you made me untouchable for life.
written: 1:40 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 26, 2005

Well, I'm not one of them.

I know: Shock, gasp, surprise!

The thing is, I am such a damn cynic that I get annoyed when I receive such messages. It means that I have to reciprocate with a "You too!", regardless of whether I mean it or not; most of the time I'm too nice to delete the SMS without a reply. And so I "You too!" to 99% of the people whose Christmas greetings I received, and after a while I got so sick of doing it that I stopped.

I deserve a trophy for Miss Anti-Social of the Year.

To be fair, it's not as much about the people themselves as it is about the fact that it's Christmas and - political correctness thrown to the wind - that I don't give a damn about Christmas at all. Because, really, the only thing I want for Christmas is for the songs to stop, I don't get why Orchard Road fusses over Christmas and not Chinese New Year, Deepavali, Hari Raya when these three holidays have more to do with Singaporeans than Christmas, I'm not remotely religious and yet I'm slightly offended by how commercialised this holiday has become and because I am so edgy and anti-establishment, I refuse to buy into the whole "holiday spirit" thing.

Living in Singapore that term doesn't mean anything anyway, because December is the holidays and Christmas has always been a day that's a part of the end-of-year school holidays anyway, big freaking deal. I'm not cynical about the religious symbolism of Christmas; I'm cynical about how everyone is buying into it and making such a big deal over it even if they're not Christians and am I really the only one who thinks that the pervasiveness of Christmas-y celebrations is another symbol of ill-deserved Western supremacy?

You know how it is when people are too educated. It happened with Western-educated terrorists, the whole "spitting on the hand that feeds" concept. It's kind of the same with me too: getting the low-down on globalisation and all that jazz, the way it encroaches into local cultures, and I hate the fact that I'm more comfortable expressing myself in English than Chinese.

Well, I've strayed from my original topic. The good part is, I realised it early enough so that I won't stray any further and go into a huge rant about my lousy Chinese and how I'd rather have perfect Chinese and know no English at all and how I find it a lot easier to speak proper Chinese than proper English, yadayadayada, really boring things that I'm not too arsed to expound upon right now.

So I shall end this rant with this: Christmas totally sucks.

Oh, and in the Christmas episode of Grey's Anatomy Meredith opined that the Christmas period is meant to be spent with the person that you love.

The fact that I just spent another freaking Christmas all by myself (discounting family members which is a given) doesn't do anything to sweeten my situation.

**

I just typed the most scathing email I've ever typed in my life and I will decide if want to send it or not in the morning, when I'm not running on spent energy and thus not really thinking straight.

Funny thing, I find that I'm most productive, writing-wise, when I'm operating in such a state.

**

Christmas lunch at my grandma's and a couple of older people made a fuss over the law school thing again.

People should get over it. It's not a big deal. Getting into law school doesn't automatically make a person smart. Yes, it's not the easiest thing ever, but it's far from being the hardest thing ever too.

It is not a good sign at all when I'm cynical about my education.

The only kick I get from telling people that I'm in law is their reaction. Even then, I'm smirking more because of how their reaction amuses me than how their reaction conveys their awe in my brilliant linguistic and analytical abilities (what. fucking. ever). I wish I could blow the lid open for good and tell everyone that this whole charade is exactly that, and overrated to boot.

If I get stoned for saying all this, please mark me down as totally un-surprised.

So the two older people: toss-up between Cambridge English and NUS Law, they say the latter. Secure your rice bowl, they say. Go for something lucrative (note the absence of the word "more", and I would use a technical term here if I knew what it was), ideals do not have a place in the real world, just bludgeon me to death with your "real world" ass-shat doctrines, why don't you.

I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry. If only they knew how unhappy I am, how dangerously close I am to falling irrevocably into the deep end, how my only instinct is to self-destruct. I want to rebel, not conform. I resent the route I picked out for myself and I refuse to embrace it.

