letter to a good friend

I'll miss talking the evening away. Even if it wasn't really "talking". I hope it all tides over soon, this sadness that no normal person should have to endure. I hope that what you're doing is for the better. Enjoy life. You have so much going for you.

new blogskin

Now I can safely say that more than 90% of the blogskin was done by myself. The visual design, at least. Stupid frog, at last it came and invaded the computer version of my blog.

The experience of creating it myself will be treasured.

It's not perfect. It looks disgusting, done by someone unskilled. But I promise I'll improve on it, bit by bit.

con moto; the winds of change

I think something's very wrong if I only blog when I am unhappy.

School is proceeding well. I'm doing badly in terms of formative assignments, but hey, at least I don't copy from the notes like I'm pretty sure most of my classmates and friends do. It feels so good to study seriously, focusedly, resolutely. I'm actually understanding my lessons, unlike last year. If I managed 60%s without listening during lessons, then I ought to do significantly better when I actually pay attention. Right?

It feels good to actually look forward to CCAs. It feels so good to only have to stay back once a week. And half-schoolwide WIFI, that's possibly the best thing. Ever.

Along with that, I'm crashing math lectures, SMSing wherever I please, eating three plates of rice for lunch, and taking all sorts of (strictly personal opinion) pretty scenery and architecture photographs.

The only regret I have is that I'm no longer writing, drawing or composing so much. Doodles on worksheets is as far as it goes. My time goes towards my friends now--old and new. It's a fair trade, I think. But what one loses, one cannot help but mourn over. Whether or not he or she got something in return.

Don't worry. There's two years more. I'll work something out eventually. Meanwhile, there's too much here, too much good and too much happiness, to pass over because of unneeded depression.

turn of the wind

Life tends to like to spring surprises. I'm used to it, and yet I'm caught off guard every time. That's because it's a surprise, right?

Things like this pass. But when they're over, will I be left stronger, or with less than before? That's usually the question, isn't it?

croak...?

My mistake, there's nothing wrong with my blogskin. Only on my phone, I think.
FROG.

frog

O_o what be happen to blogskin?
Must...make...new one...

skip

And just like that, my secondary school life has begun to derail.

I hope this isn't a big wedge between my class and I.

I hope I never have to exclude myself again.

Team building games are just stupid.

Class camps are stupid.

Katy Perry: Peacock

Music: captivating, fascinating, a little addictive.
Words: gulp...

had to get it out of my system

I can't stand it when someone speaks to me of a subject as if he/she were a professional in the field, when, in fact, he/she is far from that, especially when I'm clearly just as or more qualified to speak of it.

You are not my superior unless I concede to it.

I can't stand it when someone attempts to fit words intended to point to extensive verbal capacity into speech, only to end up stacking malapropism upon malapropism. This is worsened if no one picks up the mistakes.

You do not sound smart by misusing big words.

I hate it when someone continually and repeatedly (but 'casually') mentions and discusses good things that he/she has had the fortune of claiming ownership, membership or partaking of, just to rub it in my face that he/she is good enough to warrant such prestige.

Your craving for self-gratification is all that amazes me.

Most of all, I hate having to listen to it all, unable to make complaints or corrections out of pure respect and politeness.

paper cones and colliding galaxies

I'm sleepy, so this will be a short one.

My first session at Astronomy Club today was amazing. I'm hooked. I've been brainwashed. I wanna join.

Lectures on something I've only encountered briefly before. A birthday celebration with fifteen cups too few. Dinner with a group of people I don't know at all (save one/two).

Symmetry. Space. The unreachable.

Oh, I'm sure that's not what they hoped I would enjoy about today, but that's what I enjoyed all the same. I even took notes. And I gained more resolve to push forward with my studies. Simply seeing the things that scholarly insight can bring to light. I want to be at the frontier.

I need to thank the person who suggested my joining (though 'suggested' is, in all senses, the wrong word here).

today's lessons

When was the last time I did so much in a day, and managed to enjoy myself thoroughly throughout?

So maybe I've been wrong about a few things.

Maybe my class isn't completely rude and dumb and...sporty. Alright, they're clearly sporty. I think I just proved to my class how much of a failure I am at sports. How far I have fallen. But besides some audacious behaviour that I've just begun to understand, they're actually...quite nice.

And maybe Astronomy Club is a serious contender for my main CCA. I told the Writer's Guild interviewers that WG was my clear first choice. I'm not sure that's the truth anymore.

