Q

Maybe

I want to be a baking competition judge. A renowned one. My word will be the certificate of excellence in the realm of pastry and desserts. They want me on every event. I’ll travel everywhere acceding to their wishes tasting all kinds of baked goods. I would never have to pay for meals again. I’ll eat so much magical wonderful stuff I’d gain two hundred pounds. But it doesn’t matter because at the rate their paying me, I can hire a follow-around personal trainer… or even a few rounds of liposuction.

In my perfect world that would be me in five years.

May 27, 2012
Subjective song is subjective.

I’ve always had a problem with Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me. It strikes me as assuming, self-righteous, biased, and even hypocritical. In the first place, theboythesongwaswrittenfor (hereby known as Boy) must have chosen girltaylorswiftbitchesabout (thereafter known as Bitched) for a reason. She was either

A) genuinely a worthy girlfriend – in which case Taylor was wrong in wishing they’d break up for her own selfish wishes, especially since she did it by basically being hot during prom, OR
B) a true bitchtart, which says a lot about how dense Boy is, and how he’s attracted to hots basically, highlighted by his turn in affection after Taylor transforms by removing her glasses during prom.

Either way, Taylor and Boy are highly misguided people.

A brief dissection:

You’re on the phone with your girlfriend, she’s upset
She’s going off about something that you said
‘Cause she doesn’t get your humor like I do

Unless she’s a complete monster devoid of humane reason (in which case see B), there must be a reason Bitched freaked out over Boy’s ‘humor’ which she doesn’t get. Think about it. Maybe Boy’s humor is of the derogatory, sexist, or crude variety. Maybe that’s why Bitched got set off: because he was being a complete asshat – and one who thinks he’s funny at that. And because Taylor is a lovelorn bag of desperation, she’s willing to swallow all of Boy’s douchebaggery and by extension claims she ‘gets’ his douchebag humor.

Essentially, Boy is an ass and Taylor enjoys kissing his ass.

I’m in the room, it’s a typical Tuesday night
I’m listening to the kind of music she doesn’t like
And she’ll never know your story like I do

Oh God NO YOU JUDGMENTAL HYPOCRITE. If we go metatext here, Taylor Swift is in fact saying Bitched would never like Taylor Swift songs (which already makes her significantly more likeable than Taylor Swift). Or perhaps this is another one of those hipster my-songs-are-more-superior-than-yours, if-you-don’t-listen-to-indie-you’re-not-in-my-ranks kind of thing. BITCH PLEASE. Who are you to say that the Pussycat Dolls or Justin Timberlake isn’t any better than whatever is the ‘kind of music she doesn’t like’? ALSO, does music compatibility even MATTER out of 500 Days of Summer and Nick and Norah’s Magical Playlist of Wonderful Indie?

You know what Taylor, NO. No it doesn’t.

And you probably know his ‘story’ because you are a stalker.

But she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts
She’s Cheer Captain and I’m on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find
That what you’re looking for has been here the whole time

This verse offends me deeply. The blatant condemnation of short skirts, for one. What makes you think you’re in any way better, just because you’re a T-Shirt wearer? What makes someone who bothers about how she looks like any less than you who enjoys the comfort of casual shirts. Nothing. Nothing, Taylor. Stop it with your stereotypes. Stop insulting anyone who tries to do something with their lives instead of sitting at home on Tuesday night in T-shirts stalking people (which ironically is often what I find myself doing hurhurhur).

And again comes your generalization of cheerleaders. Are you a sucker for B-grade tween made-for-TV movies, Taylor? Are you? Because your entire prejudice against Cheer Captain, obvious from your disdainful description of Bitched – seems to be shaped from watching one a two many chick flicks, in which case can I suggest you take your own advice and try matching your taste in film to something as apparently glorified as your taste in music. The fact that she is Cheer Captain probably means that SHE IS GOOD AT WHAT SHE DOES and has LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL and also, FRIENDS – which she must have acquired from hard work and being proactive. A concept you obviously do not understand because you prefer to ‘dream’ passively.

And you’re on the bleachers. Well boo-hoo poor you. K. No one cares.

Standing by and waiting at your back door
All this time, how could you not know?
Baby, you belong with me, you belong with me

This borders on obsessive, and you being obsessed with someone =/= he belongs to you. That’s the kind of stuff CRIMINALS believe in. Those who end up sending creepy letters and when jilted stab their object of affection with swiss knives and get sent away. Also the fact that you’d stand by and wait at his back door suggests a total lack of self-respect, in line with our earlier conclusion that Taylor is of little opinion of her own – choosing instead to concur with Boy and his crappy degrading humor.

