Friday, 14 May 2010.

This is another Microsoft Word document.

That means that this is going to be another ten-page-long spam of whatever I want to write about.

Be warned.

At the moment, though, I can’t really think of anything to write about. Script-checking went okay, I guess, although oddly enough I only have three of my papers back out of the six I actually took. As for English, Physics and Japanese, I…don’t know how I did.

I’m not altogether sure I want to know either.

Well, my class’s class outing changed its proposed location several times before deciding it didn’t want to exist anymore, upon which the aesthetics committee went off on an aesthetics committee outing and ate burgers.

They were very nice burgers.

We took twice as long waiting for the bus as we should have, because the first time our chosen bus turned up, we noticed just in time for it to drive off, leaving us stranded waving hopelessly at the bus stop. It was rather depressing, all things considered.

I’ve heard that 308 is organizing itself a class chalet, which seems very…sudden. But if they want to, I’m sure it can only turn out well. I sort of wish 309 would have a class chalet, at least at some point, because there’s nothing we need more than class bonding- *coughcough*- and I mean, who doesn’t like chalets?

If you don’t, please don’t inform me. I might become depressed. Especially if you’re from 309.

I mean, it’s a holiday, right? I for one spent a lot of time just looking forwards to it. And now it’s here- almost, there’s already nothing to do in the afternoon, and I’m bored bored bored bored bored.

The obvious solution is to schedule a lot of stuff. Class outings, ex-class outing, Sevens’ outings, clique outings, arbitrary outings, whatever. It might work, but then again my class doesn’t seem that interested, I think. Maybe if we can do cycling this coming Friday.

In Spanish the term for ‘headache’ is ‘dolor de cabeza’, which is literally ‘sorrow of the head’.

Hi, my name is Edith, and I have sorrow of the head.

You are giving me sorrow of the head.

This sheet of homework is a sorrow of the head.

I notice I haven’t been writing so much poetry anymore, which is probably a good thing, because it was all so emo I’m glad to be rid of it.

But then again, one doesn’t really stop emoing, one just finds a different way to emo.

Which is technically even worse, because then you won’t notice for a while, not until you’re trapped back in the quagmire of emo-ness where you started and you can’t find your way out anymore.

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice.

I don’t want to come across as one of those pretentious people who read classics partially for the purpose of being able to declaim their classic-reading-ness to the general public and garner admiration, so I should probably explain that I saw a storyboard of a remake of Pride and Prejudice starring one of my favourite pairings.

….now that just makes me seem shallow. No matter what, one can’t win.

Did you know that in Singapore, male civil servants can extend employee benefits to the rest of their family, while female civil servants can’t?

That piece of trivia is brought to you courtesy of my random online searching caused by Google Chrome’s deciding to suggest I search for ‘feminism in Singapore’, which was the result of a long and complicated story involving the manga Soul Eater.

Also, it’s very dark in my room. One of the lightbulbs is out, and it’s surprising how much difference it makes, especially how it’s past six and getting dim-ish out.

I feel like doing another of those music quizzes.

Maybe I’ll just ask my playlist questions. Like a magic 8-ball. I had one of those once, but it broke.

Or maybe I’ll just get a lot of song names and string them together in a pseudo-making-sense way.

Emergency! Love is all around on top of the world. Believe the only one halo. Just dance, run, lose control. Believe october. Say a little prayer boys and girls, I’ll ask him ignorance. Whataya want from me on my own? Say you give love a bad name. Iris floorplan. Looking up, it will be me living on a prayer. Hop a plane back in your head. Untogether? That’s not my name…common reaction. Cherry bomb adore clumsy sky. Boulevard of broken dreams not a love song. She wolf gives you hell, 21 guns explode. Inevitable sakura call me when you’re sober. Away from here, simple man dance with me. I see red where the lines overlap, the photographer feeling sorry. Barracuda victim of circumstance. Everybody needs someone in the background. Say, I’ll ask him misery business. Road to home so happy I could die; American idiot celibate now. Careful! I wanna know your enemy.

….that’s not even pseudo-making-sense, that’s pure gibberish. But it was fun. Like those alphabet-codes where you go Foxtrot Charlie Beta Tango, although I don’t think FCBT stands for anything I can think of.

Anyway, I repeated some of them, but it’s entirely the fault of my iTunes shuffle so I shall blame that.