I learnt all that today. I'm aching, but I'm smiling. It's been a while since that last happened.

doors

So far away, so hard to keep the threads together. The longer you're gone, the further we become. Or so I fear. We're being dragged in opposite directions by forces that aren't even undesirable, whispers spidered in nectar.

Truth is, I'm afraid of bonding activities not because of me, but because of my friends.

I'm afraid their bonding with new circles will show them new doors. Doors that will take them from me. I'm afraid of being replaced. I'm afraid of being forgotten.

I've said this before: I'm sorry for sounding clingy and selfish, but friendship is not easy for me.

Maybe they have enough friendships to think of friends as common commodities. Maybe they will have no qualms shifting connections like they're changing outfits.

But I hope, if they do so, that they realise how it hurts for the person they left behind, alone in the dust of what used to be.

To my friends: Enjoy yourselves. I have no right to stop the fluidity of relationships and connections. But there's someone here still hoping that things can be the same as before.

regretting isn't enough, is it?

So comes the payoff. I should have known slacking off on the last year of secondary education would have its detriments.

Well, here I am, stuck in what I have discovered is a 'help' class, in which all the low-scorers with sub-3.2 GPAs are gathered for special tutoring.

I could go on about how RI is unfairly expecting us all to keep their averages high (it's not my fault I managed to get into your school despite my low scores!), and I could go on, also, about how silly gathering all the 'weak' students in the same class for two years of life is. I mean, some of us (e.g. ME) are here because of a once-off slip-up. Okay, a one-year slip-up. Putting me here just MIGHT convince me that I'm as lousy as my scores make me look. Is that a good thing? No.

But I won't. I have no one to blame but myself. I am finally, finally ashamed at not trying half as hard as my parents and teachers hoped I would. And I only have I myself to depend on now, to extract myself from this mire of labels and ghettos and mistakes.

(At least I did something good with the time I 'wasted'. Not everyone would have made people cry with words by 16 years of age. And I hope that, if anything, will ward the bursting guilt off.)

brave little resolution

I'm not trying hard enough. This is my last school. Last chance. I have almost no time left.

'Two years' is shorter than it seems.

Let's make these a good two years. Let's push myself in the direction I want to go. If that's not enough, at least I'll raise my general fortune level. What bad could better scores do, anyway?

nothing once again

This all reminds me of that episode of Avatar called The Beach. It'll become clear as you read.

There are our old faces, faces sunken deep in stigma, engraved in stone, tossed aside in favour of new, unknown faces. Faces that have never been worn before, or perhaps have been forgotten years ago. This is the freshness of seeing the world through new, perhaps skewed, perhaps finally objective (so objective they seem skewed after years of imperfect vision), lenses. Is this the masquerade, or is this the unmasking? Am I pretending for the first time in my life, or have I at last been laid bare?

I think my class has brought out my worst, inwardly, my best, outwardly. I feel the silent demand that my unspoken place in class conveys to me. The only studious one. The one who actually listens to the teacher.

This is the direct opposite of what I was just last year. Is this really how the world is, or have I sunken to a new high? Tinted lenses never seem so because you have no point of reference. Only when they have been removed do you realise things were not normal. Or then again you could say you've just been pulled out of reality into a fabricated perspective that people insist is 'truth'. Confusion, worry, surprise abounds.

Maybe this is an hurdle of life I will need to surmount eventually. Though no one likes to admit it, I've been locked in a glass bubble for a long time, and I've seen barely a fraction of the people I'm going to meet in future. Especially if I take worst case scenario and become a roadsweeper. Surrounded half my life by the most studious, obedient group of people in Singapore. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to pull us out and teach us as a segregated group.

Whichever it is, whether this is reality or whether this is a test made to register in my mind like reality, I know I need to get used to living among 'normal' people. People who haven't grown up equating studies to life. People who don't mind failing sometimes. Noisy people.

I must be tolerant. I must not presume my superiority, what rubbish. I must not want their respect for being 'elite' (elitism within elitism, how funny). Respect is earned, never mind what you had in past circles. A person's respect is not yours until you prove to him/her that you deserve it.

My classmates shared, during ice breakers, their achievements in various sporting fields. Some people, no names given, shared unbearably impressive and unbelievable egotistical things at every round of sharing. Sure she made us feel some form of awe towards her, but she also lost some amiability from me.