WHO ARE YOU TO DECIDE WHO BELONGS TO YOU, TAYLOR SWIFT? If you ‘understand’ and ‘get’ Boy so much, then why don’t you respect his decision and stop making things difficult by posing as a friend when in fact you’re consciously seducing him with flash cards across the road and planning a huge makeover to charm him during prom and VERY POSSIBLY sabotaging his relationship with Bitched the ENTIRE TIME. That just makes you a bad, scheming person, Taylor Swift. Not a deserving, understanding friend who eventually became Boy’s lover.

You used means of beauty (which you very recently dissed as artificial and superficial, because, yknw, you wear T-SHIRTS AND SNEAKERS and is therefore more compatible with Boy) to turn Boy against Bitched, which makes you no different from everything you’ve bitched about Bitched. OH, WAIT. NO. It makes you WORSE because you weren’t Boy’s girlfriend to begin with and secondly: HYPOCRITE.

It’s such a bad song it makes me mad.

May 24, 2012
Japanese titles.

So i spent last night finishing Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen. It was quietly brilliant. No gimmicks or moments of exceptional sublimity, but when i was done i knew i read something really, really good.

Then i realized how much i loved everything by Japanese authors – and how much Japanese authors i’ve unconsciously consumed.

Also by that i don’t just mean Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (lolol) (it wasn’t even one of his bests, no not even close) (in fact it’s only famous because he tried his hand at a different style, can i say more Englishy~?. Which i guess made it more read-able to the general public. Hypes..) (try his short stories, in particular The Elephant Vanishes) (After Dark was good too).

It’s, slightly, language. Most are translated and the language takes on a kind of clarity you cannot get from text in English originals. Simplicity, and a stunning flow in narrative. But that’s not all.

It’s mainly the perspectives these Japanese authors take on. Too often i find that books from everywhere else are shaded with pretension. There’s this knowledge that they are writing, creating a form of art, with something they need to tell. I think it’s this awareness of having a sort of power or task or importance that taints their writing with contrition.

This contrition extends to the need to avoid cliché, which usually drives the story into hitting walls – if you are conscious of clichés you cannot transcend it. Many Japanese authors can – somehow. It’s that strange kind of surrealism they have, i guess – a twisted almost perverse way of viewing life they have that gives them the vastness of thought.

They can take life, death, marriage, controversy, love, and deconstruct them to their pure essence, before stringing them together in the weirdest, simplest, but get this – most natural – fashion possible.

It’s also Japanese novels that can make everything seem both depressing and hopeful at the same time – which is really how life is all the damn time.

Even Amélie Nothomb (who is my favorite author of all time gushgushgush), spent her childhood in Japan and could never see anywhere else as home again – i like to think of her as Japanese. I can’t claim to have read Japanese authors intensively, but i guess more extensively than most. Wanted to finish Tale of Genji (because it somehow felt right to start at the very seed of Japanese literature) but i’m not all that disciplined or intellectual – modern texts are easier to sit through.

Of course there’s the usual Natsuo Kirino and Kazuo Ishiguro that everyone reads (Kirino is spectacular with characters) (Ishiguro is good but that distinct Japanese touch i love isn’t very apparent in his works – he might as well be a good Ang Moh writer who writes with a Japanese slant, same goes with Murakami).

Yukio Mishima. He is the only one who can make me sit through historical texts (eughbarf) (i know, coming from a History student.. i don’t deserve that A, really). Kenzaburo Oe, whose short stories i really, really loved. Mitsuyo Kakuta, i’ve only read ONE of her most famous work actually her translated texts are limited but shdamn was she good. Some years ago (when i was taking third lang, which holy damn is SEVEN years ago) i tried Yasunari Kawabata’s short stories and a novel about the mountain, which i remember was good but didn’t really spend time with. So recently he’s been popping up more often so imma check him out. Well ok this is all i can remember now.. which probably means i haven’t really been reading Japanese texts as much as i should given how much i enjoy them.

THAT’S IT. Reading list expands.

May 22, 2012
Between work.

I like work.

Not as much as I like freedom, but freedom takes on a whole new dimension now that I’m employed. Granted, I chose a job that was flexible and the most similar to my usual (holiday) routine (walking about, thinking, making strange observations about people), but the days I’m free are wonderful. My productivity level for everything has gone up by at least thrice as much. It’s contrary, I know. But.

Since work started I’ve been borrowing things off public libraries so fast my card can’t take anymore and I’m considering upgrading to Premium. And I have a bunch of books I bought that’s laying there unread because I have to clear off borrowed ones (which will never happen at the constant rate I’m getting and returning them). The only regret is that I can’t finish them in one sitting, which is how I like my reading done. Also I keep intentionally/unintentionally? borrowing sapphic novels I DON’T KNOW WHY but they are really good.

