Everytime I come back to this house in Johor where I spent most of my childhood, I get hit by lethargy from the generally more relaxed atmosphere because I have a huge collection of dvds to choose from for my bouts of boredom, and somehow the air here makes me sleepy.
Unless it rains, of course.
And somehow I feel like I’ve got more mood to start playing the piano again, especially when it rains. The piano sorta accompanied my sisters and me throughout our childhood. There are too many memories that came with it.. And I’m always prone to reminisce everything about my childhood when I set my eyes on that piano..
Talking about that piano, I just went to KL to visit my first ever piano teacher, Ms Chong, who’s currently based in Selangor.. It was lovely, she had a friend who came along to join us for the day trips to the endlessly huge malls (we went to 1 Utama and Mid Valley on monday and tuesday respectively…didn’t manage to hit Bangsar for the nightlife since we were already knackered from the days’ shopping and talking and walking) and we had so much to talk about among the 3 of us..
Although we each belong in different decades (I just ventured into my 20’s, Ms Chong in her 30’s and her friend, Michelle probably in her early 40’s), we never ran out of things to talk about, from politics to pet peeves to ambitions to relationships to frustrations of a changing time to family inside jokes to books, etc. It’s therapeutic. Especially on monday night when we dined at the restaurant inside IKEA till closing time. haha. I think KL’s kinda like Singapore, but more dangerous, which gives it character. Only if I spoke cantonese. All chinese people speak cantonese in KL. No wonder Hong Kong stars are buying property in KL. Anyways.
Back in JB, my mom got emotional today, when she felt nostalgic about the time around my childhood, when my sisters and I were all living with my parents..She just suddenly cried, sliently. Like everything just contracted somewhere between her throat and her heart and made her tear ducts work. I’m also kinda like that, getting emotional all of a sudden. Joey will swear it’s true, leave me alone for an afternoon and I get all paranoid and upset because I let my imagination run wild and my memory surface. It’s like that for the womenfolk in my family, so I can’t really help it. :p
It kinda made me cry to know that she still cries whenever she recalls the time when she made my eyes and scalp sting from the solution that treats head lice when I was about 11years old. Got the bug from school mates, most likely, and according to my mom, I was sobbing so hard, I made my sisters cry with me. How it was like for my mom to be helpless about my pain, I’d have no idea, but how she remembers the way she hurt inside while trying to help with no experience of dealing with a crisis like that, I was beyond words for the kind of love she has for me…
As for myself, I think living by myself in S’pore gave me a lot of space to learn about myself and grow into someone more independent. (I’m talking about the freedom of getting drunk and going home without my mom waiting in the living room to discover I reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol…among other things….lol)
Friends from my younger days see me and tell me I’ve changed, grown older, more jaded and more solemn. I dunno if that’s good or bad, the last part, but I know I’ve definitely become a more honest person to myself and people ar0und me. Brutal honesty is the way to go from what I see. People need to stop pretending things are going great when they complain all day and do nought to change the way things are. Like if you’re stuck in a torturing relationship it’s better to ditch the bitch and move on.
Life’s too short to waste time enduring bullshit, eh?
This is EVIL…. I felt like puking while reading how the French tortured their criminals..
SARS didn’t do its job.
Yes, it’s a shame the SARS outbreak failed to wipe out half the population of Singapore, because in Singapore, you find:
-inconsiderate commuters
-narrow-minded imbeciles (a hyperbole, if it offends you) + government ass-kissing brainwashed nobodys who think Singapore is the centre of the Universe
-arrogant middle-income earners who dress more flamboyantly than billionaires
-white-ass loving SPGs (of course the tourism industry isn’t complaining)
-people who speak Singlish with pride and are thinking of glorifying it further, to the horror of their government, to the delight of moi.
-desperate males
-materialistic females
-frequent Karaoke patrons
-American-accented true blue homegrown locals (which makes you wonder how many hours they spend watching American TV, which of course we know is mostly crap)
-people like Mr Pita
-money laundering institutions and agencies of all trades & industries (which happens in most capitalist environments but here, they are so blatant and scheming)
Yes, it is this half of the population, this half who mostly hold the Singaporean passport, this half who pisses me off day in and day out, who should’ve been wiped out by SARS.
I’ve practically lived here since 7. Most people who don’t piss me off and are what you call, worldly, possess common sense in the universal sense of the word, are PRs, expats, foreign students, exchange students visitors, etc.
Of course I’ve met very nice Singaporeans but this bunch is rare, and they mostly are thinking of leaving the country once they get the chance.
Wise.
The rest just can’t entertain the fact that a Malaysian who went through their education system isn’t proud of being mistaken for a local, can’t wait to leave the country and casually points out atrocities staring at them in the face (but they’ve never come to terms with the reality of how they got duped into the propaganda)