i am woman.
written: 4:44 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007

I don't mind rap, but I'm not a fan and I wouldn't buy a rap album. But I really liked this song because of the Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" samples and I thought the way it was incorporated into the track was rather creative. I was quite impressed. As usual though I have no idea what the dude is rapping about (need to see the lyrics lah) but it's the theme song to Freedom Writers which is not exactly the best inspirational teacher-type movie I've ever seen and it's not exactly or particularly well-made, but it has good intentions and it is generally moving, so I'm guessing the lyrics to the song should be along some similar veins too.

While we're on the subject of movies, Swimming Pool is one hell of a wonderful mind fuck. LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT, and the French chick is hot.

Another night of alcohol and debauchery and too-loud music and staying out and falling asleep standing up. Well, maybe not debauchery; not even alcohol, for that matter. But there was queuing up, though, at Powerhouse (i.e. St James Powerstation) for about an hour and a half with Mel and her friends, and talking to a friend of a friend of Mel's friend whilst queuing up, and squeezing my way through the thick sea of people into the club where there was a raised platform on which Mel and I stood and moved about until the music became some crap-ass dance number, to which I was like, "What the fuck?" According to the friend of a friend of Mel's friend whom I talked to, that took up fifteen minutes. I came home with sore feet and aching calf muscles, and as I was writing in my diary my eyelids started closing all on their own and I found myself writing with my eyes barely open. A novel experience indeed.

Powerhouse gave all females five free drinks but I'm not really into alcohol anymore, ever since that horrendous experience with too many tequila shots, so I asked for a beer and it was Heineken and I think the only white beer that I can stand to drink is Hoegaarden because I couldn't drink the Heineken after a while. All the things that have been said about beer are true: it really does taste like piss and there are much more palatable ways with which to destroy your liver. Seriously.

We were crowding around a few tables which were occupied and I was under the impression that the people there were friends of Mel's friend, so I handed this random dude my Royce chocolates (more about that later) with the intention of asking him to put it on the seats or somewhere safe. He was all, "Is this my present? Is this for me?" Basically being fucking irritating. But I thought he was a friend of a friend, etc, so I entertained him and was all, "No this is mine!" Blah blah blah, trying to make light of the situation and not telling him to stop being retarded and just put my chocolates down. But it turned out that he was just some random guy and he was not a friend of a friend of a friend. And I hereby declare that I absolutely hate it when strange guys whom I've never met and with whom I have absolutely no affiliation whatsoever touch me in any way, be it a nonchalant touch on the arm or something more. That random guy touched me lightly on the arm when he was going on about the chocolates being his present (whatever lah) and my first instinct was to jerk my arm away. I don't like being touched - at all. Friends, strangers, whatever, I just don't like being touched, and strangers touching me are the absolute worst. Maybe I'm weird. I think I am. Oh well.

The cardinal rule is, don't touch me unless I touch you first.

Last night - early this morning - was rather late. We only got into the club at 2 a.m. and whilst queuing up for drinks I was falling asleep against my arm, propped up on the counter by my elbow, with the right side of my face pressed against my Royce chocolates. Must've looked drunk. I was just really super tired and I sure wasn't the only one. Moving around randomly to the rather random music was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep. But it was fun nonetheless, first time clubbing with Mel and all. The friend of the friend of Mel's friend whom I was talking to was surprised when I told him that it was my first time clubbing with Mel. I don't know why.

I probably wouldn't go back to Powerhouse though. I mean, it was fun, but the crowd was rather cheena-piang beng-ish, which is really just kind of gross. Then again, too much clubbing gets really old really quickly and it's something that I'd only do for kicks once in a while.

The beer, however, felt like acid going down my near-empty stomach and I felt slightly sick after a while. I was going to dump it with Marcus (the friend of a friend whatever whom I was talking to) but he went off somewhere with his friend, who was the friend of Mel's friend (Marcus was hence the friend of the friend of Mel's friend) so I dumped some of it with Mel and forced myself to drink the rest of it. Blech. Gross. No wonder Kenneth doesn't like and therefore doesn't drink beer. I totally get it now, and what he told me about the beer belly thing sometime back kept coming back to haunt me.