Work requires lots of walking (Celine’s 10km walk around Waterfront when she did roaming shifts) so I’ve abandoned my weekly jogs and will just stick to swimming, which means -> MORE TIME FOR OTHER NONSENSE. Other nonsense being food and criminal minds and art and music and d&d and shopping.

This is the result of having a group of friends who’re as enthusiastic about most every retarded idea as you are.

So after the very, very successful Free Comic Book Day spree (where we wandered to Paradigm Infinitum at Midpoint Orchard, of all outlets – the most obscure tiny shop literally in the middle of everything else, like a hidden away Diagon Alley). It was great because unlike other stores, Pi (yes, 3.142.. obnoxious geekery going on here) actually had a pile (did I say pile? because I mean a MOUNTAIN) of comics and they very subversively ignored the 10 per rule and decided to let us take back as many as we wanted. AS MANY AS WE WANTED (or at least as many as we could carry).

The five of us stood around the table for more than an hour with these few hardcore nerds (they were like the Asian version of Big Bang Theory, I’m serious) playing Comic Book Jenga. All of us lugged home at least 70 comics. I have only read 5 out of them all… ALTHOUGH. Although this is because I’m midway through this bigass Star Trek TOS collection. Which can never be as good as the TV series just saying.

To extend the geekdom, we’ve decided to have Game Night, and the game we’ve chosen is… Dungeons & Dragons! With Celine as DM. I vaguely remember having played this in Primary School, Celine DM-ing. That was back in the days we spent after school hours play-acting EVERY. SINGLE. SCENE. In Harry Potter. VERBATIM. In the school yard in full view of everyone. Wow. I can’t tell if I was brave or just an extreme loser.

Beni, Xin and I, in a bid to be more productive members of the society, raped an arts supply store one day and started this thing where we’d share (and by share we just mean Whatsapp) each other our art pieces and meet up and do art so we don’t ferment and grow into moldy adults. It is KIND OF working out… We’ve yet to actually meet but we’re doing art. And by god are my friends talented. I’m pre-employing them to decorate my room walls in the future. My output is pretty good on free days, one sketch per day SAY WHUUUT. Which. Is something after half a year of nothing.

We’ve also been kind-of-ish doing art at Gloria’s theater workplace. It’s mostly paper mache and sculpting cloaks and glue-gunning and sewing (YES, I CAN SEW. Pretty well at that) life-sized models, but it’s really, really therapeutic. And they have great waffles there.

Rei, Cel and I are also (SOON) (SOMEDAY) (PROMISED) gonna start on our String Trio where we have jamming sessions (proper ones not the half-drugged random choir-uke ensemble in porches) where we will be brilliant and serious business with our harmonizing and shit.

I’m actually pretty proud of us and our productive projects.

And the shopping. Which I justify with the fact that I now have WAGES. WAGES!!! FREE MONEY!!! In a way. So after work I’d go out and spend a bunch on clothes and food and realize I’ve spent more than a day’s worth of salary. And feel sheepish and sign up for more working days and the cycle repeats. I am a joke. Although end-July would be The Great Bangkok Spree with Beni and Cleo so I shall consciously put aside cash for until then.

May 20, 2012
Dyeap.

1.

i’m using a paper clip on my fringe because hair clips cannot be found. it actually works. i am therefore paper.

wow that did not even make sense.. i’m sleepy.

2.

people ask me: ‘so have you decided what you want to do?’

actually i have. it involves a pink caravan. it also involves lots of exciting ice-cream/omelette i’m gonna sell all over Singapore. on said caravan. i’ll sleep whenever i feel like it, and finish all the unsold food at night.

and when people laugh and go, ‘..but seriously, what will you be doing?’ i’ll laugh along and pretend i didn’t actually mean the above. lol..

3.

the dream where i saw unicorns was too vivid to be only part of my consciousness. i’m convinced the Universe is trying to tell me something important. also i was truly excited about them existing, i can’t believe it was just a dream I CANNOT ACCEPT THAT.