Attempting to psycho-analyse myself here: I'm being childish on purpose and not facing up to reality like a mature adult that I'm supposedly supposed to be because I never once said I wanted to grow up. In fact, the last I checked, I didn't even bloody agree to it. Where is my signature on the contract? In fact, where the hell is my fucking offer? Without an offer I can't possibly indicate an acceptance and so I should be able to declare my contract with Time as void.

Oh, if only these shaky principles of Contract law applied to real life where it actually mattered. I couldn't care any less about stupid business transactions and things that turn the hands of the economy; I'm more interested in ideas and concepts and abstracts, things that make you feel, things that give shape to life, that makes it worth living.

Unfortunately, the adult world is looking insipid, dull and fucking boring from where I'm standing right now.

Time takes a dagger and stabs me in the heart and it has no remorse and it deserves the death penalty but it will always be the murderer of youthful ambitions and ideals that will forever get away with its heinous crimes.

**

Correction: I Know What I Want To Do.

The problem: I Can't Realise It In Our Insufferably Practical (And Quite Fucked Up) Society.

**

My dad, his words translated: "Forget about ideals and ambitions."

I love my dad, but I hated what he said.

**

Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to be this or that, no exception? Why does the system force you to choose when you'd be quite happy going for both? Maybe if I could do what I like while doing law I wouldn't be so miserable, and maybe I'd stop pinning the blame on the course for being the one thing that has slaughtered the only real ambition I've harboured.

I don't know who I am without this writing thing. It's come to define me, people identify me by it, it is what I am. I may not be good at it, but I sure as hell enjoy it more than anything else in life and without it I am literally nothing.

So do you still find it hard to understand where I'm coming from, this identity crisis? I don't know who I am anymore, where I'm going, what I'm doing. It tears me up and breaks me apart, my defining passion turned into a mere hobby. Are you serious, World? Are you really serious? Why bring me here just to show me how worthless it is?

Thanks to you though, I have another reason against giving birth. It is not a gift of life; it is the biggest curse a woman can ever inflict upon another person.

So, to all mothers out there, if you have a kid that wants to be a writer/pop star/space traveller/insert other impractical occupations here, kindly do your poor, deluded kid a favour and lay out the facts of The Real World exactly as they are to him. Rip off the blind fold, tell it as it is, stop lying.

Take it from me, kid. It is never about what you want and it will never be about what you want; it is about what you have to do, obligations to get you through this life and probably many more to come. The meaning of life isn't making every second count; it is making a lot of money and securing a roof over your head and measuring success by the number of digits that make up your bank account balance. Your ideals don't mean anything; the adults have been lying to you when they told you that your ideals are important. Because, your ideals are shit, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't matter if you have a defining passion or not; as long as it isn't a money-spinning machine, you can just forget the fuck about it.

But it's okay, you can make things easier for yourself. Just, you know, simply abandon all hopes and dreams of becoming the great writer you've always wanted to be and conform! That is, after all, the only key to happiness that The Real World has to offer.

Excuse me for being bitter. I just found out that my life has been little more than a lie; I think I deserve a moment to fucking grieve.

**

You know what would be quite great? Me going against my rules and hitting a pub and getting drunk and going into a hotel room with some random guy and losing my virginity to an intoxicated one night stand with a stranger.

At least then I'd have something legitimate to be depressed about. Right now, I'm nothing more than an ungrateful little bitch who whines about how terrible her life is when there are (apparently) many people who'd love to be in her shoes.

For the record, I'd gladly give up my place in law school to anyone who wants it. Just so you know.

**

If journalism in this country were even vaguely legitimate, I wouldn't be stuck in this stupid quagmire right now.

**

I need to improve my grammar. It is, quite honestly, an unforgivable and disgusting piece of shite.

**

College Day Dread: I oscillate between Dread and Anticipation, which could be the same thing, depending on how you look at it.