Marcus was nice and kind of cute but I am still me and I think I have a new problem that's sort of a repackaged version of an older but also rather recent problem and what I saw hours prior to Powerhouse only further reinforced my belief that I'm really more self-sufficient than I think I am. Here's where the Royce chocolates come in. Basically, I was unduly influenced by my neighbour into being his date for his OCS Social Night thingy. He came to my house at 12 midnight, asking me if I could go because he desperately needed a date, and because I am so damn nice I said, "Okay I'll go." The event was on Wednesday night and on Wednesday morning I went for an emergency shopping expedition with my mom for a new dress because I was under the impression that it was a terribly formal occasion, and obviously I don't have a single formal-ish dress, so I ended up buying an Allure dress with which I am now absolutely in love because it is gorgeous, though it does make me look rather pregnant but who cares.

It turned out, though, that half the girls there weren't dressed that formally anyway. Bleah. On the bright side, I have a pretty new dress! Like I told my neighbour, "I can always find an excuse to buy a new dress."

I didn't do much during the event, just sat around and looked pretty and fulfilling my function as my neighbour's arm accessory. He was in charge of planning the whole thing so he sat with the commander-in-chief of his unit (or whatever) and I obviously had to sit with him. Everyone else was seated in long tables and I was there with my neighbour at this round table with some officers (or whatever) and their girlfriends. They had Royce chocolates as souvenirs which was why I brought a box of Royce chocolates with me to Powerhouse, ha ha.

Throughout the whole evening, whenever I wanted to go somewhere or take something or just do something, my neighbour would be like, "Do you want me to walk you there? Can I take it for you?" And even after saying "No I can do it myself", he'd still 1) walk me to the toilet; 2) take food for me; and 3) pull out my chair for me. It was all part of their social graces training and whatever which was all well and good and I get it, but god, I just so was not used to it. Every time my first reaction was to say "I can pull out my own chair" or "I can find my own way to the toilet" or "I can take my own food". I was queuing for the buffet and it was moving along so damn slowly because all the girls were waiting for their guys to get food for them and I was like, What the fuck? I wanted to die. My neighbour came over after he was taking a break from running around doing stuff and said in jest to his friends, "I don't need to get food for my date because she's independent."

I don't consider myself a feminist in any way, shape or form and sexual politics don't interest me at all. But there are just things that I would much prefer doing on my own, and it makes me feel rather uncomfortable when guys do it for me. Pulling out chairs, going out of their ways to open doors (if I'm ahead of you you really don't have to suddenly surge forward and open the door for me; I can open it myself and even better, I can hold it open for you), taking food, walking me to the toilet, holding my shopping bags when they're not heavy at all, all these small little things that I've been doing by myself for as long as I can remember and therefore will continue doing by myself.

And yet, having said that, I often criticise and write off guys who don't offer to do these things. As much as I'd rather pull out my own chairs and open my own doors, guys who don't offer to do these things don't leave a good impression on me. I accuse them of being ungentlemanly when I reject the gentleman's offers to do gentlemanly things. But I don't think I'm being contradictory; what is gentlemanly isn't the doing, but the fact that he had the thought to do it. I don't want you to ultimately do it for me, but I do want you to have thought about doing it, and to have offered. And of course, after you've known me well enough, it wouldn't matter anymore if you offer or not, but if you're a complete stranger and you don't offer I'd just think that you're uncouth and...shitty.

I suppose some could say that I'm trying to have my cake and eat it, but then again, isn't a cake meant to be eaten? So what's wrong with me wanting to eat a cake that I have when the whole point of the existence of the cake is for it to be eaten? Why waste food, right? I think so too.

