i want something more.
written: 2:33 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 01, 2005

Average. Mediocrity.

And what I said was so true. I fervently wanted not to believe it, to be refuted, but 7 weeks into school and now I know I was right. And I can't stand it, I really can't, before it was "Read Yelen's essay, it's fucking good" and now it's "Yelen read their essays, they're fucking good". Before it was "Yelen is so smart", now it is "Yelen that person is so smart". The more I realise this the more I don't want to do anything to change it, the more I drown the more resigned I am to my fate, the more something kills me the more I let it kill me.

I'm in SNGS all over again. I am. And I hate - absolutely abhor - the person I was back there, and I became someone else in JJC and I want to be that person again. I went into law school thinking that if I couldn't kick everyone's asses, I'd at least try, all these promises to myself that I've broken over and over again, I know I have to stop drowning in this perpetual lethargy and apathy but I can't.

For the first time in quite a while I feel truly, hopelessly and utterly lost. The second week of school opened a floodgate that started all of this and I want to point the finger away from myself but once you're past the age of 18 you're no longer allowed to shift the blame away from yourself like a petulant child. I know what I did was infantile, I know it was utterly immature of me to be affected by what was eventually a non-issue, I know I said it won't ever affect my school work, that I didn't get into law school just to fuck it up, I know I said all of those things and proved myself wrong repeatedly.

But what's to be done about that? I don't know what to do. People are trying so hard and they're getting results and I'm stuck trying to try and I never succeed significantly because I'm always distracted and my heart isn't in it and I'm just not the studying type and I want to stop making such bad excuses for myself and take responsibility for my own actions or lack of it and at the same time I don't want to face up to any of it I don't want to deal I just want to amble on languidly the way I'm doing now and push away feelings of inferiority that are so not me and pretend there isn't a problem but there is a problem and I feel it every single second I'm in that place and I fucking hate it and I hate even more the way I'm not doing anything about it and I know this isn't who I am but who am I and how do I know I really am that person?

I wish I could do so many things: snuggle up in bed with a good book the whole day, live life running along the edge, write beautiful poetry, go to gritty cities and experience life in all its myriad paradoxes, feel despair, feel love, feel hope, happiness and freedom and liberty, write beautifully in Chinese, learn foreign languages, attend good gigs and just let myself go, and above all else, I wish I could break out of this mundane reality that is my life, deviate from the norm and be happy doing what I choose.

All I have are sparks. You look forward to a certain event but after that event is over you're back to square one; even worse, there aren't many events you look forward to in the first place.

I want something more. I want to be more. The thing I feared most growing up was mediocrity, and I still maintain that it's the worst disease a person can ever have. To extend the lousy metaphor slightly further, I need a vaccine right now.

There has to be more than...this. This disgusting predictability, mindless conformity, unchanging adhesion to the norm, and I'm so bored and tired and unintersted, I wish I could meet interesting people who aren't from JCs, you have no idea how same-ish JC people can get, there has to be more. This can't possibly be it, can it?

And yet, if you're ordinary you shouldn't expect anything less. I never had that great love story I penned for myself and I don't think I ever will. As you get older and further away from youth you begin to face life with a tired resignation, all the battles you fought and lost coming back to haunt you, a million "what if"s that make you wish you'd taken a chance or done something differently or made things happen.

I don't know. What does anything matter, really? In the grander scheme of things we're exactly nothing and that's the answer to life.

What do you do in the light of such revelations?

Smile and nod and pretend you mean it.

**

The thing about most people is that they're boring. They don't interest me, I don't bother getting to know them because I have nothing to ask them, and I have nothing to ask them because there's nothing about them that I want to know. And then there's this whole issue with speaking good English. How difficult is it to string together a coherent sentence without resorting to Singlish? I don't even take issues with the Singaporean accent even though it's not proper because I know I speak with that unfortunate accent too and it can't be helped. But proper English? You have definite control over that and yet you don't even bother.

