sweet

Upon returning home from a Singapore Idol studio recording, my brother says,

"Eh I think you'll have quite a bit of eye candy this time"

and proceeds to list the names of a few girls.

Only because it was an all-girls round. What were you thinking?

anhedonia

numbness, loss of ability to feel pleasure
associated with depression maybe
schizophrenia

One incoherently worded paper from everybody's favourite ex NMP
and 200 questions that squeezed every bit of memory, knowledge and O Level organic chemistry that I never knew I would so desperately need until today
(God bless My Chemistry Teacher who tried really hard to make sure I did all those TYS questions)

There is this unshakable feeling of emptiness, like my soul has been emptied out, only it isn't my soul because it's still there, technically, but I feel vacant, like when wind blows it goes right through but you don't feel cold or anything you feel nothing
nothing is everything now

catatonia
when i see anything faintly schoolwork-related
remember that after all the papers end i still have a script to mug for another show, three I turned down, because three is a magic number, but the fourth request I should take even though it means emptying out more of what I don't have, and I don't know how that is possible but it can and will happen.

Tomorrow is my mental health exam, the paper, not the actual thing, although I think the actual thing would be appropriate now too given this debilitating disability to string proper complete coherent sentences together instead of this stream of consciousness rubbish that tries to pass off as therapeutic writing but fails miserably and if a 40 mark question comes out on that tomorrow I won't be able to write anything without feeling like I'm selling out.

And on and on the fragmented phrase flashes in my mind - "pain begets pain relief" from the drug notes and I wonder if I should do it but really, this feeling is not pain, the disturbing thing is the lack of feeling anything and writing is the last desperate act of trying to invoke some sort of feeling and failing.

dirty laundry

With extended families whom you don't meet other than during Chinese New Year, they tend to be categorised as the ones that attempt to make conversation, the ones that interrogate, the ones that don't say anything, or the ones you wished you had more time to talk to. Normally there isn't much to say, you just sit still and smile politely and give the annual update.

And then suddenly when one of these relatives calls up and offers to pay for the rest of your university education/upkeep, because he has "spare cash" and wants you to "enjoy the rest of your undergrad life", you find that the once-a-year cursory conversations have now been translated into stress that your parents never ever gave you, especially parents who didn't care if you left assessment books to rot, a mother who constantly, even now, says "Pass can already la why you want to get high marks?". They said "First class honours, no less", and I flipped (and am still flipping).

I met up with a few of them over an extended lunch, at which they ordered two rounds of desserts, no mean feat for a group of an average age of 55, just so that they could watch me eat. Force feeding a person with an anorexic perception of self is not the best thing in the world but there was rum involved so I obliged.

The weirdest thing is that the whole affair was so comfortable, even though if you think of the power relations and all, I'm basically their charity case, in their eyes overworked and undernourished. (Well the one who's helping hasn't worked since his NS-clerical staff days so any work is overwork.)

What does comfortable mean anyway? A friend once said it's feeling like you can wake up in bed next to the person everyday. Not an applicable definition, both incestuous and it's a rather horrible visual image, but it's just the feeling like there's nothing to prove (even though there's everything at stake), and there was actual two-way conversation involved.

Alright maybe I"m just saying this because I'm people-starved and going slightly off tangent before the exams and any break from studying is a good break, but I finally see them as people, not annual blurry faces. I see the family traits of the Khoos passed down the generations in little things such as not wasting anything and painstaking scrutinising the bill (sending it back twice for amendments), things I never thought they would bother with especially since $12(plus)K is termed 'spare cash'. Yes the dirty linen with monetary squabbles washed so regularly in the papers aside, the multiple children of multiple wives aside, when they become real, in your face, perceptions inevitably change.

And this really is not about the money.

botox me to life

I think it's inevitable, in a 'meritocratic' society that equates education with worth, that those with an illustrious education history (grades, schools etc) tend to feel just a little bit superior to the less academically inclined. I do know this is quite a generalisation, but still, it does happen, in subtle thoughts and little gestures that suggest a patient tolerance of ignorance. Sometimes though, one of these supposedly 'less smart' people comes along and shows you everything you needed to know but did not want to find out about yourself.