Another thing that struck me last night was how...well, to put it as accurately though bluntly as possible, bimbotic some girlfriends are. Nothing more than arm accessories, pretty faces without a brain, mouths that open and the lips form the shape of words but nothing really comes out. All I could think of was, "I'm so glad I'm not like that." I wouldn't want to be like that - ever. As much as I can't imagine not looking like me, I also cannot imagine being stupid. I think at the end of the day, I'd fear being stupid more than I'd fear being ugly or fat or whatever. I don't want to be the woman behind the man, to be an arm accessory, and if there's going to be showing off, it has to be a two-way thing.

You know, I can't imagine how anyone would not want to date me. I am a damn slack girlfriend. He doesn't have to do anything for me. I won't coerce him into going shopping with me because I can't shop with a guy; it makes me feel bad, like I'm imposing, when I take my time looking at clothes and trying things on and being all picky about my purchases while he stands around and looks bored. Every time I see boyfriends shopping with their girlfriends, I feel bloody sorry for them and even sort of empowered that I'm shopping by myself. He doesn't have to carry my stuff for me, he can continue hanging out with his female friends, he doesn't have to call me everyday and in fact I'd hate it if he called me everyday.

And maybe that's why I'm single: I don't need a guy. It would stand to reason, therefore, that I can't make him feel needed when I don't need him, and don't guys have this power-ego need to feel needed? They need to take care of someone, but I don't need to be taken care of by a guy when I can do it myself. I'm not cute, I'm not demure, I'm not sweet, and you, simply put, cannot take care of me. And that's fine, that's awesome, because I don't know any other way. And that's fine, too.

The bottom line is, I'm unsure about some things at this point in time, but I'm still sure about one thing: I don't need a boyfriend, I don't need a guy, and I don't think I've ever needed anyone. Because when I did need someone, I felt weird about myself, uncomfortable in my own skin, and to some extent I became a stranger to myself. And now I think I've a much clearer sense of who I am, and I also think that I've put down and thrown away most of my excess emotional baggage. Some things simply turn out not to matter as much as you thought they would, and that's always for the best. Whatever 'the best' means. But we don't need to have all the answers.

Still, that doesn't quite provide any guidance or rule of thumb as to what the protocol should be when you find yourself having these strange urges to take the first baby step towards things that are entirely inappropriate and really not right when you know that they are inappropriate and not right. And this time, you can't explain it anymore, and it's driven by something else altogether, something extrinsic to you. It's no longer about your own problems; it's about how the external relates to you, independent of your problems, and how you find yourself having strange urges and making an effort to suppress them. What's to be done about that? I don't know, really. There are sacrifices to be made, trade-offs to weigh, no matter which option I look at. Is it really about doing whatever it takes? Or is it more a case of putting things through a balancing exercise?

In any case, I told Mag before that I don't feel capable of feeling strong emotions for a guy anymore, and that is still true. No matter how many nice kind of cute guys I meet whom I find attractive from an objective stand point, I have difficulties being attracted to them. It's one thing to think that someone's attractive; it's another, more difficult, ballgame altogether to be attracted to that attractive person. Things ought to be so much simpler, but they're not. At all.

In other news, I haven't done anything for my paper except to send the books for photocopying which I did on Monday, only to be told that they'd be ready only on Friday. What the fuck? I just realised that it's Christmas next week already which means the holidays are almost over. Where did my time go? This semester break seems to have flown by much faster than the previous one.

And contrary to what I'd initially thought, living through December 2007 isn't painful at all, because I've pretty much forgotten that I'm supposed to be in pain. Too many things happening this week! Or rather, all these meeting friends and having dinner and having drinks and clubbing, and there's still this nagging thought at the back of my mind, reminding me that I have things to do which I haven't started on. How annoying. Kenneth got this well when I told him that self-imposed deadlines are the worst, and I'm glad someone's sharing my misery with me, though for a different matter. Who gets stressed during the holidays? Kenneth! And me! I have company! Woohoo!

Lastly, I have observed that I don't know how to flirt. At all. And I am still bored. And I don't feel like checking my exam results next Wednesday. Sigh.

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