts and I walk all the way to the back of the place, relatively far from the main entrance, just to find a bunch of books on flower arrangement and quilting and other things that I'm not interested in, no bloody poetry. What is wrong with this country? Misspelled words and omitted words also pervade the photography exhibition at Level 10 and I will take my words back when someone tells me where in China 'Xinjing' is, or what 'Marco Polo was here 700 years' means. What a magnificent display of our eagerness to develop into a global and vibrant city and other empty ambitions that will never happen to this country because we're 1% city and 99% heartland. And 'heartland' is euphemism for...then again, I shall not be rude.

And because I am a snobbish elitist, I think the national library should impose a sort of dress code. No slippers no sloppy t-shirts and no unsightly shorts - in other words, no market attire. No screaming kids. No children allowed below the age of 18. No ah lians no ah bengs. Only a hundred people allowed in Basement One at one time. Who can read in the midst of all that noise, who can enjoy beautiful photographs with irritating kids crawling on the floor and running about, god it's so annoying. People are so annoying. Singaporeans are so annoying. You wonder why my mom wasn't in Taipei when she gave birth to me. I'm a snobbish elitist and so I think my parents look so much more educated and sound so much more educated and are so much more educated and refined when juxtaposed against all the other parents I see around me who speak English like ching chong cheng and speak Mandarin like lah lor leh. 'That woman ah, covers her face because it is in their culture.' GOD SPARE ME THE EAR BLEEDING. I am proud of my dad and proud of my mom and proud to be their daughter.

At Bras Basah complex and I think I realise where I get my urge to buy tissues that I don't need at all from armless uncles and old grandmas from. This guy in a wheel chair, probably crippled, and he's selling some unidentifiable object in front of the escalator. My mom and I are going up and she stops when she sees him. She reaches into her handbag, takes out her purse, walks over to the man. He's selling this dubious-looking invisible pen gadget for S$12. My mom thinks it's too expensive but I can't bear the thought of getting that man's hopes up just to crush them, so I say, Just buy it, it's only twelve bucks. So my mom buys the invisible ink pen gadget thingy and I discover, like a kid opening her first birthday present, that it's really pretty cool. First, though, I laugh at the bad and ungrammatical English. If I knew Spanish and French I could probably laugh at the bad Spanish and French too.

Dinner at Tianjing restaurant and I don't have much of an appetite. Vegetarian dumplings. I swallow 9 out of 10 dumplings when I usually eat everything up and still feel slightly hungry after. A plate of kelp and today I finally know what to call 'hai dai' because I don't think 'a type of seaweed' is really accurate. I'm stoning though, my parents are talking, I'm staring into space and thoughts go through my mind. I give the excuse that I'm tired and they take that to mean physically, but the truth is I'm more than physically tired because I am drained and empty and lonely. Unwanted and undesired and undesirable. Fat and ugly and stupid. A train wreck for whom things will never work out. I get the urge to cry, once, twice, three times, four times, and I think up an excuse - my contacts are hurting my eyes - to tell my folks just in case I really lose it. I don't lose it, I keep it inside, we finish dinner and get into the car and I sing "Someday We'll Know" to myself. The New Radicals, competently covered by Mandy Moore and Shane West - only, I think it's inherently a solo song because it is so heartbreakingly sad. "Someday we'll know why I wasn't meant for you." Is no contact better than some contact or do I need you or just want you? I love that song because it makes me feel less alone. Someone understands because he wrote that song, such tragic words, gorgeous melody, lyrical poetry. I make my dad stop at Shell, the one along Bukit Timah, because I want to get a bottle of vanilla Starbucks coffee. I feel like collecting Starbucks bottles because they are pretty and I like Starbucks. So much for being anti-establishment.

I come home and read Azrul's blog and an entry about History class and Miss Lim and I get this overwhelming longing for that hateful place and I feel like crying. That place is hateful but I miss the familiarity and how I had friends who are always there and friends to walk to lectures with and friends to have lunch with and friends to sit around and shoot the shit with (in Khai's words) and thinking about it makes me so nostalgic that now I'm really crying, a lone tear leaving a wet trail down the face, watch out for the sequel. Friends who know me and accept me for who I am so that I don't worry about not being accepted, not fitting in, no awkward silences, and I miss it despite Jurong Junior because I am so lonely and alone and lonesome. I wish things were easier and more perfect, that utopia truly existed, that it weren't inherently contradictory, that Orwell never wrote "1984" and Huxley never wrote "Brave New World" and More was never so hypocritical about the word he coined. Utopia - good place and no place but why does it have to be that way? Another day in school tomorrow and I just want to be put out of my misery.

So I sit here and type all of that. I wish I were talented, less imperfect, more beautiful.

I wish I don't exist.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010