4.

mamihalapitahsdhajd

5.

will it kill people to be more polite? before working, i’ve always taken courtesy for granted – that everyone says thank you and excuse me and you’re welcome and sorry where it’s due. but no.

i’m not trying to be racist – i’m not, but it’s too undeniable an observation: the ones i’ve met with the most terrible manners are the stock Indian father types. on one hand, there was that incredible Indian man who came up to say Good Morning, i thought he needed help but no.. he genuinely just wanted to wish me a good morning (people! hope!) and then there are the Indian fathers.

i’ve had a few come up to me raging unnecessarily and basically being very antagonistic and unappreciative about everything, but i’m fine with that. i can handle persons with anger issues okay, i’ve had much practice. i’m talking the RUDE ones. after noticing the racial pattern last week i decided to tabulate the number of people who didn’t bother to thank me for my help today.

out of the six who didn’t, six were Indians. maybe i should be more specific (because at the same time many other Indians thanked me). i’m talking A CERTAIN INDIAN FATHER TYPE: the short, stocky kind usually with a mustache and a family of scared looking females in tow, and he’d look like someone had just rubbed chili powder up his asshole – which i imagine to be extremely uncomfortable and rage-worthy and makes you need to rush everywhere (mainly the toilet).

FIVE of them brisked past me or came up to the counter while spitting out one curt word: “Tickets?” i’m not even kidding, they all said the same thing in the exact tone that after awhile i started suspecting they were just the same person coming back again and again to troll me or something. anyway. i’m too used to being polite on the job so i just gave the directions as per normal.

this is where i start getting annoying – they’d just WALK and not even look at me as i’m trying to explain it to them. yes they expect me to CHASE after them while giving him his damn answer because it would be too much of a hassle to pause for me, i mean who has time to stop and treat someone who’s helping you like a human being? not an Indian father, no. and when i’m done he’d just walk on without ANY indication of thanks. or even glance back at me. i don’t even..

i don’t need you to effusively thank me like i bestowed you with immortal life (like the Japanese tourists do) or be insanely cautious and ask permission to enter the public toilet (yes, people do that surprisingly often) – but dammit JUST A NOD? JUST LOOK AT ME? god i’m probably five times smarter and better smelling and looking than him it just kills me to have someone treat me like this. it also kills me that someone IS. EVEN. LIKE THIS.

also this happened FIVE. FULL. TIMES. just today. they’d come up saying one phrase really hurriedly (and it’s not that they can’t speak English) and just turn and leave once i’m done answering (or mid-way, even). holy crap i can’t wait to be important and powerful so i can whop some rude ass. also they look MAJORLY cheezed off all the time. dude. you’re on a vacation not reliving the Mughal war. you need to wash that chili powder off your asshole and stop being such a huge one yourself.

Celine reckons it might be their culture.. but then again many Indians/fathers are very friendly and polite. it’s this certain TYPE i’m talking about and i realized yes it’s culture – but not the culture to be rude but rather of patriarchy. maybe some of the more traditional Indian households, where both of the marital unit agree on the entire patriarchalmale/subservientwoman thing, breeds an entire new class of silent Indian wives who’ll trail alongside their warring patriarchs. angry faces in the morning demanding help annoys me.

i’m quite proud of the fact that i haven’t assaulted any Indian patriarchs or incited a racial riot yet. all i did was been particularly stern with one who hung around for like fifteen minutes asking me round-a-bout ridiculous questions and being very angst about it. so i stared him down and made him realize he can’t push me around like (i bet) he does his (really quiet) wife and daughter (who just kept rolling her eyes behind his back it was hilarious).

MANNERS, PEOPLE. MANNERS.

May 19, 2012
Stupid Decision-making Weekly, Issue #1

1.

Eating ice-cream thrice after developing a cough.

Soya ice-cream (i can’t go a week without those things anymore) (on the other hand, HEALTHIER CHOICE LOGO).
Nutella-banana-vanilla split (which is healthy because it consists of Nutella which makes you jump really high like that boy in the advertisement and bananas are fruits).
And green tea Hokkaido ice-cream today which was brilliantly generous.

Basically i now have screwed up lungs and it itches all the time and elusive phlegm and everything.

2.

Forgetting i now have a chastity belt made of rubber bands installed in my mouth (no seriously), and that it hurts like a bitch when i chew. So i persistently purchase crunchy food and the paaaain, the pain! Which then again gives me incentive to pursue soft food like ice-cream.

Yeah when i said chastity belt i wasn’t kidding. It’s restrictive and gross and troublesome and probably the best form of birth control the world has ever seen.

3.

I hate how my posts are so food oriented. I have no life.

4.

Working only two days last week – while fun/productive, time at home is starting to get pretty stale.

5.

I STILL CAN’T DECIDE WHICH COURSE TO TAKE. It’s scarily balanced, my inclinations towards everything. So i’m still sitting on it. Bad, bad decision-making, bad.

6.