I have half a mind to toss out the stupid speech and just go up there and say exactly what I think about the whole event. What can they do to me anyway, expell (sp) me? Don't be stupid.

But because I am only aggressive in writing, I'm not going to do that.

I can't believe that I'd be speaking in front of a fucking audience for five minutes this freaking Friday.

Those five minutes will be the longest of my life.

**

I make up all these movies in my head, absurd stories of impossible love, and one day I will translate everything into writing and make it great.

I will look on the bright side: I can't sink any lower than I've already sunk.

Um, wait, hold the phone. Actually, I can. I think the only time I can make that statement is when I start failing law school exams on purpose.

The scary thing? I can genuinely see that happening.

**

I busy myself with Veronica Mars and its fictional world and Logan Echolls and his broken-boy persona. Sometimes I wish I were a mere character in a drama series, so that my fate will be vaguely clear from the beginning. Even better, in a novel, where my life will be immaculately and intricately mapped out and I won't have to make life-altering decisions just to fall flat on my face.

Other times, I drown everything out and throw myself into Neptune, California, and pretend Veronica was my friend and Wallace and I are also BFFs and Logan is my soulmate because without it, these childish illusions that loosely form the outline of a cowardly escapism, I would get so caught up in my own life and how much it sucks that I think I may just off myself for good one day.

What is the difference between suicidal-ness and truly believing that life is meaningless?

Huh. That'd be an infinitely interesting distinction.

**

So. Veronica Mars.

Dear VM. Is it January 18 yet? I need my VM fix. Badly. I'm dying without new episodes. Whenever I hear that "Santa Claus is coming to town" song I picture Veronica saying "making a list and checking it twice" to Keith in the Mars Investigations office; there are times I find myself thinking, "Anthropomorphic" and then smiling moronically to myself; and I get all obsessed over trying to figure out which episode certain scenes occurred in, such that sometimes I keep myself awake at night trying to think of the answer.

I'm so crazy that it's retarded but I don't care. A bright spot is a bright spot, even if it's a TV show.

And no, the irony doesn't escape. A TV show in the noir genre as a bright spot.

Well. Life is a contradiction and so why should its myriad subsets be any different?

**

I've given up on hooking up with someone before the year ends.

On second thought, I can't possibly and logically "give up" on something on which I've never started.

Well, the good thing about the KL trip is that the guys there are a thousand times better looking than the guys in Singapore. A few hours in KL and I was treated to more sights of good-looking guys than I had been in Singapore for months. The only piece of clothing I brought back from the trip is a brown skirt from this store called Romp, and I'm telling you, the guy that served me? Totally. Fucking. Hot. Big eyes, pierced ears, fair skin, totally nice, weird (Cantonese-accented) Mandarin but he was a KL-er so I suppose that made sense. When I was making my purchase he was like, "Xiao jie, ni de hua yu you yi dian bu yi yang. Ni shi bu shi KL ren?" (Translation: "Miss, your Mandarin sound a bit different. Are you from KL?")

I just said that I'm Singaporean. If my brains were more agile I would've gone, "You're really cute" before I left the store.

Singaporean males barely have a thread of hope left. It's so tragic and depressing. No wonder I can't find a decent temporary boyfriend.

**

I meant to write this entry really quickly and sleep because I'm very sleepy but one thing led to another and so it's 2.52 a.m. now and I'm still typing.

I was going to say something about SMS and Me but forget it.

In short though, I hate SMS and I hardly reply to SMSes anymore. Believe it or not, there used to be a time when I replied to SMSes immediately after reading them; now, I read them and make up an excuse to reply "later" and "later" comes and "later" goes and I never get around to sending that reply.

Oh well. It's nothing personal, it's just me being anti-social. I do it to everyone, no exception.

No wonder I have so little friends.

I swear, everyone hates me.

If they don't, they really ought to.

2.54 a.m.

title of entry from spoon's "i turn my camera on"

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