I wonder which was more acceptable for script-checking—the green coloured pencil or the green pen refill. *shrugs*

It’s not like it makes any difference at this point.

I mean, I’m sitting here in my room spamming Microsoft Word with boredom like paint splatters or something, and whatever happened during script-checking can’t really be that relevant, right?

I hate how all these little things, like whether you guess 1 or 4 for the Chinese MCQ, or how many keywords you put down for Chem when you understand the whole thing anyway, keep feeding into the Great Grades System, which in turn takes it upon itself to determine the path for your future.

As long as I’m heading off on a tangent towards full-on ranting, well…

I’ve also noticed, and felt like commenting on, how I’ve seen an implicit or occasionally even explicit request from authority figures to self-censor in regards to writing anything negative about the school or other people, particularly online.

It’s not as though I come up with any scathing criticisms here, as far as I can recall, but still, what happened to the ability to self-express without the threat of punishment from authority if you go a bit too far? I can see how personal attacks would be past the realm of free speech, but attacks on an institution? Do I still get to complain about the school? What if my complaints have valid reasons behind them?

The thing about a lack of free speech is that it implies a lack of transparency; it also veers into the realm of treating people as a commodity instead of human beings. Even differences in thought have to be minimized to keep the machine running smoothly.

I’m not writing a treatise here, and my arguments aren’t well-structured or debate-ready, but still, you can just browse the Internet a little, and there’s censorship whichever way you turn.

I mean, monitoring everything you write to keep careful track of what impression it projects? To quote xkcd, fuck that shit.

(Am I allowed to swear on my blog? Does it violate some sort of code? What about the school rules?)

….you could say I’m just annoyed. Good manners dictate that I don’t mention peoples’ names when I’m in the process of raking them through the mud; it’s when the issue becomes politicized that one gets ticked off.

But don’t take my arguments too seriously, because I’ve found after several English essays that for many things how one sees an issue, and which side one takes, depend entirely on what light in which one sees the issue at that point in time, which leaves me somewhat lost on how I actually stand on, say, childcare.

‘Only a mother can take care of her child appropriately!’

‘Mothers no longer have to conform to traditional gender roles; try daycare!’

‘Fathers and mothers should split parenting equally!’

Although I’m still rather amazed I could write a letter disparaging working parents and still get a good grade from Ms Lau. I wonder if I got marks taken off for my essay disparaging all parents. (Although to be fair that’s not how I meant the letter; it just turned out to be a possible interpretation once I re-read it.)

And an apology to the rest of the aesthetics committee for being mildly obnoxious.

Am I still being mildly obnoxious? Ranting at length on my views? To be fair, this is five pages in, and anyone still reading hopefully isn’t intending to quit now.

o.o

I like those emoticons. They’re very small and cute, like I-have-been-overwhelmed-by-your-surprisingness-and-am-reduced-to-shrinking-into-two-wide-eyes-and-a-tiny-nose.

Or ___m_________m____, which is a guy hanging from his table by his hands. Or alternatively, a woman hanging from her table by her hands. Hands, at least ‘m’-shaped hands, are rather gender-ambiguous.

(I’ve never met anyone with m-shaped hands, though, so I’m not sure what the statistics on them are. How depressing. )

I’m sort of bored, and sort of…quixotic? I feel like tilting at windmills.

We don’t have windmills in Bukit Timah though.

Not just that; I feel like I should write a novel, call Ri-chan, abseil out my third-storey window. (What if the sheet breaks?)

Blast music, have a friend over, look over a precipice and let myself fall into insanity-can you see the sea all the way down there- somersault into oblivion, go out in a burst of fireworks.

Remember when Ri-chan forgot her birthday?

The link is tenuous, but maybe—I could shut my eyes and remember back when someone held my hand.

because we’re all just like primary-schoolers if you look too closely

all our petty egos and obsessions and infatuations

and the more we daydream, the more we delude ourselves.

No?

And the more I delude myself, the more I think I care.

I would like to trust and be trusted, to go out in fireworks

I wanna explode, watch me

But you just shrink and keep shrinking, next to a world that just. doesn’t. care.

It just doesn’t work out, and I don’t even know how to try, because I smile and talk about whatever I can think of, but I just feel awkward, and dare I say it, fake?

….I’m not making sense.

There is the ‘not making sense’ of making your point in a scrambled hash of whatever words come to hand, and there is the ‘not making sense’ where you lost your point somewhere, and you’re scrabbling on your knees in rubble just to get it back again.