Work+swimming+weather gave me a horrid tan. And i’m really lax with my sunblock with places i can’t reach so now i’m the shade of Donald Trump. My dentist squinted at me and went ‘Why are you yellow?’ in a concerned and shocked way.

Also, THE HUMIDITY. The hell you playing at Singapore? You know that whole equator shebang that was cute awhile ago? Well yeah i have news for you it’s no longer an endearing quirk you can put in your travel brochures anymore. It’s toasting foreigners alive and one day we will all spontaneously combust.

7.

D&D D&D D&D.

Currently in the preparation mode, intensely downloading manuals and drawing grids and doing illustrations and sourcing for dice.

8.

PPFSCXCDDHKKDRRQDDGHH i am confused.

9.

Still not registering the fact that in three months, some of my closest friends won’t be available within twenty minutes.

May 15, 2012
Regrets.

Awhile ago Stella asked me this:

“what are your top 10
a) regrets
haha okay just that actually”

It’s interesting because i don’t have many. Not because i make all the right decisions, but because i consciously avoid thinking about what could have been done right. Now is probably the time to think about it, though.

1.

This one comes easily. I know i’m quite a callous friend, in that i don’t see the importance of constant contact.. and i have a cruel need to withdraw at times. I hate it about myself too, but most of all i expect my friends to understand – which means i don’t feel as guilty as i should be.

But there’s one close friend i’ve had through primary and part of secondary school. I don’t know why i did it, but consciously distanced myself from her until we became just acquaintances. She didn’t do anything, i still liked her a lot. And even if you ask me now i don’t know why i did it, it just happened. If i had to point out myself at my most repulsive behavior it was then. It was borne from illogical and pointless cruelty, and i’m not proud that i had that in me. The guilt settled in pretty soon. And it never left, now when i think about her it’s just guilt and shame and guilt and, seriously. I regret it so much and i never got to apologize because no one talks about it.

While i regret it, i suppose it made me want to prevent anything like that from happening anymore. I still have issues with my bouts of needing space and time alone, but i try not to deliberately dilute any friendship because losing a friend is the dumbest thing to happen.

2.

Alright this may partly be for aesthetic purposes, but it’s not shallow k.. I wish I had taken better care of my eyes.

When i was 8, the teacher sent in my parent because i squinted all the time and seemed to have trouble reading off the blackboard. So we visited the optician and the startled optician was shocked i had waited that long to see him – i was at a frightening -3.60 degrees (for a primary two), which means i was semi-blind all the time but never noticed. Not sure how i lived either. And it seemed like i never learn because after getting my first glasses, the next time i visited i had shot up to -6.50 which means i walked around blind for awhile, again. Now i’m about 7.00/8.00. I also have terrible floaters.

The thing is, i was reading like a madman before schools even found it necessary to feed us with all the myopic eye-care education. And i read everywhere. In the car, in the bathroom, in the dark, under the sun, on my bed, on the couch, walking around, at the dinner table. Literally everywhere. And all the time. For the entire stretch in primary school i may have read more words than i have looked at the world.

When i got older and started with contacts (while performing at the Arts Festival) it struck me how obtrusive and troublesome eyeglasses were, especially when you do theater or sports. I wanted the feeling of waking up with perfect eyesight, and not having to grope around for glasses in the dark (although it made me feel like Harry Potter). My glasses are always either too loose (case in point right now), crooked (because i’m violent with them), or frustratingly grimy/scratched. That’s why i’m permanently on contacts. Which is fine until it dries up on me or hurts towards the end of the month.

Basically, it’s a huge hassle i could have avoided if i’d just read in proper settings. Now i’d have to do lasik. And live with floaters.

3.

Been nicer to my sister. If i were the one more adept at picking up social nuances or reading people, my sister is the complete opposite – she can’t pick up social clues for nuts because she is “not manipulative like you” /quote.

She’s a mawkish, sentimental, gullible, naive, idealistic and, /quoteagain “sensitive” person. This also means she’s incredibly nice to her friends. Too nice. When she was a toddler she was pretty fierce, one who did outrageous things like slutdance to milkshake and scream at people. Now her friends can swing her around and she’d swallow it until it gets too bad. Sometimes i think the years of having to live with me killed that part of her.

I think my dis-compassion towards her comes from being an only child for too long, almost six years – by that time i’d somewhat grasped who i was as a person. And there was the me who already knew the best ways to pander to my parents and the Grandma, it also doesn’t help that I’m a lot smarter. That meant i almost always got my way.. and that she didn’t. When my sister went through that phase as an annoying preteen – i was in my cruel psyche obsessed phase; i unleashed upon her some mind-screwing experiments and could never consistently be the older sister that she could ‘go to’ (a barf-y concept). As far as i was concerned i was still the only child.