There's this boy in my new church, let's call him FloppyHair13. FloppyHair13 has an illustrious history of the alternative kind, from being called up to police stations, gang and drug related activities. Fatherless with a mother who works long hours and leaves him to his own devices, he engages in attention-seeking behaviour, speaks loudly, but sometimes you catch him sitting quietly in a corner, biting his nails to shreds. He exhibits great musical ability though, acute sense of pitch, awareness of tone quality, strong rhythmic sense, and has a really nice voice (despite the fact that it's breaking). Last week I volunteered to teach him how to play the guitar, maybe out of fascination to see how far he could progress, or out of an insufferable saviour complex. He did amazingly - picked up chords fast, and he really wants to learn, anything and everything, wants to attempt the difficult stuff, but doesn't mind repeating things over and over again just to get it right.

And I remember my cello standing neglected and accumulating rosin dust, sneak a peek and the textbooks lying at the bottom of a drawer, and wonder what is this indifference, this lack of motivation; there's so much to learn but so little I want to know, because knowledge is at once empowering and frustrating, because you see how much you cannot do/how much more you have to cram.

FloppyHair13 is probably immune to the concept of failure, maybe because he hears it all the time, from his teachers, his mother etc. Or maybe he knows exactly what it is but it doesn't matter to him. Either way he's better off.

On a strange note, I realised that I'm currently at Erikson's developmental stage of generativity vs. stagnation, which is supposedly characteristic of adults undergoing mid-life crisis. On a weird note, one of my lecturers was just talking about an elderly person who, through therapeutic writing, reconciled her past experiences with her current identity, and said this person was at the stage of integrity vs. despair (characteristic of the elderly). Which coincidentally was exactly what I wrote in my therapeutic writing essay/reflection. Middle aged or elderly, it isn't much of a choice. Either way, I think now I know that I'm aging prematurely.

responsible hedonism

It's the time of the year again, the time where you place a stack of books in front of you and attempt to make some sort of plan to finish reading them, the time where you haunt coffee joints all over the island in an effort to get away from the guy in the next block who screams vulgarities at the oddest hours, the renovation works going on downstairs etc. The time of the year where you realise that all the knowledge in your books and files actually provide a way out in case you ever think of self-destruction.

For example. I realised in most of my social work lectures, the lecturers mentioned some form or another of successful suicide methods (detailed plans that should set alarm bells off), all of which I dutifully copied down. I think the lecturers assume that most if not all of the people attending social work lectures are mentally and socially well-adjusted enough not to be tempted to try out their very feasible suicide methods.

The drugs module this semester says it's alright to smoke marijuana because there's little withdrawal symptoms, similarly for cocaine. And if you want to take cocaine, you get a quicker high from smoking it then from snorting it.

If you really can't stop smoking (normal cigarettes), keep puffing until you feel nauseous enough to stop - aversion therapy will do its mojo.

If you want to make your muscles burn fat instead of glucose stores, drink caffeine - helps you lose weight too, plus withdrawal symptoms are (apparently) minimal depending on the individual.

Information leads to informed decisions. I suppose that's a good thing. Prevents you from touching alcohol before the exams because brain cells are short in supply, high in demand, and cannot be regenerated so they cannot be allowed to die.

sidestream smoke

It's so much easier to have people having crushes on you than to have a crush on someone. For the former, even though it might be a little awkward around the person initially because you don't really know what to say when you're around the person in question, it goes away quite soon (the awkwardness, not the person). For the latter, well, I hesitate to use the word 'crush' because it sounds really adolescent and implies blind attraction based on superficial reasons like looks or powerpuff-girl abilities. But to call it fascination feels like you're distancing yourself from the feeling.

Ah crap this is so embarrassingly teenage.

caught in the rain

So I got the scholarship, and rejected it, and felt waves of hostility from across the phone line, and at home, felt the frustration of my parents who knew that they couldn't stop me from rejecting the scholarship though they really wanted it.

Sometimes I wonder if it's all just a game, whether I'm in it for the chase, the thrill, the challenge of trying to get the unattainable (unattainable cos of my non-existent CCA record).

Someone said, when I asked her to write a referral letter for the scholarship, something along the lines of

"You need an ego boost huh?"

Of course she said it in jesting tones, but a part of me now is wondering whether she was right. Doesn't matter if I'm rejecting the scholarship because of the insane working hours, the fact that it's a Buddhist organisation or that it's not financially worth it.

Then again, ultimately life's like Russian Roulette. There's the thrill of coming close to self-destruction, or seeing how far you can go before you die; and there's the whole leaving to the higher powers thing (of course God won't ask you to kill yourself but I'm speaking metaphorically). After a while, acceptance is a conditioned response, but what needs working on is the inward smile.

(This entry is warped and incoherent and should be ignored. It's the therapeutic writing phase - 8 more days to go - and the words have all be drained out of me.)