So will I stand up and lay unbacked claims? Will I say that I once topped the level at the end-of-year English writing paper? Will I brandish my AMC ranking, supporting it with the fact that I've never taken math training, never even liked math, and started the compulsory test colouring fancy patterns in the OAS? (not to mention that I only missed the medal score because I friggin misread a question.) Will I mention my score on my Grade 8 piano exam, possibly the second highest score I've ever heard (after Lee Voon the freaky genius)? Will I tell them that I won three of the four top awards at a songwriting competition my teacher had to beg+force me to take part in, the first national competition I ever entered?

No, because it says nothing. I will earn whatever I have in them. I won't let myself be judged on my past. I won't languish in my laurels. I won't build my cathedral upon jewelled skulls. I am no one to them until I earn it.

It doesn't matter what my class is like. I'll get back to where I have managed to get before. I'll make the climb again. I'll claim another peak. Yet another.

classes

Urgh.

I think I've made a very clear point about hating tall, noisy, manly, sweaty, sporty males. Guess what? My class is full of them. And guess what? Even the GIRLS in my class are like that.

Excuse me for this, but I can't believe I'm here. I just can't. This...this is like my Chinese class from last year...x10. I thought my Chinese class was the worst imaginable. I thought I'd never have to see that sort of disorder for the rest of my life. I was wrong. What I was seeing there was just a snippet of the real horror.

It has to do with nothing but my Chinese. My taking Chinese in JC. The only reason anyone would be here, taking Chinese, is their ineptitude at the aforementioned subject. And blame me for stereotyping, but most people are so (bad at Chinese) because they either aren't the brightest, or can't be bothered to study due to attitude.

Fine. It sounds like me. Maybe this is where I'm supposed to be. Maybe I've always been classified, unfairly, a standard above what I really am. Put into high-level classes full of the true future leaders and pioneers of Singapore. People with enough vision to consider ambition over present gratification. I've grown accustomed to quiet, studious, obedient people being all around me. I even noticed the way I thought of myself as out of place, for being rowdier, more reckless, more disrespectful.

Now I'm back where I belong. And well, I just can't bear it. I've forgotten life among people who will put aside future for now. Speak before thinking. Party. I can't bear it. This class...is just nightmarish. Hellish. I shouldn't have let myself absorb the silence, but I did, and now I'm having trouble reverting.

The worst words I heard today were 'two years'. Them, for TWO BLOODY YEARS. Oh my god.

If anyone from my class reads this, this is meant with no offence at all. I'm just saying that there are some environments I absolutely abhor, and while this attitude is common, acceptable socially and normal, I find it almost impossible to put up with. I'm sorry for being different, alright, so I hope you'll excuse me for going on avoidance flight.

four stories

1) I'm not alright. But I've mastered the delicate art of looking like I am. It's easy. I've been doing it for years. What difference is another day?

2) I've been hurt so many times before, it's become easy for me to shrug the hurt off.

3) If you think being disliked as a person is torture, having your art disliked is death. Now I can say that I know from personal experience. This is nothing.

4) I don't hold things against others. I only hold things against myself. I don't hate anyone in this world. The only exception is me.

seaside

All those portents of the fleeting days.

I begin to understand. But by now, I've already passed the threshold of the shore, into the limpid cold. It's gone.

The burning cold pierces me.

I want to go back. I want to rest in the embrace of sanctuary once more. I want to take every hour and turn it into a firework. Watch as it rages into the sky and leaves a meteor trail, onto which I will hang, as tight as I can.

The hours are scattering sand, and too little too late, I reach for them as they sing goodbye, and the tide claims my fingers.

Maybe this will be my greatest regret for the rest of my life. But there's still a little of it left. A few hours. I'll etch a note somewhere to remind myself.

oh well

I just had the oddest (but most entertaining) pair of MSN conversations ever.
I wonder if it's my fault.
Good night.

slipping away

Take 5. The last day. I never thought my freedom would end like this.

Technically, it wasn't a bad day. Besides the rhythmic headache the sun gave me, there wasn't anything to hate about today. While they were having fun, I was haviing my own sort of fun. After three walked rounds of the beach and some brief spectation of various ongoing games, to the artificial rocky seaside it was. I watched the ships and tossed coconut husks into the sea, watching them depart and wondering if they'd someday, somehour, come to bump against the hulls of cargo ships.