So she grew up to feel slightly inferior, though i never intended it to be that way. She also became less annoying, and a lot nicer and made less of a racket all the time. My mom pointed out once that although i was obviously more intelligent, my sister’s lack of actually made her a much kinder person. It was quite a sad thing to be told, but i totally agree. I stopped bullying her after awhile, but never had the patience to be one of those let’s-talk-about-your-feelings-and-i-will-be-your-guardian type.

My sister is considerably kinder to friends and she loves younger children and younger children love her. She’s also a complete geisha – she’s had five years on the violin, went for flower arrangement classes, has her own tea set where she holds tea ceremonies occasionally, she dances to Korean music and she bakes. Also she is stick thin despite eating like a maniac. I don’t know how she turned out culturally superior to me, but she did. So good on her. I’m glad she didn’t turn out to be a complete whacko under my reign.

But i’m responsible for making her susceptible to external bullying and i don’t think she’s kick up her confidence level any time soon.

–

These are the only few significant regrets i can think of, actually. Told you i don’t have much.

May 13, 2012
Afthartos

At work, there was a fledgling that fell from it’s roost, lying beside another dead one. It was kept in the office for the day, in a makeshift nest of tissue box, shredded paper and napkins. We couldn’t leave it there for the night because the office was deemed too cold, so I decided to take it home.

Most said it won’t be able to survive, and Rizal said not to get attached to it. Rei-En and I agreed on one thing: that we wouldn’t get attached (it was an ugly deformed naked little thing), but we sure as hell don’t want it to die on us. The fear of it dying was there, but I had an inexplicable hope that it would live if I cared for it properly.

So it was all planned out. In the staff bus, Shuzhen warmed it with her phone light the entire way. On the way home I broke off some twigs and leaves and rested it on them, and then my Grandma and I cut up some old stuff for it’s blankets.

Then I tried to feed it some sugar water soaked white bread with a straw. It flailed around a lot and clicked it beak making small, sad sounds, but wouldn’t eat (or couldn’t? or didn’t know how?) I’m really not sure, but maybe I should have tried putting the food directly into the beak…

To keep it warm I had a table lamp wrapped up in a thin cloth over it, whenever I moved it away from the light it would twitch and thrash around. It was quite terrifying. The rest of the thin cloth I punctured with holes and put over the box in case random insects or ghettos attacked it at night.

That was everything I could think of doing. It was still moving slightly.. pulsing? As if it’s heartbeat was so hard it just moved along with it. Occasionally it would make that tiny whining noise. I named it Afthartos, ancient Greek for athanatos – immortality.

It was not that I loved the bird, or felt like it was my pet. I mean even though I’ve had a score of weird pets before (Zachariah the bluebottle, Anthony the ant, my quails and the rock) (and cried when each of them had to be released/died), I didn’t feel that way towards Afthartos. I didn’t like it.. I just didn’t want it to die.

Negative space: I didn’t care about whether it lived, but I didn’t want it to die.

In a way it was quite selfish. It was just terrifying to think of waking up, lifting it’s blankets and finding it dead. I don’t know what I was expecting or thinking, but it made sense that if I kept watching it, it couldn’t die. So I just sat around prodding food at its beak content with it’s slight movements and eerie infant sounds.

But I suck, so at last I fell asleep, with it beside my bed.

When I woke up a few hours later (I dreamt about psychedelic cats and doors and wailing infants), I felt dread. At that point I thought there was still a good chance it was alive (I THOUGHT I heard the sad tiny sounds), but it was the act of checking that was frankly terrifying. And I’m not very good with confrontation so I laid in bed for half an hour hoping I can fall asleep so I’d have a couple of hours of reprieve.

Then I realized it may die within that couple of hours (and also I’ve left it alone long enough) so I got up and lifted the covers. It wasn’t moving but it wasn’t dead. I’m not sure how to put it. I’ve only imagined two scenarios:

1) I woke up and it’s alive! I’m happy. Go down to the fishing store and get some mashed worms, feed it. It gets stronger. In the late afternoon go down to the park and find a safe place for it to live. 2) It’s surrounded by ants and flies, it’s carcass reeking of death and ferment. I’m traumatized.

But what happened was stranger. It wasn’t moving, but I couldn’t decide if it was dead, or just asleep. I disturbed it slightly to get a reaction, and sometimes I thought I saw movement but then again it was immobile. I didn’t want to assume it was dead, because it might just be breathing too slightly to be noticeable. But if it were dead, then what do I do with it?