I lost my point somewhere, but I don’t want to find it, because on some level I know it’s like holding a fire in your hands, so beautiful and so painful and if you get too close that’s the end of you

Hi.

Congratulations.

Hi.

Hi…?

Or not—just give up, the world hates you, didn’t you know?

I wonder if any of that counts as reverting to emo poetry; I wonder if I’d rather be angry than sad—there’s so much to be angry about, did you know marital rape’s not a crime in Singapore, there’s a limit on the number of women going into medical school, there’s so much still to fight for—or happy, hihihi! Today I went on an outing!!~~~ And it was awesomeeee!!! =D

But I think maybe when I’m saddest is when I’m most sincere.

I just heard today Ms Koh is leaving next semester. Along with the other Lit teacher. We aren’t learning Shakespeare, we just lost both our, uh, two teachers—dare I say the Lit department’s a joke? Perhaps I have an obligation to avoid self-censorship, if I’m going to practice what I spent several paragraphs preaching a few pages back. But that in turn brings up a series of questions, and you know, this doesn’t have to be a discursive essay, because you write so much, and still you could argue against it.

Losing my religion

Because going to church is awkward, and common sense kills, and you can’t have blind faith if you don’t have blind faith, and you know, what the hell is the point of blind faith anyway?

Smiling and telling myself, everything is okay, even if it doesn’t make sense.

I suppose you could call me an on-and-off Christian.

Statistics based on the visitors to my blog suggest that the majority of the people who read this will have widely differing views from me on this.

This is eight pages.

Eight and a lot. A paragraph and so and it’ll be nine. I expect I’m aiming for ten pages again. (seven eight nine, because he wanted six for himself, but eight killed herself out of shame and six ran off with zero, upon which two, three and five took the opportunity to overpower one and four, bestowing upon them in the process the title of the ‘subprime numbers’, whereupon two staged a coup and assassinated her partners-in-crime, becoming a dictator in charge of approximately two numbers, not counting seven who was in jail, and they all died of overwork soon enough anyway.)

Synesthesia.

Because zero is black, and one is white; two is yellow, three is pink, tending to span the darker range of the color. Four is red, five is orange, six is light yellow-green. Seven is muddy green and eight is navy blue and nine is dark green. Monday is pink-red and Tuesday is yellow and Wednesday is orange and Thursday is seven-colored and Friday is nine-coloured and Saturday is sandy and Sunday is golden, and each letter of the alphabet has a relatively unique colour of its own.

(I know ‘relatively unique’ isn’t a technically correct term.)

And some people hear music as colours and vice versa, I think? And textures and all sorts of interesting things. Not that they aren’t black if they’re typed in black; the colour comes up in association, or maybe in the mind’s eye.

And ‘eclairee123’ is yellow-white-pink-red-yellow-white-yellow-pink; it’s a distressingly feminine sort of thing. I remember wishing I’d made it eclairee456- yellow-white-pink-red-yellow-red-orange-green, or eclairee789, yellow-white-pink-red-yellow-green-blue-dark green, but it’s an old thing, and I’m attached to it, and the passwords tend to be less overtly pink-and-white.

‘imaginary-lightning’ is white-pink-brown-green-red-cream, white-beige-black-green-brown.

Because of the association with the blogskin, there’s also red and grey overtones where they otherwise wouldn’t be.

It’s very interesting, all-told; statistics suggest anywhere between one in twenty-three and one in two people have it.

For which purpose, I have announced, “Wednesday is orange!” to varying people, namely my mother, Ri-chan, Awa and Sean Seet. The latter decided I was being an idiot, while the first three came up with some variation of “No, it’s blue!”

Unfortunately that’s a laughably small sample size.

So I'm saving all my secrets for a deaf man
blabber on I blabber on
stare empty at a wall
and make it try to sing along
carry on I carry on
you’re shackled all you pain is stiff
tattooed lovers they don't like to reminisce

keep pictures of the people you once loved
in a safe oh in a safe
oh no you lost the combination oh no you have the wrong address
scribble names unscramble names
oh you’re shackled all your pain is stiff
I know you’re planning your vengeance
tattooed lovers they don't like to reminisce
who knows what name they're screaming now

so I'm saving all my secrets for a deaf man
blabber on and on and on and on
oh no you lost the combination oh no you have the wrong address
scribble names unscramble names
see this world is not just a ball
of vagueness you can just bounce off