And that annoys me more than words can possibly hope to describe. A hot guy is useless if he can't speak proper English, if he can't SMS properly, if he uses retarded SMS language, if he can't punctuate and spell correctly. I'm not even talking about really technical precisions of grammar and punctuation; I'm not saying that you cannot start a sentence with an 'and' or a 'but', or that you cannot precede a conjunction with a comma, or that you have to capitalise the first word of each and every sentence; I'm talking about fundamentals here. Spell correctly - "fren" is not a word and will never be a word, "dun" should cease to exist from the consciousness of Singaporeans right this second, and 'accommodate' is double 'c' and double 'm'. Punctuate correctly - I don't expect ah bengs and ah lians to know this, but for the love of my sanity, if you've been to JC you have no excuse (unless you're from JJC and other JCs ut from the same cloth). There is no such punctuation as '..' and no you cannot plead your case citing 'poetic license' (and how pretentious is that anyway? It's not like you'd ever be e. e. cummings). The ellipsis comes with three dots and please don't use it all over the place in between the oddest phrases. An example: "I'm at...the bus stop...it's so hot. Your umbrella...is with...me." What is your so very thoughtful and wistful point? Then again, I'm not interested.

And lastly, SPEAK PROPERLY. What the hell is "you never jio me ah"? What the hell is "I never tell you what!" And I'd go on further but for the life of me I can't think of the horrible things people say, precisely because I don't say them myself. People don't realise that "never" is definite and forever. "I never eat lunch" - you've never had lunch before your entire life and yet you've survived 19 years? Wow! Major kudos to you for I am so impressed! What a biologically-defying feat!

Just to let you in on a little secret: law school students aren't exempt from such atrocious distortions of the English language.

But I think it's largely a Singapore thing. And you know what? I was born in the wrong country. We're here and there and nowhere, our Chinese sucks, I don't know about Malay and Tamil, and our English is nowhere near international standards. The way people speak, oh my god, just put a bullet through my head. The way Singaporeans pronounce the word 'schedule' is disgusting. The British pronounce it without the 'k' sound ('sheh-jule'), the Americans say it as "skeh-jule", and the average Singaporean says, "skeh-dew", with an upward emphasis on the mis-pronounced 'dew'. I was at the Arts canteen and I heard a woman say it and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes in her face and correct her pronounciation.

People are so...I don't even know what they are.

Or maybe I'm the one with the major problem as a snob with a stick stuck permanently up her arse. But how wrong is it for me to demand proper English from others? I have as much of a right not to subject myself to such shit as they do to annoy me with it, and since they aren't told how wrong their language is often enough, I shall take the liberty upon myself to do it.

And don't even get me started on Chinese. I watch Quan Min Da Men Guo and even MTV Mandarin just to hear real Mandarin and not the butchered type you get over here. And Singaporeans have the audacity to laugh at the way mainland Chinese speak Mandarin - excuse me while I laugh at their ignorant complacency! Take the average Singaporean to Taipei/Beijing/Shanghai and chances are, he won't be understood.

I know I was difficult to understand while I was in Taipei anyway. And I try very hard to speak proper Mandarin but because my Chinese sucks major ass I end up stuttering most of the time. I have to learn phrases like "zhong dian shi" (the point is) and others I can't recall offhand at the moment from Taiwanese movies (namely Formula 17) and Jay Chou songs. That is really pathetic and I should read Chinese books, but.

I've lost my point.

And speaking of point: I can't even begin to impart how annoying it is sometimes to hear "out of point" when it's wrong and when it's supposed to be "off the point", as well as "with regards to" when the correct form is "with regard to".

Well, then again, the above were corrected by my brilliant JC teachers and I understand that not everyone had the privilege of having Tubby and Tim Dore as teachers so I guess I shan't bitch about it that much.

Surprisingly, "irregardless" isn't purely Singaporean. I looked it up the dictionary and it's used in the USA. I think this is the part where I laugh.

And I will go to bed laughing for there is nothing else I want to say.

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