So I sat there. Like a fool. And renamed it Lazarus. Then changed my mind because it was a literary prosaic-ism. Then I thought, dead birds themselves are a a literary cliche. Then I felt bad for making a damn fledgling’s death into some macabre literary analysis of sorts like one of those annoying pathos milking literates. Then I thought, maybe it’s not even dead. Because it was morning and my eyes aren’t adjusted to movements.

Now it’s still in it’s nest. Under a lamp. Still hasn’t moved. It is probably dead. I heard the fledgling sounds a few times but it’s probably a wild bird outside or my computer. So… yeah.

Lol I didn’t really expect it to die, so I’m not very prepared for burial. It will probably be in a park with a temporary headstone, in a few hours just in case it decides to move again. I don’t know.

It was a truly ugly bird. Sometimes I can’t even believe it’s a bird. It looks like an alien. It’s repulsive, with it’s raw pink nakedness and crooked claws and bits of unidentified organs. But if you stare at it hard enough at it’s grotesque beak and wrinkled patchy head and although there are a million of these mynahs everywhere – for just awhile it seems like quite a beautiful little thing.

May 7, 2012
Xenarthra

Three reasons why I’m not fit for survival.

a) I’m too drawn to ugly things.

The majority seeks symmetry. Symmetry connotes the lack of deformity, which indicates health, and the most primitive part of us calls for a healthy mate to birth healthy babies and ensure the survival of your genes. Intuitively we see symmetry as beauty, meaning the plainer you are (and by plain I mean unblemished), the more attractive you are to others.

So obviously I’ve found pretty things/people pretty, but it’s a kind of appeal I can explain away – it’s nice and pleasing. But those invoke only a beach-y, wavelike pleasure that easily fades when high tides’ over.

What I cannot get over, and what draws me in like a freaking tsunami that had laid dormant for fifty years waiting for a victim, is hideousness.

I know it’s strange, but ugly things are just so. damn. attractive.

And by ugly I don’t mean those Hello Kitty glasses that’s increasing in frequency and which I dislike with the passion of a starving activist. Neither do I mean the unaesthetic, the kind of thing that’s dour and unhygienic and gross. I mean people who just look strange. Like crooked teeth. Like wild hair. Like acne. Like a broken nose. Like uneven ears. Like eyes that are too close to each other or slightly out of focus. Like people who look too uncannily like an animal (I love people who look like animals).

I can’t stop staring at people like that. Yesterday at work a man came to ask some questions (I can’t remember what), he was Indian (neither can i remember what he looked like in general). I just remember sinking in love with him as he was talking because he had these amazing canine teeth which were grotesque. But amazing. It made him look beautiful I don’t even know how. And a week before there was a primary school kid with her mom. She looked pretty normal otherwise, except for her eyes. They were so extra-terrestrial. The shape was all weird and they were too wide set. And she had acne that were a perfect constellation around her ugly nose. One part of me was going, Omg Weiqing stop being a freak stop staring she’s noticing you staring her mom will think you’re deranged stop it but I could. not. stop.

Yet on the commercial level we revere deformities. On models, for instance – if you have an abnormally strong brow or gap-teeth or an obvious mole, it can be taken as an extra appeal. So why are we only alright with deformities and asymmetrical beauty at a distance? In real life we are attracted to safe-looking people, otherwise we do things to make us safe-looking people, with hair products and pimple cream and breast enhancement and braces.

My theory is that true beauty is idiosyncrasy. Is hideousness and grotesque features you’ve never seen before and the general chaos of the face. Producers of Healthy Babies are just conveniently labelled beautiful because we are attracted to them to, well, produce healthy babies.

Maybe we’re just repelled by hideousness because it’s a kind of beauty so intense that it hurts to look at it too much. But it’s a sick kind of pain that I can’t get enough of. Because I’m disgusting that way.

This also means my future partner will be an absolute troll to the rest of the world. And if our basal instincts are true, we’ll produce a pool of offspring as susceptible to extinction as I am, dying out faster and saving the world from my genetic freakishness.

b) Competition petrifies me.

Survival is basically how well you respond to competition. Surviving is one huge mother race itself. If so, I suck at surviving.

I’m not sure if it’s inborn, or a nurture thing, but I’ve never performed any better under the thought of competition. In fact all it does is make me want to give up. Just the thought of it.