And apt, maybe, because today is the day I say goodbye. Goodbye to the laughter that has always and will always characterise sacred childhood, so precious, forever pure and locked in that secret cabinet. Today feels like the last chance we had to dream and dance and touch our crumbling innocence. It's a gift, and yet it's a warning--that after tomorrow, it will all have vanished. Maybe forever.


No more playtime after this. It's time to get to work. There might be next year, but next year it will no longer be the same. Only a reminder that we'll never return to the place we once were.


I should have done more. I really should. Watching others play was entertaining, but not much else. Rather pointless. I didn't play myself, and thus I effectively squandered the day. I wish I had said my goodbyes. I wish I had treasured the sun on my face. But all I did was watch. Then retreat from the sun and be my silly, lonesome self.


Well, off we go into the world of stress, A levels, guys, fame pursuit, dire cruel necessity and frisbee fans. Wish me luck. Especially with the guys. I have no idea how I will handle it all.


---


On a side note, 1) I wasted HT's time today after take 5, waiting for a bus that would never have come. How could I forget that 188 terminates before that stop? Uhh! Just because I take 188 TO vivocity doesn't mean I can take it FROM vivocity as well. 2) It turns out Mr. Astronomy nerd lives a ten minute drive from my home, in a condo I pass every single day after school. Coincidences are just astounding. Fascinating. The world is shrinking. Singapore even more so.

a dream

star-painted illusions and idealisation and poetic hopelessness.
[Look this way. Take the chance. I'm not going to wait forever, you know.]

who they are

A: Female. Silver white. Ladylike, graceful, steadfast and sturdy and dependable.
possibly because A looks like the Eiffel tower...

B: Female. Pregnant, pimply. Rather rough around people.


C: Female. An incomplete circle. Friendly, pleasant and a lover of the sunlight.
C, I have always associated with the sun.

D: Male. Responsible and serious, a little boring.

E: Male. Mathematical, rigid and strict. A teacher type.


F: Female. Flowery, lighthearted and drifting, enjoys gardening.


G: Female. Dignified, queenly, enthroned, ancient and aristocratic.

H: Female. Reddish brown. A tomboy. Stable and content and very certain of self.
possibly because it looks like a house, also begins the word "house", invoking bricks.

I: Male. Black, inky, suspicious and paranoid; gangly and cloaked in darkness.

J: Male. Quirky, playful, mischievous, a little eccentric but very charming.

K: Female. Fiercely passionate, full of spunk, wildly pretty with a lithe frame.

L: Effeminate male. Silvery green. Gentle and graceful, walks with a glide, robed.

M: Female. My sister, with an extra dose of saccharine smiling.
my sister's name starts with "M".

N: Male. Yuck. Buck-toothed with pants pulled high. Muted personality.


O: Androgynous. A circle. Glowing. Very honest, very fat. Almost godly.
I associate O with the moon.

P: Male. A postman.
possibly because it resembles a mailbox flag, as well as beginning the word "post".

Q: Female. A queen with many gems. Fat just like O, and very royal, not so perfect.


R: Female. One who rides a horse past rivers and across plains. A more docile K.
first half of description could be because it sounds like the rustle of water and grass.

S: Female. Snaky, speaks sibilantly, older than she looks.
this letter embodies a snake, even to non-synesthetes.

T: Male. Nerdy, dull and gangly with very square shoulders.

U: Androgynous. Squeaky, pink; smiles a lot and annoys the hell out of people.
resembles a very, very large smile.

V: Male. Fierce, suave and skilled with the sword.

W: Androgynous. Quite a strange character; mercurial. I have not much of an impression.
its name and shape just don't match in my head...

X: Male. Fierce but quiet with constantly-narrowed eyes and an almost-alien aura.
definitely affected by X-Men.

Y: Androgynous. Yellow and good-natured, plods around with large shoes.

Z: Male. A weirdo who wears odd clothes with a lot of moving metal parts.

the brighter the sun

Skill begets expectation and expectation begets pressure.
People covet talent. But the truth is, even if you're talented, you never really have it easier.

gone, all gone

I've come to realise that almost all my will to create is gone. Maybe a combination of fear, worry, external pressure, disappointment, feeling there's no point, JC. But I really don't feel much anymore, where the source of my inspiration used to be. Like a fire dwindling to embers.

JC is like a huge black, and very, very wet blanket.