I don’t remember my parents ever comparing me with someone else, in fact when I try to point out my strengths in relation to another in anticipation of a compliment (in my more asshole-y days), they’re seldom impressed. Neither have I any competition with my closer friends. Not even the healthy kind. I know some people who, in order to push themselves, set their friend’s achievements as yardsticks or try to match themselves to their friends. Maybe because we have diverse interests, but I seldom feel the need to race against any of them, much less wish I ‘did better’ than. If anything, we (or at least what I glean from our WhatsApp group chats) wish to death the others would do well, because in the (highly) likely scenario that one of us become homeless unemployed-s, we have someone’s mansion to crash (forever).

Anyway. The healthiest and strongest of the pride are the ones who, with the fuel of competition, generate a shitload of go-getting energy to get somewhere. Mine works in reversal. I’m not just slow to rise in a competition, I practically quail and falter in utter panic until I die. Okay, it’s not all that dramatic, but the very notion of having to compete against anyone by myself makes me feel uneasy and reluctant. I have no idea how people with ‘competitive spirits’ do it. It’s not a spirit. It’s the soul of Satan’s spawn taking over you. And it scares the shit out of me.

K, let’s say there’s a barren island and there exists only one edible fruit at the top of a tree. If I were alone, I’d climb the shit up there in five seconds and have the damn fruit. If there were five other starving people eyeing the fruit, I’d probably attempt to climb it, but warily and passively and wouldn’t really grab if I had to. If there were ten other hungry idiots besides myself I’ll just walk off and eat some grass instead.

And that is how I’d die out – malnutrition-ed. As with my genetically passive children.

c) My shit sense of direction.

My shit sense of direction in clever titles and anecdotes.

ALTHOUGH I have been actively trying to improve this as of late. Aided much by necessity (MY JOB) and also Google Maps and patience. I still get lost about 99% of the time, but the time I take to re-orientate and finally find my way is… somewhat shorter. I think. In an apocalypse I’m still the most likely to run off the edge of a cliff or end up in a colony of L4Ds while trying to locate Twinkies though. Especially since Google Maps would then be defunct.

Come to think of it, my job’s been refining my survival skills. Microscopically, but still. (For one, my Mandarin’s better than it has ever been since circa 2006 [pre-06 I wrote freaking Chinese poems. Tang style.], I can now stand at a spot for half an hour straight without peeing in my pants with hyperactive rage, I can memorize lunch menus verbatim [during a shift where I stared at the guest menu for three hours bored and hungry]). So in the event of an apocalypse, post-working Weiqing can:

a) navigate her way around marginally well. marginally.

b) i can communicate and request for help from over one billion more people than before. politely (an occupational hazard).

c) recite a lunch menu so extraordinarily tempting, the hostile forces will weep and exalt and retreat.

…Obviously, I am severely under-equipped for survival. I have nothing except for my biting wit and slightly bonkers courage borne mostly out of Tourette’s and lack of common sense.

That is all.

April 27, 2012
Oneiric.

Yesterday’s dreams were exceptionally vivid. They took place in two separate sleeps (and yes I’ve been polyphasic of late for some reason).

Dream #1:

An acquaintance doused a wall with gasoline and set it on fire. It was for necessary self-preservation purposes and we all agreed on it. When he started it, I knew clearly that it’s fatal for the residents. They’d be trapped and perish unless I warned them about it right then. And I had lots of time because it was a curiously slow fire. But I didn’t.

I knew they would die. But I just left it as that, kept it to myself. The only reason I remember having was sloth. Pure laziness. It was too much of a hassle to even mention the danger or do anything about it, so I let it be. Went ahead with other things to be done (I can’t recall what they were) and at the end of the dream, I turned back and there was the most intense fire I’ve seen. It was literally white-hot, almost like it was a piece of the sun right on that damned wall. And everyone living there died.

Right there and then this colossal surge of guilt just ate me up. There wasn’t even much rationalization – just pure guilt for way too long. With that sick feeling that I’ll never be able to forgive myself, and probably no one else can or will.

Dream #2:

I was having one of those discussions with Celine about potential. How little of our actual physical and intellectual capabilities we’re employing. We gave a few smart examples, and Celine started narrating this one. This entire sequence was played out in my dreams as she did.

A cat was abused by a bunch of people. They buried it alive, in a coffin. And relentlessly electrocuted, whipped, drowned, and basically tortured it. I’m not sure how it worked because it was in a coffin – but a dream la. It was pretty scary and Wiccan, had a very gothic Poe feeling to it. And they taunted the cat in their drunken stupor, asking it to spell ‘cheese’ and recite the two times table, whereupon they might stop their abuse. Anyway, the cat eventually died. They dug up the coffin and opened it.

At the back of the lid (facing the cat) were markings; the word cheese and the entire two times table scratched out. By the cat. The cat, when faced by extremities and possible death, did what was felinely impossible.

It was freaky.

April 22, 2012